you are not alone.

I spent most of my twenties fearing the end of my fertility, in part because I knew my mother entered menopause early. I also knew it took her mother, my grandmother, nearly a decade to conceive my mom, and that in the end she was only able to do so with the help of whatever fertility drugs were being prescribed in the early 1950s.

And yet, when my husband and I first received our infertility diagnosis, our RE declared me "fine." The problem, he said, was the testosterone supplement my husband's urologist had surgically implanted in his thigh: it had rendered him sterile.

The relief I felt in the time that we waited for my husband's sperm to come back is indescribable. I was fine! I could make a baby! According to the RE (the one I've not-so-affectionately dubbed Dr. God Complex), a year wouldn't make a difference in my fertility - in his mind, the line between 35 and 36 wasn't as dire as the charts seem to make it.

Ten months after being declared "fine," I was rushed to the ER for the recurring pain I had nearly every time I ovulated. I'd been complaining about these episodes for years, but my gyno had dismissed my complaints as mittelschmerz and basically called me a cry baby. I didn't think this sounded like typical female pain, though. I would simultaneously feel like I had to poop, pee, and vomit, and then I'd writhe in bed, clutching my lower abdomen and sweating, until some anti-anxiety medicine would kick in and put me to sleep. 

For two years this happened, nearly every single cycle, until it started to get worse. I started to have the episodes outside of ovulation. Two weeks apart, just before my period, on a random Tuesday. One of the worst times it happened was the day of a close friend's funeral. She'd died young, unexpectedly, from complications with an autoimmune disorder. I was delivering one of the eulogies. The attack came on after I'd already put on my makeup, and I just kept moaning no, not today, please, God, not today.

Miraculously, my body pulled it together long enough for me to deliver the eulogy, but the pain returned during the last third of the funeral. I handed my dish off to a friend and went straight home, where I sweated and writhed and cried for hours.

The trip to the ER happened not long after that - less than a week. The attacks were coming too close together. For the first time, someone decided to use a transvaginal ultrasound to see what was going on in there. That's when they discovered the 10 cm dermoid cyst taking up residence on my left ovary.

I lost the ovary in the surgery meant to remove only the cyst. My surgeon liked to cut things. He prided himself on how quickly he was in and out of my body. Speedy Gonzalez didn't think I needed that ovary anyway. I was still planning on doing IVF, due to my husband's low sperm count, and I had another ovary. One would be plenty.

In the years following, I've come to form a theory of my own: there was a reason I almost always ovulated from the left ovary. That's where all of the good eggs were. The ovary that was left behind was lazy. In the wake of surgery, it took a long time becoming active. In every attempt at ART, we could only coax one decent follicle from the right ovary. Every. Single. Time. When my AMH was finally tested, it was <.16 - undetectable.

The depression that followed my IF diagnosis was so deep and so intense that my therapist asked me if I would consider attending a Resolve support group. It would be good for me, she said, to connect with others in my situation. I had attended support groups before, for people with loved ones who had mental illness, and found them to be less-than-helpful. They were bleak, these meetings. I never left feeling hopeful. 

But my therapist was insistent, so to the Resolve support group we went. My husband and I sat in a room of other couples and some women flying solo. I told our story to a group of strangers and listened as they told me theirs. I cried along with the young woman who'd just gotten her diagnosis of cervical cancer. They would harvest her eggs, but she'd never be able to carry a child. The pain she was in was so palpable, I just wanted to hug her.

It was cathartic, attending that group, and we returned, month after month, for the first year after our diagnosis. I formed a couple of friendships with women I met in that group, one a fellow DOR gal like myself (Kindred). The meeting facilitator formed a secret Facebook group for us to keep in touch in between meetings. I felt like I'd found my people.

Later, I'd move on from those meetings to my secret Facebook group of women pursuing donor embryos. It's an active group, more than 530 members strong, comprised of women from all over the world. They have answered my questions, cheered me on through two cycles, consoled me after my first-ever pregnancy turned into a miscarriage. They have followed me through my current pregnancy, and a satellite group - one focused solely on anxiety/depression stemming from IF/ART - has held my hand through every fear I've had about losing another baby.

In short, these women are my lifeline. 

