During the time we were doing IVFs in 2010, CL was coming to the end of her journey with infertility.  She had done an Egg Donor IVF, using donated eggs from a family member, and gave birth to her daughter in July.  I was so blessed to have someone in my life who had gone down this road before me and was able to support me when it was my turn.  Because of her success and the fact that she felt so bonded to her pregnancy and her child despite the genetic differences, I felt compelled to quickly move onto using a donor.  I was operating on auto pilot at this point.  We had just experienced three failed IVFs in a row, all of which truly sucked the life out of me.  It was a miracle in and of itself that I found the energy to keep going, but you don’t ever throw in the towel.  The mother inside me was going to push my body and my heart to its furthest limits.

In January of 2011 I met with my doctor and discussed doing a donor egg cycle.  He was adamant about moving forward with this cycle.  He said his job was to get me pregnant and although I was still considerably young, all arrows pointed toward my issues being of the ovarian variety.  There was nothing wrong with my uterus.  So in theory, I could get pregnant with better quality embryos, and to do that I would need better quality eggs.  Knowing how much money this cycle would cost put the brakes on the whole thing.  We would have to save.  Plus, I couldn’t help but notice this uncomfortable feeling that would come over me when I thought about having a child that was genetically unrelated to me and my family.  I was going to need help getting through this, from an emotional standpoint.

Who better to go to for advice and guidance than your big brother, if your lucky enough to have one.  I do have a big brother, I’m more than lucky to have him, but really lucky that he’s an emotional guy and willing to discuss this stuff with me.  I’d have to use words like “ovaries”, and “uterus”, and “period” in order to have this conversation with him, but God bless him, he didn’t laugh or make me feel weird.  He listens, and we cry together.  We adore each other.  I met him for lunch and we talked about what I was going to have to do.  I remember him saying, “in a year from now, you have to be different.  You have to be better financially, physically, and emotionally.”  He told me he wanted me to look into “talking to someone” about what was going on.  That meant a therapist.  He wanted me to get on a budget plan to save money, and a diet and exercise regimen to get fit.  It was like he was giving me orders, and I so appreciated being told what to do.  I was exhausted from having to make so many big life decisions in the passed few years I just wanted someone to guide me and tell me what I should do.  Lastly, he told me it didn’t matter how my baby came into the world, it had a big loving family waiting to embrace it, and an uncle that would adore it.  I was renewed after that lunch with my brother.  I had an action plan.  I was empowered.  I went home and found a therapist that specialized in women’s issues and began seeing her every other week.  The first thing we tackled was my obsessive and unhealthy attachment to my six dead embryos.  She suggested I bury them, (their pictures anyway), we cremated them in the chimnea in the backyard on January 19th 2011.  We said a prayer, I read a little speech I wrote about them (which I’ve posted to the Roller Coaster page of this blog), we dropped their pictures into the flames, and I was freed.  As the smoke rose I imagined their little spirits soaring up to heaven to be angels for us for the rest of our lives.  I know how this sounds.  It’s crazy.  All I can say to defend myself is that infertility does something to you, it changes you, it breaks you.  I can’t help how I felt, or how I behaved.  I bonded in a very real way with these six embryos.  I knew then I couldn’t make a genetic link to myself, this was as close as I would ever get, I couldn’t help but love them, and I had to set them free.

After our little ceremony I felt a huge weight had lifted and I was empowered to move forward with our donor egg cycle.  We needed money.  This is when our openness about our journey truly paid off.  I could not believe how generous people were being, giving us items to sell at our flea market.  Our basement was beginning to look like a Moroccan street fair with all the stuff people had given us to sell.  Thousands of items donated, each with their own set of hopes and well wishes for us.  We raised about $1000.00 towards our baby fund.  My cup runneth over.

