Sad news

Hi all,

I have to admit that i have been lying through omission to my blogspace friends. J and I have done another IVF cycle, this time a bit more under the radar because we didn't want to have to take out an ad on NYT.com again if it all went badly. So it all went badly, and I wanted to let you know.

This time our cycle was good and bad. The Lupron just about caused me to have a brain bleed - I have had a migraine for going on 20 days now. The Lupron migraine was of the "giant vise pushing my head together" while the estrogen migraine is the 'slow leak of brains out the ears" style. Lupron also gave me hot flashes like I was a 65-year old woman, which was HOT when I was doing all those job interviews, drenched in sweat.

This stim cycle was a dream. I was not really that bloated, felt really good, positive, happy, etc. I never had the extreme ovarian pain or twinges, never had the feeling like my ovaries were going to bust out of my abdomen, etc. Turns out that SUCKS.

So we go in Monday morning for retrieval. I know from Saturday's u/s that I have about 19 follicles, giant big ones. So when I wake up from the poking and prodding and hear that they got 7 eggs my head exploded. Look back - last time we had 25. 7 fucking goddamn crappy eggs. and 11 empty follicles. What the hell???????? So our embryologist goes to bring J in from giving his deposit and we talk to him. No idea what happened. Dr S comes in and says that as women age, their ovarian function does start to fail, and the fact that I had so many empties is a really not great sign and he is worried. HE is worried?

So J and I go home, and I go to bed. I feel much better than last time of course, mostly because i had absolutely no fucking eggs. We convince ourselves that quality is better than quantity and go to bed looking forward to our embryologist calling with great news.

Or not. Of the 7, only 2 were mature. Of the 2, only one fertilized. So he is watching it. Watching it die, I am sure.

I cant think of any other reason for this other than there is a problem with my ovarian function. J wants to talk to the RE, but i am just afraid he will say "oh well lets try again" not having any real idea what the hell happened. We are out of insurance money after this cycle and I am NOT happy about spending 10K on one fucking egg. Basically this process has been a nightmare from day 1. I cannot think of a worse thing to go through, except cancer. Between the shots, the pills, the tears, the crazy crazy diet (NO SUGAR???), the really early RE appointments, the miscarriage, the dead ovaries, the hope and then the devastated failure; I am done. Obviously I am not meant to have children. I get it, I get it. Now leave me alone.

So, we will have our post-mortem with the RE next week. We will be told "who knows what happened, let's try it again!". I will drop dead on the spot from exhaustion and pain. ANd hopefully we can all move past this in a semi-calm way.

Yes we will try adoption. And yes you can read all about it here. But first I have to mourn and cry and basically shut myself off from the world as everywhere you turn there is some gestating woman or story about some mom of 4 or something. I had no idea this was going to suck this bad, or I would've never ever ever started it.

My therapist says that fertility treatments are horrible for people. Meaning it is traumatic and gives you false hope. I am seeing her tomorrow and will definitely be having this conversation with her. I couldn't agree more. I would never tell anyone to go through this.

So, I have to say goodbye to future J and R's. I am devastated about this as I really wanted to give J a child. And i really wanted to experience pregnancy. The fact that our Stewie was the only shot we got makes me so, so sad. I loved being pregnant.