A good egg?

Following our pregnancy loss, we attempted to conceive again. Initially, we continued to try the old fashioned way with a little help from ovulation predictor kits.  No luck.  So, we added a touch of Femara at the beginning of my cycles, under the guidance of my ob/gyn.  No luck.  Then we added vaginal progesterone after ovulation, hoping to correct any luteal phase issues I may have due to my age.  Still nothing.  After about a year of all this, we decided to bite the bullet and seek help from an infertility specialist.  I could hear my biological clock ticking loudly in my ears and knew we needed to get going.

The specialist was kind...and honest.  Gave us all of the statistics for women of my age.  By my labwork, he could tell that my egg quality wasn't awesome, but he was willing to give it a full effort.  I was excited and really believed that we would conceive with some help.  Anyway...we had just conceived a year before this...shouldn't be too hard, right?  All we needed was a little assistance.  Maybe we just weren't timing things well on our own.  Now our efforts would be planned and monitored.  Great.  Not very romantic, but we were willing to go through the "fun" of fertility treatments if it meant we could have a child.

The first cycle of "fun" was Clomid.  I sat down with the nurse and learned all of the potential side effects...moodiness, hyperstimulation, too many eggs, etc.  I was scared, but what options did we have?  I began the Clomid as instructed and went in for my first ultrasound.  Just one small follicle?  Seriously?  That's it?  The physician said not to worry...this is just our first cycle...we have a lot more we can do.  I ended up ovulating on my own before they could even give me an HCG trigger to make me ovulate at the right time.  Ugh.  On to the next.

The second cycle was high dose Clomid.   Insert the above paragraph again here.  Same crappy thing happened.  One egg...ovulated too early.  Ugh.  We realized this wasn't going to be as easy as we had hoped.

For my third cycle, they decided to start me on injectable medications.  Ok! We are getting the big guns now!  I am going to produce a bunch of eggs!  So many that we won't know what to do with them all!  Umm.. yeah.  Not so much.  I produced my one, lonely egg.  They didn't feel that one egg was sufficient to justify performing an IUI (intrauterine insemination) so we were told to "try on our own" at home with ovulation predictor kits.  My physician said this recommendation with a look of kind pity on his face.  I was beginning to get the picture.

With my last cycle, they increased my injectible medication to a "large" dose.   They also added another medication to prevent me from ovulating early.  By now, I'm sure you are starting to see the writing on the wall as I was.  One egg only.  They had difficulty preventing me from ovulating on my own. On cycle day 10, they determined I was in the middle of ovulating by some blood work I had drawn that morning.  They called me at work and told me to come right away for an IUI.  I knew that they previously had not wanted to perform an IUI with only one egg.  I realized they were giving me a "Hail Mary" chance with this cycle...because they saw the writing on the wall too.  This wasn't working the way it should.  My sweet husband came running over to the doctor's office to "deposit" his contribution to the effort and I underwent the IUI.  No luck.

The next month, my infertility specialist asked that my husband and I come in to talk about next steps.  I knew what that meant.  We were going to get the "we've-tried-all-we-can-do-with-your-bad-eggs-and-it's-not-working" talk.  And, indeed that's what we got... although it was said a little nicer and with a lot of sympathy.  My physician said I wasn't a candidate for IVF due to my poor egg quality.  He talked about donor eggs and embryo adoption....ugh.  My head was spinning.  The whole point of this thing was that I wanted a baby with my husband.  One that was part me (with my stubbornness and love of bubble baths) and part him (with his sense of humor and OCD tendencies).  That's what I wanted.  My husband's sperm fertilizing someone else's egg or adopting an embryo that wasn't genetically connected to either of us was not the picture I had in mind at all.

No.  Unfair.  Why us?  Those words came back to me again as they did after my miscarriage...like a bad friend that won't get out of your life.  A friend that doesn't do you any favors.  I knew that feeling sorry for myself would get me nowhere.  I'm not the only person in the world that has been through this kind of thing....surely there are hundreds just in my community alone.  I'm not special.  I'm just a girl with a lot of blessings in her life...more than I deserve...that is unable to have a baby of her own.  Big deal.  So, be happy with what you have.  Suck it up, girl.   Sounds easier than it is.

Grieving the loss of fertility and the loss of a future pregnancy is not for the faint of heart.  It is devastating and life-changing.  How do you come to terms with the fact that you will never have a child?  How do you find the strength to say goodbye to someone that you never had the opportunity to meet and love?

What no one tells you is....dealing with your own infertility while being a stepmom is hard.  I mean, really hard.  Let me be clear:  I love my stepchildren with all of my heart and would do anything in the world for them--without a doubt.  But struggling with the inability to have your own child while taking care of someone else's children is not always easy.  It is a reminder of what I will never have.  I will never hear someone call me "mom."  I will never have that kind of bond with a child.  When I am around the kids' mother, I am reminded that she has shared something with my husband that I will never share with him.  She was able to give him three beautiful, healthy kids...I can't give him one.  She has that precious connection with him that I will never have.  That is a hard thing to live with.

Of course, all of this is absolutely no one's fault.  It is what it is.  I'm lucky to have my sweet stepchildren.  They have no idea I am going through this struggle, and they shouldn't.  They have had enough upheaval and adjustments in their life.  They don't need to know about my drama.  Also, it's not my husband's fault.  He has done everything I have asked of him, and then some.  He can't help the fact that I am now 42 and my eggs suck.  All of this is out of his control, as it is mine.   And the kids' mother can't help that she was blessed with having three children.  I can't hold that against her.  I'm sure I have a lot of blessings in my life that she doesn't.  And...again I'm reminded that life isn't always fair.  It's just life.

My husband and I are still dealing with these issues and decisions now.  It's not easy and the conversations are hard.  But, with love and faith...I am hopeful that as this door starts to close, a window will open somewhere.

http://www.resolve.org/