Twisted Ovaries

My Grass Isn't Greener, It's Just My Side of the Fence

I ran into an old neighbor the other week.  She's a good friend as well, but someone who I sometimes struggle with.  I had to go to the village we used to live in to get a refill on my Cyclogest - my GP and my midwife are still there, and the village is only 5 minutes away.  I was walking to the pharmacy to fulfill my prescription.  I had a magazine in hand and it was a rare June day where the rain had yet to burst through, so the sun was warm on my face.

I saw my friend on the sidewalk, walking towards me.

"Hello, Billie," I said, smiling. 

"Hello Vanessa," she said, looking immediately at my stomach.  I saw her flinch.  Her lips tightened.  I know all about this.

Billie and her husband - who has 4 kids of his own from a previous marriage - went through 4 rounds of IVF.  They did ICSI every time.  She never got a positive result, not once.  They gave up when they realized they couldn't afford to keep trying, as shortly after their fourth try he had a heart attack, so they gave up their high-powered jobs for much easier careers that wouldn't endanger his health anymore.  This took a huge toll on their finances and put an end to her dream of being a mother.  A side result of this new life has been her problems with alcohol and financial woes.  I've tried to be there for her.  I love her, but it's not always easy.

I remember her once crying on my shoulder when she had to go to one of her husband's grandchildren's christening.  Her bitterness was palpable.  I knew how that ache she had inside felt.

I told her about the pregnancy at the last book club we held.  Billie, myself, and one other woman all cannot have kids, while the other two women in the book club are at different stages - one woman has a grown son while the other woman says she's not ready for kids yet.  Billie knows I did IVF, we discussed it.  She herself went to the expensive London clinic, the one that has the best success rates, while we went to a local clinic with good rates but less of the crunchy-granola huggy feeling.  Telling her that I was pregnant was so hard, and I felt so shit about it, but she hugged me and congratulated me.

I lick my lips.  "I'm sorry if this-" I put a hand on my stomach - "bothers you, Billie.  I can go, if it helps you.  I really do understand, honest."  And I do.  It's a fun game, this board game called Desperately Wanting a Baby While Being Reminded That I Haven't Succeeded.  I've played it many times.  I absolutely know how she feels, to be the one wondering about a future she's convinced she'll never have.  I am honestly ok with her telling me to bugger off and walk away, if it would help her.  Sometimes when she's really pissed she's honest that she's jealous of my life - a house, loving stepkids, Aidan, money.  We're not rich by any stretch of the term but we have more money than she does, and it's something she remarks on.  I always hug her when she brings it up.  I don't know what else to do.  Maybe telling me to bugger off would be best.

"No, it's ok," she says.  Her eyes look exhausted.  I can smell cigarettes and alcohol on her breath, and it's only 11 am.  "I'm over it.  I've passed feeling upset I can't have kids," she says, looking away.

Liar,  I think.  I don't care who you are, running into another pregnant woman hurts.  If you've known every hour of how it feels to be on a two week wait, if you know what it's like to wake up from egg collection and immediately want to know how many they got, if you know what it's like to cry with ache because of someone else's christening, then you just don't get over it like that.

She asks lots of questions about the babies.  I answer them, but then try to change the subject.  I don't want to be the blunt instrument she keeps throwing herself against, I know how that feels, too.  In the end she wishes me well.  She hugs me and says she'll see me in a few weeks at the next book club meeting.  Then she goes off into the pub.

And I feel horrible.  I've become one of those Flinch-Worthy women.  I am now visibly pregnant, so those who long for babies flinch when they see me.  I feel it in blogland, too.  Not like it's all about me or anything, but it's true-I do have that guilt you read about when people get knocked up. 

People do disappear from the blog when you get pregnant.  And the weirdest thing is, the hardest part to admit because I feel ashamed for admitting it is this: When you get pregnant, you need people way more than you do when you're measuring out your Lupron doses or counting your antral follicles.  That part of the IF game you know, you have no doubt where you'll wind up on the board when you throw the dice-you're in an IVF cycle.  It's famliar. 

But pregnancy...I'm going to be honest and say that pregnancy is really fucking scary.  Every little thing could go wrong, there are so many horrible stories out there, and it's a whole new territory.  You have never played this game, or if you have you never lasted very long against the contenders of Mother Nature or Genetics.   Every bump, twitch, change, feeling...you feel so scared.  And because you crossed into another area, you're supposed to be tough, to not complain, to not find a single moment of it unpleasant or uncomfortable or intimidating.  You got pregnant!  You don't get to be scared!  You got a positive test result!  Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth!  This is without question the scariest thing I have ever been through, and I have seen some scary shit.  Yes, it's what I want and yes, it's also wonderful.  But I can't just go about skipping and singing and acting like one of the women who are one with nature and their bodies, who spend their time talking about how full of the essence of life they are.  Instead, I'm on the reality side.  I'm having twins.  I'm happy.  I'm scared.   

