Lights Will Guide You Home

The doctor’s office called R at noon. We debated whether she should conference me in to listen the voicemail together on her lunch break, but we were each too afraid to get bad news alone. She decided to leave work early so we could finally end the agonizing wait. At four pm we laid down on our bed, held hands, and pushed the voicemail button. The nurse’s tone was neutral. Professional. My heart sank. And then she said,

“Congratulations you are pregnant.”

I began sobbing. Sobbing so hard and for so long that R feared I was actually unhappy about the news. She shook me and said, “Please tell me you are happy about this?!” I managed to utter a garbled response, and continued sobbing.

Our long struggle is over.

I feel so much gratitude. I am so humbled by the scores of people who have prayed for us, hoped for us. Earlier this month I had a visual reminder of all the prayers and good wishes when my mother spilled an entire bowl of prayer beads on the living room floor.  When I laughed about the ridiculous sight of three adults crawling around fetching hundreds of tiny beads she said, “This is how many prayers are being said for you right now.”

Thank you thank you thank you. Oh my goodness thank you. I’m so grateful.

My sweet Bean(s), I can’t wait to meet you. Until then, you are held in the light of so many wonderful people. We just can’t wait for you to arrive.

How to Eat a Word Sandwich

As Dr. A was closing up shop after the embryo transfer he peered over his minute square glasses and said,

“Now, all my patients tell me the next two weeks are completely miserable. The best advice I can give you is to try to keep yourselves busy, but not too busy (that was for R). Do your best to avoid obsessing…am I pregnant am I not? Did it work…did it not? Try to just think positively, but not obsessively.”

I practically rolled my eyes and simultaneously blew the dust of my fingertips, all casual like. This dude obviously had no clue what freaking pros we are at managing the two week wait. We’ve only done this about a hundred 17 times over the last three years. Get real!

Cue Tuesday morning. I woke up in a cold sweat, burdened by a sinking feeling. My old friends Fear and Doubt were nipping at my heels. I tried to ignore them. They bit harder. My mom texted me just as I was starting to panic. She asked how things were going and I admitted my steely confidence had evaporated and I wanted it back. I stared at the photo of our two perfect embryos, and a few hours later I had recovered my hope. Mom also sent me a link to an article about creating a visioning board, and I have some ideas for making something similar. I think the project will keep me busy and hopeful (Doctor’s orders!) and give me something tangible to hold on to. But in the mean time, I’m eating a big ol’ word sandwich. And that brings me around to today’s subject: eating your words.

Let me tell you, I am becoming a P-R-O at eating my words. When we first started this whole adventure, some of our friends referred us to their lesbian friends who’d gotten pregnant by various means. One of them was a woman in my office, Rebecca, who was kind enough to meet us for lunch one day at a local vegan cafe. I still remember sitting there, listening to her story about trying to conceive for six years, and ultimately succeeding through IVF. I’m sure I had a Judgey McJudgerson look on my face, because she said

“You know, we can judge women for spending money on IVF, but I actually believe it should be covered by insurance.  We live in a society where it is often difficult for women to bear children and launch successful careers, and they need to do both at roughly the same time. Until we value the role of women as mothers and workers, we’re all sort of complicit in the role that reproductive medicine plays in our society and it shouldn’t be a burden that individual families have to bear.”

I considered her point, but didn’t agree with it. When we left I told R that Rebecca’s advocacy for insurance coverage for IVF was ludicrous, and I declared that I would never undergo invitro fertilization. Never!

And here we are, friends, entering week two of the two week wait after our first (and hopefully last) round of IVF. In the three years since our vegan lunch with Rebecca I’ve learned a great deal about the difficult choices women (and men) have to make as they try to create a family. I’ve learned that I can never know the full extent of another person’s suffering, nor how it shaped their journey to parenthood. Each family walks its own path and manages the twists and turns as it sees fit, and could use a relief station instead of judgement.

