Just like everybody else

My friend J struggled with infertility. After a painful procedure (she never mentioned what it was,  but I remember her leaving work the next day because the pain got too bad) she was able to get pregnant. And then she had a miscarriage. This happened at the time I was beginning my own efforts to conceive. I tried to be supportive, but shortly after that I moved away. She finally made it into motherhood and now has two beautiful kids, whose pictures she constantly posts on facebook. And I always look at them fondly and think that she deserves such joy after so much pain and suffering.

Se recently posted the following comment:

 kids spent the night with  ___ and i got to sleep til...10!! and now i am drinking my HOT coffee and watching NO cartoons!!

My first reaction was anger. Wasn't she supposed to forever cherish the presence of her kids in her life??? Was this not why she fought so hard to have them??? Two seconds later I realized I was overreacting. Yes, I want to have kids too, but I also enjoy drinking my morning coffee while it's still hot, and I hate cartoons.

If anything, this proves that whether you go through infertility or not, once you're a mother you get to be like everybody else, always putting your children's needs before your morning coffee. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a break from that once in a while. Infertility leaves some scars, but it does not have to change your enjoyment of hot coffee.

A phrase to ponder

"People who have information about an individual case rarely feel the need to know the statistics of the class to which the case belongs".  ~Daniel Kahneman


And so I get to hear about so-and-so who gave up on trying to get pregnant, but got pregnant anyway later on. I am very tired of this story. This has happened to many infertile couples, but I am pretty sure that there's plenty of couples who never made it. It's just that nobody talks about them.


Too bad that just a few days ago I promised not to get mad at people who blab some nonsense trying to make me feel better. How does someone else's unintended success is supposed to make me feel better about my own failure after six years of trying?


Oh, right. I am not supposed to lose hope. Yeah, got it.


But you know what? Maybe it's time to move on and hope for something different.

Better things are coming

That phrase, in a nutshell, sums up what people mean, no matter what idiocy comes out of their mouth (God knows best, just relax, those treatments work miracles, you're still young, just adopt, etc).

I do not usually make a list on New Year because they tend to lead towards disappointment in myself. Why pile it up? But here's a good thing to try out: Each time I hear another person condescendingly throw one of those idiocies at me, I'll do my best to thank them, and repeat the above phrase in my head, because,  ignorance or disinterest notwithstanding, that's probably what they're trying to say anyway.

Is it just about genes?

The nice thing about traveling is that the spouse and I had plenty of opportunities to talk. Two conversations were very important.

In one, we talked about someone I hardly knew, but who died last Summer of uterine cancer. She and her husband had suffered infertility and, though I never got the details, I assume she underwent some aggressive hormonal treatments when trying to get pregnant. They ended up adopting two kids, who have now, sadly, lost their mother.

One case does not make a rule. But it makes me ponder whether or not I want to keep pouring artificial hormones into my body, especially now that my sister has cancer.

Another conversation was about being child free and what that would mean for the spouse. To me, it is a life I do not wish to live. To him, it is not a big deal. My fear is that sooner or later he might change his mind, and then leave me for someone younger and probably fertile. He insists that will not happen.

I also told him about Dawkins's selfish gene, and how at least some of my genes have been passed into the next generation, through  my sister's kids. However, in his case, it is looking less and less likely that either of his siblings will produce offspring. And so he asked, all of a sudden, if I would agree if he were to donate sperm. I laughed, then I said no. Then I said maybe, and said I would think about it.

It's almost been a month, and I am still thinking about it.  I don't think he was serious, because he has not mentioned it again. But what if he does? I have no answer.

Book Recommendation

After more than 18 months, I finally found a book on miscarriage that I was able to read without feeling anger, envy or sadness. I started reading many books on infertility and miscarriage, some of them recommended by readers of this blog, but was unable to finish a single one. I always got discouraged after a few pages or even after a few chapters.

Not this time. The book is Coming to Term, by Jon Cohen. Let me start right out by warning you that the author has three kids and they get mentioned in this book. Yet,  this is not his personal success story (though he did experience the pain of miscarriage). It is a compilation of information he gathered throughout many years. This book is extremely well documented.

