people say the dumbest things

Fortunately, I am following the sage advice of my nineteen year old brother. He often tells me to "be the duck; just let it roll you." So I am letting all of of the stupid assvice roll off me, just like a duck. Maybe you would have to be there.

We have some good friends (perhaps after this story I will change that to past tense...had some good friends). The way Paul met them is rather convoluted but he has been friends with them for fifteen years. They are closer to our parents ages so we think of them as our other mom and dad. Or at least I did. Not so much, now. My mother has never said anything this rude to me.

I have never been shy about our IF. We were honest that we were ttc from the get go and five years later it's pretty obvious that we are encountering some difficulties. "D" has usually been pretty sensitive to me and as a former endo sufferer she can be nice and sympathetic. Until now. Ok, obviously I am not doing a great job of letting it roll off me. She was asking us where we we're at in the IF journey and I told her that we were gearing up for an IVF cycle. Her response..."well, don't be too upset if it doesn't work. You need to be prepared for the fact that this could fail." Well, thank you so much for inspiring me with so much hope. She proceeded to then lecture me on how I just shouldn't be upset if this fails. Over and over again. Like a broken record. Aren't you noticeably impressed at my self control for not drowning her in my bottled water.

Both "D" and her husband are chain smoking fools. I wonder if he gets diagnosed with lung cancer first if it would be inappropriate to tell her that he might be cured or he just might die and to not be upset if he does die. Geez! I would never say that. In fact it mortifies me that I'm typing it out but come on. It was the dumbest thing ever to say. If my DE cycle fails then I will deal with it by being upset and I will move on. I am strong like that. I know I am. But it might work and right now, I need to be hopeful. So I am going to be like the duck. Letting it roll off me. And moving on. And having hope.

The coolest adoption story ever.

Ok, so this isn't really an adoption story. It's really a story about the blending of cultures in an adopted family. My friend Brooke's mother is visiting Albuquerque right now. She has a friend who is Japanese who is married to a handsome German man. I actually have no idea if he is handsome or not but in my imagination he is. They are in their fifties. Obviously fertility was going to be an issue. They have adopted a beautiful little girl from Ecuador. They've named her Sara. She's two now and is a thriving happy little girl. Both mom and dad speak English so the little girl also speaks English quite well. They also want her to be fluent in their native tongues as well. So mom speaks Japanese to Sara and Sara speaks Japanese back. Dad speaks German to Sara and Sara speaks German back. Sara is going to be quite the multi lingual child. Brooke and Yoshiko (Brooke's mom) were visiting the family and Brooke thought it would be polite to entertain the little girl so the adults could visit. Sara was being very shy at first but once Brooke started speaking to her in Japanese she opened right up. I have this image in my head of this beautiful, dark skinned, dark eyed little Ecuadorian (is that a word?) speaking fluent Japanese....and German...and English. And it makes me smile.

I'm an aunt

My sister is now a mother. It's a little bit of a scary thought. She is my LITTLE sister. Except for a few minor spats Abby has been very considerate of me and my infertile, fragile feelings for most of the pregnancy. She has hardly whined or complained and if she did she spared me and complained to my mother.

Last week she saw her doctor and he told her he was going to wait until 30May to induce her. Her response, "Like hell you are going to make me wait another week and a half. If I haven't gone into labor by Wednesday you will be inducing me then." He said alrighty. And Wednesday it was. She required a lot of pitocin and the baby was born Wednesday evening. When I talked to Abby on Wednesday night she sounded great, chipper and full of joy. I happened to call on Wednesday while Abby was busy laboring and Consuelo, Abby's sil answered the phone because Abby was busy pushing. Consuelo announced to me that the baby was crowning and she could see the top of head. "Look at all that hair!" she exclaimed. Now, my mother has tons of hair. I was born with tons of hair. Abby was born with tons of hair. Obviously Abby's child will also be born with tons of hair. I laughed as I remember our baby pictures. It was the first time I really felt connected to my niece.

Savannah Paige S______ was born Wednesday 23May around 7:30 EST. I'm not sure about the weight and height and frankly since it's not my kid, I don't really care all that much. But she's healthy and adorable and I already love and adore her.

Donor News!

The donor just finished cycling for another couple and I have some news of how she did.

26 eggs retrieved
21 mature
17 fertilized
they did a day 5 transfer
We had several morulas, some decent looking blasts, and one perfect blast.

They did assisted hatching because the zonas looked dark. I have no idea what that means but you can rest assured that I will be spending the afternoon googling and webmd-ing it to death.

Hopefully I will find out the actual grades of the embryos in the next week or two. The IVF coordinator is going to call my second choice to just find out where she is in her cycle just in case. The recipient is now officially in the 2WW and I didn't realize it was possible to be this stressed about some one else's cycle. Please just let it work!

Donor Eggs

I love my church. I really do. But there is a huge difference between the doctrine of the church and Mormon culture. I love the doctrine but I pretty much detest the culture. There are a few things that I've been a bit skeptical about and have labeled them Mormon Urban Legends. One is when people say that they have been struggling with an issue and they open the scriptures and it was like the scriptures have been written just for them. My response when people start telling these stories is, "oh please!" I just didn't buy it. I thought it was people creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Until it happened to me.

