Baby or Highway

It was never supposed to happen like this.

 

Today as my state and country observes a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the fires three weeks ago, I find myself launching head-long into a different kind of grief.

 

Perhaps it is something about disaster that makes us turn our thoughts to new life? However, here thoughts of a baby predated the fires, along with all of a dealings with fertility clinics. The fires helped me to feel that various daily concerns were petty and unimportant. Yet there is one unshakable truth. Our quest for a baby is an important.

 

This week has brought a stark reminder of how fraught with difficulty the desire to have a baby is for the aged and fertility challenged.

 

On Sunday I had the tiniest of bleeds. Almost non-existent but it was there. This has never happened before. It was way too early for my period, but with my post-IVF body anything is possible. I waited for the inevitable full flow to start soon after. But it didn’t. There would be an almost five day pause before my menstruation ‘proper’ began. That five days became full of hopes rising, uncertainty, supposition and the inevitable disappointment. Despite all I have witnessed with infertility those long days between bleeds have reminded me that I – deep down – remain ever hopeful and keep suppressed longings for a baby I dare not admit to myself.

 

Not since I was ten years old and only recently in receipt of irregular regular ‘monthlies’ as the expression was back then, have I been so convinced there was a chance I could be pregnant. Back then, the early onset of physical maturity brought some half-hearted adult explanations of what was going on with my body. The most tangible thing I could grasp was the idea that it was now possible for me to make a baby, even though I wasn’t too sure on how that was achieved. I had heard all the oldwives tales about not sitting on public toilet seats, and one sort of delayed bleed and I harboured secret fears that I must be pregnant.

 

This week, despite a lack of charting and some rare post-operative bouts of “make it quick…everything is hurting!” (how sexy!) rumpy pumpy, my innocent ‘pre-bleed’ became (in my mind) a case of implantation bleeding. Some days in I had a long bout of nausea and vomiting – with no signs of a headache or migraine. I added 2 and 2 together and found it equalled baby. It was all mercifully short-lived, and by late one night there were signs I was about to bleed ‘properly’ and the next day I did – and how. Not before I had decided how wonderful it would be to not only have a baby on the way, bound to arrive only a shade past my 45^th birthday, I could side-step medical science and proudly know Wobbles and I had managed to do what most of the rest of the world manages to do, and make our own offspring without assistance and without endless financial cost. Better still, this baby would be of my own genetic material, and not the result of a humiliating search for a donor egg.

 

How does that expression go? Anything too good to be true usually is.

 

There was to be no last-stitch miracle natural conception, no matter how convinced my mind was. By week’s end I realized that my speculation had not only harmed my own psyche, but raised (then dashed) the hopes of my beloved Wobbles. Again, I had irrefutable proof of how much this endeavour means to him. Once again I was reminded of how much it hurts to see the disappointment he bravely tries to hide, and how much it hurts not to be able to give him the very thing he wants;

 

‘You should have taken up with someone younger’ I say for the kazillionth time.

 

‘I want to make a baby with you!’ He counters for the kazillionth and first time.

 

So on we go, picking up the pieces. Fully reminded of the difficulties  that lay ahead; delays, IVF medications, appointments, injections, delays, hopes, ultrasounds, dealing with clinic staff, poor results, time lost, money spent.

 

Somehow now we need to find the strength to enter the IVF Zone again. We now know how it all works. ART is not for the faint hearted. Just when you believe you have face every possible delay, error, oversight, miscommunication, disappointment, another arrives.

 

So where to now?

 

Last August when our fourth (and so far) final IVF cycle met with an unexpected snafu our ‘road to a baby’ made a sudden and unexpected detour. We needed rest, but were not to know then that we would spend more than six months with no real progress on the ART front. Okay, there was that laparoscopy back in December – the procedure that at least two fertility specialists either forgot or just plain over looked. We still are unsure why it took a third doctor to realise that further investigations may be warranted.

 

There was a long bout of whooping cough, back troubles and sinus surgery to deal with as well. Moving house and town in the hottest summer on record also contributed to the extension on the already extensive break from IVF.

 

Whatever the case, it has taken until the last week to return to anything that suggests we are part of this whole ART deal. Such a long hiatus is not ideal when you are a female now aged 44 years. Come September the clinic will officially stop treating me and my own aged eggs, as 45 is the cut off point. Yes, overnight human eggs reach their use by date and are officially labelled ‘useless’, although it seems medical science has unofficially had mine marked ‘dodgey’ since we started with all this malarkey when I was a mere babe of 42.

 

There is every chance our faithful fertility specialist, Dr Loverley will start using the ‘dodgey’ label just a bit ahead of the official allowable end date. I suspect he will see us through one more cycle of our own, then it will be his way -  the use of donor eggs – or the highway, a place we have spent a lot of time on during this caper to have a baby. Most people might spent a lot of time between the sheets or bent over in interesting positions picked up from the karma sutra. Not Lifeslurper and her gorgeous (yet vague) partner Wobbles. Our time attempting to have a baby has largely been spent travelling up the highway (or railway) and finding new ways to gather up the thousands of dollars required to let medical science disappoint us – again!

 

There are signs of progress.

 

Now we have moved town. This means a nice five hours has been shaved off the round journey. That is a bonus! After indecision the one tiny asset I entered this Lifeslurper/Wobbles arrangement with – my dear little house has been sold. An economic downturn and a marathon effort means there will be a tiny profit which will fund some more IVF, so that is something. Will the settlement or closing on the property happen in time for this cycle to get going in early March? No one is really sure. However, there is hope. If not, the cycle will have another delay of one month.

 

This cycle is to be one of the old-fashioned variety. The long slow type that the fertility specialists all prefer. A contraceptive pill lead in, followed by the dreaded Synarel* nasal spray (generic name Nafarelin) before going onto the Follicle Stimulating Hormones (FSH) injections of Puregon or Gonal-F and any other goodies the fertility specialist cares to throw in. I have not done one of these cycles since cycle two. Synarel has previously caused headaches, hot flushes, irritability and hair loss. The hair has never grown back, but Wobbles forgave my grumpiness.

 

So I am a few days into taking the pill. This will continue for at least three weeks. I seem to be experiencing some kind of hormonal changes, as my mood has made an instant plummet for no apparent reason. When in doubt I always like to blame ART!

 

Knowing what is ahead for once does not bring me comfort. The months ahead will be tough.

 

Unlike at least 209 Victorian families I still have my loved ones. We don’t suggest a baby will make us love each other any more, but believe we have a lot of love (and more) to give to our child.

 

The risks are great, but the promises – no matter how slim – are even greater.

 

Continuing on is worth it. Isn’t it? 

 

 

* Nafarelin is a synthetic protein chemically similar to the natural gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), a hormone that regulates the output of gonadotropins by the pituitary gland (a small gland located at the base of the brain). Gonadotropins (FSH and LH) are hormones necessary for estrogen production by the ovaries.

 

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