The ART Dung Heap

Lately I have spent far too much time contemplating the ART scrapheap.

Another predictably downbeat appointment with the fertility specialist, more delays and a 45^th birthday end date looming large has brought Lifeslurper to even more reflection. I suspect that this time even Wobbles’ unfailing optimism has been brought to heel.

Our baby is floating further out of reach.

Tori Amos once sang; “You think there’s heaven where some screams have gone?” I now wonder if there is a place for all those who have valiantly tried (and failed) IVF. Perhaps What Becomes of the Broken Hearted is a more appropriate lyric?

Too commonly I hear from the media that ART is the sure-fire means to a ‘designer’ baby. What the media never makes mention of, are the numbers of people medical infertility treatments fail. Where are these people? How have they lived beyond IVF? How do they cope without a child? Do they complete their family though other methods? Do they ever find normalcy again?

No stranger to failure, I feel an acute kinship with these unknown solders of ART. The heroes that have gone before me. The pioneers who faced less developed methods and treatments. Those first older women who attempted to revive their late hopes for motherhood. I salute you all! Your combined tears, frustrations, and stresses float through the atmosphere, a tangible reminder of your joint efforts. Those nameless masses who fell in the pursuit of reproduction.

There must be life after IVF. So far IVF hasn’t brought us a life – in the form of a baby. The very presence of IVF tends to such the life out of the very living of those who bravely attempt to land on its rocky shores.

Wobbles and I don’t want a baby to complete or rescue our relationship, but we want one all the same. A little one of our own to love. The ovarian reserve has little time to work some magic. Donor eggs don’t fall from the skies. Adoption is not an option for us. The overseas purchase of donor eggs and the necessary away from home cycle this would require seems financially untenable. Last estimate was $50,000 per cycle. The already slim chance of a baby just got slimmer, and we didn’t even receive prior notice!

There was never a sense that IVF would be easy, nor that we would have certain success. We did not assume that this would work, but we certainly hoped it would. These days I find it increasingly hard being sandwiched between an IVF end date and a brief foray into the wilds of ART. Every day I encounter IVFers who expect – even demand success; those who do cycles followed by repeated Frozen Embryo Transfers; those who are disappointed when their embryo numbers fall into single figures, or whose embryos merely make it to morula stage. Those who are desperate to give their existing child or children a sibling.

I am part of the wider group, but not in the running. This is high school all over again; we’d talk about boys, but ‘funny’ looking Lifeslurper was never considered a serious threat. However, I was always handy for filling out the wall flower position behind my more acceptable classmates. The fertility clinics will treat me, but the treatment is not equal. More and more I feel like a terminally ill patient seeking that last stitch surgery that might prolong my life. I can’t imagine any other good or service for which we would pay so much money and be so passive about getting so poor a results.

If I had met Wobbles in the year prior to turning 45, I don’t think I would have ever put myself through this IVF caper. In what now seems like some form of divine punishment after a lifetime of loneliness I meant him when I was tantalisingly close to being considered ‘young’ enough to make babies. I was young enough to be part of the program, but possibly never considered a ‘starter’ by my own clinic. That first clinic and specialist said “hurry” but seemingly deliberately slowed us by many many vital months. Could it have worked? It all seems like a moot point now.

Not that such grim facts stop me from my favourite pastime; indulging in idle fantasy. Yes my so called ‘rich inner life’ never fails to get a good work out, despite the fact this never does me any good. My latest IVF fantasy is to find a younger women who wants to be a single mother by choice, but prefers not to use an unknown sperm donor. Wobbles could contribute his ‘swimmers’ (hey, he might be vague, but he is really cute, plus he is very very intellectual – he has lots of pieces of paper that say he is!) as a known donor. The young woman in return would do a donor cycle for us, supplying us with a percentage of her eggs. Of course, I’d have to demand some time delay before Imaginary Egg Donor is implanted with her own embryo/s – at least until after I was preggers – and well advanced to motherhood. Too many issues would result from her becoming (with Wobbles) a parent before me. *sigh!* This is just another Lifeslurper useless dream-slurp. My daydreams never ever come true!

If being successful requires a particular mindset, I am afraid I cannot find it.

In my most sorry-for-myself moments I just wonder why everything in life needs to be so hard.

My life thus far has known failure and disappointment, illness, poverty, violence and more. I find myself having to actually calm growing sensations of resentments of peers who sailed easily into their first professional jobs, marriages, children, their own homes, inheritances, lives of leisure. In some cases this has been a recipe for boredom and discontent, yet there has been an ease to it all.

My life of interruptions and changed paths remains in a perpetual position of setback. I could cope with previous failures, but this one somehow seems harder. Perhaps as it involves another person, IVF proves more difficult to manage, cease, or get over because these are not decisions for me alone to make.

In my worst moments, I fear the optimistic Wobbles took me on under the illusion of certainty that I would provide him with the family he aches for. I don’t believe he has contemplated his life left alone with Lifeslurper. I sense he may be afraid to do that.

Where to now? We are heading into IVF cycle five with no sense of excitement or anticipation. It seems beyond difficult. I am tied of the difficult. Difficulty should not be the norm. Contemplation of one’s own fertility should not be fraught with so much sadness and regret.