The guy is a scientific writer, and you can tell by how well he organizes and presents the information in a clear way that anyone can understand. A lot of that information is, of course, related to miscarriage, but there is also many facts on infertility, including a bit on PCOS and other conditions related to it.

I wish I had read this when I first started trying to conceive. I would have pressed for more tests sooner, changed treatments sooner, made life changes sooner, changed doctors sooner.

Even if you have never had a miscarriage, this is a good book to read if you are trying to get pregnant.

The Evolutionary Wallflower

I am trying to come to terms with the fact that my my eggs are all frittata by now. I am pretty sure that's the reason the second pregnancy went, literally, to the trash.  I respond well to injected FSH, but I guess I am producing crappy eggs that are unable to implant, even if fertilized.  I have to sit down with the spouse and make him see it too. He is OK with my decision not to do IVF, but I don't think he really understands what it means: Donor eggs, donated embryos, or adoption.

From a Darwinian point of view, my genes are out of the game. But I dislike the term "evolutionary dead-end". It sounds kind of... well, dead.  Evolutionary Wallflower sounds nicer. I know that a wallflower is a dull person, but still, that's better than dead, no?  And flowers are pretty. I came across the term in a book about, of all things, feathers (Thor Hanson, 2011). 

And yet, my sister shares 50 percent of my genes, and each one of her kids  is the genetical equivalent of my grandchild. In a Dawkinsian sense, the game is still on. I just skipped a whole generation, without ever having to worry about poopy diapers, school, violent media, drugs, or setting up a college fund.

I know I am missing also on the fun, the many milestones, the pride and the simple joy of being a parent. That may still come, attached, of course, to the above mentioned worries. Genetics is the only part that is settled.

But I still have the rest of my life to live, and I definitely do not want to play the part of a wallflower in it.

Here we are

My daughter, you were lucky not to come
my son, you were lucky to stay back
a crazy world ruled by crazy men
is no place for births

we will not mourn those absences
we would, of course if you were
among two fires or two bloodsheds
or dutifully preparing to be orphaned

here we are, the old ones, the witnesses
with that unintended privilege
of watching planes and other vultures go by
with lethal messages as trophies


my daughter, you were lucky not to come
my son, you were lucky to stay back
and since we have been orphaned of children
let us drink to your awaiting souls.

                         Mario Benedetti

Wins and Losses

You know what's back? The sex drive. I never knew it was gone. One morning I woke up and thought the spouse looked very handsome and I should make love to him, so I did. Only later did I realize that I had not felt like that in a long time.

I also got back my grooming instincts. I looked down and noticed that I had not shaved my legs in ages, and that the war zone had not been waxed and trimmed properly except for the occasional benefit of Dr. Careful. The worse part is, I have not had a manicure & pedicure in two years. I am not about to have one, because the eczema  is still troubling me, but two years is a long time, isn't it?

One thing that is fading away, I think, is the hope of conceiving and carrying to term a healthy baby.

I always thought hope was a beautiful thing to hang onto during harsh times. But six years of infertility and miscarriage taught me that hope is also a shackle that makes you put yourself through painful procedures and humiliating tests. It takes away your freedom to eat and drink what you like, have sex whenever you want, do whatever exercise you like and treat other medical conditions that you might  have.

Hope has made me move too quickly into the next cycle, accuses me of not trying hard enough, makes me ignore my boundaries, has made me be available at all times for his benefit, insists that I stop spending time with friends and family, insists that I stop participating in leisure interests and, worst of all: seems too good to be true. And what has Hope given me, after putting me through all that? Bad bruises, physical and emotional hurt and even a visit to the ER. Oh, and bitter disappointment. That, too.

Hey, I guess I've been in an abusive relationship with Hope. So if this thing with Hope does not work out and he dumps me, well, good riddance. I'm just not ready to dump him first. I still like hanging out with him.

Telenovelas

This week I was mostly sick in bed with a bad cold. I ended up with my email account open, which resulted in a few friends inviting me to chats. These I gladly accepted because I wanted to catch up with them.