So yeah, Dr. A’s other patients are correct–the two week wait post IVF is HARD. Turns out that if I’m a pro at anything, it’s eating my words. My advice? When forced to eat a word sandwich, try to smile – you’ll need the room.

Prime Time

My favorite number is 37.  I like that it’s a prime number comprised of two prime numbers. So what better day for our transfer than 3.7.13 – the trifecta of prime numbers?

We arrived at the clinic and sat nervously in the waiting room, where the other (hetero) couples smiled politely and tried not to stare. The surgical assistant, Patty, called us back and instructed R to put on a hospital gown, hair cover, and shoe covers. She started to hand me one of the pre-sorted stacks of surgical scrubs, hair and shoe covers and realized all the stacks were size 3XL. Guess they don’t have very many lesbian couples coming through! Patty went to the staff changing room and grabbed a small set of scrubs for me, and I tugged them on while R stuffed all our belongings in locker number 3.

Lucky number 3

Once we were dressed in sterile clothes, Patty led us into the procedure room and reviewed the process with us. After a few minutes Dr. A came in and made a joke about loading all six embryos into the catheter for transfer. I told him I’d already called TLC to discuss the plans for our reality show’s pilot episode. We shared a giggle and then he opened a little window into the lab and read off R’s date of birth and social security number. In return he received a printed photo of the two highest quality embryos, who looked just perfect to me.

We chatted about the remaining embryos, which may or may not survive until Monday when they could be frozen and stored for future use. While we’d love to have a spare or two, we were just thrilled to have two really strong looking embryos for today’s transfer. After Dr. A answered all our questions he knocked on the little window and a technician reached through it with a long thin catheter. Dr. A threaded the catheter into R’s uterus and gently pushed the two embryos out. It all went so smoothly that we had to be told (twice) the procedure was complete.

Patty and Dr. A left us in the room for about 20 minutes, during which time we congratulated each other and looked forward to two weeks of relatively little medical intervention. We smiled and hugged and marveled at the photo of our strong little Beans. We’ve done everything we can do. Now it’s their turn to work and our turn to rest.

Two Angels

I’m live blogging again today folks. It’s 9:42 and Dr. A said to expect his call before 10.  I’m trying to keep calm, though the coffee may not have been helpful in my pursuit of tranquility. I’m revisiting A Blessing for Waiting, and breathing deeply. I’m also taking comfort in this photo of my great grandmother, Hazel.

 Hazel

The photo is on my side of the bed in my aunt’s guest room. Just in front of it is an angel figurine that somehow managed to survive the Christmas decor round up. In her arms are six apples.

 

Two Angels

Last night I interpreted the whole scene as a signal that grandmother Hazel is tending our embryos until we can. And when the doctor’s office finally called at 9:57 am, we learned we have six embryos growing. I’ll entrust them to grandmother for safe keeping.

Before and After

I’m watching R sleep comfortably in the recovery room, wrapped in the baby blanket her maternal grandmother made for her when she was born. The blanket traveled all the way to Ohio, along with two small pebbles we picked up on a beach somewhere long ago. While R was in the operating room I held onto the pebbles and said my prayers.

Dr. A retrieved 11 follicles, gave me a reassuring arm squeeze, and whisked them off to the laboratory where our KD’s sperm is thawing from a deep freeze. And with that folks,  it’s all out of our hands. I’m relieved to know that our part of the work is over. Rather, the hardest part is over; while we still have a few meds to remember each day it will be a cake walk from here to the 21st.

So I’m sitting in the dark, a little more free to breathe deeply, and happily listening to R’s heart beating in perfect synchrony with that of the lady in the next bed. Every now and then they break rank, but for the most part, they mark time together.

