I've been absent, so I'm sure you must realize that we didn't receive the news we hoped for last week.
I've been having a difficult time getting anything done. Not even feeling creative, even.
I feel like a big, worthless blob.
I contemplated closing down my blog, feeling ridiculous sharing these feelings...exposing myself.
I don't know why I keep writing.
I realize there are many others out there in my shoes. Aren't there? Or do most people only try to conceive a few years? Is this 8-year stretch entering bonkersville??
I started counseling last week. Doing so in French, so that will be a real hoot. I guess if I can get married in French, I can seek counseling in it, too.
I actually asked my husband to ask one of his sisters to carry our baby. The doctor seems to think I must have an attachment issue, so...you know your desperate when you start thinking of these things. But that's exactly what we are and desperate times do require desperate measures. I don't know if I've talked much about all the allergies to skincare I've developed since we've been doing these treatments. I actually am coming down from a reaction right now. It makes me feel just plain miserable.
I think I see the stop sign just beyond the bend.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Hope
WARNING! UNINTENDED, FOR I HAD NO IDEA WHERE I WAS GOING WHEN I SAT DOWN TO WRITE THIS POST, BUT THERE IS A DEPICTION RECOUNTED BELOW THAT SOME MAY CONSIDER TO BE GRAPHIC.
I haven't talked much about the procedure we are still amidst.
Maybe I'm tired of talking...tired of thinking..tired of hurting.
It all makes you so tired... so lethargic... so angry.
I'm nearing the end of the gruesome 2-week wait. I'll have a blood test on Friday to see what another round of drugs and emotional trauma have yielded.
It's a painful mind game. My boobs are hard as a rock. I'm 37 years old and breaking out on my face, neck, back...you name it. My stomach is swollen, hence clothes are tight. I feel twitching, heat...the smallest thing and.... I'm excited. I don't want to be excited again and then let down.
My first IVF was a complete nightmare. I never have really talked about it.
Everything was initially going really well. We had 16 fertilized eggs and then the day we go in for transfer, the doctor sits us down, and very poorly I may add, conveys that everything took a turn for the worse. All 16 of them went bad.
The doctor tells us she would go ahead and transfer 2 for the heck of it because 'sometimes bad ones take'. Really? What a nightmare. We were very green then.
Despite having had every test in existence, none of which hinted at bad egg quality, she tells us the most probable culprit was probably my egg quality and we may never have children. She actually said that. We were frozen stiff with shock. Sure, we had been trying for years at that point, but my husband traveled a lot and we honestly thought it was our mounting age and never being together at the right time. We naively believed one IVF and we would be parents. We never in our wildest dreams envisioned something so horrid taking place.
Five minutes with that lady, and we were shooed out the door. No counseling, no moral support. Nada.
And to make matters worse, I had to proceed and actually walk around with those 2 basically dead embryos in me. Talk about trauma.
After that we didn't try making a baby for a very long time. No procedures, no nothing. Maybe a year and a half, two years went by...that's when we went the au naturel route and picked up Chinese medicine. We even packed up and flew to the West Coast to see a Chinese practitioner that had written a book we liked. He just wanted our money. We wasted time. I see that now.
It took us a lot of it to get back to a place where we had enough hope to dare to try again. We started with IUI's - lots of them. With injections. Each at 6-thousand dollars a pop.
That's when, for the first time in my life, I actually got pregnant. A glimmer of hope. But the baby died and au-naturel-me refused to have a D&C - that's the medical procedure where they scrape out the dead baby. Oh no, not me. I wanted to do it naturally.
Thing is, that baby was 10 weeks old.
I have never known physical pain like I knew the week or two that baby was working its way out of me. Most I have been able to let go...but the worst parts, I don't think will ever be forgotten.
I was sitting on the toilet that last day wishing for nothing less merciful than a swift death for myself. But then it was finally over. I remember feeling something squishy pass through me, like a jelly fish.
I didn't dare look.
I quickly flushed and I tried to move on best I could. My husband was out of town that night, but he stayed on the computer and listened to the whole thing. The best way he could support me at the time.