Because that's the truth of it.  You're happy and terrified and delirious and nervous and so many other things that don't come with the monotony of an IVF cycle for a longtimer like myself, where you know what your body is doing, where it's familiar territory.  I'm sorry if this hurts anyone, but I just wanted to say - it's scary going through fertility treatment.  It's also scary if you succeed.

I want to chase after Billie and tell her that I know it's fucking hard to be around me.  I know it's weird. I know you look at me with hope and jealousy and all of that, because I looked at other women that way, too.  I wish we could be in the same boat, I wish you could be pregnant too.  I'll be there for you if you can be there for me, because maybe we both need each other.

But as someone who has been in her shoes, I know that's not the right thing to do either. 

In this game, there never is a right move.  It's all a throw of the dice.

Step Ball Chain

You're Invited!

Who:  Your hosts, the Lemonheads!

What:  The wildest dance party this side of the placenta!

Where: Vanessa's Uterus!

When: Between the hours of midnight and 5 am!

What to Bring:  We've installed two new bouncy castles, one called the Bladder and one called the Lung!  Bring football shoes, golf shoes, hiking shoes, or any shoes with cleats on them for a bouncy good time!

R.S.V.P. today!

Yeah.

Not sleeping so well lately.  The babies think the hours of 4pm - 9 pm and then midnight - 5pm are the best hours to recreate the magic of the Solid Gold dancers.  That, and the reflux has me freebasing Tums (luckily I have had an ulcer for years and am used to the feeling.  This may be the first and last time I've been pleased I have an ulcer.)

I have 15 more weeks to go.

Just Teasin'

I didn't tell the sexes yesterday because Aidan and I agreed we wanted to tell my father and stepmother about the babies before my mother and sister read about it and then blatantly blabbed it to my father, as they've done with other things.  We wanted to tell them ourselves first.  We're going public as I can't keep my own secrets (it's why I blog, really.  That whole "Watergate" thing, I totally could've kept that thing secret, but if I do something like shoot a suppository out of my ass then I have to tell the whole fucking world.)

Throughout the entire process of IVF, my insides have been telling me things.  I’m not one who’s very clued up about my body, who knows what’s going on, but I’ve been able to understand what’s been going on.  Without being too gory, I remember miscarrying last August.  At one point I passed a blood clot – it was one of many – but I thought to myself at the time “That was it.  That’s the pregnancy gone I think.”  And although I don’t know at what point I lost the pregnancy, I did indeed miscarry.

This cycle has been similar.  After the embryo transfer I got pretty calm.  I couldn’t prove that it worked but something in the back of my head told me that it might do.  I didn’t know until the approved test day if it worked or not, but when I peed on that stick I somehow felt that it would come up with two lines, I somehow just believed that it worked. 

And it did.

When one of the babies turned up with a bad nuchal scan, again I can’t explain it but I just knew that the baby was fine.  Just knowing wasn’t security enough for either of us, particularly when a second scan made the results sound even scarier than our initial results, but a CVS reassured our minds.  The first test reports came back negative for Down’s, and then the rest of the genetic profiling came back telling us that the baby had completely normal genetic karyotyping. 

I felt so strongly that the baby was completely ok, and it was. 

It’s as Amy said, I should just trust my instinct.  I’ve never been very good with that, my instinct-o-meter is way, way off most of the time.  Aidan says that for men, they “feel it in their water”, but that’s not a term I understand.  It implies some kind of knowing to me, some kind of intuition that I feel I genuinely lack. 

More after the jump, in case you don't want to know.

Lemonhead Update

Sorry for being quiet-there's been a great deal going on over here, a lot of it very difficult from a personal life perspective.  Add on to it the fact that Aidan's kids arrived on Saturday, and while I love them massively it means access to the PC is virtually non-existent, and, well, the blog, she gets neglected.

The Lemonheads are definitely moving on.  I noticed the other night that you can actually see my stomach bulge out when they're rocking the house, and I wonder at what point I'll be able to discern if it's a foot or a hand coming out.  They're pretty active babies and I enjoy the comfort of knowing that they're doing well, if not just because I know that they're still grooving along in there.