It’s nice to breathe again. Our trip here was a little harrowing. The “tinker toy” (my aunt’s nickname for the tiny red Fiat we rented) was covered in ice this morning, and it idled the entire way to the clinic. At one point I thought it was starting to smoke. I wasn’t sure we would make it here today, between the malfunctioning car and R’s attempt at reading directions through a thick fog of valium. If we have to do this again,  R’s support person is going to need a support person!

It’s been a bittersweet week. In midst of our hope and anticipation we lost R’s grandmother, Ruth. In many ways R lost her grandmother years ago when dementia stole away with the chain smoking, coffee drinking woman who taught her to play penny poker at the kitchen table. Many of our family members pondered how Ruth, who loved dancing to big band music, gardening and drinking margaritas, left this world just as our children are about to enter it. I like to think of them, mingling and laughing, in that place where we are before and after we are here.

Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady

The start of this morning’s email exchange with R went something like this:

Hey, Katie just called and your E2 level is great (656)! That’s about three times the upper limit of normal estrogen levels, so you’re ‘Once, twice, three times a lady!’

I’m waiting to hear if she was as amused as I was.

So far things are going pretty smoothly. It turns out that having a few weeks off from making major life decisions is really rad. I’d almost forgotten what that is like. I didn’t even really realize the toll it was taking until yesterday, when I told a friend that it feels like I’ve been making major decisions every single month for nearly three years. She pointed out that I have been making major decisions every month for the last three years, and that is really stressful.

I like to think that all this is teaching us something, and maybe some day I’ll compile a list of lessons learned and post it here. Here’s a preview: the first lesson is How to eat a word sandwich.  Then What not to read and Things to know before meeting your sperm dealer: a guide for lesbians.

Alas the dissertation beckons, so I hope you’ll be happy with this pithy report. Just wanted to let you know that it’s day 26 and we’re getting on pretty well. We are busily preparing for our big trip, which begins at the crack of Wednesday. Cross your fingers!

For THIS child I have prayed.

Yesterday our shipment of medications arrived, along with our multicyle plan contract and some educational DVDs about how to inject all the fertility drugs. Between the giant box of meds and the receipt for the IVF payment, I was more than a little overwhelmed. And strangely, my anxiety was less about whether or not this plan will work, and more about whether we’ll be glad we went to all this trouble.

Now, everyone in the parenting club says it’s amazing and totally worth the sleep deprivation, the poop, the sore nipples and all that jazz. But every now and again I wonder if they aren’t just lying to trick us into buying a membership and getting their numbers up. You know, some kind of sick parenting schadenfreude.

I wonder how the decision to relentlessly pursue parenting will affect my life, my marriage, my future happiness. I worry about having buyer’s remorse and wanting to revoke my membership. As much as I know I should have no expectations of my children or of parenting more generally, I do have these vague visions of what life with kids will be like.  I envision us camping, hiking, taking trips, working on homework, puzzling over science fair projects, going to the library, eating gluten-free, no-sugar-added cupcakes. (JK on the last point.) But our child(ren) might hate all those things, or more importantly, they may be unable to do them.

This week I read about how R’s age and our use of ART increases our risk of having a child with a chromosomal abnormality or cerebral palsy or a few other birth anomalies. And yesterday I was struck with a cold panic over all the things that could go wrong after R conceives on top of my baseline panic over all the things that could go wrong beforehand.  I wondered if we’re ready to accept any outcome, because that seems like an important prerequisite to parenting. There’s no guarantee that after all this money and effort spent we’ll walk away with a healthy, happy child. And even if we do, s/he may still turn out to be a royal pain in the ass. I guess it’s natural to get cold feet when you have to work so hard to make something happen. It’s probably normal to constantly reevaluate your motives, your desires, your goals as you inch further and further toward complete insanity to achieve them. But it’s a little unsettling.

This morning I hopped on a TTC forum to check on how a friend was doing after her egg retrieval today. I noticed that one of the other women posted under the subject line “1 Samuel 1:27.” It was a fitting passage for me to stumble upon today, after chewing on my anxieties for a few days. The verse says:

I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.

