Concei-versary

One year ago from 10/6, yesterday, a very giving woman (who we coined Dotty 2.0), went into our fertility clinic and donated her eggs to us, 24 in fact. Tidy went in around the same time and within a few hours, the bean burrito and M&M were conceived.

It's crazy to think about that....

I just went back and read my post from that day. It was a somewhat sad post. I do remember feeling like I had no hand in that day, that so much excitement was going on but I had nothing to do with it. I also felt sad for the loss of my own genetics, but I'm lucky that I some wise friends to give me support.

A year later, as I know the result of those beautiful 24 eggs from our very generous donor, I jump for joy in what they brought us: And end to the pain of struggling, a new hope of some success, and 9 months later, the other best day of my life (other to my wedding day)... the birth of our children.

Children... I have 2! A son, a daughter. It's overwhelming to think this... mind blowing. And you know what? The fact that they are not genetically related to me rarely, if ever, crosses my mind. M&M and the Bean Burrito are my babies. Full stop.

(and Tidy's too, of course)

So yesterday, and over the next few days, I will relive these hopeful moments in my mind. The egg retrieval, our trip to watch Tidy run a marathon that Sunday. My sister L and I running around the course, me waiting anxiously daily for our embryo reports and then a few days later, the transfer of two perfect blasts... I'm feeling sentimental and grateful... so so grateful.

And for your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of our 2 miracles, one year from the day their were conceived. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

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As for us on the home front, things are going well. They are just shy of 17 weeks and moving right along. M&M is still pretty fussy. She's on reflux meds which are helping a lot, but she goes from 0-60 in seconds flat. Bean Burrito is a bit calmer, but his fussiness level has increased lately. It makes me think that the are both going through some major development changes. We are working on getting a schedule established. 7pm bed time, a few long naps during the day, but they seem to have 'regressed' a little on sleep. They wake up more often now than they did say a month ago. We put them to bed at 7 fairly easily but then they seem to wake up a half hour to an hour later not realizing that it's the time they should be taking their "long nap". They used to sleep through the night, but now they are waking up again every few hours. It's making for a very tired mamma and pappa, especially come 5:30 am when I have to get up and get ready for work.  I'm hoping this is just a developmental phase they are going through and that in a month or so they will go back to better sleeping. 

They have their 4 month shots this coming friday and then we are heading back to where both of our parents live next weekend for a family party with my relatives to meet the babies. My dad is calling it "Twin-palloza"... I'm really looking forward to it, but a bit anxious that it will over-stimulate them and we will have some major cranky babies to deal with. We'll do our best to swoop in and get them some naps during the party. Keep your fingers crossed!

Donor Anniversary

One year ago today, we turned a corner and never looked back. We signed on the dotted line and entered the world of Donor Egg IVF.

Our first donor, Dotty, didn't quite work out, because she didn't respond very well to the meds, but it is very significant to me because we committed to moving onto a new option to find our babies.

Little did we know, that that choice would bring us here today, a day shy of 35 weeks pregnant with twins.

I am ever grateful for this opportunity. I'm not sure where we would be today if we did not make this choice. I hope that we will always keep with us the sense of gratitude.

Don't Ignore the Ignorance... Educate!

In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week (April 22-28) and as an entry into the Bloggers Unite event to help bring awareness to Infertility, I have written this heartfelt post:

A peaceful town was in the news a few weeks ago because a doctor wanted to build a fertility clinic in a vacant space. This space is close to a church, an elementary school and a small college. Protesters came to the city board in hopes of stopping this "immoral place" from being built. One of the organizers of the protest commented that a child born through IVF "becomes a manufactured commodity" and is "reduced to an object, a product."

This sentence enraged me.

I'm currently 30 weeks and 3 days pregnant with twins via donor egg IVF and there is NO WAY that I view these babies as a "product" or "manufactured". I view them as an amazing gift. After a 5 year war with infertility (and I say war, because we went to battle, many many times), we made the not very easy decision to be done with my eggs and try a new route. And once we moved forward, we never looked back. I've been grateful for every. single. moment of this pregnancy and I'm already madly in love with these babies thriving away inside me. I can't wait to meet them, hold them, nurture them.... To me, and my husband, they are very far from "objects".

They are OUR children.

Just because we had to spend over $35,000 to even have this chance at a child on this ONE IVF cycle, in no way shape or form, minimizes their meaning to us. In fact, I would argue, people who go through fertility treatments to have their children, MAY even appreciate the fact that they are parents more so than if they were easy to conceive. (Now I'm not arguing we are better parents here, but just that we understand what it took to get them...and that perspective is very special.)

But then I tried to calm down a bit and think this through, or at least put myself in these protesters shoes. I understand why IVF and third party reproduction scare people and why some consider it unnatural. They are right. IVF was not the way nature intended children to be conceived. (I would say, though, that nature gave us all very intelligent brains and thus doctors, the ability to create these amazing processes that have helped many of us become parents)

But I believe that some media and a lack of awareness/education has a lot to do with this fear. Stories in the news can make IVF appear as a freakish thing that creates octo-moms and fabricates babies in places where "god didn't intend" a baby to be. This misrepresentation creates ignorance and fear.

Specifically, it causes people to make ignorant statements about IVF babies as commodities...

Ridiculous.

Fertility clinics are certainly not manufacturing babies. They are actually helping to create THE POTENTIAL for a baby to be born. With all of the time, money and effort that goes into taking eggs from a woman and sperm from a man, joining them in the lab, and then putting a few resulting embryos  back in the woman, fertility clinics still have not created a baby! Those embryos have to decide to snuggle in tight and stick around for 8 more months before a baby enters the world. And there is no fertility clinic that can gaurantee the success of the last part.

