A different kind of reproductive choice

This morning I started looking up some infertility information (I was researching for a loved one), and I came across this site.  Reading Dr. Sher’s message, I was reminded me how lucky I was to find the amazing RE and the team who helped create Bean. 

You see, there is a secret that no one tells you when you first start down the assisted reproduction path, and that is that not all REs are created equal.  Some are brilliant, some kind but lousy, some are up on the latest information and technologies, while others prefer to rest on their laurels, and some are just pretentious bastards.  Some are caring and sympathetic, others are cold and callous, some offer options and advice, while others can’t be bothered with explanations or questions, and to be honest…your RE may be an expert in 10 different types of infertility diagnoses, but if they aren’t an expert in yours, you may want to find yourself a new doctor. 

My own doctor was the second RE I saw, and I met with him mainly to get a second opinion after a slightly traumatic first RE interaction (which you can read more about here and here, on my old blog).  Disregarding for a moment the terribleness of this particular doctor’s manner or that of her evil nurse, I would also like to point out that she was also quite wrong.  She was an expert in recurrent miscarriages, implantation failure and immunological issues.  I had never been pregnant, so she went with implantation failure and immunological issues.

My second RE (an expert in PCOS), basically threw all that out the window, explaining to me – in detail – why he felt both diagnoses were incorrect and not supported by my blood work.  He really listened to me, he spent time with me, read over all of my medical history information before laying out multiple plan options for how he could help me, and – a small perk – he let me cry all over his desk. 

When it came time to start our very expensive and very scary IVF treatment, I knew at least that I felt safe and confident in my doctor’s knowledge, experience in treating women with PCOS, and his success with PCOS and IVF.  The protocol he selected was similar to the one Dr. Sher talks about in his followup section, and it was incredibly successful – yielding Bean, plus two high quality frosties. 

Now, I know not every couple pursuing infertility treatments, lives within an easy distance of multiple infertility specialists, but if given a choice of caregivers I would beg you to consider carefully your options.  I have heard too many sad stories of couples seeking help from medical professionals who just wasted their time and money; thousands of dollars drained on bills for procedures that didn’t work, couldn’t have worked, and yet were repeated two, three, even four times.  Some of these tales have happy endings – usually because the couples sought help elsewhere and found someone fantastic – but that isn’t often the case.

So there you have it…the secret is out!  Tell the reproductive endocrinologists of the world to tremble and shake in their surgical masks and latex gloves, and my best wishes to anyone out there reading this who may be struggling with infertility and looking for a doctor to help make their dreams come true. 

Arm yourself in knowledge, be your own advocate, and don’t be afraid of a second, third or even fourth opinion.

the monday snapshot - Kerri

Reblogged from PAIL Bloggers:

• 

Kerri of Uncommon Nonsense is going to open up the week for us with her contribution to the The Monday Snapshot – an evolution of the MMM feature, meant to bring the PAIL blogroll to life by giving its members a chance to feature themselves and make new connections. 

If you would like to be featured on The Monday Snapshot…

Read more… 446 more words

Harboring a Fugitive

So I have some news that has kept me offline for a few weeks now…drum roll please…I am 12 weeks and 6 days pregnant.  Yup, that’s right, I am playing host to a miraculous Bean the Second, and hoping he/she is actually healthy and growing well inside me.  I have an ultrasound today, which will hopefully put my mind more at ease, but seriously, WTF!

I don’t know how this happened…I mean, I know how, but HOW?  I was supposed to be infertile.  It was all I knew, all I had come to know…hell, it had become part of my identity. “Hello, my name is Kerri, I’m 31, and I’m infertile.  This is my daughter, Bean, who was conceived through IVF.”

Actually, about 8 weeks back I was making plans to see an RE, and thinking about thawed embryos and whether or not to travel back to Chicago for my FET.  I had zero expectations that I would conceive naturally, ZERO!  When I saw that second pink line, my mind froze, my hands shook and I went numb. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t elated, I was in shock.