You’d be within your rights to suspect I find comfort in this passage because it suggests the good Lord is going to grant my wish. But truthfully, and astonishingly, when I read the passage I automatically placed the emphasis on the word “this.”

I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.

And I feel sure that when I finally meet my child, I will know s/he is the exactly the one that I prayed for, and the one who belongs with me.

How it Works, Pt Deux

Well friends, it’s time for a follow up to the original how it works post. I’m not sure I can make this one as entertaining as the first, but I’ll do what I can.

We started our first IVF cycle on Saturday. The week has been a flurry of calls between us and the doctor’s office in Ohio, us and the credit card companies, us and the airlines, us and our relatives. Lots of coordinating over here. I think all the major details are finally ironed out and I can finally take off my IVF coordinator hat and put back on my ABD Grad Student hat. A lot of folks have asked us how, exactly, this procedure works. It’s somewhat fun to watch the whites of their eyes grow as we divulge the nitty gritty details, but it’s also exhausting to tell the same story over and over so I’m gonna put it all here for the record.

Before we were allowed to start the cycle we had a four hour visit with the RE in Ohio. During that visit he briefly reviewed R’s medical history, and then examined her uterus and ovaries by ultrasound. He took some kind of measurements to understand the size and shape of the uterus and that process looked rather uncomfortable. I was happy to be seated in a vinyl chair next to the exam table. After the exam, we were escorted to a small room at the center of which was dinosaur of a laptop primed with an equally dated educational video. Here’s a screen shot of instructions for me, “the husband”:

After we’d watched (or slept through) the video, a nurse came in with a pile of paperwork more voluminous than the stack we signed to close on our house.

A ream of paper later, the nurse reviewed R’s med schedule. There are at least eight drugs from this doctor, plus prenatal vitamins and fish oil, and two types of Chinese herbs prescribed by her acupuncturist. We had to make a spreadsheet, and set alarms for ourselves. We tacked the spreadsheet right next to a fertility talisman from Israel, which has thus far failed us but perhaps needed to be closer to water? (We moved it to the bathroom.)

All the meds have different effects and are therefore administered on different days during the cycle. The first drugs are meant to synchronize follicle development; in a normal cycle, a woman’s body has a wave of follicles that that all start the race to ovulation. Typically, the most mature follicle wins, and occasionally the two most mature follicles win. But all the competing follicles grow at slightly different rates, and if they were all encouraged to continue growing and mature to ovulation, when they were released from the ovaries they’d be different sizes and some would be too old and some would be too young to have a fighting chance at fertilization. So R takes oral birth control pills for 14 days to suppress the growth of the follicles and keep them maturing at the same rate. It’s kind of like ovarian socialism – we’re leveling the playing field and giving all follicles an equal chance, rather than using internal competition and market forces to let the best (or most crooked!) follicle win the prize.

Once the follicles have been stabilized and readied for growth, we give them a three day rest period. Then we feed them some superfood (Follicle Stimulating Hormone, injected into R’s abdomen in very high doses) to nourish their growth and encourage dozens (hopefully) to keep maturing as though each will be fertilized. On the third day of stimulation, we go the lab to get a blood test to make sure things are going according to plan. Then we adjust the medications as needed, and perhaps start a second injection to prevent R’s body from naturally releasing the outsized crop of follicles. On the sixth day of stimulation we fly to Ohio to see the RE who will count and measure the follicles and determine how much more time and medication they need before harvesting.