Through the four IVF cycles with my body, our fertility clinic helped us produce over 55 embryos... and not ONE of them turned into a baby. Not one. I bought the chance to have a baby, many times over, but we certainly did not buy a baby. If it were that easy, to just go out and buy a baby when we faced with the disease of infertility, would so many of us need the support of this community? Would so many of us want to build awareness and educate others that it is OK to need help?

If only I could meet these protesters and tell them my story. Maybe then they would see how their ignorance only hurts those of us who need help to experience the joy of having a baby. Maybe they would see how truly life altering and devastating it is to be infertile and feel isolated, depressed, anxious, and hopeless.  Maybe they would see how much I am in love with my babies already, how grateful I am and how they are not simply a commodity to me.

For those of you who would like to learn more about NIAW and the basics of the disease of infertility, please click on the links. The more you know, and educate yourselves, the more you can educate others.

Please pass this along!!

Happy ICLW!

Welcome to my blog. I haven't participated in ICLW for quite a few months, but it will be nice to be back and meet some new bloggers.

A little about me and Tidy:

We started trying to conceive almost 5 years ago. In fact, it will be 5 years next month. We've tried everything under the sun: 5 IUIs, 4 IVF (6 total transfers: 4 fresh, 2 frozen). And tons and tons of diet changes, yoga, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, meditation, you name it...

Finally last spring, after our 4th failed IVF cycle with my body, I drew a line in the sand, jumped across it and never looked back. That line in the sand represented my own genetics. We made the decision to try one IVF cycle using donor eggs, from our gracious anonymous donor, Dotty 2.0

And it worked... well...

And we are SOOO grateful...

I am currently pregnant, just over 17 weeks, with twins, thanks to some amazing donor eggs, my husbands swimmers, an amazing team of doctors, and oh I guess my body gets some credit too! I'm so thankful to know that my body can hold a pregnancy.

So please have a look around my blog, leave a comment and join me as we get ready to welcome our twins into our lives.

Listen with Your Heart

Well, we did it... We told my mom.

I've been nervous about this for so long, trying to figure out the best way and timing to reveal to my mom that we used donor eggs to help us conceive our babies.  As you know, my mom has some strong feelings about IVF in general and has a very strong faith in God and her religion. Because of this, I have not always felt supported by her in my attempts to have a family. My initial thought is that she would greatly disapprove of this method of family building. I was so anxious that the night before we decided to tell her, I slept like crap and had major anxiety dreams.

Tidy and I went back to see our families this past weekend to celebrate his sister and her husband's 30th birthdays. A few days before that we had a discussion and decided it was time to tell the rest of our immediate families. Up until this weekend, recall, only my 3 sisters and my dad know about our donor egg choice (and a few of our closest friends here in town), but we had made the decision to tell everyone else... at some point... we just hadn't figured out when.

Tidy started to think about it and realized that he'd really like to tell his family sooner than later. He felt like it would have been pulling the wool over everyone's eyes to have them wait to meet our babies first and then tell them after the fact about Dotty 2.0 and what a wonderful gift that she's given to our family. He wanted them to be able to absorb the information and see if they have any questions and get used to the idea if they needed to before they arrive.

I was still on the fence about the best time to tell my mom, but I didn't want her to be the last to know, or have others know, not tell her, and have her find out from others. I also didn't want others to be in a position to have to keep this secret from her.

So we took the plunge and decided to tell her.

My mom and I had plans to go shopping together on this past Saturday to look for maternity clothes for me ... I BOUGHT MY FIRST PAIR OF MATERNITY TROUSERS FOR WORK!!!!! WHEEEEEEE!!!!!!... So I thought before we went, I wanted to sit and have a nice conversation with her. I wasn't exactly sure how to frame it, but when I went into the bathroom near the kitchen, I was looking on the shelf and there were a few little pray booklets sitting there... Serendipitously, one was titled "Listen With Your Heart" and I thought, how perfect is that?!...exactly the approach I will take with my mom... ask her to listen with her heart.

And so I sat her down at the kitchen table with Tidy and I and asker her just that... please, listen with your heart...  and proceeded to tell her how, back in April, we had my sisters up for a visit and charted out all of our options: Surrogate, Adoption, Donor eggs... not really knowing the right path to go down, but having a feeling that I really could carry a baby and we just needed some healthy embryos, we decided to look for a gracious woman to give us a gift... a seed... to help us on this journey. I was tearing up as I told her how much we were thankful for this opportunity and how glad we are we were able to go down this path.

And she teared up as well and simply said, "god has given us these babies to have in our family"... She thanked us for telling her. And I let out a big sigh of relief.... no judgement, as I was expecting, no negativity about our choice, as I was anticipating... just simple acceptance and listening with her heart.

My mom was definitely the rock star of this weekend!

Warning: I'm Going to Start Talking about this Pregnancy

I love this community and I don't want to leave it. And I'm not going to. And knowing what I know, and fearing what I fear, I need you all, very much.

But now is that time, the time where this blog becomes a little more about my pregnancy and a little less about a struggle, not completely without struggle, but definitely less.

So you will see some changes...

1) I've added a ticker at the top tracking the growth of my twins (eek!! MY TWINS!!!). I saw this on a few of my other post infertility pregnant friend's blogs and just loved it and have dreamed of seeing it on my blog.

2) I'd also like to start talking more about my pregnancy here, and while this may deter some of you from reading, or maybe even make me lose some followers,  in the end, this is my space to document this whole journey, or "tumultuous trip", and get some support from those of you who have made it to this other side.  So expect a few symptom discussions, some ultrasound pictures and some belly shots.