I've made a lot of good friends thanks to my infertility. Some of the strongest, most resilient women I've ever met. My fellow infertiles, I call them. We share a bond that only another woman who's struggled to achieve (and sustain) a pregnancy can understand. 

That circle has expanded in the past seven months, after I started this blog and started spending time reading/commenting on other people's blogs. Women I've never met in "real" life, who I may never meet face to face, send me Facebook messages and leave me comments before every follow up appointment. "Thinking of you," they'll say. "Let me know how it goes." I do the same for them.

I am not alone. I am far from alone. And I am grateful to everyone in my support system, from the women I met in my Resolve group to the blogger whose story I just discovered last week. If you want to know how people survive infertility, this is it: through the camaraderie of fellow infertiles. People who've walked the path you're on. It doesn't matter if they're still in the thick of it or have reached the other side - these are your people. They will help you get through it.

I'm not fully "out" in terms of my infertility, but I will be. All along I've said that when I reach the other side - whether it be through a take-home baby or making the decision to live child-free - I will tell my story. I'll tell the story of my miscarriage, too, because that's another thing that needs to be talked about more openly. 

Why not now? you wonder. I'm just not ready. I'm still in the trenches, fighting my way toward the family my husband and I so desperately want. I'm not ashamed of what I've been through. I'm not embarrassed. Biology is what it is. A doctor put hormones in my  husband without counseling him that they would render him sterile. A surgeon stole my good ovary and patted himself on the back because of his speediness. I can't change any of these things.

For now, I tell my story anonymously, through this blog, because I want others to feel less alone. And it's working. Recently, a woman found my blog after researching the too-small gestational sac that led to her miscarriage. She told me that reading about my experience with the same thing helped her come to terms with her situation.

I cried when I read that. Because I can't tell you how many times I've done the same exact thing - found someone out there, through an online or in-person support group, or through the blogosphere, and said YOU, YES YOU, YOU ARE MY PEOPLE. THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORY.

This post was written in response to Resolve's National Infertility Awareness Week. Click here to learn more about the disease of infertility. To read more stories of hope, check out the NAIW 2015 Blogroll.

the fertility detective.

I feel like I've spent the last 48 hours playing Agony Vagina, PI. Gathering evidence for my case to prove that yes, there is indeed a bun in my oven.

Exhibit A: Woke up yesterday with greasy hair. It usually takes four days of no shampooing to get hair that greasy. It had only been two.

Exhibit B: During my shower, I lost like four strands of hair vs. the normal small, rodent-sized clump I typically clear out of the drain. This happened when I was pregnant with Nugget, too.

Exhibit C: While I was watching TV with Mr. Hope yesterday, my head in his lap, I passed out cold in an instant. In the middle of the day. When I woke up, I didn't even realize I'd been a sleep until the plot of the show didn't make any sense. Time I'd been dozing? 34 minutes.

Et cetera.

I managed to stay busy most of the day. Busy is good. Busy keeps me from obsessing over symptoms that may or may not be there.

And then last night, the BFF came over for dinner and we talked until 1:30 in the morning. We talked about EVERYTHING - work, life, her kids, the kid I hope I'll one day have. The subject of fertility came into the conversation so many times, in so many different ways. Like, we started talking about GMOs and if maybe they have anything to do with the uptick in infertility in recent decades. (My theory: it has more to do with chemicals, like the kind found in plastic.)

Side note: I fully believe that in the next 10 to 50 years, scientists will discover a way to help women like me - women with DOR - regrow an ovary with a whole crop of fresh eggs. Or something similar that has the same results. "I was just born a decade or two too soon," I told her.

After the umpteenth discussion about IF, I said, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. You've had to spend so much of the last four years hearing me talk about my vagina. It can't have been fun for you - me working my way through all of the stages of grief."

She laughed. Then she said, "It's more like I want you to be happy, so when you get good news and good things are happening, I'm happy, too, and when you get sad news or sad things are happening, I'm sad, too."

In the early days of my diagnosis, the BFF was one of the only people I wanted to talk to about what was happening, but she was also one of the people who managed to say the wrong thing 50% of the time. It hurt. It was never intentional on her part - I know this - but outside of my husband, this is the one person who I really needed to "get it." I needed her to be there for me in ways she wasn't able.

It took a lot of therapy on my part, and a little of me coaching her a bit - "When you say things like X, it makes me feel Y" - but eventually it all worked out. Now she's one of the biggest sources of support I have. And I'm so glad that I have her in my corner.

