I initially wrote this in July 2010, which was after two failed adoptions but before Aidan was born.
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Since I've opened my blog up to the public, I have met dozens of other wonderful bloggers, many of whom are fighting the same battle with infertility that we fought for so long (and I suppose are technically still fighting). I read their posts about TTC (trying to conceive) and it brings back so many memories of our experiences and all the heartache that goes with the process. The emotions all come flooding back as if we were still in the midst of it. My heart breaks for these lovely ladies who are facing a struggle that's so difficult, you couldn't begin to understand it unless you've been through it.
For family members, or my male readers, the rest of this post might be TMI, so I won't be at all offended if you choose not to continue. It's not grotesque, it's just honest. If anyone you ever love has gone through infertility treatment, it's an accurate representation of the sort of thing they've had to go through.
Thanks to PCOS, I always knew I would have trouble when it came to getting pregnant; but for the first ten years of my adult life I didn't know that was the problem. My cycles were usually completely absent and although I didn't know much, I knew that wasn't good when it came to getting pregnant. I was always embarrassed by being different, so I didn't go to the doctor like I should have, and even when I did, I didn't tell them everything I should have. Finally, the Monday after we closed on our house, I went to a new doc and told him everything. He didn't even have to examine me to tell me that I had PCOS - he could tell by looking at me and by what I had told him so far. Even still, he did bloodwork and an ultrasound just to confirm, and he was right.
When I got the PCOS diagnosis, I was all over the place. I was angry with myself for waiting so long to get it checked out, and I was scared, because let's face it - 'polycystic ovarian syndrome' just sounds like a scary thing. For a minute, I was afraid it was cancer or something. But once the shock wore off a bit, I was extremely relieved. It was great to know there was a reason for all these weird seemingly unrelated things about me. The reason I carry weight around my middle, a part of the reason I'm overweight in the first place, my oily skin and hair... it finally all made sense and I loved that part of it.
The first thing the doctor did was to put me on the diabetic drug Metformin (aka Glucophage). Though Metformin (Met) is not FDA-approved to treat PCOS, they find that because it's a metabolic disorder involving insulin processing, Met can be helpful to encourage ovulation. The idiot doctor put me on 2000mg of Met right off the bat, with no gradual increase from a lower dose to a higher one. If you've ever taken Met, you know it doesn't do nice things for your tummy. I spent several days cursing the doc before I cut myself back to 500mg and then gradually increased to 1500mg. I never did get back to 2000mg - it was too tough on my system.
I should say here that although I really liked that doc initially, and am eternally grateful to him for discovering and accurately diagnosing my PCOS, I began referring to him as Dr. Moron after the Met incident. Still, I continued seeing him, thinking maybe I was just oversensitive to the Met and he couldn't have known that. His next step was to prescribe ten days of progesterone, the hormone that the ovary secretes when ovulation occurs. Progesterone is responsible for triggering the 'monthly gift,' as the TV commercials are so fond of calling it. We in the infertility world often call it AF (for Aunt Flo). Since women with PCOS often don't ovulate on their own, there's no progesterone to start a new cycle. The progesterone was to trigger AF, and then he gave me Clomid to take for a few days to stimulate my ovaries. Actually, he gave me three cycles' worth of Clomid, not just one, and said, "call me if you get pregnant."
I had done enough research by this time to know that Clomid can be nasty stuff if you aren't appropriately monitored while taking it, so I found his willingness to hand it over without any checkups quite alarming. That is when Dr. Moron became my ex-doctor. I got a referral from my family doc and started with a new OB/GYN who I loved to pieces. He did some new tests, ran the correct tests on hubby which he passed with flying colors, and off we went. To make a long and boring story short, I ended up taking Clomid at the lowest dose (50mg) for 2-3 cycles before we were able to determine that it was not going to make me ovulate. (Ovulation is determined by a blood test on day 21 of the cycle.) We increased to 100mg for two months and that wasn't enough either.
Meanwhile, every month, I had to visit the doc once for a manual exam to be sure there were no giant cysts on my ovaries (a potentially dangerous side effect of Clomid). Then about two weeks later I had to go in for bloodwork. Then, I had to wait another 7-10 days beyond that before I could take a pregnancy test. Once I got that negative result, he would call in more progesterone, more Clomid, and we'd do it all over again. At this point, with office visits, bloodwork and meds, we were spending around $500 a month on this little 'project.'
Finally we arrived at the magic dose, which for me was 150mg, and I began ovulating. Eureka! We stayed at that dose for probably 3-5 cycles, but still never got pregnant. The doctor I loved so much then referred me to another doc in their office who did "more of the infertility stuff" and knew more about it... supposedly. This new lady, Dr. Frigid, wanted to continue the same routine, but first she required me to have an HSG test. That's one scary deal, let me tell you. "We're going to jab you in the cervix with needles to numb it, then we're gonna shove a cannula up in there and shoot dye in your uterus and see where it goes! And we're going to x-ray/videotape the whole thing!" Oh... joy... Though it was a major source of anxiety for quite some time, and cost us $1500 for a two-hour ordeal, at least it was over, and the results showed everything was just fine in there.
Under Dr. Frigid's care, we stayed at 150 for probably 6-8 more cycles. After the first two with her, we told her we were interested in pursuing IUI. I still remember the date of our first IUI procedure - March 24, 2007. We were so excited, having read that something like 40% of couples are successful after each IUI. I remember sitting in the exam room after the procedure was done, and crying, feeling like that MUST have been the lucky cycle. After all, it would be a Christmas baby, how could it not be the one?!