3) I intend also to talk about things related to pregnancy after infertility, i.e., how much the fear and depression and expectation of bad things affects the way I go through this.

4) Finally, I really want to talk about donor eggs and how this choice we have made has affected our thoughts around this pregnancy. I want to be honest and true here to this amazing gift we have received. I want to let others know what this choice has meant to us and how it is impacting us, or families and our babies.

I do hope you decide to stay. I truly enjoy having each of you read and journey along with me on this. My blog is one of my favorite spaces to work through my thoughts, get support and connect with this amazing community.

Telling My Dad (Part 2)

And now for the conclusion of this story from yesterday's post...

After giving thought to my dad's email, I took some time over lunch that day to craft a response back. I thought it would be hard, but the words just flowed. Here was my response:


Well, Dad, we were hoping to have this discussion with you in a different form and at a different time  (ie in person, not via email) but since you asked, no, they are not my eggs. 


We found a very giving young woman, who is anonymous to us (except for some early childhood pictures and characteristics and health history), and we are anonymous to her, to donate her eggs to help us have our dream of building our family. It's a very gracious gift and one we can not thank her enough for helping us get to this point.   


L, C & J are all aware of this. They have been "in the loop" since earlier this spring when Tidy and I had made the decision to go down this path. In fact, they helped me one weekend when they came to our house. I explained all of our options to them and the potential costs and success rates and graphed it out on a white board. We sat and discussed with wine and cheese and laughed and cried and it was great. They were very supportive of this route and it really helped me feel supported in our next steps.   


Tidy and I then decided to keep it quiet between L, C & J until we had any news to share because we thought there was no need to get "too many cooks in the kitchen" and ultimately, this is Tidy and my decision to make. And why make a whole bunch of people start to develop their own opinions, worries and thoughts on something that might not work. 


Thankfully, this worked ... and we now have to determine the best way forward in sharing our news. We do know that we want to raise our kids so that they understand their story and how they came into this world and how much we went through to get them and how much we  wanted them and why we felt this was the right option for all of us. I don't believe in hiding this information from them, so we did intended to let everyone in on the news so that it just becomes a non-issue at some yet undetermined point in time...   


It's possible this all might be a bit overwhelming, so I'd love to talk with you more about it. And I do ask that right now, you keep it to yourself. I'd like to share this with Mom in our own way....  So I'm  very sorry to put you in this position right now. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on what you think might be the best way to broach this subject with her.   


Honestly, I had thought to not tell anyone else (except J, C & L) about using donor eggs until after they had met our babies and fallen in love with them. And even then, more so on a 'need to know' basis, or if we were asked. There's many books on this topic and Tidy and I had decided to venture into those as we get close to meeting our babies, or at least past the 1st trimester when we have more confidence that they are going to stick around.... 


Either way, managing everyone's emotions will be hard, but something we are going to prepare ourselves for. We want to be open about this and educate everyone as much as possible. I know we can't change anyone's opinions, but we do hope that people can set aside their beliefs and focus on our babies as they would any other child that would come into our life via natural methods or adoption.   


Know this... regardless of the genetic makeup of our children, I get to carry them.. it is MY blood coursing through their bodies right now, it  is MY immune system protecting them, it is MY food and exercise choices nourishing them and sustaining them to grow, and ultimately, some of their genetic expression of traits is unique because they are inside me (google the term "epigenetics") and not someone else... Yes I grieved my genetic loss and I will always be curious about what that combination with Tidy would look like, but I don't believe they are any less MY/OUR children or any less YOUR grandchildren.  


I hope that you can feel this way... maybe not right away, but at some point.   


And we are OH so very excited to meet our unique, individual babies...   


(Clearly this is a very deep and emotional issue and I could go on and on and on...)   


We also have not told anyone from Tidy's family yet either, so as of right now, only You, J, C & L are in the know... Please keep it that way until we determine our next steps.   


Should we talk more on the phone? Maybe you have lots of questions? I have tons of answers :-) What else do you want to know? 


Love, Tippy

And after I hit send, I realized that email might NOT be a bad way to share this topic with certain people. It is giving my dad some time to process this on his own and then be able to ask me questions on he is ready.

And that is basically the response I got from him:

Yes, I will keep it to myself no problem, and work through my own thoughts and then we can talk; in the grand scheme of things it certainly matters not, I believe its the initial feelings I will work through and then we can talk soon. The mom issue, that's a tough one.  It's almost like I would initially say never or not for a long time, but then again that's your call.  Obviously, it's Tidy and your decision when.   


Ok, thanks for telling me and it'll be fine. Let me reread this later again and ponder the mom thing. I will have a goodly share of questions.

This response from my dad makes me happy. It may not seem very overjoyed to the reader here, but knowing the person my dad is, a very analytical, well thought out and emotional, this is exactly the response I was hoping for. I look forward to talking with him more about out babies beginnings and know that as he processes this more, this will be a non-issue and he will see the true miracle that our babies are.

The next challenge is how and when to tell my mom. Soon? Or wait until the babies are born... tbd.

Stay tuned!

Telling My Dad (Part 1)

This past weekend was pretty amazing. And we got it all on video (which I may post a snippet or two of..). There were a lot of "Oh my gosh!!!" and "Shut up!!"s, a few tears, hugs and some great facial expressions.

We told my family about the two heart beats we saw just over a week ago, growing inside me on Saturday, November 5th, my 37th birthday. The faces of my mom and dad were the most precious and I will treasure those looks forever.