Anyway.

So I spent most of Saturday playing fertility detective. This morning I woke up after 6 hours of sleep (Mr. Hope snored me awake). I had to pee pretty badly, so I got out the cup and dipped the stick and nothing happened.

White.

I put the stick on the side of the sink and reminded myself that it was still really early, and that I had until 8dp5dt to start to panic. A minute went by. I looked at the stick again. Still white, but is there maybe a shadow developing?

I reminded myself that you're supposed to wait three minutes for a reason. Duh.

And then I saw it. It's so pale, only trained infertiles would recognize it. A second line with only a whisper of pink to it. Seriously, it gives new meaning to the term "super-faint positive."

But it's there.

Today, I am pregnant.

It's weird; I don't feel the unfettered joy I did the first time around. Maybe because this time, I know how a positive pee stick can end.

(Of course, it could be because I don't have photographic evidence yet. I took a pic but it looks more like a fuzzy gray shadow right now, even though in person it's clearly got a pink tint. P.S., I sent the pic to a woman in my FB group who transferred the day before I did and who got a BFP at 4dp5dt and she totally saw it. Infertiles, man. We've got eagle eyes for this shit.)

My goal for the next few days is to not freak out. To not obsess. I need to make my grocery list. Pull together the docs I need for the accountant. Work on the freelance project.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe.

confessions of a bitter infertile.

Yesterday I had my eighth solo appointment with Quirky, my infertility counselor. I first met her over two years ago, when she came to speak to my Resolve support group about tips for getting through the holidays. She doesn't take insurance and is out of network, and at the time I wasn't in a good financial position to start seeing her. But, once we made the decision to pursue donor embryos, I called her to see if I could work through some of my anxieties and fears with her. Turns out she was able to do our requisite pre-donor counseling session as well.

I like Quirky - a lot. And I like working with her. I have been seeing therapists fairly continuously since I was 17 (I have struggled with depression and anxiety since I was very young). Chance, who started as Mr. Hope's and my family counselor, started seeing me one-on-one about a year and a half ago. In the beginning, he was just the kick in the ass I needed to start making some serious changes in my life.

But after a while, the one thing I needed to talk about most in therapy was my infertility. Plucky, the therapist I was seeing prior to chance, had this bad habit of comparing my infertility to that of Julianna and Bill Rancic, as that was literally the extent of her knowledge. Hence one of the reasons I stopped seeing Plucky, because hi, really? Julianna and Bill?

But Chance isn't much better when it comes to the babymaking blues. In fact, lately I've been considering taking a break from therapy, since I haven't been getting much out of my sessions with him for months. He had Mr. Hope and me come in together on Christmas Eve, to make sure we were okay with everything going on, and I sat there for half an hour recounting what had been happening before he sent us home. In the parking lot I turned to Mr. Hope and said, "Is it me or was that a colossal waste of time?"

Quirky, though...Quirky gets it. (In)fertility is her bailiwick. Pregnancy, loss, adoption, donor gametes - you name it, she covers it. And yesterday she really took me task.

My appointment with Quirky was for 2 p.m. Yesterday was the first day I'd been home alone in a week. It was the first day without holiday craziness or house guests. I was supposed to get up, work on my freelance project, do some laundry, make some soup, and balance the checkbook. Instead, I sat on the couch and binge-watched an old sci-fi show on Netflix, drifting in and out of sleep as I did.

Before my appointment I had to drive to my office to pick up my bottle of vitamins. I'd run out at home and Mr. Hope was freaking out that one day off prenatals would be enough to do Nugget in. On the way there I listened to a sweet, country-flavored pop song on repeat and, out of nowhere, started crying. In the car. While listening to Taylor Swift. (The song is "Stay, Stay, Stay" if you're interested.)

Then I had to pick up an audiobook at the library. More tears. More frustration about getting stuck behind old people and people on their phones and generally crappy drivers.

So when I arrived at Quirky's office, I wasn't doing so hot. I was still sniffling back some tears. I was wearing zero makeup and my hair may have been slightly wet from the shower I took before I headed out.

"Talk to me," she said. "What's going on?"

I told her about watching What to Expect When You're Expecting.

"Why would you do that?" she asked immediately.