Most women need about 10 days of stimulation prior to harvest, but some need fewer and some longer. We’ll be monitored closely to determine the right time to have all the follicles harvested. On harvesting (AKA “retrieval”) day, we’ll check into a hospital where R will be sedated and the mature follicles will be removed from her ovaries. They’ll be rushed to a laboratory, where a technician will examine each one for quality and contents. An unknown proportion of the follicles will lack an egg, and therefore not particularly useful to us. But the ones with an egg inside will have our donor’s sperm injected into them in hopes that they’ll fertilize. Another unknown proportion of eggs will fail to fertilize, but the ones that do will spend three to five days growing to the embryonic stage in a petri dish in the lab.  On the third or fifth day after the retrieval, we’ll go back in to the hospital, and the doctor will transfer the two best embryos into R’s uterus, where we hope they’ll get cozy and implant. The remaining embryos, if we have any, will be frozen and stored for future use. The day after the transfer we’ll fly back to the PNW, and I’ll try not to worry about the in flight radiation exposure to my embryonic twins. We will wait ten agonizing days before getting blood tests to find out if neither, one, or both of the embryos implanted and continued growing.

So that’s the story, morning glory. The entire process involves 12 drugs, 3-4 blood draws, 3-4 ultrasounds, 2 surgeries, and 12 drugs over the course of about 45-50 days. Oh, and it costs an arm and a leg. And we’ve already spent an arm and two legs, so between us we have like, a torso, left and only a modicum of sanity. Hope the kids won’t mind!

Here I go, Here I go, Here I go again!

Yesterday when R left for work she sang a little Salt-n-Pepa ditty. You know the one.

Here I go

Here I go

Here I go, again…

Dutifully, I replied

What’s my weakness?!

My enthusiastic reply was met with silence.

I shouted,

‘Hey, I said, What’s my weakness!’

More silence. The sound of R’s bike slamming against the garage door. She shouted back

Uh, I don’t have any weaknesses!

…

Oh…except fertility!!!

Love you, bye!

And if infertility can work its way into our white ladies’ early morning rendition of Shoop, I think it’s fair to say it’s penetrated every layer of our lives. Sigh.

So, after many discussions with friends, family, the Midwest adoption agency, and our friendly social worker, we’ve decided the stress of trying to adopt as a single female is just too much for one of us to endure mostly alone. We don’t want to disentangle our bank accounts, stage our home, prepare evasive answers to questions about dating and marriage prospects, or pose as roommates. We are uncertain about what would happen if we were still trying to finalize an adoption in 12 months when our domestic partnership automatically converts to a state-recognized marriage–something we fought for, but now realize would prevent us from adopting internationally.

In the next few days we’ll begin the protocol for our first IVF cycle. We were lucky to qualify for a shared risk plan, which allows us up to three fresh and three frozen cycles of IVF for roughly the cost of two fresh cycles. If we decided to cease and desist, or if all the treatment fails, we will get 70% of our initial payment back.

I won’t lie to you (why start now?!). It was hard for me to settle into the idea of IVF. I’m exhausted already, and the idea of R taking eight medications over six weeks is terrifying. We’re nervous about it not working. We’re nervous about it working. I guess we are just nervous. Our financial and emotional reserves are spent, and I know we’ll struggle to keep our heads above water during the coming weeks of injections and blood draws and doctor visits and pills and powders. Thankfully we have wonderful friends and family to keep us afloat.

We wrote to KD and let him know about our plan, and he was genuinely excited for us. It was sweet, and affirming.

So…here I go, here I go, here I go again.

About that crystal ball…

So we called a psychic. Not the 1.800.PSYCHIC type, but an astrologer and psychic counselor who came highly recommended by a good friend. I would quite possibly be expelled from the PhD program (and The Academe, to boot) if I said that opening line aloud, which is precisely why I write anonymously.

At first I felt silly for even considering this option, but then I realized the psychic counselor isn’t really so different from the three reproductive endocrinologists we’ve seen – each uses her set of tools to predict the best way forward. And let’s be honest, folks, the REs have been about 0 for 20, so perhaps it’s time for a game changer! R talked to the counselor first, and then tearfully handed me the phone about 25 minutes later. I don’t want to divulge the details of the conversation, because in spite of appearances, I do consider some things private. But a fair summary is that the counselor was eerily insightful and gently suggested that adoption is the better path for us. I could hear the reluctance in her voice, even as she tried to convince herself that we could be successful with IVF. But she kept circling back to adoption.