For days after that, there were just a series of sensations that I ever expected to feel about a pregnancy…sadness, fear, guilt, more fear, more guilt, confusion, separation, disbelief, and did I mention fear.

Why was I so negative? Well, I was terrified for starters…thinking about the what ifs, and having two babies under 2…the plan had been to try naturally for a year, and when that didn’t work (which I KNEW it wouldn’t, but we had to try anyway), go for the FET when Bean would be turning 3.  In the meanwhile, I would focus on Bean, and finding my dream career, and I would build a relationship with an RE and take care of all the necessary tests and screens.  It was a well conceived plan…I thought.

It was so hard to feel connected to this new pregnancy, this new being.  I didn’t really believe I was pregnant, and I was afraid of feeling something for this baby and then losing the pregnancy.  I didn’t trust that everything would be okay, that I wouldn’t miscarry and wouldn’t need to pick up the pieces afterwards and go on with my life.  My sister (who also has PCOS) had only recently lost a pregnancy at 10 weeks, and here I was, the supposedly infertile one, what chance did I have?

Though there was no emotional “connection” to speak of, I still felt every first trimester discomfort…I was constantly nauseated, breaking out like mad, gaining weight left and right, exhausted beyond anything I experienced the first time around, sick with a never ending series of viruses, unable to play with Bean or even take care of her the way I usually do, depressed and filled with anxiety and horrible, gut wrenching guilt.  I felt so awful, that I think some part of me actually wanted the pregnancy to end, so I could just feel normal again and continue being Bean’s mommy and that’s all.

What changed me?  I think it started the first time I saw the newest bub on an ultrasound monitor.  I went for an early one, as I was having some pain on on my left side.  The pain turned out to be from a ruptured cyst, but there was the bub, flickering away inside my uterus.  My numb brain allowed the moment in for just a second, and I realized there were tears in my eyes.  This was really happening.

A couple of weeks later, at my prenatal appointment there was no heart beat on the Doppler. Still, supposedly numb, I tried to ignore the sinking the feeling in my stomach and told myself it didn’t matter either way.  I went the next day for an ultrasound, and there was the Bub…healthy, secure, doing just fine…more tears escaped, and more thoughts that maybe I was not so impartial to this new baby as I would have myself believe.

Now, at the end of my first trimester, and feeling far better than I have in months, I realize I am looking forward to today’s ultrasound and seeing the bub on the monitor once again.  I am still plagued by fears and doubts, but I have sworn a promise to this new life growing inside me, that I will be better; I will take care of myself and him/her to the best of my abilities, and I will, given a bit more time, grow to love him/her as much as I do my first little Bean.  I also know that I will begin to show and feel this baby moving very soon, and that that change alone will bring us closer and more in tune with one another with each passing day.

UPDATE:

All went well at today’s ultrasound.  The Bub was not cooperating at first and had to be jostled a bit, but he/she turned and the the tech was able to take all the necessary measurements.  I got the thumbs up from the doc, and the chance to see my little one moving and grooving and waving his/her little hands all around.  The photos I received from the tech, clearly show the baby’s brain, which was kind of freaky and kind of cool at the same time.  It was an awful wait at the office, and Bean was losing it, making it hard to enjoy the moment, but it was still pretty amazing and, as usual, a bit surreal.

Maiden to Mother: A Journey

I recently read an interesting blog post, written by a long time blogger and fellow IF survivor, Miss Conception.  Her series of posts on the challenges of being a new mom, bring back memories of my own fraught journey from maidenhood to motherhood, and the sadness and fear that accompanied the joy and awe of bringing Bean into this world.

When Bean was born, the love and protectiveness I felt towards her was instantaneous, but the rest – the selflessness, capability, and motherly “instinct” I thought I was supposed to feel – were not.  At this point in my life, I don’t believe they are for anyone, at least not with a first child.