We did not, however discuss the donor egg topic with them, at that point. My 3 sisters do know, as they were part of helping me make the decision. I thought I wrote a blog post on this, back in May, but apparently not. Regardless, I'm very glad that they sat with me oh so many months ago to help me sort out my thoughts and support me and Tidy in our big decision to use donor eggs. It really made it feel more like a family decision and that is important to me for something this big. Thank you J, L & C. I love you guys and can't wait to see you holding our babies.

I had mentioned that donor eggs was an option way way back in late 2010 to my dad when I told him we were thinking of doing one final IVF cycle  (IVF #4) with my body and if this didn't work, I was considering looking into donor eggs. It was a quite and quick conversation at my P's kitchen table over the holidays and he made a face and said a few words that made it apparent he wasn't a big fan.  That, along with my mom's disapproval of IVF, period, was one of the reasons that Tidy and I decided, besides my 3 sisters, and a few of our close friends who have known the day to day details of this journey, we would keep the 'donor egg' part of this journey to ourselves, until later on down the road, when we figure out the best way to share with our friends and family and more importantly to our babies.  (That was one HUGE run-on sentence).

So, this past Monday, I got an email from my dad, with the subject line of "WOW"

Dad: Just tearing up occasionally thinking about how the two of you have handled this reasonably long journey with such strength, confidence and faith. I can't imagine the past levels of disappointment, and now the great hope and joy that has taken over. Love, Pops.


Me:  Thanks Dad! Each day I wake up I still feel like I'm in a dream. I definitely have some low levels of fear that this will all be taken away from me at a moment's notice, but I am trying really hard to tell my fear to go to hell and just enjoy this time. 


Dad: I am with you, of course, on all of this. Yes, go to hell! (re: fear). I have one nagging question I need to resolve, if I can... your eggs, right?

Ugh....my heart dropped into my stomach and my pulse quickened. I wasn't ready to tell him, especially not over email. He's my dad, the one I want approval from on most things, and of course want to make him proud! I was also a bit angry at him for asking about this in a email, but I got over it. He has every right to ask whatever he wants, how he wants it. So I forwarded it to Tidy and we decided that I would respond and go from there...

Stay tuned to tomorrow for the remainder of this story.

Emotional Rollercoaster Status: Back on a High.

After all of my worries yesterday, freaking out because  we only had one grade "A" egg, feeling like, here we go again, high expectations dwindling..., we are definitely in new ground, ladies and gentlemen. New ground, indeed.

We had 9 embryos yesterday, and we transferred 2, so that leaves... (one sec, let me get out my excel spreadsheet to calculate that.. .inside joke for you actuaries, cpas, general number's geeks in the crowd)... 7 (1 grade C, 6 grade B)

Today, I got a call from my nurse practitioner. Instead of letting it go to voice mail, which was my initial plan, because I didn't want to get bad news that we had no embryos to freeze, I got brave, and decided to leave my meeting to answer it.

And I'm so frigging glad that I did. She said, "Are you sitting down for this?...We were able to freeze SIX embryos today... Six, grade A, expanded blasts..."

There was more to the conversation, but I don't quite remember other than my heart was beating fast and I was shaking and almost crying that we had such good news.  SIX FROSTIES!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!! This could really work? This may finally be our end game. One of these 8 have got to work, right???

So, needless to say, I'm back up on a pretty high high today. Hopefully I can find some mellow over the next few days and just stay sane as we go through the coming week till beta day. 

Thank you dear Dotty 2.0 for making such a beautiful crop of eggs, and also, thank you dear Tidy for getting some beautiful healthy sperms to make these embryos. Now, it's my turn to do the work. Come on embryos... let's make a take-home baby!!!!

Bittersweet Eggs and Wise Friends

Life, and the way I navigate through it, certainly takes me by surprise sometimes.

Today should be a happy and hopeful day for me. Dotty 2.0, our "rock star" egg donor, underwent her egg retrieval. And before I get into all of my thoughts on this, I will tell you the end of the story first...

...She did great. Fantastic actually. They retrieved 24 eggs...2 dozen...2 of those grey-ish cardboard cartons full of fabulous eggs. Pretty amazing, huh?

While I know this is a big hoop that we jumped through today, I'm sad too. The reminder that they are not "my" eggs creeps back in and I grieve a little bit again. A friend from one of my chat boards did warn me that I might feel this way, however, so I was prepared at least. She has been through this before and shared with me on the day of her donor's egg retrieval, she too felt sad. It was supposed to feel great, right? But because she literally had no part in that day, it was another reminder of the loss of her own eggs.

And that's exactly how I feel today. Bittersweet.

I definitely can find some of the sweet in here. 24 eggs is fantastic. This should give us a good shot, pending our fertilization report tomorrow. But the bitter lingers too. My husband's dna is mixing with some other woman's dna as we speak! (Cheater!!!) Oh, and I think my competitive nature is also getting to me. I couldn't produce 24 eggs myself. My ovaries feel defeated. My goal, however is to not let this linger too long. I want to wake up tomorrow and start to focus on "our" embryos, rather than "her" eggs.

I am lucky to have very wise friends, however. They are giving me the strength and cushion I need. One friend said she wished I lived closer to her. She would make a flower lei for me and we would take a walk out to the ocean and put my sadness and loss into the lei and let it float out to the sea... I love this visual.

Another friend commented on how truly amazing the human experience is. She said: The beauty of the human heart is that it can hold so many emotions at once. So hold, in your mind's eye, the baby picture of your donor and see it as a projection of your own baby to smother with kisses....and fill your life with memories.
And finally, another friend sent me a quote from her calendar for this months which said, "Open your arms to beautiful moments, and they will come to you"

Like I said, they are wise friends.
So with that, I will honor my sadness today because it is a valid and honest, but I'm also heading out the door to spend 3 hours at my yoga studio to clear my mood and focus on the beautiful moments that are here and yet to come.