We were both quite sad after the phone call, and unsure how to weigh it against our desires and the advice of our doctors and the statistics for ART and the risks involved with any choice we make. I can’t say we’ve arrived at anything close to a decision, but a somewhat serendipitous series of events occurred over the weekend.

On Friday I stumbled upon the website of an adoption agency in the midwest and noticed that they accept applications from single females for one of their international adoption programs that interested us. I worked up the nerve to email them, admitting we are a same sex couple, but legally single and not keen on lying to prospective adoption agencies. (Side note: my aversion to lying is not some sort of moral high ground – I actually have great difficulty lying, and it causes me a lot of stress.) I expected the usual polite rejection email in return, but surprisingly the agency wrote back and asked me to call to discuss how they’ve handled “our situation” in the past. Of course the agency was already closed by the time I called, so we had to wait all weekend to hear if this really might be feasible.

In the meantime, I remembered that years ago my good friend C told me that she had two friends who adopted from central Africa and those friends live in the same state where the agency operates. I reached out to C, and she called me immediately (i.e. within seconds) and injected a huge ray of sunshine into my chilly Sunday morning. She connected me to her friends, and when I saw their names I realized that one of them is the executive director of the adoption agency. Isn’t it strange how all these seemingly unrelated pieces of information float around us and then when we reach for them, at the right time and place, they begin to fit together?

I called the adoption agency yesterday, and indeed they have worked with GLBT couples who’ve successfully adopted from central Africa. It would not be easy. And it would not be cheap. It would actually cost more than one cycle of IVF, but there’s a (theoretical) 100% chance of success. Of course there are a thousand ways the whole thing could go wrong. We’d have to present ourselves to everyone but the agency (i.e. a social worker who does our home study, and everyone else we meet along the way) as a single female with a single female roommate. I’m not whooped about that part of it, but I bet there are lots of aspects of this whole parenting gig that I won’t be whooped about, either.

We spent a lot of time this weekend talking and crying and being intermittently hopeful, angry, frustrated, and then hopeful again. We have no idea what the best next move is. I can think of a dozen reasons to adopt and a dozen reasons not to. I struggle with the ghosts of colonialism, racism, ethnocentrism when I think about adopting internationally. I think about how the tens of thousands of dollars we’d spend to bring home one child could be used to support an entire family for years-maybe even our child’s own family. So is it right  to extract her from her culture, her extended family (if she has any) to bring her here to live in a mostly white family in the crunchy granola Pacific Northwest? On the other hand, is it right to pay the same amount of money for the chance to create our own child, whose prenatal environment will be nurturing, whose birth will be attended, whose every need will be met from her very first day on Earth when we know we can adopt a child from an orphanage with 200 children and one pot of rice between them?

I know that when I stew in these juices I’m just preemptively answering the people I think will judge us for adopting internationally. I hear them shouting, “Self-indulgent American imperialists!” Or the people who will judge us for pursuing IVF. “Couldn’t you just adopt for crying out loud?”  Perhaps the best answer is that wise old saying Hatas gonna hate.

Those same critics probably have children of their own, and the time, money, and energy they’ve poured into their own progeny also could have been used to support a family or a small village in central Africa. Parenting is always selfish to some extent. It makes us less productive members of society while simultaneously draining the planet of resources. So I’m unconvinced the hatas hold the truth card. But I’m nonetheless thankful for the opportunity to pause and think about our motives for parenting and the ethics of our procreative choices. (For more on the importance of treating procreation as an ethical dilemma, see this article.)

So in this time of indecision (which makes me extremely uncomfortable, as you well know), I find myself googling IVF vs. adoption, as though Google (my own version of a crystal ball) will provide the sort of immediate clarification I’ve come to expect from it. No such luck.