My post-partum situation was a little unusual, as I was hospitalized two days after giving birth, and separated from Bean.  It was necessary to keep her away, to allow me some time to rest, and to protect Bean from the germs and exposure of multiple trips back and forth to the hospital, but I missed her terribly and I felt very disconnected from my new role as mom.  Rather than glorying in my new baby, nursing and snuggling quietly at home, I was stuck in an uncomfortable hospital bed, loaded up on painkillers that hardly masked the pain I was in, weak as a kitten, and strapped to a breast pump every three hours to express toxin filled milk to be dumped down the sink.  I felt helpless, impotent, disconnected and a bit like a failure…feelings that were only amplified when I wasn’t able to successfully transition Bean back to the breast after her time on the bottle.

That was my first week with my baby, painful both physically and mentally, and the fun didn’t really stop there, just the hospital stay.

Over time I did heal, I did learn the ABCs of Bean, and I did come to trust in my motherly instincts, but it was all a learning process…

I learned that mothers don’t actually instinctively know their babies the best, they just spend the most time with them and learn to read every sign and every sound. The instinct part is more animalistic, more practical for baby’s immediate survival – like being in tune to your baby’s cries – but knowing that this cry means I’m hungry, and this other cry means I’m tired…that is just observation over time.

I learned that every mother mourns her maidenhood.  My sister taught me this – one night when I was melting into a puddle of post-partum misery and guilt.  Mourning your life before is normal.  Grieving for your lost childhood and former freedom is normal.  As Miss Conception says quite perfectly, “…before children we tend to live a fairly selfish life. A life based around what we want and need. To go from that, to putting yourself second or third always….overnight….is huge.”  It is huge, and it is sad.  The life you knew is gone forever, so taking a few moments to cry and feel the loss, that’s okay.

I learned that no matter how hard the journey, you will ultimately forget or bury the bad over time, and will instead focus on every smile, every giggle and each new day with your child.  You will rise to the occasion over and over, even when you think you can’t, and you will become a person you didn’t know you had the strength to be.

PAIL Inspired Post: “Marriage 1st, Child 2nd?”

Since Bean’s conception, or perhaps even before, I have always put her first…husband second, me third.  Has that been the right decision, or even a healthy one?  Perhaps not, but it’s what the women who came before me did, it is the example set by friends, family, parenting books and the media, and it is all I seem to know how to do.   

If I were to be honest with myself, I would have to admit to feeling resentful at times…not resentful of Bean exactly, but resentful of those who get to think about themselves and their husbands first, those whose husbands still think of them first before anyone, and those whose marriages are still young, unencumbered and romantic.

For us, romance is my husband canceling a meeting to come home “early” to help out, when I’m already an exhausted wreck by 11am.  Romance is letting the other partner sleep an extra 30 minutes on Saturday morning by volunteering to “keep the baby”.  There are still flowers and chocolates on Valentines Day, but the real romance is waking to find my husband has already emptied the dishwasher.

I think we’ve mainly forgotten how to be romantic, either that or we are just too tired and busy.  There is always something to do, some list of chores or some work to complete before bedtime. 

Date night was supposed to be a priority…we promised each other back before Bean was born…yet it got lost in the tidal wave of parenthood.  We realized it was really expensive to have a babysitter AND pay for dinner, AND parking, and I guess it was also hard to coordinate.  It was easier, and cheaper to stay at home, and have a date night here.  It didn’t occur to us that this would lead to “date night” becoming just like every other night, except with the added stress to somehow make it special regardless of how hard and tiring the day might have been.

When we were dealing with infertility and IVF, we had so many conversations about “US”…the realization quickly dawning that infertility had drained us of everything but an extreme focus on having a baby.  We weren’t making time for each other, for the other things in our lives.  We weren’t having fun with each other.  We were sad, frustrated and socially isolated.  The result was we became closer as a couple, and we worked harder on our marriage than ever before.  We were working for each others’ happiness, and we felt so in love and so in sync with one another.