Once we realized we would have the money we needed by the end of the year it was time to go back to the clinic and get started on the donor search.  We first had to fill out a stack of papers about ourselves.  Well specifically, about me, as Hubby’s sperm would be in the mix.  It was only necessary to find someone that was more or less, like me.  As my family and friends would tell you, that is not an easy task.  I had to prioritize.  What characteristics do I have that represent me the most.  A better way to answer this question, as morbid as it sounds, is to ask what people would remember most about me if I died tomorrow.  Would people talk most about my blue eyes, and brown hair?  Probably not.  Would people remember that I was a pretty good singer and dancer in my younger years, and that I was determined, kind, smart, and outgoing?  Perhaps.  I also had to ask myself, when I look at this child, my child, what about it will I identify with.  Will I care if he or she has blue eyes like me or if they looked anything like me?  I wasn’t sure.  I felt the best way to get a physical resemblance was to ask for a donor with fair skin like me.  The odds of someone with fair skin having lighter hair and eyes is pretty good, but since Hubby has an olive complexion and brown eyes, our genetic baby would probably tend to have those features.  So here I was, playing God in a sense, trying to choose the right set of characteristics to produce a genetic copy of me without there being a genetic link.  When ultimately, I wasn’t even sure if I cared.  I just wanted a baby.

While we were in the midst of saving money, reading through donor profiles, and going to acupuncture and therapy appointments, I had the rug pulled out from under me.  My company had been talking for months about layoffs again.  We had gone through a season of layoffs many times in the past and because of the type of job I had, and being the only person in the department that did it, I didn’t think I would be effected.  I have to admit, on the day the meetings were scheduled (to find out whether or not you still had a job), I was feeling rather cocky.  When it was my turn to go into the meeting room, I took a deep breath and opened the door.  When I saw the HR representative sitting there along with the manager my heart sank, I guess she’s not here to tell me I’ve gotten a promotion.  I have no idea what they said, all I could think about was my insurance coverage, my upcoming donor egg IVF, would I still be able to go through with it after all this planning and preparing.  I could not believe what was happening to me.  This was the worst imaginable thing at this moment, given what we were about to do, given the money we would need and the insurance coverage we would need.  The silver lining quickly revealed itself.  I would get a pretty good severance package, with my full pay and benefits for 24 weeks beginning in December and ending in June of 2012.  After my official separation day I would also be qualified to received unemployment.  Things were starting to look up.  I could keep my insurance, still save money, save unemployment payments, and be off from work to relax and enjoy my pregnancy.  God was moving things around for me, making way for what was to come next.  That is true, even now in hindsight that is true, just not in the way I thought then.

After being matched with five different donors and turning the first four down, we finally chose our girl.  She was a little bit shorter than me, light brown hair, hazel eyes, fair skin, danced Tap and Jazz as a girl, owned her own business, and was of German decent.  She reminded me more of my mother than she did of me, but I loved that about her.  We had made our choice, and we felt great about it.  The best part was that she had donated before, and those previous donations resulted in pregnancies.  I was filled with hope.  I couldn’t wait.  I loved this girl.  Although I would never meet her, or ever see her face, I imagined her, and sent her loving energy from the deepest part of my heart.  I thought about her everyday.  Wondering what she was thinking and doing, hoping she was feeling positive about what she was about to do.  Hoping she could feel my love and appreciation for her.  Despite the compensation she was getting, it takes a very special person to make a sacrifice like this, put yourself through something so physical and invasive, for a stranger.  I loved this girl.  On the day of her egg retrieval, knowing what she would go through, the soreness, the grogginess from the anesthesia, I wrote her a note.  I’ve posted it on the Roller Coaster page of this blog.  I asked the nurses to give it to her before she left the recovery room.  They said they would.  I never asked if they actually did.  I was too afraid they would tell me they had forgotten.  I just assumed she got my note, and felt a sense of gratitude and peace, knowing I had told her how I felt.  Despite how this would all end.

She gave us seventeen eggs.  It was amazing.  I was on cloud nine, literally clapping my hands as I read the embryologists report.  I had never produced more than 5 eggs myself, and this angel on Earth had given me seventeen.  Of those seventeen, three were immature, five were multi-nucleated (when one egg is fertilized by more than one sperm resulting in multiple nuclei), which would not survive, and nine were normally fertilized.  I couldn’t believe it.  Nine fertilized embryos.  It was a miracle.  This was the highest I had ever felt during an IVF cycle.  I was elated.  We pushed the embryos to day five post retrieval when they are becoming blastocysts and getting stronger.  In five days, we lost a few embryos which is to be expected I guess, we ended up with 2 really great A+ embryos they would transfer into me, and one left over to cryofreeze.  A twinge of disappointment.  We were hoping for more, but we focused all our energy on the strength and quality of the two embryos we were bringing home.