I've gained only 8 kilos, but a call to the midwife showed I shouldn't be worried-she said it's ok, that as long as they're still growing, that in the UK they don't follow the mother's weight so strictly.

And a scan today showed that they are, indeed, still growing.  Aidan's kids came with us to the scan, a first for us, but we both think it's important to let them be as involved as they want to be throughout the entire pregnancy and beyond (Buzz Lightyear forever!)  The sonographer was very kind and calm and put me immediately at ease. 

Both babies are doing great.  They're about a pound each and sizing in around 7.5 inches (I made the mistake of asking Aidan how big 7.5 inches was.  I should have known better.)  They were being very active.  One of them is breech, the other cephalic (head down).  The breech baby's head is right in my ribcage, which explains why it's been hard to breathe lately.  The fluid looked great, the babies looked great, and although we couldn't for the life of us make out the kidneys, ventricles, cerebellum, etc, the sonographer could and that's all that counts.

I've inserted the pics but can't make typepad work in lining them up in a way that doesn't make my OCD tick.  You can click on them to see more.

Also, surprisingly, Aidan had a change of heart.  While in the waiting room he said we could find out the sexes of the babies. 

So we did :)

The Hand That Rocked the Hell Out of the Cradle

I seem to have pissed off a number of folk with my last post, and I assure you that wasn't my intention.  I'm not in to writing controversial blog posts, I leave that to people with thicker skin and less manners than I have.  My life tends to be stressful enough, adding altercations to the fray isn't my kick in life, I like my masochism in more boudoir terms.

Lemme' try to be clear: I think bad things happen to me for a reason.  I don't know what that reason is, but I tell myself there is a reason for the bad in my life because if I don't, I won't get up again when I get knocked down (there's a song in that somewhere), I'll just stay down for the count.

I don't know why bad things happen to other people.  If you are infertile, have had miscarriages, have suffered serious medical issues, have never won the lottery, or have yet to find those magical Cheese Doodles you have been searching for in your kitchen cupboard, then I'm very sorry.  I don't know why bad things happen to you and to other nice people (although I can be a bitch and I lean to thinking that it's karma that's kicking the ass of one of my exes' ex-girlfriends, the one who belongs to the Abortion of the Month Club.)  I couldn't begin to speculate and I won't even try because I know I hate it when people try to tell me what's up with my life, I'm sure you might hate it if some blogger tries to tell you about yours.

Doubt if that cleared anything up but, you know, a final try before ditching into the sea.

Anyway, as to how the Lemonheads are doing-they're ok I think.  I am 19 weeks today, and still have only gained my original 7 kilos (15 pounds) that I gained in the first trimester to ward off morning sickness.  In general I eat pretty healthy stuff, and the only cravings I tend to have are for fruit.  My shape has definitely changed though, as I had a black tie do last night but had to buy a dress as none of my other formalwear I already have fit anymore.  I have no stretchmarks so far and am religious about applying this stretchmark cream, which I love.

And I feel one of them move often now (the other one, my anterior baby, is not in a position yet which I can feel it).  It's usually in the evening but it's unmistakable as I feel the Lemonhead attend its own personal rave.  I don't sit there and bask in the amazing glory of being able to feel my unborn wiggle and feel one with Mother Earth or anything, but I do like knowing that the disco ball has been raised and the twins are having a good time in there.  It's hard to feel all crunchy granola about it all when you have to spend time discerning if what you're feeling is gas or baby.  Kinda' takes the emotional element out of the equation.

So without too much more controversy, Aidan and I are off to Scotland for a long weekend now.  See you next week.

UPDATED - forgot to mention, we took our first plunge.  Nervously, Aidan and I went ahead and bought a baby item.  Aidan's a big stickler for not buying too much, especially not before they're born as he's worried it'll jinx things, but we are no longer baby items virgins.  We bought this pram.   It's in blue, not red, and we bought it off of ebay as there's a whole lot of things we'll be needing and there are an abundance of auctions for double prams that were barely used (seems a lot of people buy double prams for their newborn and toddler but wind up barely using them, much to our advantage).  And we paid half of the retail cost by buying one "gently used" (a new one retails for £300).  So yes, it's used.  Yes, it will be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.  And yes, when we're done with it it'll be going back on ebay.  Circle of life and all that.

I won't be buying things like cots and bedding off of ebay, those will all be new, but I do see the business case for buying the bigger ticket items off of ebay, especially since in some cases we will need two of things.  I don't mean to sound cheap, but we have two infants to buy for, an extension to build, and nursery care to start saving up for.  So it won't be the last of us ebay will be seeing.  We now must be on some kind of roll as I won one of these yesterday, too.