And all the conversations sounded like the convoluted plots of the stupid telenovelas I always hated. It does not help that all conversations were in Spanish.

• L broke up with his girlfriend of five years, because she finally told him she does not want to have kids with him (she has kids from a previous marriage).
• K is still unsure on whether she should divorce, though it is clear she and her husband do not love each other anymore. She feels staying together is what is best for their son.
• M is still fighting for full custody of three kids that treat her like sh*t, have no respect for her and do insulting things that no mother should tolerate.

It all made me think that we all want kids for different reasons, and are willing to do really illogical things for the sake of those kids (ending what was otherwise a good relationship, staying in an awful relationship, going broke in lawyer fees and tolerating horrible teenager behavior).

As for me, complaining about the torture of  artificial hormones, scheduled sex and having stuff shoved up my vagina, all for nothing... do I also sound like a stupid telenovela to them?

The Endowment Effect

It was not a bad anniversary. Thank you for the happy wishes. We ended up having dinner at home and not doing anything special, that is the problem when your anniversary falls on a weekday.

I'm trying to remember where I read about the endowment effect. I read a lot of stuff but then I forget what came from where. Anyway, it all boils down to a good being worth more when seen as something that you might lose than when it is a potential gain.

The example I remember is the Duke University experiment with basketball tickets. Students enter a lottery after standing in line for days. Those who actually get a ticket, when asked, say the would not sell it for less than, say, 500 dollars. Those who had also stood in line for days but did not get a ticket said they were willing to pay 50 dollars.

The bottom line is that  when you actually own something you think it is more valuable.

Under this light, I see why miscarriage was emotionally more painful*  than the negative pregnancy results I used to get month after month of trying to conceive. And negative results were also more painful after going through the trouble of Clomid/FSH injections and IUI. It is as if going through all that trouble entitled me to a baby.

And so, at the risk of offending someone, I wonder if people with kids simply cannot fathom life without them, and when they read all those studies that indicate that people without kids are happier, they convince themselves that they are the exception.

If it is so, maybe, being childless is not going to be so bad.

* Let's not talk, for now, about the physical pain.

What is it with women?

Our 9th anniversary is fast approaching. Yesterday, at the opera, the spouse and I had some bubbly between two acts.

A friend of ours who knows this is something we never do (the bubbly between acts) asked what the occasion was, and we informed him of the upcoming anniversary. He congratulated us and made some jokes. Children were never mentioned.

It dawned on me that all my women friends  have had something to say about us being married for so long and not having kids. Some know about our struggle in detail, and feel the need to comfort me about my childless situation instead of congratulate me for staying married for so long. Some don't have much information, and make stupid jokes about how I should not waste more time and get to it, or that they could not imagine being married that long and not have any kids.

Most of these women have good intentions and I try not to take anything personally. Still, I wonder why kids are so important for women, while men simply do not think about them much.

I freaked out

I was talking to Dr. Funny and I started crying. I just left because really, we were not getting anywhere, with me just crying non-stop. I cried on my way home, then cried during dinner, cried before going to bed, and cried a lot in bed until I decided I'd better let the spouse sleep and took my crying to the bathroom.

I kept crying and crying until at 1:30 I felt I needed to do somethig. Now, my insurance supposedly has a mental health specialist available at any time. I'd never tried them before. It seemed like a good time.

It turns out you don't get anywhere without first dealing with their automated system (which does not do well with foreign accents) and entering your policy number and your date of birth, then being put on hold for three minutes while you listen to recorded health advice (if you think you're pregnant, stop smoking and drinking alcohol) until after another five minutes or so you finally talk to a bored nurse who just wants you to go to the ER, and will not put you through with the mental health specialist until you beg and cry a little more, and then explains that she has to hang up and have someone from the mental health and substance abuse line call you. By the way, why do they call it the mental health AND substance abuse line? I'm not sure I like that they throw those two together.