Why shouldn’t we make the same commitment to each other now?  Why should Bean always be first and our union second?  Isn’t our marriage and our happiness together one of the best examples we can set for her?  Isn’t giving her all of ourselves, while giving our marriage nothing, just a path to spousal resentment and separation?

Perhaps it is time to start putting our marriage first, or at least alternating priorities on occasion.  Our family is only as strong as the marriage that created it, isn’t it?  I think it is time we remembered how to be romantic, and started making more time for each other even it that means letting Bean wait for our attention now and again.

 

Play Dates & Puppy Dog Tails

As a sometimes lonely, full-time stay at home mom, I feel I’ve perhaps been conned into believing that maintaining my sanity means landing in the right play group. Bean is now 14 months old and so far the experience of doing just that has been a failed series of stops and starts. New part-time employment opportunities, nap schedule differences and viruses are the usual culprits, and other times…well, let’s just face it…the moms don’t have all that much to say to each other outside of comparing baby accomplishments and weaning issues.

I’ve tried Meetup.com groups, mommy & me classes, local family network listings, and plain old inviting friends for some chit chat and coffee, but somehow an official, regularly meeting group never gets past two or three meetings before falling to pieces and/or drifting apart.

I’m beginning to think that it’s all a myth. That the whole perfect playgroup ideal, in which the moms and babies all get along well, stay friends forever, plan excursions together, babysit each others kids, and get to experience each others major milestones – like an extended family – is all a lie created and perpetuated by Hollywood, book writers and my mom.

Am I really asking for so much? I know kids get sick, and skip naps and change your plans on you at the last possible moment, but lately I feel more like the heavens are aligning in perfect formation against my heartfelt attempts at boosting my happiness – and Bean’s as well – with a variety of amusing morning and/or afternoon companionship opportunities.

Perhaps this is just the effect of living in a place where most of the moms work, at least part time? Maybe it is my own fault for not being able to live near longtime friends and family who have young kids of their own? Maybe it’s just something I need to work even harder at, and eventually it will all come together? Or, worst of all, maybe it is a myth and I just need to find another tree to bark up altogether.

Ode to a SAHM

I realized that my post yesterday was a bit out of the blue, and might have sounded down on the whole being a SAHM thing.  I wanted to express that I’m not at all anit-SAHM, and I’m actually incredibly grateful that I get to be a SAHM to Bean – now, while she is still a baby.  My point was more that I don’t know how to be a SAHM mom once Bean goes off to pre-school and I really want to go back to work at that time, but I don’t know how or what I even want to do.

My sister is a SAHM mom to two kids, and she is awesome at it.  Not only is she a child educator and a master of arts and crafts, she also has a song for everything, she home schools her children, bakes, cooks, decorates cakes, gardens, prepares natural soaps and cleansers using herbs gleaned from her backyard, sews all their Halloween costumes and knits their sweaters and hats for winter, hosts other home schooled children in her home for special learning/social activities, and in her spare time she helps run a small organization for promoting doulas and safe birthing.

A good friend of mine, also a SAHM to two kids, is also a master of arts and crafts, cake decorating and cooking, as well as being a kids birthday party planner extraordinaire, a child educator (in her previous life), and member of various community boards and organizations.  This is a woman who – at the request of her 4 year old – made a rainbow themed birthday party complete with homemade decorations, a cake of marbleized rainbow food dye, similar cake pops as take home gifts, rainbow jello prepared on slices of of orange peel to look like actual orange slices, and a rainbow tie-dying station. I would have probably ordered pizza, set up some games, a pinata, and a gift table, and picked up some decorations from Party City.

These are women who know how to be SAHM moms, and I just don’t fit the bill.  That is what I meant by not wanting to pretend to be something I’m not.  I’m home with Bean now, because she is little, and I want to be here with her; cuddling, laughing, wiping away the tears, seeing all the firsts, and recording everything to watch a million times over again.  I just can’t continue to be a SAHM mom once Bean starts preschool and leaves me for many hours at a time.  I’m simply not cut out for it.