Dotty 2.0

Tidy and I went to our RE yesterday afternoon to look at donor profiles and we found a bigger and better (ovarian reserve, speaking) version of Dotty. We signed the intent papers and officially have been matched with our new donor. Yet another new beginning in this long journey to our child.

Henceforth, she will be called Dotty 2.0.

We are so very lucky that the timing worked out with her. She's one of our clinic's "rock star" donors. She's young, has a child of her own, has done a few cycles and has always had frozen embryos as well as some pregnancy outcomes in the intended parent.

Now I know this doesn't necessarily mean that we will have the same results, but we have a much more "proven" and vetted donor this time.

She's not as 'familiar' looking as I felt when I saw Dotty (the original donor) for the first time, but I think right now, we are willing to take someone who has a bit less of a physical resemblance for quick availability and "rock star" status.

I must say that this process hasn't been easy, emotionally. I really am excited to move forward with her, but as I suspected, going back to look at these profiles made me feel a sense of longing for my own genetics. It re-opened that wound. Dotty 2.0 doesn't have the exact features I was looking for, but she's cute, as much as you can tell from a less than one year old picture. I think I just have a lot of fear that if we get pregnant, I will react negatively to the look of our baby that comes out of me 9 months later. I'm honestly terrified that she or he will look a certain way that I don't find attractive in my child... Is that crazy? I'm sure that sounds awfully superficial. And I'm somewhat embarrassed to write it. But it's a real fear that I felt when I started this process and I feel now. I wonder if this is a true fear of people in my situation? I don't know. Is this nuts?

It doesn't seem to bother Tidy at all. He's very excited about this donor based on her stats. He's so ready for this to work and for this to be over with, and oh my gosh, so.  am.  I! But...

...fears surface and I wonder.

We will find out this coming Tuesday how soon we can cycle with her. She could start her meds as early as this coming Thursday. Our bump in the road could equate to only about a 2 week delay.

Dumping Dotty

I got the phone call from my RE's office while I was in the middle of a meeting yesterday at work, and while I didn't get any details (ya me! I didn't ask for any either... can you believe it? I let go of some of the control!!!) ... they recommended that we cancel her cycle.

So, with that, we are dumping our donor.

Sorry Dotty, it's not you.... it's your ovaries. They aren't kicking it the way we need them to. This just isn't working out...

Ya know what, though? I'm actually ok emotionally and very glad this was a clear decision, per the doctor's recommendation. I am kind of sad to lose her, but... not really. I thought I was more attached to her than I am, but I'm not. I guess I was really just attached to the idea of her rockin' ovaries. But now that I know they aren't optimal and there are other women out there with way better ovaries... I want THOSE ovaries instead!

There is some sadness resurfacing because I now have to go back into the clinic and choose a donor...again... and I know that process brings up feelings of loss of my own genetics. I'm already feeling a bit sad once again that I don't get to pass on my own genetics... my hair, my legs, my height, my eye color, my quirks, my face shape...

With Dotty, I was feeling like I wanted so badly to make an emotional connection with my donor, at some strange anonymous level that we were allowed to. But really right now, what I want are just some healthy eggs. I'm not buying a relationship here, I'm just buying some genetic material that may or may not be close to my own. In the end, my child will be their own unique individual, no matter where their genetic material comes from. And I will love him/her/them as fully as I would love any child because they are an individual, they are themselves, not because they did or did not come from an egg that I grew in my own body.

So, while this break up was done via a third party (ie, my clinic), I do hope that Dotty doesn't feel too badly about herself. I'm sure it's a disappointment from her point of view that her body didn't do something that it was supposed to do, and she doesn't get that nice healthy sum of money after the retrieval...

There's VERY small suspicious part of my mind that wonders if maybe she got cold feet and just didn't take the meds... (yes, I know, that's a bit crazy to think.. but... ya never know, right?)

In any event, these are things I will never know, so the only option I have is to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, marching, every so diligently, towards our baby...

Really? When Does the Bad News Stop?

A quick update while I gather my thoughts and figure out how to go into my next meeting at work without bawling my eyes out.

My RE called to give me the update from Dotty's 1st monitoring appointment this morning and when SHE calls, as opposed to the nurse, that's not good.

Dotty's ovaries aren't responding to the meds...

FUCK.

We're going to give her three more days on the meds to see if her ovaries decide to wake up, but we may be faced with scrapping her and starting over with a new donor.

I'm  so so so so so sick of bad news.

It's ICLW time again!

(This is somewhat of a re-post of July's ICLW welcome that hardly anyone read because I goofed when I signed up for it, so forgive me if it might sound a bit familiar)

It's been a few months since I've participated in ICLW and I must admit, the last few months when I didn't participate, I felt a bit lonely in blog world! So I'm excited to be back and hopefully gain some new readership. And I did try to participate in it LAST month, but I made a mistake and put a link to my  OLD blog, so new readers couldn't find me. Silly me.

For those of you who are newer to the infertility blogging world, a bit of info on what ICLW is can be found here.

This is an exciting time for Tidy and I. We are right in the midst of our first DE IVF cycle. Dotty (the nick-name we have given to our anonymous egg donor, which stands for Donor for Tippy and Tidy) started her stims this past Friday. This is a whole new world for us. One that we are both scared and hopeful for. If any of you have happened along my blog specifically because of donor eggs, welcome! I hope to shed some light on this process and share my journey along this new and hopefully short path.
For those of you who have been with me for a while, I do cherish your readership and your comments. They mean so much to me!