Anyway, the mental health specialist was nice. The phone ringing woke up the spouse, but after sorting things out I finally had a compassionate human being on the line who listened to me go on and on about injections, infertility, getting stuff shoved into your vagina over and over, ovarian cysts, bloody periods, anemia, miscarriage, hormonal imbalances, six years trying to conceive, uterine malformations, being away from my family, and even the death of my dog more than a year ago.

She made me make a plan: Go back to my antidepressants and begin taking them ASAP. She kindly tried to find a nurse practitioner in my area who would prescribe them but had no luck. She told me NOT to go to the ER or urgent care (duh) but to try to get my PCP (Dr. Nice) to prescribe them without an appointment, even if the doctor who prescribed them last time was not him. Best of all, she gave me a 1800 number that will supposedly get me directly to the mental health line if I ever need to, which I hope I won't.

The plan was made, and she suggested I just have a  glass of milk and  go sit somewhere comfortable without even trying to go to sleep.

It worked. I cuddled with the yellow dog on the couch and before I knew it the sun was up and she was waking me up.

Dr. Nice is on vacation, but one of the other doctors in his office took pity on me and prescribed the antidepressants. I also called Dr. Funny, apologized for leaving and made another appointment for next week.

So that's the plan: Antidepressants and not making plans for now.

Keep going...

My cousin and his wife dealt with infertility during several years. That plus two ectopic pregnancies. But they persisted and now they have two healthy kids. Somehow, now that they have everything they were hoping for, something else is broken. I have no clue of who is at fault, but I learned this week that she asked for a divorce.

I know my cousin to be a true gentleman, who works hard, loves his wife and children and would never do anything to hurt them. I've also known his wife for many years, ever since we were all teenagers. I remember talking to her about my own infertility problems. She was always very compassionate and kind. I have no clue what brought up this decision but I can't help but think that maybe the ordeal they went through while trying to conceive somehow took its toll, and it is only surfacing now.

I am scared. I hate to think that we might be able to finally become a family, only to break that family to pieces later on. Just because it happened to my cousin does not mean it's going to happen to me, but I think about it a lot, especially remembering my recent breakdown when I had my period and the FSH was not here, and then discovering that they did not even send the right amount and I had to order more. I still marvel at how the spouse put up with me and my anger, despair and depression.

He took it upon himself to call in the missing injections and deal with our insurance. He has also kept me company during three of the four times I've injected myself for this cycle, and each time he hugs me and tells me he loves me.

I have always known I am blessed to have him, but the news from home have made me even more aware of that fact.

The childless four

T is not pregnant. This was her last attempt at IVF. She kept very quiet about it and only after a second email told me the result, stating that she will be incommunicado for a while. And I gave her a brief reply saying that I love her and know very well that there's nothing I can say to make her feel better, sent her my hugs and said I was sorry.

And I truly am. We have two other friends, also from college, who are also childless. D got  pregnant a year ago, and then miscarried at 12 weeks. She had to undergo a D&C. And then there's O. She's never been married, though she's been with her boyfriend for the past 17 years. They have never moved together and they do not want to start a family. But O confessed to me that she sometimes yearned for children. Here's the four of us, at one of the weddings.

I know I don't have the right to blog about other people's lives. And yet, these three friends, and a few others, feel like family to me. At some point, we were all roommates. Little by little, our periods became synchronized. Pheromones, maybe? Coincidence? Who knows?

I do know that it is a tragedy that none of us is a mother. In this case, I know there is no biological connection. It's just coincidence. A very unlucky one.

Things I should not think about but I think about anyway

Divorce. The spouse dying. Me dying. Having another miscarriage. Bleeding to death during that miscarriage. Having a very ill baby. Not having a baby at all. Death again. Never seeing my family again. Not wanting to see my family just now. Not even wanting to talk to them. Cooking squash for tomorrow's lunch. Not wanting to cook but too guilty not to. Guilt about eating chocolate. Guilt about not giving the yellow dog a bath. Guilt about falling behind with the packing. Divorce again. I have to pay the plumber. I should call the general contractor again. I should get the gas turned on. I should call the power company about the vines on that post. Why bother? I don't even want to live there anymore. I want to stay in this apartment forever, and eat lots of chocolate, and never deal with moving, contractors, or infertility again.

