Wednesday 25 January 2012

Up and Down and Round and Round...

Some days are ok and some days are completely crap...

I find myself wondering whether I'm really living in some sort of soap opera - that I been given these incredibly difficult, impossible even, decisions to make when it seems like the rest of the World get to decide whether they add to their family or not... Fancy that - a choice! How on Earth do you make such massive decisions? And what if you cock it up and get it wrong?
I realise, when I'm feeling rational, that there are plenty of women who find themselves unable to have children and as I constantly have to remind myself when feeling particularly sad/angry - I have a DS and I am incredibly lucky.
DS has been nagging for a brother or sister (preferably a sister so he can pinch and use everything she owns that's remotely pink and sparkly, I'm sure...) for the last couple of years. It makes me weep (literally sometimes) that I cannot give him this one little thing. I think that the guilt is something that can really get to you. I feel guilty to my DS that I can't provide some company for him and I go through days when I feel like a 'dud', a 'reject' and feel sorry that my DH got stuck with me for a wife. For the record, he would have a massive problem with me saying that - I know that he loves me and is incredibly supportive.

Lately DH and I have been discussing adoption as well as egg donation. I'm not sure that adoption doesn't sit slightly better with me but at this point, I just cannot make a decision and my brain is packed full of all the variables... Do we try a round of egg donation? How will I feel about a child that is genetically not mine but is my husband's? Do we feel we could adopt a child? What if we weren't successful at either? How would our families feel about it all? How would DS feel? And....the big one... What if we do absolutely nothing and move forward with the life we have?

DH and I have a lot to think about and in the meantime, I'll cope as I always do - crying a bit, using humour a bit and thinking a lot. It's probably just as well that the night sweats wake me at around 3.30am every morning - afterall, I have a lot of decisions to make...

While researching donor eggs, I found a really good website that goes through the emotional aspects, find it here -  http://www.4therapy.com/life-topics/parenting/pregnancy/infertility-and-emotional-aspects-having-child-through-donor-eggs-23

I have one recommendation at this juncture - hang on to good friends and talk to them lots. Good friends are those that listen and say very little and are just there to support you. Getting your head around things is hard enough without everyone around you having an opinion. There's nothing worse than a friend (who has happily completed her family) telling you how you should feel.

So, onwards and upwards - we have an appointment with our consultant in March to discuss my latest blood results and egg donation and then we also have, in the same month, an open evening on adoption so am going to spend the next few weeks looking forward to getting more information and hopefully, in doing so, getting closer to the outcome that's right for us...

Thursday 19 January 2012

Eggs well and truly scrambled...

I received the rather damning news that I have 'Premature Ovarian Failure (POF)' last March at age 35:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premature_ovarian_failure

My ovaries had been quietly failing (oo - that word nips...) for some time it would seem and the fact that I have a child at all is a wonderful miracle - it should never have happened. Apparently. I fully believe it absolutely should!

Stupidly/naively/certainly not timely I had not given too much thought to the night sweats, the hot flushes, the erratic and extremely heavy periods and the permanent PMT; prefering to concentrate on my lack of a pregnancy. I know all about pregnancy. I've been pregnant a few times (6, actually but more about that later...) and my husband and I were so busy either having sex constantly (while secretly growing to despise one another ;o)) or thinking about having sex constantly that it was only dawning on me a good 18 months into 'Project Baby-Number-2', that when once we shared a bar of soap and became pregnant (for those of you wondering, this is not an actual way to become pregnant), suddenly and rather annoyingly I was having periods most months. And negative pregnancy tests.

Yesterday I received the blood test results that change everything. Actually, they change very little but because I had harboured a romantic notion that it would 'all work out for us in the end', I now have to face the stark fact that with an FSH of 31.5 and oestrodial levels of <70, my one-in-a-gazillion chance of obtaining a pregnancy through IVF has vanished - poof - forever. I no longer have that option. In all honesty with an 'undetectable' ovarian reserve and a follicle count of 4 in total, almost a year ago, we were looking at a less than 5% chance anyway but, to us, that was a chance.

I didn't 'leave it too late', I was 27 when we started trying for a family. After two miscarriages and an ectopic, we were blessed with a darling son (DS) in 2006. He is ace and I am extremely lucky to have him. We started trying for baby number 2 (with a view to eventually stopping having babies at around the '4' mark) in the December after DS turned 1 year old. We managed a pregnancy the following March, which sadly turned out to be another ectopic and then nothing. Sex virtually every other day for the next 14 months or so ensued. My GP eventually agreed there could be a problem and sent me for tests. And more tests. And then a few more. None of which gave us very much hope.

Last October, amazingly, I became pregnant. Quite naturally. I would say 'all by myself' meaning without the help of IVF but I believe my husband was there at the time so I can't take all the credit. By November, it was all over. Another miscarriage. I don't think I could ever feel more heartbroken than I did at that time; for me, for DH, for DS and for yet another baby that wasn't to be.

And so here we are.

My advice, by the way, if you are struggling to conceive - see your GP as soon as possible. Especially if your mum had problems conceiving or had an early menopause. Had I pushed it, I may be sitting in a different place today.

My husband and I had discussed donor eggs (DE) briefly but I had refused to give it serious consideration as I was still hankering after that little girl that looks just like me. Now, we've made an appointment to go and see the 'Donor Egg Coordinator' (who'd have thought such a lady existed..??) at our local Centre for Reproductive Health. It seems that we will be giving it some consideration afterall...Watch this space...