"Masochism?"

"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe you needed to cry."

"More likely masochism."

I told her that I realized right after Mr. Hope left for work that my boobs had stopped hurting entirely. I mean, there was nothing. I could mush them with my hands and there was not a single spot of tenderness. I told her that I knew then I'd lost the baby.

She said, "You realize it doesn't work like that, right? Even in a normal pregnancy, symptoms come and go like that. When you lose a baby, your symptoms don't disappear that quickly. It takes a while for your body to catch up."

I shrugged. I did a lot of shrugging yesterday.

(Side note: when I got back into my car after the appointment, and buckled my seat belt, I winced. Guess what? Boob tenderness back with a vengeance.)

I talked to Quirky about what a horrible person I was, because the weekend with Mini-Hope was so rough. I told her that 80% of the time I don't even like Mini-Hope, and this makes me wonder if I'm even fit to be a parent.

Quirky said, "I don't believe you think that at all. You know you're not a horrible person. How old is Mini-Hope? Ten? She's not going to be likable a lot of the time. And it's okay to feel this way. Why are you being so hard on yourself? Why aren't you giving yourself any love right now?"

So then I proceeded to outline all of the reasons why I am a piece of shit not deserving of self-love. And she proceeded to tear down my reasons one by one.

We talked about a lot of things yesterday. About how part of my devastation over this miscarriage limbo is due to the fact that this could be Mr. Hope's and my genetic child. When I found out only one embryo implanted, I was convinced it was the donors'. When the embryo stopped hitting benchmarks, I became convinced it was ours. Mr. Hope has said he doesn't care whose it is, and that we'd only be testing after birth to make sure we had the right medical history. But that's his feeling, not mine.

My feeling is this: we wanted a biological child. We were unable to have one. We decided we wanted to be parents, period. We decided to pursue the use of donor embryos. But it's not like that was ever our first choice. That was our backup plan. Our only realistic path to parenthood.

It's not that I would love a baby created from donor embryos any less. And if Nugget pulls through and it turns out she isn't made from our DNA, who the fuck cares? It's a baby. OUR baby.

But I feel weird saying these things, even to Quirky. About how donor embryos are our backup because we couldn't make the genetic thing work. About how deeply saddened I am that there might never be a tiny human that's half Agony and half Hope. About how I see these rah-rah donor embryo women in my super-secret FB support group who are all snowflake this and snowflake that, and how I wish I could be like them but I'm not.

I am grateful that embryo donation is a thing. I know it's given a lot of infertile couples a gift they never dreamed they'd have. We may be one of those couples.

But the whole snowflake thing is just a little too precious for me. There, I said it. In the FB group, there was this 10-day stretch of women posting any little thing they found on Amazon that had a snowflake on it. Jewelry, t-shirts, socks, Christmas lights, etc. It's winter and it's Christmas, so yeah, there's a lot of snowflake shit out in the retail world right now. Do we need to post all of it?

I know there are women who embrace the snowflake thing 100%. I get it. I do. The embryos are frozen, see. They're unique. Just like little snowflakes.

I feel like I should add a disclaimer here and say that I don't look down upon anyone who digs the snowflake thing. I really don't. I kind of wish I could be part of this particular sorority, but I'm too fucking bitter and not nearly adorable enough.

So.

Quirky's whole thing was this: "Why are you censoring yourself in here? You need to be honest with me. You need to say what you think and what you feel."

But I'm a good girl. I always have been. I go out of my way to not hurt people's feelings. I have trouble saying no. I hate it when people are angry with me. I don't want anyone to think I'm a bad person. Ever.

In the spirit of being more honest, though, there's this:

I hate being out in the world and seeing women with cute little baby bumps. I will never have that bump, even if I have a pregnancy that sticks. Fat women don't get bumps - they just look fatter.

I hate being out in the world and seeing women with babies who look annoyed to have babies. Or who yell at their toddlers in stores. Or who threaten to spank them when they misbehave. Why can you have a fucking child and I can't? I would never hit my child. Never.

I get irritated by women who get pregnant easily. I get irritated by most pregnant women in general, actually. Unless I know they've struggled with infertility or suspect they have. Then you get a pass, because you had to work really hard for that baby. You, I like. You, I not only tolerate pregnant, but am actually happy for.