So, without further ado, here's a quick get to know me from the fertility point of view if you are new here:

1. Tidy and I have been ttc for 4.5 years next month (that amounts to over 50 attempts to have a baby)
2. We've had all the testing there is to test: HSG, SHG, every hormone under the sun, Laparoscopy, Immune panels, blood clotting panels.. you name it, we've done it. I promise!
3. We've done 5 IUIs, 4 IVFs (4 Fresh transfers, 2 Frozen), TONS of herbs, acupuncture, diet changes (gluten free, vegan-ish, organic), yoga, guided meditation..
4. Of the above treatments, we've had only 2 confirmed chemical pregnancies.
5. We STILL really don't know if anything is technically wrong.

We needed some new hope, so we decided to buy a 26 yr old woman's eggs in order of having a much higher chance at a pregnancy. Yes, that is a fairly blunt way to describe our next steps, but in essence, that's what we are doing... And for the first time in my life, I have now become protective of some other woman's ovaries. It's a very strange feeling.

So please join me, Tidy and our anonymous donor, Dotty, and follow along as we venture into this new world of DE IVF.

Thanks for your comments in advance.

Anger is from Unfairness... duh!

You would think by the title of this blog that I would be talking about the unfairness of infertility.

But I'm not.

First, a cycle update before my story: Dotty had her baseline yesterday and all went well. She is starting her meds today. I should get an update on Monday after her first ultrasound. Fingers, toes and eyes are crossed that we get a few good embryos out of this deal... well, that and a baby too :-)

Ok, back to the story... I learned a lot yesterday from my therapist. A lot about unfairness and anger. And while it now all seems very obvious, I feel like I understand some of the anger that I carry around inside a whole lot better.

I get angry, like screaming angry, at my sister and at my husband, but mostly in my dreams (sometimes in person... but I try not to). I'm usually angry at them for doing something that I think is unfair, or not the way I think it should go. I don't WANT to be an angry person. And mostly in real life, I don't think I am. But I definitely have some deep seeded anger down inside there.

I talked with my therapist yesterday about these dreams and the anger that I carry around. She said that anger is from a perceived feeling of unfairness, injustice. And it's ok to feel things are unfair and react, but the reaction should be on par with the stimulus. So it's ok to give a little eye roll at something small, say like when someone cuts in front of you in line, but it's not ok to feel intense tightness in your chest. That tightness though, really isn't about the line cutter, say, but about some deeper feelings of injustice/unfairness in your life that you haven't resolved.

We then talked a bit about my mom's disease (bipolar), and about how old I was when she was first hospitalised. I was only 12, I think. 12 years old... and at that point, I took on the house maker role in some ways. I did laundry, and cleaned the kitchen, and organized things, I packed lunches. It was a lot for a 12 year old to deal with but I think, if memory serves me right, that it kind of felt good. It felt good because things were quite chaotic in our house hold when mom was at her sickest, and when she was gone, there was sadness, but there was also peace. And I liked that peace.

It's funny though. As I look back on that time in my life, I see it now as a 36 year old, not as a 12 year old. And I have no friggin clue what and how a 12 year old thinks and how having to step into that role and be an adult for a while, at age 12, affected me.

Hmmm.... I wonder if I feel like that was UNFAIR!?!?!? Unfair that I had to worry about those things and didn't have a care free 12 -20 year old existence? Unfair that my mom and I didn't have the relationship that I probably craved. Unfair that my sisters were younger and maybe didn't seem affected by it as I did at the time. (Clearly, each of us has our own memory of our childhoods, which might not always match... but that's ok. There is no right memory, ya know? They are individually ours)

And so maybe, when I get angry at things in my dreams and sometimes in my life, and I feel that tightness in my chest and desire to correct the wrongness, it's not really about that perceived unfairness at that time, but it's actually about this unfairness I haven't dealt with from so long ago.

Hmmmm... It all seems so obvious to me..... now! I think I'm really going to like going to my therapist. Next question for her is... why my sister and my dear Tidy? Why are they the objects of my anger in my dreams?

I think therapy is going to agree with me :-)

Dear Dotty,

First off, I want to give a HUGE thanks to everyone who is donating so far to the adoption fund we are gathering for one of our friends. You can read about her story here and donate at the link on the top right button that says "donate". So far, we've raised over $300. I'm so amazed at the help people are willing to give. It warms my heart. It feels amazing to collect money for someone and they don't even know it yet! I can't wait to give her this gift. We will keep the fund open for donations through the next week or so...Thank you all SOO very much.

Secondly, I went into the RE yesterday morning to check my lining after 2 weeks of estrogen. All looks good on the "cushy embryo landing pad" front.  Triple striped and 9mm... couldn't ask for much more. Now, we just have to hope and pray that it stays the course over the next 2 weeks AND that Dotty, my sweet nick name for my donor, gets to start her stims on Thursday. She goes in for her baseline then... Please keep your fingers crossed.

Finally, I wanted to share the letter I wrote to my donor with you. I sent it to our coordinator yesterday and asked that she would send it on to Dotty. I've been trying to find a way to tell her, in a nice way, that I really hope she understands what this means to me and knows that her efforts are appreciated. There's a small part of me...well, screw that...rather large part of me, that is having a hard time with letting go of the control aspect of this. I have NO control over her. I have NO control over the time she does her shots. I have NO control over what she puts into her body. I have NO control over how much attention she gives to this in her life... And  more than likely, everything will go just fine. But I'm so worried that she's going to trigger too early or to late, or she's going to mess up the dosages and not get a lot of eggs... blah blah blah...  My mind NEEDS to stop this madness.

