Holy Crap

The long awaited call just came not two minutes ago.

My donor embryos are ready.

4 perfect 8-celled lovlies - if I want them. The product of an egg donor and the father's sperm. The embryologist said they are very high quality. Oy, visions of triplets dance through my head.

I have 7 days to digest the parent profiles and decide. If I don't choose to take these I can stay at the top of the list for the next set to come my way. I'll continue to get "first dibs" until the right set comes in.

Since the partner and I have split I'll be signing up to be a single mom, a scary prospect. I'm not sure what to do. My heart says "go for it", my brain says, "Why do you have to do this? You gave up!"

How do I make this decision this week? This month? This year?

Swimming in IVIg

I've got 30g of Gammagard Liquid IVIg, stored properly (refrigerated), boxed, sealed bottles.

1 - 20g (200ml) expires Mar-9-1010
1 - 10g (100ml) expires Jan-25-2010

Will ship on ice.

Inquire within.

PS: Please forward to other gals if you know of anyone in need?

Ranting on the Irony of it All

I've been in a purge mode in the last few months. Cleaning out the spare odd terra cotta pots and saucers on my patio, donating old clothing to the local thrift store, and last week I offloaded off the bulk of my IVF pharmaceutical regalia. Oh, and I now have chickens. Yes, 5 chickens. They were bought in a moment of anti-purge, but I'll write about them another day.

Today, I had a wild hair up my derrière to call two of my RE's just to see where I was on their embryo donation list. I didn't get an answer right away as it was early in the AM.

About 5pm this evening I noticed a voice mail on my cell. It was the last clinic I cycled at. Apparently they move their embryos rather quickly because I'm #9 on the list. Nine. I nearly choked. The embryologist explained that I could expect to do my transfer as early as 3 or 4 months out.

And the irony of this? Last week I sold off my fertility drugs, tomorrow I'm having surgery to remove my abdominal surgery scar that went hypertrophic because I figured I'd never have that c-section my ob/gyn promised me (narrow hips) so why not get rid of it?

But that's not all of it. I've lost 25 pounds in the last year (mostly IVF weight) and haven't done a damned thing that us infertiles tend to do when cycling. I've been eating meat, the occasional dairy, coffee and tea with caffeine, and I haven't done much to stay on top of my vitamins as of late. Wheat grass? What's that? In essence, I'm not physically ready for an embryo donation. I'm also not emotionally ready for an embryo. But how am I supposed to wait? I mean, this is what I was working for the last few years. Things are about to change, shift. Why am I not jumping up and down for the joy of it all?

As for J and I? J and I are still living together but it's more like he's a roommate than a partner these days. Everything turns into an argument. There's barely any affection left between us and let's just say, that had I fallopian tubes left, there would be precisely zero chance of my getting knocked up the old fashioned way. It's sad what infertility led to, but I know we're not the only ones stressed by this.

Life's changed quite a bit since our canceled cycle with Dr. Pompy last March. J and I have drifted apart and I'm sort of seeing someone ("D") who has kids of his own (as well as a vasectomy and little desire to sire more children, although I reckon he might help me out if I begged and promised to not make him responsible for yet one more mouth to feed). He's in a similar predicament as I: he lives in a guest cottage over the garage of his wife's property as his children are young and he needs to be there. I totally get where he's at. But there's no affection between the two of them and she's moved on as well.

So a little tube of embryos on ice somewhere in the Bay Area is earmarked for my uterus. And I don't know what the hell I am going to do. It's quite clear that if I proceed I am signing up to be a single parent because I don't assume that anyone will be on this ride with me. I've started a new job and I can afford a child and a house on my own at long last. My mother, who is 91 and healthy as a horse, lives with me and would make a great nanny. Everything is in order. But apparently my brain is NOT.

*help*

Hiatus

I should have written this post shortly after the last one because no sooner than I agreed to take the new job, I found out there weren't in fact any IVF benefits to be had. My girlfriend "J" said, "They're a major software company. I am sure they are on the list of companies that have coverage." Well I didn't see them on any lists but I had faith in J that she was on top of her IF stats. Ho hum.

Well, it's not like any company with IVF benefits is knocking my door down, so I decided to stay on and make the best of it. Besides, they raised my pay 30% from my last job and now I'm full time/permanent. Full time gigs are a bit hard to come by sometimes here in the SillyConValley. I miss the flexibility of contracting but this job is an ideal career move for me. It's got a lot more responsibility and the skills I am learning here will easily push me to into a director level position with my next job.

So I just finished week 1, and let's just say that I'm exhausted. My manager quit right before I was hired and his last day is my 5th day on the job. He's forwarded me everything he ever did. Needless to say, the mail server sent me a dreaded, "Your mailbox has reached it's limit" at the end of day 3. So on day 4 I archived my mail. This is a first in my life. It's been like that the entire week and I feel totally overwhelmed. It's literally a trial by fire. Hopefully I'll survive.

So after hearing that IVF was not included in the benefits, I've decided to "clean house". I've put an ad on FGS for my follistim, lovenox, menopur, enbrel, and other lovelies. For the last two days I've been dealing with the typical flakes that one meets online but I've also met a few girls who my heart goes out to. Hearing their stories as to where they are on the IF highway makes my heart break. God how I've been there. Desperate. Trying. Hopeful.

And now? Spent.

In some ways I am relieved to not be trying again. Is it that I've truly given up? Or am I hardened to trying? Or fearful of hurting again when the BFN message comes through at the end of the cycle? I don't right now if I am going to regret my decision to stop trying or not but I do know that I gave it everything I had. There's not a chance in hell that I'll ever say, "I wonder if I should have tried (fill in blank)..." because, ladies, I did try everything. I left no stone unturned.

These days I ponder more of what I will do if and when the times comes for my donor embryos. Will I proceed and try again? Will I change my mind about adoption one day? I sort of feel, or intuit, that I'm not really at the end of this path just yet. It's a hiatus of sorts until the next fork in the road, or until science finds out a way to scrape those damned ovarian stem cells out of me and do something with them.

I might be agnostic, but somehow I have faith that it will all work out in the end.

Irony

Irony - i·ro·ny [\ˈī-rə-nē] noun, d. 1502. (Etymology: Latin ironia; Greek eirōnia)

"Incongruous state where, after successive IVF failures, an infertile woman ceases trying to have a baby only to score a job with IVF coverage."