I hate the way my stepdaughter is being raised and hate even more that Mr. Hope and I are powerless over it. I hate that she's turned into such a spoiled brat. I hate that she only seems to like me when I say yes to her and give her what she wants. I don't do that very often, so she doesn't like me very often, and this makes me like her even less. I hate that Mr. Hope doesn't nut up and be more of a father when it comes to her, even though I understand where that comes from. (Elevator version: he didn't even know about her until she was almost five, so he missed out on all of those early formative years.)

I still feel responsible for my infertility. I'm too fat. I smoked when I was younger. I waited too long to have kids. I rushed the surgery to remove my dermoid cyst instead of waiting to find a doctor who would've tried to save my ovary.

I'm broken. I can't do the one thing a woman was built to do, even with donor gametes in my body.

I hate that I'm going to lose this baby, and I hate that there's a part of me that doesn't believe I'm going to lose this baby, even though all evidence says otherwise.

At one point yesterday, Quirky said, "I'm concerned that you've already decided how this is going to turn out, when you might not even be going down that path. And you will have wasted weeks being miserable and waiting for something that might not happen."

I said, "So, what? If Nugget makes it and I wasted the first trimester feeling miserable, oh well. I will have a baby. Who cares if I missed out on the joy of pregnancy if I end up with a baby?"

I'd give anything for Nugget to make it. To become a healthy baby in my arms. Boy or girl - ultimately I don't give a shit. C-section? Who cares? Cut me open. Get that baby out.

My birthday is coming up. I'm going to be 39. In fertility years that's like 104, especially if you're DOR like I am. Quirky says it doesn't matter when you're using donor gametes but you know. I'd like to not be on Social Security when this kid enters high school. And god forbid we decide to go for a sibling. I'll be like the only kindergarten mom with an AARP membership.

One last thing: I think my theory on the weight gain was spot-on. Only one day of eating mostly (and not entirely) healthy and I've already dropped almost three pounds. So that's a minor relief.

Got to get ready for Ultrasound #4. Expecting the worst but hoping for the best. (Dear god, please - PLEASE - surprise me.)

something to lose.

As happy as I am over yesterday's unexpectedly good news, I'm also feeling a little...well...scared.

I mean, I was fully expecting to be told that Mr. Hope's and my embryo didn't make it to Day 3. I was pleasantly enough surprised when I thought ours was hanging on at a grade C. But to learn that my presumed-rotten egg had managed to produce a grade A embryo? 

I don't even have the words.

In a split second, I went from expecting the worst to hoping for the best:

• Our embryo makes it to blast
• We transfer it on Day 5
• It sticks
• We have a baby that's half Agony, half Hope

I keep thinking about the dream I had early in my stim cycle, the one in which I was holding our Agony/Hope baby and thinking, "I almost missed out on this. I almost gave up on this." Could this actually happen? Could we end up with a bio baby after all?

Even if our embryo makes it to blast, we still plan on transferring the best of the donor embryos, too. So I keep chewing over this wacky scenario in which both stick and we have fraternal twins from entirely separate parents. How wild would that be? 

So, yeah, there's a part of me that's thinking about these things. And then there's this other part of me - the realistic part of me - that knows there's still a good possibility that our embryo won't make it to blast. How would I feel Friday morning if I got that call? Would I be devastated? To come so close and yet not quite make it there? IT'S A GRADE A EMBRYO. That means cells of equal size and no visible fragmentation. 

This thing that I never dared think possible? It's not impossible. It's just not. 

I don't even know what to do with that.

Plus my overthinking brain is going in all kinds of crazy directions, like, "What if the embryo from the last transfer was good but my toxic, broken body killed it?" I think about this a lot, actually. And yes, I know plus-size women carry healthy babies all of the time, but I'm not basing this on my weight alone. There's the psoriasis. What if that has caused bad inflammation in my body? What if, even on this EZ Diet, I'm eating too much saturated fat? I won't do low-fat dairy because I know that can have adverse affects on a woman's fertility, too. Will the half of an avocado I've been chowing down at breakfast each morning counteract any negative effects from the full-fat cheese?

You see how this works?

On Tuesday, even before we got the happy grade A update, I told Mr. Hope that we were going to get pregnant this cycle. I just knew it. And then I immediately regretted saying the words, because it was like tempting fate to come along and kick me in the teeth.