You know the torture that lays ahead.  You’re expecting it.  All the same emotions, ups and downs, aches and pains and worries.  There is no other kind of hell than the two week wait.  Even now, being separated from it for almost two months, I talk about it, and that ache in my gut comes right back.  It makes me sick to my stomach.  Sick with worry is not a cliche, it is a very real emotion.  I suppose it will fill my life when I do become a parent.

The day of our pregnancy test was horrible.  As usual we went to the clinic very early in the morning to give blood for the test and went home to wait for the call to come with the results.  We went to the mall that morning just to stay out of the house and keep my mind occupied.  The ache deep in my abdomen was strong, convincing me I was pregnant and the test would be positive.  It just had to be.  We went home and I slept, trying to make the hours go by, hoping to be awakened by the phone ringing.  I woke up exhausted, Hubby was on the computer keeping himself busy, no call had come.  Mean while, my parents were worried sick, they could hardly concentrate, both of them were working.  My father left early and came over our house to see if we had any news.  He was just as frustrated and worried as we were, knowing we hadn’t heard anything yet, and it was 3pm.  Hubby finally couldn’t take it anymore and picked up the phone, “I’m gonna call and see what the hell is taking so long.”  In that moment I knew.  If it were good news they would have called.  We were about to write history.  My father stood next to me while I sat on the couch.  Hubby called, asked for a nurse who had just gotten out of a meeting, he gave his name, and never said anything else.  His eyes were off in the distance, he was on hold waiting for the nurse to pick up, he stared at the wall.  Then, in an instant, his eyes darted over to me, he looked directly in my eyes, and without him uttering a word, I knew.  I read it in his eyes.  Like in slow motion, he began to shake his head.

The panic was yards away from me at first, but I could see it like a freight train racing toward me.  Closer and closer the panic came, I saw it coming and could do nothing to keep it from taking me.  I closed my eyes, bracing for it.  Then with a sudden sweep, starting at my feet, rising up through my legs, and stomach, and chest, and forehead.  I took a deep breath and let the panic take me.  I don’t even think I cried.  It was like the moment before a scream, when your mouth is open, but nothing is coming out, not even air.  It felt like fire all over my body.  It was over, it was officially over, my last attempt to be pregnant.  Gone.  In an instant.  My childhood dream of being pregnant, the movie in my mind I would play over and over again, of pregnancy, and childbirth, and nursing, and that bonding with my baby I would experience.  Gone.  I didn’t even notice my father, who had been standing next to me, had all but collapsed on the couch and grabbed me up, holding me like I was his infant baby girl, rocking me, sobbing.  I immediately felt a wave of guilt.  It didn’t last long, but it swept over me almost as dramatically as the panic had set in.  I did this to him.  His soul was pouring out of him because of me.  My poor father.  Helpless to save me.  Helpless to protect his little girl from this devastating pain.  Forced to watch me endure it.  His hands bound.  It was torture for both of us.  The first thing I could whisper was “I’m sorry daddy.”  I still am.

I called and told my mother, through coughing and sobbing.  She left and rushed home to get to me.  We just held each other.  My mother held me in her arms like she would never let me go.  I could feel her heart beating against my chest like she was, through some kind of osmosis, giving me strength to survive this day.  She just poured all her love and courage into me, filling me up, so I could first get up off the couch, then eat something, then move forward one foot in front of the other.  I felt sorry for her.  For both of my parents.  Having to helplessly stand by while their daughter, their only baby girl, walks though this hell.  They didn’t imagine this for me.  If they could have saved me from this they would have.  I felt sorry for them for what my infertility was putting them through.  I forgot about myself in that moment, my heart ached for them.  Hubby was a pillar of strength, a beacon of light, all I had to do was follow him, and he would lead me out of this.  I trusted in him, in his smile, in his words telling me that it would be alright.  We would adopt, we would figure something out, we would be parents no matter what.  The days that followed were a blur.  I was devastatingly sad, and riotously angry all at the same time.  I screamed at Hubby, “tell me what to do, TELL ME WHAT TO DO, WHAT DO I DO NOW?”  The answer to that, I know now, is this.  Just keep breathing, don’t think or plan or stress any more, just keep breathing.  That’s what I did.  I made sure to breathe.  I managed to sleep out of pure exhaustion, I sat, I watched television, and I kept breathing.  In a week, when I was ready to receive it, God would send me another angel.