Well, it wasn't. And neither was the one after that, nor the one after that. I had now been on Clomid off and on (but more on) for a couple of years, whereas most reputable fertility docs won't use it for more than 6-8 months due to long-term risk of cancer. Not to mention the fact that this barrage of drugs made me a crazy person for half of each month. We used to joke that it's a miracle anyone on this regimen ever gets pregnant, because what husband in his right mind would want to climb in bed with a raging madwoman?! Ha! By this time, we were spending $1000 a month on infertility treatment and still had nothing to show for it aside from tears and sadness. The doc was wanting me to be done with the Clomid since I'd been on it so long, so it was pretty much the end of the line for fertility treatment for us. No one in Alaska does IVF; we don't even have any reproductive endocrinologists here, which is unfortunate because they know exactly how to deal with PCOS.
On April 10, 2008, I remember going to pick hubby up from work (we shared a vehicle for years) and it was on our way home that night that we finally drew the line in the sand. We were both sick to death of the roller coaster, the tears, the fury that comes with Clomid and progesterone treatment, the heartbreak, the questions from people... all of it. We were just done. That was the day we decided to switch gears and pursue adoption instead. The next day I made our first appointment at the agency, and here we are 27 months later. This is certainly not how we had hoped things would go when we set out on this journey (in terms of how long we've waited), but we completely accept that we're not in control of any of this, and we're doing our best to be patient and take things as they come! (Or as they don't! Ha!)
The funny thing about infertility is that, at least in my world, it actually has little to do with the process of getting pregnant. What I mean is that infertility is a big part of who I am. I'll never be one of those people who can 'choose' when to have a baby. We'll never have the luxury of having a conversation about when we'd like our future child's birthday to be. We'll never be able to time a child's birth to fall before the end of a year for tax or Permanent Fund Dividend purposes (I know several people who do this!). Even though we stopped TTC over two years ago, I still have pangs of the heartbreak that would come every month when the stick showed a minus sign instead of a plus.
My infertility, when it rears its ugly head and pops to the front of my mind, makes me feel angry, sad, frustrated, cheated, and lied to. It makes me feel jealous of the majority of women who have these choices; the ones we were always taught to believe we were born with. Infertility makes me want to punch women in the grocery store who are being mean to their kids when they are just being kids. It makes me want to rescue all the children I see who are obviously unloved, unwanted, or uncared for. It makes me wonder what I did wrong, in this life or some past one, to deserve this. It makes me question my belief that hubby and I are truly good people. After all, shouldn't only good people be re-populating the world? Do we really need more crackheads and jerks in this world?
Infertility makes me lose sleep at night, wondering if we'll spend the rest of our lives childless. It's not that we need children in order to 'complete' us - we are so happy together and we'd be just fine without kids. But ask almost any parent, and they'll gush about how much better life is with kids, how they feel so much more complete. Infertility makes me angry that I don't get to choose that for us. We have to work harder, wait longer, and spend ridiculous amounts of money to accomplish something that most people have happen by accident. Though it shouldn't, infertility makes me resent the birth parents who have teased us by agreeing to let us love their children for the rest of our lives, and then changed their minds.
Why were they able to change their minds? Oh, right. They're not infertile. They have the choice. And we don't. And that's just how it's always going to be. It doesn't matter if it's right or fair, it just is.
With all that said, I'm grateful that these feelings usually stay buried deep in my consciousness and they don't bother me much anymore. They seem to pop up less and less frequently as the years go by. Granted, when they do emerge, it's almost always at the worst possible time. In line at the store. Thanksgiving dinner with the family. At the fair amid hundreds of cute little kids and babies. During TV shows or radio commercials that refer to child abuse, abortion or childhood disease. (The whooping cough commercial with Jennifer Lopez, where the baby is hacking and coughing through the entire thing, brings tears to my eyes every single time.) But the point is, overall, it's getting easier. It'll never leave me, but it's becoming more and more controllable, which tells me that I do have a choice. It may not be the choice of whether (or when) to get pregnant, but it's a choice about how to cope with the hand I've been dealt. I can either allow it to define me, or I can compartmentalize it, dust it off once in a while when it's healthy to do so, and the rest of the time, just leave it in the corner and ignore it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: to all of my friends, new and old, who are still embroiled in the TTC process, please don't give up. Even if you never achieve a pregnancy, don't give up on yourself and don't punish yourself for what you're going through, even when it feels like the world is punishing you first. Your infertility might change you, but it doesn't have to define you. It's only a small piece of who you are. I understand the awful ache to be a Mommy; I have it, too. But I believe that we wouldn't want it this bad if we weren't going to end up achieving our goal one way or another. Whether it's through pregnancy, adoption, foster care, or being great quasi-Mommies to our pets, our relatives, and our friends' kids, we will change little lives in a positive way. And isn't that what Mommyhood is really all about?
My wonderful husband said something to me last year on Mother's Day. We had been through the first disrupted adoption and it was a rough day because for two months earlier in the year we kept saying to each other, "we get a Mother's Day and a Father's Day this year!" ...And then it didn't happen. What he said to me that day, as I cried, was, "Honey, being a mother is about how you treat people, the way you are kind and selfless and genuine. The way you'll help anyone who needs it and you'll give of yourself til you have nothing left and then keep giving. You're already a Mommy. You just don't have your kids yet." I think that single statement meant more to me than anything else he's ever said.
He's right. And I will have my kids. Someday. Somehow.