But then I think:

We are in a good place, Mr. Hope and me. We're in a better place physically, emotionally, and financially than we were even nine months ago, during our first IVF. I am ready to be a mother, no matter how I get there. Nine months ago, it was still more about being a mom to a baby Mr. Hope and I created together. Now it's about us being parents together, period.

Maybe I had to go through all of that to get here, to where we are at this very moment in time. 

Or maybe it's all just completely and utterly random. Who knows?

The problem with having hope - genuine hope - is that in some way, it sets you up to be let down. Hope has given me something to lose. In some ways, expecting bad news, and being okay with getting that bad news, was easier. You don't get a sucker-punch to the gut when you're ready to hear the worst.

I'm rambling. And it's Thanksgiving! There are so many things I am truly thankful for. Like my excellent health care coverage, and a top-notch clinic, and a husband I love who loves me back. 

I guess I need to spend more time thinking about those things than I do wondering about the what ifs. 

embryo adoption awareness day.

Today, November 25, marks Embryo Adoption Awareness Day. From the blog Wishing on a Snowflake:

"November is already known as National Adoption Month, so what better time to recognize EDA and spread awareness than during November? Also, with it falling near Thanksgiving, it gives us the ability to discuss the gratitude that EA brings to many families."

Liz is one of the most vocal advocates of Embryo adoption I've encountered. She's the founder of the super-secret Facebook support group I belong to for women pursuing the EA path - the one Kindred added me to before I knew I was definitely going to be pursuing that path myself. Interestingly enough, I actually found Liz's blog when I was researching whether or not you could get a colonoscopy when TTC. Then started following it. It took me a week or so to recognize the super-secret FB group connection.

The world works in mysterious ways.

Liz, who has severe DOR like I do, has been all over the news lately, sharing the story of how she and her husband came to adopt their daughter Sammy as an embryo. She recently wrote a post that includes links to the People.com coverage and a segment that appeared on Good Morning America.

The other person I feel compelled to mention on this day is Sara from Chronicles of An Adoption. She's a frequent commenter on this blog and has been just a lovely source of support. Sara's pursuit of parenthood is admirable and inspiring, and if you're not familiar with her blog, I encourage you to check it out immediately.

Here's Sara's post about Embryo Adoption Awareness Day.

This day of awareness is important to me personally, too. In the relatively short time I've been on this path I've educated at least two women about using donor/adopted embryos - one who's a confirmed infertile who thought traditional adoption was her only option, and one who's concerned that she may be infertile but doesn't have confirmation of this yet. I've educated others as well, but I think these two stick out the most because having this information could someday change their lives as it has mine.

And though she'll likely never read this, I want to say thanks to G, a woman from my in-person Resolve support group who became a mom through EA earlier this year. I'd never even heard about using donor embryos myself until I met her and listened to her story.

I wish I could contribute more to the cause, but I'm still a closeted infertile, for the most part. And, when it comes to using donor embryos, I'm not sure how much I'm willing to share beyond my innermost circle.

But I applaud these women, and am grateful for all that they've done and continue to do in our corner of the IF community.

fert report.

I missed the fert report call this morning. My phone was on silent and we were running around like crazy people because we're down to one car temporarily. This means having to leave earlier AND we had to drop something off at the post office.

Anyway, we got Mr. Hope off to work and when I was switching over the car so I could drive it, I plugged my phone in. That's when I saw the missed call. I was like, "Oh, right, I forgot about this part." It was kind of good that the morning was so hectic. I wasn't obsessing in the least.

So I called Posh Clinic back (on speaker phone). The one egg fertilized normally with ICSI. I wasn't surprised. This was what I'd predicted all along.

Now comes the unexpected part. With my two previous IVFs, I did Day 2 transfers. This time, we're going to see if we can grow the embryo out to blast. 

I have to be honest: I don't expect the embryo to make it. Since I have DOR, I figure my infertility must be the result of low egg quality. If the little bugger DOES make it to blast, I will be pleasantly shocked. Even so, when I get the call that it's arrested, I know I'm going to cry. This really is our last shot at a bio baby. Saying goodbye to that possibility will be hard, even though I'm expecting it. (Does that make sense?)