Because of this more brute method, there was no baby to test to try to understand what had gone wrong. At the time I thought it didn't matter. Bottom line - something was wrong and that sufficed...
2 months later we did another IUI with injections and I became pregnant again. Back at the 10-week mark, the baby's heartbeat stopped. It was agony beyond anything we could both bear.
This time we went the western medicine route and had the D&C performed. The result was what our doctor called 'bad luck'. The baby had too many chromosomes (69). A "mistake of nature", that evidently is more common the older a woman gets...something like 1 in 3 pregnancies for women in my age group.
The kicker, evidently most of these 'overly chromosomed babies' usually die more quickly. Like before a woman even realizes she is pregnant. Oh no, not my child. Handicapped and still a fighter. Made it 10 weeks. But I guess she helped re-instill the fighting power in me. It was a girl.
Those two pregnancies gave us the strength to be willing and able to try another IVF. That's when the decision to move to Belgium came into play. Like I mentioned, Belgians get 6 basically free rounds of IVF. And as you know, my husband is Belgian. And through him, I too am now Belgian.
So it took several months to get back into the system. Several more months to see the famous doctor we are now seeing. (Belgium is coincidentally known as one of the best countries in the world for IVF - even better than the US. Our Belgian doctor and his clinic invented the ICSI method, now used world-wide...)
We did our second IVF in September (first since we moved here to Belgium) and while we only had a handful of eggs fertilize, lo and behold one made it to day 5. It's a big deal. Here we were thinking my eggs must be completely kaput, and we have a 5-day embryo. It was the sole egg viable for transfer, but it alone had a 50% chance of pregnancy. It didn't take, but our hope did.
We waited 3 cycles for the next IVF. The clock is ticking, but my body needed a break. The ovaries swell and need time to get back to normal....And you know what? My IVF's just keep getting better and better. This time I had 3 embryos that could be transferred back. That for a lady that had zero the first time around.
It's pretty amazing.
I'll never forget the day we got the call letting us know there were embryos to transfer (the last 2 times we naturally feared a repeat of that first IVF). My husband stays pretty quiet most the time. But when he hung up that phone, the man actually got on his hands and knees and clasped his hands together in prayer. It chokes me up even now, because even though all this stuff is happening to my body, he too is facing the prospect of never bearing his own children. It's so tragic, really.
So now we are back to the present and I've just cleared my chest of all these yucky feelings.
But there is a moral to this story.
I hope those that have lost hope, like both my husband and I had, will see that this whole journey is about sustaining hope. Supporting each other. Finding solutions. Not giving up. Yes, there is a time we must relinquish the endeavor...sadly, not everyone will succeed. But darnnit! We've all got to try. We owe that much to ourselves.
I haven't talked much about the procedure we are still amidst.
Maybe I'm tired of talking...tired of thinking..tired of hurting.
It all makes you so tired... so lethargic... so angry.
I'm nearing the end of the gruesome 2-week wait. I'll have a blood test on Friday to see what another round of drugs and emotional trauma have yielded.
It's a painful mind game. My boobs are hard as a rock. I'm 37 years old and breaking out on my face, neck, back...you name it. My stomach is swollen, hence clothes are tight. I feel twitching, heat...the smallest thing and.... I'm excited. I don't want to be excited again and then let down.
My first IVF was a complete nightmare. I never have really talked about it.
Everything was initially going really well. We had 16 fertilized eggs and then the day we go in for transfer, the doctor sits us down, and very poorly I may add, conveys that everything took a turn for the worse. All 16 of them went bad.
The doctor tells us she would go ahead and transfer 2 for the heck of it because 'sometimes bad ones take'. Really? What a nightmare. We were very green then.
Despite having had every test in existence, none of which hinted at bad egg quality, she tells us the most probable culprit was probably my egg quality and we may never have children. She actually said that. We were frozen stiff with shock. Sure, we had been trying for years at that point, but my husband traveled a lot and we honestly thought it was our mounting age and never being together at the right time. We naively believed one IVF and we would be parents. We never in our wildest dreams envisioned something so horrid taking place.