A Book Club That Didn't Include Drunken Gossiping

I joined Mel's book club because I love books to a degree that's possibly unhealthy, and am always happy to read a good book.  We recently read Peggy Orenstein's Waiting for Daisy which I was surprised to find I really enjoy - I say surprised because generally I don't really like IF stories (Ben Elton's Inconceivable was, I thought, utter rubbish.) 

Anyhow, we've been asked to share our thoughts on some questions, so here goes mine.

1) When I read how if one had asked the author 10 years earlier, she would have said that she didn't even want children, I felt better. I guess deep down I always knew that I wanted children, but having had a severely mentally and physically handicapped sister, I was scared. It was comforting to read about another woman's ambivalence and feelings of guilt. When I found out that I was losing ovarian function I could not believe that there was a strong possibility that I would never have a biological child. That spurred in me a determination I had not had in many years.  Have you ever felt ambivalence towards parenthood prior to receiving your diagnosis?

Oh my Lord, yes.  When I was a kid I didn't want kids.  When I was a teenager, being raised under the banner of the bitter divore slogan of "women don't need men for anything except opening the pickle jar, and even that can be achieved with a bit of violence", I loaded up my feminist rhetoric and decided that children = enslavement to the establishment and its ongoing suppression of women (seriously, I went through a very, very hardcore period of time known best as "Man-hating extreme".  I'm absolutely not saying that feminism is the equal to man-hating, but I am saying that I certainly was in both camps.)  Let's just say this-in my feminist studies class, which was led by a bitter divorcee as well, I did my thesis on how I thought all men should be rounded up and put into the state of Nevada, where they would get one hour of air conditioning for every hour they satisfied a woman, as women would be ruling the world.  I got an A. 

As a young adult I took major steps to insure I would never have a biological child, so my infertile diagnosis was never a mystery to me.  I never wanted to have my own child as I honestly truly felt removing myself from the gene pool was the best bet for all involved.  I was going to adopt one child, and as a former man-hater I was convinced I would spend my life alone.  All I wanted to do was be the toughtest, most killer businesswoman known to mankind.  I was going to rule a company, and I was going to prove that a single woman alone could do it.

Then I started to look at babies.

By my mid-twenties, I was ready to accept that having one someday would be ok.

By the time I went through my first IVF-cycle (my ex wouldn't adopt as he said he "simply wouldn't love the child", and we had many a blazing row about that) I was a new person.  I did a complete 180 and realized that I wanted to be a mother.  I didn't care if it was my own child or an adopted child, I just wanted to be a mother.  Years of therapy taught me that I can be an ok person, and I didn't have to run from wanting a child just because the person I used to be was so broken.  I do worry a great deal about a lot of what Aidan says-in my life, I tend to just adapt.  Lots of things in my life have been truly and profoundly awful, and I've learnt to just bend and take things.  He worries that we will lose a lot of our lives in having children, but I see it as simply bending and taking them on with the rest of our lives.  We'll see how it all pans out.

So when Peggy said she put having children off, was ambivalent, thought it wasn't for her, didn't see the point as she had a career and travel, etc., I nodded my head.  I did that, too.  And when she one day realized how badly she wanted to be a mother, I nodded my head again.  I realized that one day, too.

2) In the epilogue, Orenstein struggles with what might be called the mythology of infertility: the messages and assumptions that it's all worth it in the end; that it's a matter of luck (the chapter's title is "Meditations on Luck"); that everything has worked out for the best; that adoption might be an emotional/spiritual cure for infertility; that some couples may be too quick to seek medical assistance; that she may have waited too long to begin trying to conceive; and, as another woman told her earlier in her journey, that "the pain goes away." Her husband warns her to not become a revisionist, but she acknowledges that becoming a mother has been a "surprisingly redemptive" experience and seems to not entirely reject the above messages. Describe how you feel about the presence of this mythology, both in Orenstein's epilogue and in your own life. How has it affected the way you tell your story, on your blog or elsewhere, and how you interpret others' stories? To what extent have you revised or even rewritten your own story of infertility? Is it inevitable, perhaps even necessary, to do so?