So I thought this letter would be a good way of getting it out of my head, and in a very nice and sweet way, express to her how very much this means to me. Because it really really means a lot.... a huge lot.


But then I decided not to share it with you because I got worried that somehow she would be able to find it online and realize that I'm the intended mother... (yes, I'm kind of paranoid right now)... and so decided to take it down from here.

Anyways, it felt good to share my thoughts with her and hopefully she will take my letter in a positive way.

Cycling Sucks Ass

Warning, there may be a bit of profanity here and there in this post. I'm venting...
 
I'm not sure if I'm just a big-time control-freak and freaking out over nothing, or if I'm trying to do every possible thing I can to give us our best shot at a baby. I'm so overwhelmed by all of the little details that I want to control and/or prevent from happening, that I find myself panicking in the car on my way home from work.

Logically, I know why this is:

1. I am not growing the eggs this time, so I really have nothing other to do than grow a beautiful, healthy landing zone for those embabies. I'm letting go of some of the control I usually have and that's very hard for me. Have those of you who have gone through donor eggs cycles felt the same?
2. We are spending thirty. fucking. thousand. dollars. on ONE shot at having a baby.
3. After so many years of shitty disappointments and underperformances, why would I expect anything but that going forward? At some point, yes, this will be over, but right now I just feel like we need to do everything we can to get me to a fresh transfer with some healthy embryos.

So here's the deal... and why I need to vent...

As I explained in one of my prior posts on the timeline of our donor cycle, I will be growing my uterine lining (which I've started growing) for almost 5 weeks before we get a chance to start Progesterone on the day of retrieval. In a normal female cycle, this 'growing' phase is the same as the 'follicular' phase and it usually last about 14 days.

The combination of Lupron and Estrogen allow my body to stay stalled out, mimicking the 'follicular' phase for a lot longer than normal, until Dotty is ready for her retrieval. Some RE's don't have the intended mother (that's me!!!!!) in this holding pattern for so long by hedging their bets that the intended mother's lining will grow properly and start the donor on her stims sooner than my RE starts hers. So maybe the intended mother's lining is only in a holding pattern for a week extra or so, instead of 3 extra that mine will be in.

Usually this is all well and good, but SOME women, for reasons unknown to me, actually have their lining fall apart before they get to retrieval. My RE's office estimates that it's somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 women get to their final lining check, the day before the donor's egg retrieval, and their lining simply couldn't stay together that long... even with all the meds to tell it to just hang out. In this case, the donor still goes through the retrieval, the intended father still donates his swimmers, the eggs still get fertilized, and they they do a freeze all and prep the intended mother for a frozen transfer...

And if this happens to me, I will be spending way too much fucking money to do a frozen fucking transfer... !!! I WOULD BE SO PISSED!!! Especially when, in my mind, I think it's preventable.

Yes, yes, I know that FET's work, especially with donor eggs, and yes I know I would still a great chance at success, but right now, I'm just so anxious that I'm going to be that 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 women who's lining is going to not hold on in that holding pattern and mess, once again, in our attempt to have a baby. I mean, it feels like every other time we need my body to do something, it decides not to obey. Why should this be different?

FUCK! I'm so over this right now. I'm so sick having to think of all of these little what's if's and make adjust for them.

So you're saying to yourself, Tippy... TIppy... just breathe, don't get so ahead of yourself. OH!, and why can't you just have your donor start a week or so earlier?

Well, I did ask our NP last week to see if it would be ok, but alas, Dotty is out of town at the end of this week. Oh, and did I mention that at my clinic, they only start donors on their stims on either Thursday or Friday (I HATE when they put these restrictions on things... can't they work 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year for me????)  So if it's not this week (which it's not), it's next week...

Anyways, I'm venting quite a bit here and while I don't actually feel better after letting it all out, at least I have this documented somehow so that if I have to go back and scream at my clinic because if I end up being that lucky 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 woman, I will have it all logically written out.

Am I crazy? Really, am I? I certainly feel like it lately.

(Let's blame it on all this damn estrogen that I'm taking)

Hoops To Jump Through

I haven't shared a lot yet about this process we are going through with our first donor egg IVF cycle because frankly I've been a bit nervous to until we cleared this first hoop - the legal agreement.

But today, the donor jumped through. Yay! And started her jump on the second hoop (more on that at the end of this post)

But first hoops first... when we first got the initial legal agreement over 3 weeks ago now, most of the items in it were fine with us. We made a few small tweaks, but nothing big. However, we did want to make a more substantial change to the paragraph in it discussing disclosure. Now, we ARE entering into an anonymous donor egg cycle, so we don't know any identifying information about our donor and she doesn't know anything about us, and we want to keep it that way. BUT we have seen her profile, pictures of her as a very young girl and items that discuss some of her history and physical characteristics.

And me, being me, well, I simply can't just sit with a blog and many people I discuss this journey with and have to be tongue tied... I mean, I'm not about to try to regurgitate all of the little things I do know about Dotty (We named our donor Dotty because she is "the Donor of Tippy and Tidy"... ) but if someone asks me things about why I chose her over someone else, I would like the freedom to express that, in a very anonymous way of course.

So, I wanted the legal agreement to acknowledge that while our intent would always be too keep this arrangement anonymous, if for some reason that one person we talked to about this happened to know someone who knows someone who knows someone... type of thing.... well, I didn't want to be liable for that. We of course would treat EVERYTHING with utmost respect, confidentiality and anonymity, but the world we live in is small.