Yes, there's a reason

One of the stupid things people say to us infertiles is that God must have a reason not to make us mothers.

What reasons? Oh, they don't say, but when you are a depressive, self-deprecating infertile your imagination can supply them easily: I'll be a terrible mother, my kids would be criminals, they would be disabled, I will not be able to give them a decent life, I will probably come down with a terrible disease and they'll become orphans... you get the picture.

Well, yesterday in Houston a kindergarten boy was showing off a gun to his friends when it fired. He and two other kindergartners were injured, and the little boy will probably be expelled for a year, since that is the usual punishment.

How about the parents that left a gun where a 6 year old boy could find it? Will there be any consequences for them?

I don't know. I do know that God made them parents, but not me.

Frankly, I prefer to think that God is not really looking.

The baby-ready room

This is a blurry picture from the listing of the house.  As you can see, we have a baby-ready room, though no baby.

This will be the only room where we'll be painting. We don't like the colors and we want to turn this into a craft room for myself, at least for now. It will also be a guest bedroom.

Somehow, not taking advantage of this paint-job makes me feel wasteful. If we get lucky with the FSH cycle and get pregnant, we could leave the room as it is, especially if we get a girl.

On the other hand, if we don't get pregnant, this room will be a reminder of unfulfilled dreams.

So it's settled. We're painting. Any color suggestions will be accepted.

I adopted tofu, does that count?

I've been so caught up with house buying (or not) that I almost missed the mess about the PETA website and Infertility Awareness Week.

After taking a two  minute peek, I wish I had missed it entirely. Basically, PETA is happy to give away vasectomies to people who neuter their pets. So far, so good. The problem is that, by doing so, they are claiming to "honor" infertile people.

I can't find the logic in there, but I am not surprised: It's PETA. I don't expect them ever to be logical, much less to conduct a campaign in good taste. Even if I agree with many of the things they have to say, I'd never give any money to an organization that wastes it in offensive campaigns that alienate people to their cause.

In the meantime, PETA is far from apologizing and keeps talking about adoption. I wonder how many adopted kids the executive that wrote that statement has. The answer is: Probably none.

The logic of the regular breeder is as follows: "Since I am able to conceive naturally, there is no reason why I should adopt. You, unlucky infertile, cannot conceive naturally, so it falls upon your shoulders the task of adopting unlucky kids."

This of course oversimplifies what is a very complicated issue. I will not dwell on it right now since I have done it previously and probably will again in the future. All I am going to say is that, by the same logic, there's people who are perfectly able to purchase a cute puppy from a puppy mill. Why should they bother adopting a grown up pet from a shelter? Especially a pet like my own mutt, whose murky genetic origins resulted in funny looks, and who has been traumatized and as a result has a few undesirable behavior issues.

I just want to add that I did try once to follow what PETA calls a cruelty free lifestyle, but it proved too difficult, given that my PCOS diet dictates that I take protein in every meal. Having beans or bean products in every meal resulted in weight gain and indigestion, plus an overuse of the pressure cooker that ecologically minded people would not appreciate.

Hey, but at least I tried to follow a cruelty free lifestyle. I could probably ask PETA to also try not to be cruel to infertile people. But I guess they're going to tell me to just adopt.

My convoluted career path in the US

More than five years ago, I moved to California from North Carolina. I was happy for the spouse, who had received a really good job offer, but I did not want to leave. I had a wonderful job that I loved, surrounded by nice co-workers that I could actually call friends. Not only that, but under the new conditions, my employment authorization was going to be voided: Students' spouses can work, but workers' spouses cannot. My employer in North Carolina would have undoubtedly kept me under my own work visa. I had been with them for a year and they were very happy to have me... but I was moving to another state.

Moving to California meant starting from zero, in a very competitive job market, where employers preferred hiring someone with a green card rather than wait for an applicant that needed to get a work visa after an offer was made.