I was reading the Ensign (church magazine for those not in the know) and an old issue at that a few weeks ago. It was the Feb issue and Elder Hales was talking about axioms for life. Axiom 2 states, "Pursue your goals with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. You are doomed to failure if you pursue them in a vacillating manner. So often we are tentative and don't move forward with conviction. We feel our way along, as if we were afraid in the dark. It is so much better to turn on the light of faith and move ahead with energy and commitment. If our course is wrong, we will quickly recognize it and make the necessary adjustments. But if we pursue a course tentatively and indecisively, it is difficult to know whether it is right or wrong in time to correct it. The Lord said, 'I would thou wert cold or hot'. Rev 3:15. We should decide now to make our decisions prayerfully and then move forward with faith, energy, and determination."

Brilliant man, that Elder Hales. I tell you, he wrote that just for me. I know he did. Ok, so that might be a bit of a stretch but it felt like God is gently reminding me that He is there and aware of my situation.

I have been doing exactly what Elder Hales said. Moving along too tentatively, unsure of my course. I still haven't received a visit from an angel, a comment from God on my blog or anything else earth shattering but I am making a conscious decision to move forward with faith. I am prepared to change my course if I feel like that is the right choice but the best thing I can do is move forward until such revelation comes.

To that end, I believe we have selected a donor. She is lovely. Her health history is good. She has brown hair. She is tall. Her sisters are tall. Her brother boarders on giant like as he is 6'7". I love that about her. We share an ethnic background which surprised me how important that ended up being to me.

I was prepared to know next to nothing about our donor which is sad for me. I have been thinking about how our son or daughter will fill out forms at the doctors office regarding health history. They won't have much information about their birth mothers history. It's kind of bumming me out. It was also hard not to know if she is a nice person, a hard worker, or any things else that have anything to do with her personality. She obviously is going to put her best foot forward on the donor questionnaire. I'm not really upset about any of this but I have been giving it some thought.

It's turning out the anonymous donor process may not be totally anonymous. Entirely by coincidence I have found a connection between us. Here is my post from my favorite IF board.

I received a batch of donor profiles a while back and got some more from my clinic a few weeks later and I am pretty sure I have picked a donor. She is actually cycling right now for another couple and I will make my final decision in a week when we know how she responded, how many eggs were retrieved, and fertilized. I knew that the only way we would get to know our donor is if we recruited her ourselves. Paul got a bit uncomfortable with that though. I had resigned myself that we would never know her or know any more about her than was on the donor profile we initially received. Or...perhaps not.


So Brooke (my childhood friend that is currently living with us) and Alexis (a mutual friend from college who is visiting because her brother is graduating from unm) and I were at lunch today with Alexis's brother and I asked him what his major was. He responded criminology and I said one of the egg donors I am considering is majoring in criminology. Brooke has seen the donor profiles and looked over them with me. She and Alexis were at Alexis's brothers graduation over the weekend. At lunch when the DE subject came up a light bulb went off for Brooke. She looks at Alexis and reminds her of a conversation at the graduation where she was asking how she knew the girl that was graduating. This was a military graduation and Brooke remembered some stuff from the profile that was military related and we start quizzing Timothy because Brooke is almost positive that it is the same girl. We talk with Timothy quite a bit and in a matter of minutes we are assured that we are talking about the same girl. Does graduation girl speak German because the donor does? Has the graduation girl recently had lasik because the donor has? It was all confirmed. We got home and her picture was in the graduation program and it is definitely the same girl.

When we started this process we signed papers stating that we would never go looking for this girl and she was to be anonymous etc and I am not sure if I have violated her privacy. I still really like her. I talked with Timothy for a bit at lunch and asked what I am sure to him were very strange questions. I was so taken aback that we had a common thread. I asked him if she was a nice girl, if she was pleasant and kind. He reassured me that she is a wonderful person and a great leader and she cared about her country which I thought was very cute. I'm still in a bit of shock! Is it bad to go through with this cycle and keep her as my donor? Obviously I wouldn't tell the clinic but I am just wondering if this is ethical. This whole incident made me like her even more.

Maybe God won't leave a comment on my blog but He will so conveniently arrange things so that I fall just a little bit more in love with our donor. I know that He is paying attention to my life and my desire to have a baby hasn't fallen through the cracks. That in itself is very comforting.

I made it! I made it!

My biggest fear about the lap was that they were going to make in incision in my belly button. No, I wasn't worried about losing my ovaries. I wasn't worried about in injury to the bladder or bowel. I was worried that they were going to make a cut in my belly button. We all have idiosyncrasies and this is mine. I hate belly buttons. I hate looking at them. I hate touching mine. I hate them. I know it's a weird thing but it's my weird thing.

He did not make an incision in my belly button. I could have kissed my doctor when I discovered this happy news. As a sidenote; I also did not have any injury to the bladder or bowel and he didn't remove my ovaries but he did remove my right tube. He thinks. He showed me pictures from the surgery and there is so much scar tissue it is hard to tell what is what. My insides look broken. It's really quite sad.

When I had my post op appointment on Monday he reminded me yet again that I am the worst case of endo he has ever seen. I feel like I can't ever grasp the depth of that because I have almost no pain. I only took 400 ml of ibuprofen with my last few periods and only because I felt like my period was going to start and it's a habit at this point to start pain meds early. I'll take it even if it means being disconnected with the process. He started the conversation by saying that it looked like a grenade exploded in my pelvis. Lots of scar tissue and lots of adhesions. I suppose it's to be expected after three surgeries.

More about the donor process in the next post.