I was a bit worried that the clinic and Dotty would not be comfortable with this, but after talking more with the nurse I work mostly with on this cycle, and expressing to her my reasons behind this, she seemed comfortable with it and was hopeful Dotty would be as well.

And she was! Yay! Thanks for understanding Dotty! I really appreciate it.... even though you will never read this, I hope you know how much I appreciate you going through this with us.

So today, Dottty went into the clinic to sing the legal agreement and also get her blood drawn for infections disease testing (Hoop # 2) . The FDA requires that this be done less than 30 days before egg retrieval, so hopefully this is a very easy hoop to jump through for her as she's already been through it before to get into the donor pool at our clinic.... but... my worried mind always finds a way to make things a bit more worrisome than need be.

I'm starting to finally believe this may actually happen. I've been on BCPs for about 24 days and am just itching to be done with them. I feel like I've gained 20 pounds of bloat from them. UGH! Or maybe its just the beer and good food I drank and ate at the end of our vacation... regardless... it's time to get this show on the road...

Let the hoop jumping begin!

Donor X Needs a Nick Name!

Thank you everyone for such great encouragement, excitement and support in our decision on a donor and to move forward down this path. All of the positive words really give me a boost. It just makes it feel even more that this decision to try donor eggs is the right one.

Some of you, in your comments in my last post, asked how we came to a decision and what is the process like, so I thought I'd share a bit about that.

We chose to use an anonymous proven donor. Proven means that either she has been through a cycle before and has done well in that cycle or that she has a child of her how. Anonymous means that she doesn't know who we are and we don't know who she is. We did get to learn a bit about her as I will mention in a bit, but I don't think she knows anything about us. While I will never know the identity of my egg donor, I do have a picture of her when she was a very young girl. I also know some information about her, for example, she has a masters in Marketing but is now a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) and is in the process of going back to Nursing School. She has a little daughter of her own (yeah! her eggs can work!) and is 26 years old. She is blond, like me, athletic, like me, and is tall (ish) and thin, like me :-)  This will be her first IVF cycle, so we don't have prior knowledge of how well she usually produces eggs, but the fact that she has a daughter gives me great hope.

After spending a few weeks considering a few different clinics in the area and also a few different shared risk programs (you know, those package deals where you pay for 2x or so the cost of 1 cycle, but get 3 cycles included and a certain percentage of your $$ back if you don't have a take home baby by the end of the 3 cycles)... we decided to do just one cycle and stay with my clinic and RE here. I just adore her and think the convenience of being in my home town will help make this less stressful and easier. Also the cost is very competitive and my clinic's success rates are great too. 85% of the cycles have frozen embryos and 70% of them have a pregnancy. Now, I didn't ask if that was just a PREGNANCY or a TAKE HOME BABY, but its WAY better than the 5% chance I was given of success if I did this with my own eggs.

Just think... after all this is over, I could be pregnant, with some frozens for baby #2!! Granted, this is the ideal state of how I'd like for things to go, and we really don't know how she will respond, so I'll just hope and pray that we get at least one take home baby out of this deal.

So how did I choose her, donor X, you might ask? It really came down to her blond hair and her face. I feel familiarity in her face and even more so now that I chose her. I also decided that because both Tidy and I are mostly blond, I wanted to retain that piece of genetics in our child. I'm would assume that some people who go through this might find one characteristic they like about themselves that they don't want to lose, if possible, and so with me, it was my blond hair and a familiar face. 

It wasn't an easy decision though and it wasn't the first one I looked at. I went back and forth between all different thoughts. Did I want someone with similar intelligences as me? Height, weight? Nose shape, face shape? One donor was a 'rock star' donor and she has gotten 3 other women pregnant at our clinic in the recent past. Clearly she would be a great choice. Another recently went through a cycle that resulted in 30 eggs and 5 frozen. Another was Buddhist and I was really drawn to that (I don't have a label for my own faith, but I really like many of the Buddhist teaching). But last week, as I was mulling over a list of 3 or so and then my donor, donor X, was added to the list. At first I didn't think anything of her because she wasn't proven in an IVF sense, but after a few days of sleeping on it and talking it over with Tidy, she became our choice. And it feels like the right decision. So maybe that was my sign that I was looking for from my baby, that when we were ready to make a decision, this new donor became available. If so, thank you baby, for helping me out.

So, that about sums up some of the thoughts in my head. I'm sure more will come out as we go down this path, but for now, this weekend at least, Tidy and I are going up to my P's cabin to sit by the bonfire, drink wine (beer for Tidy), golf, read, sleep... and take a little breather from our real lives to celebrate our 7 year wedding anniversary. It's this Sunday, the 29th. I can't believe where this world has taken us but I wouldn't trade it, or him, for anything.

By the way, I need a nick-name for my donor. Any suggestions? I want something a bit snappier than donor X. Please leave me a comment and I'll choose my favorite one.

Path Chosen

I want to say something profound here, but I'm not sure what else to say right now, other than to capture our recent decisions and let you know how terribly excited I am by the email I received today.

• We spent the weekend looking at donor profiles and came to a conclusion
• We signed a piece of paper on Sunday night stating our intent to use donor X
• I faxed it into the clinc first thing from work on Monday because I was scared someone else would take her
• I got an email today from the donor coordinator at our clinic saying this: 

(Tippy),  I am getting ready to leave the office for the day, but I wanted to let you know that I talked with donor X and she said YES! She is available to cycle and doesn't have any significant dates that won't work for her...

And so with that, and a little down payment tomorrow, Tidy and I have graduated from IVF into the Donor Egg IVF world. We hit a major fork in the road this past week and are now heading down a new and very hopeful path.

I'll update you more soon.