Unbelievably, it happened. Not immediately, but eventually someone in California wanted to hire me. Of course, the union protested that the employer could not make a job offer if I was not authorized to work in the US. In turn, without a job offer, I could not request a work visa. The argument went back and forth for about five months... By then I had let go. I had been engaging in all sorts of cultural, recreational and educational activities, and, more importantly, going through my first serious steps in ART.

I had resigned myself to be a homemaker when the offer letter came in. I was able to get my work visa and finally begin working in California.

I had wanted for so long to be able to work again, especially in my area of expertise, that I tolerated too many things that were out of whack from the very beginning, and then got much worse. The job was far from ideal, but it took me more than two years to admit it. Still, without that job experience, I probably would not have been hired in my current job. Also, it is during those two years that I finally got a green card.

So what's the best job I've ever had in the US? My last job in North Carolina comes to mind. In addition to working with really nice people, I also used my lab skills and my language skills, and I was helping save people's lives, which always made me feel good even after really crappy days. I actually cried when I left.

But after infertility, I am glad I am not working there anymore. Not only was I surrounded by pregnant women,  I was actually present during more than a hundred vaginal deliveries and C-sections. I shudder to think of myself doing that again.

And you know what? I am very happy to be in Northern California, where immigrants and mixed marriages are quite common, where all sorts of languages are spoken in public places, and where the weather is never too hot or too cold. There's the earthquake risk and the housing prices, but those are the only two disadvantages that come to my mind right now.

I have to admit that, in spite of all the shitty stuff in my life, it does seem that someone out there is looking after me.

Let my ovaries decide

Last week I was approached by two different recruiters. One position is in the ideal company I should be working for, given my training. Still, the commute would be horrible because it's 30 miles away from where I live. It's also a terrible company to work for. There is a lot of job insecurity, and employees are always disgruntled and complain about long hours.

The other position is also related to my background, though not so much. It would be closer to home, about 6.5 miles away. I don't know much about how happy their employees are, but I do know that there were horrible layoffs recently.

Finally, there is the company I am working for under contract, and which might hire me permanently after three months. It's seven miles away. It's a Fortune 500 company, they're doing pretty well and everybody I know would love to work for them. The thing is, what I am doing is only partly related to my training and experience. Let's say that 50% of my work requires my knowledge and experience, but the other 50% of the time I do lab monkey work. As in, "¡Monkey, press the button! ¡Blow the whistle!". So I cannot say I get a warm feeling of professional accomplishment everyday. There is a huge part of my expertise that has no application whatsoever in this place.

I do get to knit at work, between pressing buttons and blowing whistles. I am about to finish my third pair of socks. In contrast, in my last job I was busy all the time and could hardly afford bathroom breaks. Maybe that's why I ended up with kidney stones. So this is an improvement, professional accomplishments be damned.

The thing is, if I were them, I would split my position in half. I would keep the biochemist part-time, and hire another part-time assistant to do the monkey work. I've been here for a month, and nobody has mentioned anything on whether they will keep me or not.

So of course I sent my resume to the two recruiters, and am already planning to come up with excuses at work if someone decides to interview me. I want to keep all my options open.

But I do not know what it is that I really want. There is no good wind if you don't know where you want to sail to.

Precisely at the end of my contract I will get another ultrasound scan to confirm that the ovarian cysts have been reabsorbed. If so, I will have to decide whether or not I want to do another IUI with FSH or go directly to IVF. The amount of money involved is mind-boggling.

Money aside, how do I keep working, or start a new job, knowing how stressful and inconvenient any of those treatments will be? Knowing that I will have to miss work to go to unpredictable doctor's appointments, and that I will have to interrupt work to go shoot myself hormones in the toilet?

The idea of not working at all seems tempting. The spouse and I are thrifty, he makes good money, I am on his insurance... But if we do IVF, we will need all the money we can make. If it works, we will probably want to buy a house. And the area where we live is still horribly expensive. Of course, if I were to work 30 miles away...

I keep jumping from one possibility to the next without coming any closer to knowing what it is that I really want.

But, who cares? Maybe the birth control pills are not working, and by the end of my contract my ovaries will still be full of cysts. So I try to convince myself that I don't have to determine what I really want, until I know for sure how my ovaries are doing.