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.

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.

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.

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!