On becoming employable

When should I go back to work, and what do I do when I get there?

That’s the problem, I don’t really know what I want to do, and anything that takes me away from Bean right now just seems so terribly unappetizing.  I know I need to go back to work at some point.  I can’t be a SAHM forever.  I’m already stir crazy, so what will I do once Bean starts school?  I don’t knit or garden or bake, I’m not very artistic or dedicated to the perfection of my home, I don’t throw elaborate birthday parties or make Halloween costumes, and I just don’t think I can make myself happy or fulfilled trying to be someone I’m not.  I still want to be there for Bean after school, I want to make sure she has nutritious food to eat each and every day, and I want to be available to help her with her homework, and pick her up from school when she’s sick, but truly I can’t stomach the idea of staying home all day while she is away somewhere else and not with me.  I need something else in my life, I need to work.

Now come the questions? What to do? How to start?  Where do I invest my time, money, concentration, hours away from Bean, and husband’s time spent watching Bean for me?  Do we put Bean in daycare part-time, or hire a nanny?  How do we afford that?  Will we ever be able to save enough money to make a more settled life for ourselves, buy a home, take a vacation?  Can I really afford to be first “finding myself” at the age of 31…too many questions problems, and not enough answers solutions.  Do I just go back to what I was doing before?  I can’t do that.  I need to feel I’m moving forward, not stepping back.

What did I do before?  I worked here and there in non profit and higher education.  Constantly uprooting myself and remaking my life over again, made for a real problem with advancing in my career beyond entry level placements at each place I went.  I am trained in…what am I trained in?  I studied psychology, anthropology, museum studies, and walked away with an MA, and then worked as an administrative/program assistant for various causes and colleges.  I handled finances, travel and calendars, grants and proposals, journals and special events…not what you would call an illustrious career I suppose, but it’s what I’ve got to work with.

I need to try thinking more clearly about all this, but when should I do that exactly?  Here is what just writing this is like…type type..”oink oink here, and an oink oink there,” type type…”Yes baby, that is a cat” type type, “no don’t touch that…”, type type, “what happened?” stop typing, pick up Bean, wipe tears, distract with toys, “are you hungry sweetie,” give up completely, stop typing.

Later…husband is home early and able to spend a few minutes watching the Bean, so I look up a random sampling of potential jobs related to a degrees in anthropology – a special thanks to the Rutgers University website:

Museum Curator: already went down this path and it sadly led to nowhere.

Anthropologist: Not happening at this stage in the game, plus there are reasons I never pursued my PhD in anthropology.

Business Manager: I’m guessing they list this for every major

Librarian: hmm, something I’m already thinking about but it requires I go back to school for  another Masters (read time+money+more time I don’t have).

Nonprofit agency administrator: oh, hey wait, that’s what I did for most of my post college life…nope, try again, not interested

Marriage Counselor: Okay, now they are just throwing out anything

Probation/Parole Officer: Really?  What part of anthropologist screams parole officer?

There are other choices as well, but I think you get my point…the info there is pretty useless, time to try another type of search.  But where to focus?  What to ask Google?

Should I contact old employers?  Won’t I just look confused and unsure of myself?  How is that helpful?

I feel so lost in all this, and like I’m forever asking questions but never getting any answers. Why does it feel like every other mom I know has a career they are going back to, and not just that but a career where they can make their own hours, and/or work part-time from home if they want?  Why isn’t anyone else searching and hunting or just wishing they had chosen a different major in college?   I know, I’m not really being fair here.  There are others in my circles who are searching and/or dealing with the difficulty of not being home with their little one when they would so want to, but somehow it just feels like I have no one to talk to about this, or any kind of guide to help me along.  I need a mentor, a friend, a teacher even…and while I’m at it, someone to watch Bean for just a minute or two.  I need help becoming employable again.

I Believe?