The nurse also asked me to confirm that I wanted all four donor embryos thawed. This was my third or fourth time confirming this info, but whatever. She told me I'd get an update about them tomorrow, when I get the update about our embryo. 

I thought I would at least get a thaw update today. Since I didn't hear back from anyone I'm going to assume that the thaw was fairly uneventful. I mean, if all four donor embryos died in thaw, they would've called me today, right?

I've been pretty good about NOT thinking about the embryos (mine and the donors'). I went to work. I had to come home midday because I left my Medrol at the house. I went back to work. After work, I met the BFF at her gym to walk on the treadmill, You know, an average sort of day.

Tonight I'll start the PIO, which I only have to take every other day. I don't hate the shots as much as some of the people in my various support groups, but I'll still take the messiness of the pessaries over long-ass needles any day.

backstory.

I've never been good at keeping secrets. This is partly due to the fact that I prefer to live my life as an open book. Or, at least, I used to. I even had a fairly raw, letting-it-all-hang-out-there blog for several years, in which I exposed even the ugliest parts of myself and my life.

And then I grew up.

And then I got an office job.

And then I had coworkers who read my blog.

I discontinued the blog. It was too weird with all of the daily F2F interaction. Later, I ended up deleting it altogether.

But I miss it. That whole community aspect. The spilling your guts to strangers who eventually become friends, but not the kind you see in your everyday life. Especially now, as I find myself myself navigating so many Big, Scary Things.

Such as: infertility.

Oh gawd, I can hear you thinking. Do we really need yet another blog about IF? Probably not. But right now I'm going to be completely selfish and say I don't care, because I need a place to talk about this shit, openly and honestly (albeit anonymously), before my fucking head explodes.

Like I said, I've never been good at keeping secrets.

This is what I'd put in my "siggy," if I was posting on one of the many IF-related message boards:

TTC since 2/2011
Me: 38 - DOR - one ovary, AMH <0.16, MTHFR
DH: 34 - low(ish) count & morphology (1%)

3 IUI cycles = BFN
:: changed REs ::
IVF #1 with ICSI = BFN
IVF #2 with ICSI = BFN
:: currently on a break from treatment ::

For those of you who may be new to the world of IF (which, FYI, is short for infertility), let me break this down for you in terms you may better understand:

Mr. Hope, as I will be referring to my dear husband (DH) from now on, and I decided to start trying to conceive (TTC) in January 2011. I think our first actual birth control-free cycle was in March, but I can't remember because I was still under the delusion that we could make a baby just by having unprotected intercourse.

In May of that year I had a wicked late period that turned out to be just that: a period that arrived two weeks late. I was worried, not only about the wonky cycle but also about some pain I had almost every time I ovulated. (I still had both of my ovaries then.) My gyno dismissed this pain as mittelschmerz. I also asked about whether or not I should be worried that I wasn't pregnant yet (oh, to be that naive again!). She gave me a nice pat on the head, recited some statistics about women in their 30s, and advised me to wait a minimum of six months before seeing a reproductive endocrinologist (RE).

Mr. Hope had a medical issue that accelerated that appointment slightly; the elevator version is that he had next to no sperm because of testosterone supplementation. The RE did a monitoring cycle with me and declared me "fine." He pushed for us to use donor sperm but I said I'd rather wait for Mr. Hope's swimmers to return. We wouldn't have been able to do anything right then anyway, as my insurance had zero coverage for IF. Mr. Hope's had 100% unlimited coverage (this, I think, has been one of the biggest blessings of all), so we decided to add me back to his insurance during open enrollment and revisit the conversation after the new year.

In February of 2012 we went back to see the RE and discuss treatment. Mr. Hope had enough sperm for the RE to do intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which is where they pick the best sperm from the sample and inject it into the retrieved eggs. (Here's a cool video about how ICSI works, in case you're wondering.) We were whisked from the doctor's office straight over to the IVF coordinator's office, where we were given a lot of paperwork and calendars and the like. Then she deposited us in the insurance coordinator's closet-sized office, where we were asked for a $500 enrollment fee not covered by insurance and a backup credit card in case insurance didn't come through.

It was about this time that I started to have a full-on panic attack because hey, I thought we were just going in for the results of Mr. Hope's latest sperm analysis. I wasn't ready for the actual babymaking part yet. My house was a mess. There were issues with Mr. Hope's job and a complication with mine. Etc. We decided that we'd wait until summer, using the time in between to eat healthier, exercise more, do some work on the house, and generally get our shiz together.