I am one of the fatalist crowd, I have to say.  I personally am one of those frustrating types that thinks that for me everything that's supposed to happen, happens, and everything happens for a reason, it just may be that I don't understand the reason in the short term.  But this is my view for myself-I don't think that way about others.  I tend to keep my views to myself because it makes people want to punch me, but I think that the outcome of treatment is what is supposed to happen to me individually, even if it's bad (which it often was).  Did I deserve a miscarriage?  Hopefully not, but I did learn alot about myself from it, as shitty as the experience was.  It doesn't make it any easier to bear at all, and I'm not trying to be dismissive.  I may not be religious but I do believe that things happen (to me) for a reason, even if that reason is a most painful journey to get there.

This blog was started as an outlet to talk about my treatments.  My other blog gets a stunning amount of assvice and shitty emails from people advising me to do such things as walk in circles under the moon or else advise something along the lines of yanking a random child off the streets of Guatemala and trying to give them a better life than they currently have (I love it when people assign values to other cultures.)  I write here because I wanted to avoid that kind of crap as well as keep my treatments private from my family (too late).  Is the way my story is told on my blog affected by my private life and my personal views?  Absolutely, how could it not be? 

Have I rewritten my infertility story?  No, I don't think so.  I can't have babies on my own.  I am currently knocked up.   Should something happen to the babies, I  would still be unable to have babies on my own.  The end result for me is the same-everything that's supposed to happen happens. 

Go ahead and take a swing at me.

3) "I felt like the luckiest unlucky woman in the world" (p. 57).  This quote really struck me.  Do we naturally grasp for the silver lining in things?  Do we always have to convince ourselves that something makes us lucky in order to keep going through the difficulties of life?

I'm going to have to take this one from my personal viewpoint, because I honestly am not sure how others operate here.  I don't know that I grasp for silver linings and I don't think I have to convince myself that something makes us lucky.  I think luck happens.  And once again, in my slightly crunchy granola Buddhisty slant, I believe that I get good and I get bad (take them both and there you have the Facts of Life!  The Facts of Life!  Sorry, I get easily sidetracked by 80's television.)  I will say that I currently have a life that makes me happier than I not only ever have been before, but a life that I could never have imagined I would be lucky enough to have, and when I say "my life" I'm not counting the recent IVF success.  I'm talking about my state of mind, my emotional and physical wellbeing, my security and love.  I don't think it's luck that brought me that-I think it's good coming in after bad.

I think in many ways I believe in karma-good happens if I'm good.  Bad happens if I'm bad, only others may not be around to see the bad as proof that bad gets what it deserves.  Life is difficult, there's no way around that one.  There are no silver linings and there are no options for convincing ourselves otherwise.  Life is hard, but it's pockmarked by moments that we don't expect or demand, and those moments make it all worthwhile.

My God, reading this I want to smack myself too. 

I swear I don't run around lighting incense and chanting mantras.

I haven't had an easy life, not by any stretch of the imagination.  Maybe my views on it-and on IF-are a reflection of where I've been and where I continue to work to.  If I don't try to accept that life is going to be what it wants to be, I will break myself against it in trying to control it.  My life has sucked at various points.  If I just accept that it sucked and it may suck again, it will keep me sane.  Maybe I come across as very high and mighty or que sera sera, but I promise I don't mean to.  It's just the way I have adapted to surivive.

And that's enough with the zen for one day, I think, don't you?

Read more about the book club - and sign up for tour #5 - here.

Kafka Dreams

I've always had what I call Kafka Dreams, which is a nickname for a very special kind of fun called a night terror.  My Kafka Dreams come and go, but I always have them and I suspect they'll always be around.

Last night I had one.

For the first time, it was one about the babies.

And I'll tell you about it, because hearing about other people's dreams is never boring or anything.

In brief-I gave birth to the twins.  One boy, one girl.  And while I was waiting in another room for someone to tell me the boy had been born and was ok (I realize there's something amiss with that scenario, like I would probably be in the same room as the birthing, but then you never really know) they brought our daughter in.

She was beautiful.

And when I unswaddled her, I saw she didn't have any legs, she just had two E.T. like feet on the bottom of her body.

Our daughter had no legs.

And I started screaming and Aidan took the baby and was fantastic with her and loved her to bits and rocked her, and then his kids showed up and were fantastic about her and waited for her brother, and all I could do was scream about the E.T. feet on our child.

I woke up badly.

If I had a baby with no legs, just E.T. feet, I know I would love it forever.  And I've seen the legs on both the babies in the scans, they look like little froggy legs with their bent knees.

Still, it's my first baby-related anxiety dream.  I know I'm not alone, I am sure loads of pregnant women have them (Carol I know has been there) but I can tell you-not fun.  You wake up feeling horrible.

Especially since I'm sure there won't be a sequel to E.T.