Five minutes with that lady, and we were shooed out the door. No counseling, no moral support. Nada.
And to make matters worse, I had to proceed and actually walk around with those 2 basically dead embryos in me. Talk about trauma.
After that we didn't try making a baby for a very long time. No procedures, no nothing. Maybe a year and a half, two years went by...that's when we went the au naturel route and picked up Chinese medicine. We even packed up and flew to the West Coast to see a Chinese practitioner that had written a book we liked. He just wanted our money. We wasted time. I see that now.
It took us a lot of it to get back to a place where we had enough hope to dare to try again. We started with IUI's - lots of them. With injections. Each at 6-thousand dollars a pop.
That's when, for the first time in my life, I actually got pregnant. A glimmer of hope. But the baby died and au-naturel-me refused to have a D&C - that's the medical procedure where they scrape out the dead baby. Oh no, not me. I wanted to do it naturally.
Thing is, that baby was 10 weeks old.
I have never known physical pain like I knew the week or two that baby was working its way out of me. Most I have been able to let go...but the worst parts, I don't think will ever be forgotten.
I was sitting on the toilet that last day wishing for nothing less merciful than a swift death for myself. But then it was finally over. I remember feeling something squishy pass through me, like a jelly fish.
I didn't dare look.
I quickly flushed and I tried to move on best I could. My husband was out of town that night, but he stayed on the computer and listened to the whole thing. The best way he could support me at the time.
Because of this more brute method, there was no baby to test to try to understand what had gone wrong. At the time I thought it didn't matter. Bottom line - something was wrong and that sufficed...
2 months later we did another IUI with injections and I became pregnant again. Back at the 10-week mark, the baby's heartbeat stopped. It was agony beyond anything we could both bear.
This time we went the western medicine route and had the D&C performed. The result was what our doctor called 'bad luck'. The baby had too many chromosomes (69). A "mistake of nature", that evidently is more common the older a woman gets...something like 1 in 3 pregnancies for women in my age group.
The kicker, evidently most of these 'overly chromosomed babies' usually die more quickly. Like before a woman even realizes she is pregnant. Oh no, not my child. Handicapped and still a fighter. Made it 10 weeks. But I guess she helped re-instill the fighting power in me. It was a girl.
Those two pregnancies gave us the strength to be willing and able to try another IVF. That's when the decision to move to Belgium came into play. Like I mentioned, Belgians get 6 basically free rounds of IVF. And as you know, my husband is Belgian. And through him, I too am now Belgian.
So it took several months to get back into the system. Several more months to see the famous doctor we are now seeing. (Belgium is coincidentally known as one of the best countries in the world for IVF - even better than the US. Our Belgian doctor and his clinic invented the ICSI method, now used world-wide...)
We did our second IVF in September (first since we moved here to Belgium) and while we only had a handful of eggs fertilize, lo and behold one made it to day 5. It's a big deal. Here we were thinking my eggs must be completely kaput, and we have a 5-day embryo. It was the sole egg viable for transfer, but it alone had a 50% chance of pregnancy. It didn't take, but our hope did.
We waited 3 cycles for the next IVF. The clock is ticking, but my body needed a break. The ovaries swell and need time to get back to normal....And you know what? My IVF's just keep getting better and better. This time I had 3 embryos that could be transferred back. That for a lady that had zero the first time around.
It's pretty amazing.
I'll never forget the day we got the call letting us know there were embryos to transfer (the last 2 times we naturally feared a repeat of that first IVF). My husband stays pretty quiet most the time. But when he hung up that phone, the man actually got on his hands and knees and clasped his hands together in prayer. It chokes me up even now, because even though all this stuff is happening to my body, he too is facing the prospect of never bearing his own children. It's so tragic, really.
So now we are back to the present and I've just cleared my chest of all these yucky feelings.
But there is a moral to this story.
I hope those that have lost hope, like both my husband and I had, will see that this whole journey is about sustaining hope. Supporting each other. Finding solutions. Not giving up. Yes, there is a time we must relinquish the endeavor...sadly, not everyone will succeed. But darnnit! We've all got to try. We owe that much to ourselves.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Belgian legacy
Many may not realize Belgium is actually credited with more than frites, chocolat and bière.