I just spent a little time looking over some of the entries to the Dr. Sher “I Believe” video contest, and I can barely contain my emotions.  There isn’t a family on the list who doesn’t deserve a chance at IVF, and it is a cruel injustice that only two winners will be selected and even then they must find the money to cover medicines, frozen embyro transfers, embryo storage, etc.  I keep asking myself why we do we not have mandated infertility coverage across all states and why this incredibly successful treatment is not being made available to all who might benefit from it?

Watching the videos of couples who have lost not just one child to early miscarriage, but two or three, my heart truly breaks.  How do these families keep their hope and marriages alive, how do they keep moving forward with treatments and subsequent pregnancies?  These are warriors on the front lines of infertility, and I wish I could vote for all of them. 

Please check some of these videos out for yourself, and then vote and give one of these incredibly courageous families a fighting chance.

Snowy Day Snowy Thoughts

It is December 1st, it’s chilly and cold, the snow is falling, and my baby girl is almost a year old.  It has been a whirlwind year and a beautiful one at that, and now the inevitable…when to start trying for baby number 2.

At first we were thinking to start trying when Bean turns 15/16 months, that way we will have 6 months or so to try on our own before the clock really starts to tick again.  I hope for her to be close in age to her sibling, but not so close that we still have a first born child who is pretty much still a baby when her sibling comes along.  It just doesn’t seem fair to Bean to do that; plus I might lose my mind under such a circumstance…already the husband is gone so much that I feel like a single parent much of week, and I really can’t imagine having a super curious toddler running about and constantly getting into mischief while I’m also trying to care for a newborn.

On the flip side I’m afraid of waiting…the fear started when I my period finally returned, and it’s only grown with each passing cycle…

…What if my cycles start getting worse and worse, just as they did after going off the pill?  Right now my cycles are somewhat stable, but already I’m seeing phase fluctuations and long cycles.  I just don’t know what to expect as the months march forward.  Also, with hubby traveling all the time, who is to say how often he’ll actually be around to try and make a baby when I’m ovulating?

For right now we are waiting, but should we be?  I mean, aren’t the chances of us conceiving on our own slim to nil anyhow?  Shouldn’t we at least stop preventing?  Then, there is the voice of reason that pops up to intercede…sometimes my own voice, and sometimes that of my hubby’s.  The voice reminds me of the “what if” factor.  What if we magically get pregnant on the first try and suddenly I am pregnant, home alone, and trying to run after a baby who is just learning to get into everything and go everywhere and still doesn’t understand the word “no”.  Furthermore, what does this picuture paint for Bean’s life? Isn’t it unfair to ask her to make sacrifices when she is still only a baby still herself?

Then, of course, the infertile voice steps in again and reminds me that it could only be a blessing if we conceived one our own.  How amazing to not have to share my TTC experience with a gaggle of doctors, nurses, technicians and other medical office assistants, right?  With so much guilt to see natural conception right now as only a good thing, how would we handle this blessed situation that we never really wanted — two babies in two years.  Then again, how much worse would the grief of waiting and finding out that a) my cycles have become worse, and/or b) we still can’t conceive on our own, be if I thought for a moment that not waiting could have changed the outcome.

Finally, what of my frozen embies?  I try to remember that there is a chance they may not even survive thawing, but I still think of them as mine and the thought of returning to my doctor to try and give them life seems now a natural process to go through to have a baby.  Really, I don’t know anything else…I never did conceive before IVF (we still don’t know exactly why).  What happens to those embies if I do conceive naturally, and what happens to me emotionally and physically if we try to use them but they don’t survive or simply don’t take?

It’s confusing, and nerve-wracking to try and make decisions about things that we really have so little actual control over.

I know I’m afraid of the pain of finding myself infertile once more.  I know most infertile people don’t suddenly find themselves fertile after a pregnancy, but the stories and rumors have somehow found a home in that part of my soul that shelters and feeds my hopes.  How could they not when I see the evidence of my body’s own “fertile” efforts everyday — my beautiful baby girl.  She was created with help, it’s true, but she was still made by my husband and me.  She is possible, so why can’t anything be possible, right?