If only my fertility were as easy as choosing between two divergent roads I’d have a 50% of having my own baby and those odds sound like heaven! After three and three-quarters years, however, I’ve always ended up on the wrong road.
I was thinking today that our WTF appointment is only two days away and realized that attending it doesn’t change anything. The IVF failed–period. We can’t go back and unfail it. Though I know how it failed, I don’t really know why. The most dire question I have is why more eggs weren’t retrieved. Technically, there were more there. Lots more there! I’m assuming the estradiol levels matched what was on the ultrasound or they would have told me. I guess that is a question for Tuesday. I just hope that I’m not rushed out of the appointment before I have the chance to ask my questions. I’m making a list of questions and they better answer every one of them!
I guess the thing I fear the most is the doctor saying that I have poor eggs and don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of having my own child!
But I’m so tired of being afraid all of the time. So tired of blaming myself. So tired of the endless grief that clings to me each day. So tired of others feeling sorry for me yet at the same time desperately needing their words like a parched man needs water.
I am trying to come to terms with the idea that I may never have a biological child. I am trying to imagine myself going the donor egg or the adoption route. It’s not what I want and not what I planned, but nothing on this “journey” has been of my choosing. I close my eyes and let myself visualize these other options to the point where they don’t scare me anymore. This is progress for me.
As for donor eggs, like I said, not what I imagined for my life! But. . . I would do it for my husband so he could have his own biological child. He deserves a child. He really does. He’s the most wonderful man on Earth and doesn’t deserve the train wreck that came along with trying to have a baby with me. It’s the least I could do for him and I would do it with all my heart. I would fall in love with my husband’s child, plain and simple.
Except for the fact that he doesn’t want me to do donor eggs.
He said he wants a child that is the best of him and the best of me. . .not the best of him and some other woman. I love him for this, but at the same time I don’t think he really knows what he would be giving up. He feels that if a child can’t be conceived from both of us, he’d rather have a child that isn’t conceived from either of us, hence adoption.
I’ve only done a small amount of research on adoption, but it seems to be more expensive and just as challenging as IVF. I worry that we’d be turned down–I’m almost 38, he’s 45. Oh, and I take anti-depressants. For some reason, I think that would be held against me. Of course, I wouldn’t be on them in the first place if my life hadn’t taken a serious wrong turn in the last three years.
I feel like I sound horrible in this post. I’ve read so many posts from women who have adopted and I know that once they lay their eyes on their children, it was love at first sight and the fact that they were not biologically related became of little consequence. It’s just that I’m not there yet. I can’t visualize that joy, because my heart is so full of grief. Full of grief from the babies that I lost and the grief from this last cycle.
If it were up to me and I knew that I could only choose between those two options, I think I would go the donor egg route. But then I realize that this is just as risky as anything else. The majority of research out there pushes donor eggs as the perfect solution for older women or those with poor egg quality but what they fail to mention is that it is not a done deal. The success rate for donor eggs is not 100%.
I need 100%. That’s just the cold, hard truth. Odds have never been in my favor. Technically, I only had a 4% chance of having a second miscarriage, but guess what, it happened! That’s four chances in one hundred. Pretty phenomenal.
I guess I’m rambling because I’m more nervous about this appointment than I am admitting. I fear the doctor’s words, I fear that I will be blamed, I fear everything. I know what she says isn’t the final verdict on anything, but it’s just going to be hard going back there when before we had so much hope. I’m afraid of bursting into tears when I’ve tried so hard to be composed there. I always feel like I have to appear to be in control. I have no idea why.
I am not brave. I am not composed. I am not professional. I am broken, worn, and tired. I wish I could just taken whatever energy I have left and be myself.