The good ol' saxophone was invented here. Bill Clinton may have made the instrument notorious, but a Belgian brought her to life.
You can read all about Adolphe Sax here on Wikipedia.
Or better yet, see an American President Europe actually liked playing one:
The good ol' saxophone was invented here. Bill Clinton may have made the instrument notorious, but a Belgian brought her to life.
You can read all about Adolphe Sax here on Wikipedia.
Or better yet, see an American President Europe actually liked playing one:
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Good tidings
Happy Holidays everyone!
Despite being amidst an IVF cycle, we still managed to enjoy ourselves this Holiday season. My first Christmas living in Belgium...
One of the best things about Europe for me is the delicious wines and champagne - so it really stunk to not be able to partake. We did, however, enjoy seeing family in Kortrijk - that's in Northern Belgium or 'Flanders', where my husband was born. And as always, we did a lot of marvelous eating. That's one American stereotype about Belgium that definitely pans out with my in-laws. They take their food very seriously. I think we eat gourmet here more than not (which by the way, Food and Wine just came out with their list of top recipes of all time - I just love that magazine. And their website is the best - I weekly turn to it for quick meal ideas. All of which are scrumptiously divine...They have a great search engine on their site where you can even plug in an ingredient (not sure what to do with that bag of carrots in the crisper?), and voilà! appears countless ideas....)...
In addition to the fine wines and food, I also really love the Christmas markets (referred to here as marchés de Noël).
Many towns put on a huge Christmas market in the town center, showcasing everything beautiful about Europe in one nifty locale. Ours (which was under a tent because of all the snow we've been getting) offered Christmas trees, chocolate, patisseries, warm wine and more; and allowed artisans to set up booths with their goods.
I absolutely love and cherish the emphasis here on homemade. It is such a breath of fresh air; reminding me of getting back to what it is really all about. I savour the delicious creativity and uniqueness.
People flock to various markets all across Europe, and not just here in Belgium. People do their Christmas shopping there and enjoy walking around with friends and family.
Travel agencies are still pretty predominant here and locally offered various day trips by bus to Christmas markets in Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. We had signed up for several we were really excited about - but all were cancelled due to the blizzard. My mother (back home in the good ol' U-S-of-A) says it even made the news there. It's the most snow we've seen in more than a 100 years. It just wouldn't stop snowing.
All we had on us was an iPhone so the pics aren't that great - but here you can get a taste of what I'm talking about...
Despite being amidst an IVF cycle, we still managed to enjoy ourselves this Holiday season. My first Christmas living in Belgium...
One of the best things about Europe for me is the delicious wines and champagne - so it really stunk to not be able to partake. We did, however, enjoy seeing family in Kortrijk - that's in Northern Belgium or 'Flanders', where my husband was born. And as always, we did a lot of marvelous eating. That's one American stereotype about Belgium that definitely pans out with my in-laws. They take their food very seriously. I think we eat gourmet here more than not (which by the way, Food and Wine just came out with their list of top recipes of all time - I just love that magazine. And their website is the best - I weekly turn to it for quick meal ideas. All of which are scrumptiously divine...They have a great search engine on their site where you can even plug in an ingredient (not sure what to do with that bag of carrots in the crisper?), and voilà! appears countless ideas....)...
In addition to the fine wines and food, I also really love the Christmas markets (referred to here as marchés de Noël).
I absolutely love and cherish the emphasis here on homemade. It is such a breath of fresh air; reminding me of getting back to what it is really all about. I savour the delicious creativity and uniqueness.
Travel agencies are still pretty predominant here and locally offered various day trips by bus to Christmas markets in Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Belgium. We had signed up for several we were really excited about - but all were cancelled due to the blizzard. My mother (back home in the good ol' U-S-of-A) says it even made the news there. It's the most snow we've seen in more than a 100 years. It just wouldn't stop snowing.
All we had on us was an iPhone so the pics aren't that great - but here you can get a taste of what I'm talking about...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)