By June, we'd revamped our diet and I lost thirty pounds. I felt like I was in a good place to start a family. And then my "mittelschmerz" got worse. After a trip to the ER, we discovered that my left ovary had a ginormous dermoid cyst hanging onto it, and I lost it in the resulting surgery. The ovary that was left behind turned out to be very lazy. Plus the trauma of surgery sent my follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH, the stuff that tells you how hard your ovaries are working to recruit your eggs) up over 10, which is considered not great for attempting IVF. It rose cycle after increasingly shorter cycle, which prompted the RE to order an anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test, which is a newer but fairly stable way of measuring ovarian reserve (how many eggs a woman has left). Mine came back at .16: undetectable.

Keep in mind that I'd spent the past year thinking that the only fertility issue we had was with Mr. Hope's sperm, which had since returned in decent numbers, albeit with poor morphology (i.e. the percentage of sperm shaped the right way for conception). But ICSI made the morphology thing a minor inconvenience, whereas my hormone levels indicated that whatever eggs I had left were likely rotten.

If you don't have eggs, you can't make a baby. Period.

My RE told me he could get me pregnant anyway, diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) be damned. Having a God complex makes a man promise many things he can't deliver. Mr. Hope and I wanted to believe him, so we marched forth into our first attempt at in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

The cycle started to go downhill almost immediately (issues with a lead follicle developing, instead of all of the follicles growing at the same rate) and I was converted to an intrauterine insemination (IUI). I went into the procedure convinced it would work.

It didn't.

I was devastated.

My next IUI was almost accidental. I wasn't on any stimulation medications (stims) but I had a good-looking follicle the RE didn't want to go to waste. So we did another IUI, which resulted in a second big fat negative (BFN).

Our next attempt at IVF happened in the summer. My medication protocol had been changed slightly but my response rate was basically the same.

As in: not good.

As in: another conversion to IUI.

As in: another BFN.

My RE turned into kind of a dick around this time, possibly because my body wasn't complying with his Almighty's treatment plan. Instead of altering said plan, he started to lay the foundation for breaking up with me. Suddenly we went from I CAN GET YOU PREGNANT to YOUR EGGS ARE CRAP AND I WON'T WASTE MY TIME ON YOU FOREVER.

So I left. I went to another RE. We prepared for a new protocol. During my pre-cycle, which is what I always call the cycle before I start stims, there was a death in the family. We postponed again.

Finally, in February 2014, a full year after my first failed IVF-cum-IUI, we went up to bat again. Things looked good for a while. And then they didn't. Only this new RE (we're going to call him Dr. Smiles, since he's got a thousand-watt one) didn't mind going to forward with just one follicle (follie). So we went to retrieval, and the egg fertilized, and we transferred back a meh quality 3-cell embryo (embie) on Day 2, which resulted in yet another BFN.

I went immediately into another cycle, as I'd read that sometimes this was a good thing for women with DOR. Not so in my case. The cycle looked like a bust early on. Somehow we made it to retrieval. This time the egg was immature. But wouldn't you know it, the Little Egg That Could pulled through in the co-culture (the stuff they grew it in), and it fertilized, and we transferred back a really lovely 4-cell embie on Day 2. When that one resulted in a BFN, Dr. Smiles called personally to say the whole thing had been textbook (you know, except for the only popping out one egg part) and there was nothing that we could've done differently.

Sometimes, he said, these things just happen.

After that, Mr. Hope and I went to meet with Dr. Smiles to discuss next steps. This is often referred to as the WTF appointment (which means exactly what you think it means). That's when he told us that we should start to seriously consider going the donor egg or donor embryo route. It wasn't the first time Mr. Hope and I had been given that speech, but it was the first time we talked about those options in any kind of depth.

Then we took a long break due to work travel and vacations and, if I'm being totally honest, some road construction that would've made the hour-long drives to the clinic even more of a bitch than they already are.

And that brings us mostly up to date. I say "mostly" because how we got to this precise place - which is us deciding to give IVF with our own embryos one more go but simultaneously starting the donor embryo process should this last-chance cycle fail to produce a viable pregnancy and ultimate baby - well, that's another story for another day.