Quotable Quotes: Sunday Morning Pillow Talk

Sometime between dawn and bagels...

Me: I know we aren't supposed to, but I think we should have sex.
N: Don't write checks your pussy can't cash.
Me: Fair enough. Want to do a crossword?
N: Sure.

This is the least fun way to make a baby. Ever.

Gesundheit

One embryo has been transferred, and bed rest has begun.

So far so good. Except that I sneezed.

I keep wondering if the way I sneezed caused so much impact on my mid-section that my uterus seized and caused the embryo to purge out of me. Or maybe the embryo got decimated by the violent crush of my uterine wall like some torture device from the Middle Ages. Or perhaps it met with some other sneeze-related demise too gruesome for me to even imagine.

Well, just in case my little guy did survive the Darwinian sneeze test, I'll keep best resting until Thursday morning, as prescribed, and then I'll go in next Thursday for my beta.

In the meantime, fingers crossed that I don't sneeze again. And also that I get pregnant.

My Biological Clock Has One Hand Clapping. Sometimes.

So, I got caught in an undertow of grief the other day. I could try to defend myself by saying that I freaked out because my estrogen level is 2500 instead of the normal 150, but I'd rather just accept the fact that I freaked out because I freaked out.

Today is a good day, though, due mostly to my trying to keep in mind the following four things:

One. All donors are going to present themselves in a "buy me" kind of light, and this is something I should have anticipated. Instead I took my donor's profile at its word and developed expectations about her that later turned out to be untrue, and I realize now that this is one reason why intended parents (my husband included) don't want to meet their donors. But it's always been important to me that my future children have the choice of knowing their genetic parent, and despite the fact that I don't love my donor, I still think that meeting her was the brave and right thing to do. I have no regrets on that count.

Two. All breeding is a crapshoot, and there's no reason for me to think that my eggs would have produced better children than my donor's eggs will. So what if my donor is heavier than she said she was, that she's more photogenic than she is beautiful, and that she isn't brilliant. Women are born with 1 million eggs. Men produce over 400 billion sperm over their lifetimes. This means that N and my donor can breed a possible 400,000,000,000,000,000 different types of people. Right now thirteen of these four hundred quadrillion exist in the form of zygotes that are developing at my clinic's embryology lab. All I can do is hope that they're relatively good ones.

Three. Nurture over nature is a mantra that floats around on PVED quite a lot. That and epigenetics, which is the study that looks at the extent to which people's brain, body, and character are formed by elements other than genetic code. The other day, I posted my emotional crisis on PVED, and a dozen lovely PVEDers rallied around me saying things like, "My child is exactly like me in ways that I can't begin to explain. Don't worry too much about the donor. Your child will be yours." OK, PVED. I believe you. And I love you.

Four. When I first got into this infertility thing, I adopted a mantra:

My biological clock has one hand clapping.

This philosophy was meant to serve as an inspiration and reminder that this is first and foremost a process of self-reflection. Moreover, my success at the end of this experience wouldn't be a child but rather an awareness of who I am in the context of this challenge. This meant releasing expectations, accepting outcomes, and embracing my world as it was.

Over the past 5 years, I've failed to live up to my mantra more than I've succeeded. I still have hopes and expectations, and I don't always do the amount of reflective work that I should. My biological clock just isn't as Zen as I wish it was.

But in the wake of being bowled over by grief at the start of the week, I've tried my best to re-remember this philosophy. I've seen my brilliant therapist twice, I've let myself feel vulnerable around my friends and e-quaintances (yes, you!), and I've had such rich and sweet conversations with N that I've managed to fall in love with him all over again - yet again.

So, yes, I had a freak-out a few days ago because despite my best efforts, sometimes my biological clock goes cuckoo. But sometimes my biological clock actually does have one hand clapping, and today is a good day.

The Fert Report

Here are the results from the June 7th retrieval:

20 eggs were retrieved
15 were mature
13 fertilized

By Tuesday, June 12 - the morning of my transfer - the number should go down a little, but there'll probably still be at least 8 or so, which is considered very good.

Who needs more than 8 children anyhow?

Buyer's Remorse: Egg Edition

I met my donor for lunch yesterday. The following are excerpts from our conversation.

My Donor: "I'm really good at a lot of things. Like flower arranging. I'm great at succulents. Look at these pictures.
Me: "They're beautiful."
My Head: "I hope she doesn't google search my house and see how bad my yard looks."

My Donor: "I'm also great at make-up. I want to do make-up for the movies. Like for Johnny Depp."
Me: "It's wonderful that you know what you want to do."
My Head: "But your eyebrows are drawn about an inch too thick, and they're kind of scaring me."

My Donor: "And I'm a great writer."
Me: "..."
My Head: "Your emails and texts suggest otherwise."

My Donor: "So, what else should I tell you? Oh, yeah! I have a son! He's 10."
Me: "That's right. I remember that from your profile."
My Donor: "He lives with my mom. I was too young and crazy when he was born."
Me: "Do you have a picture?"
My Donor: "Yes, you should see him. He looks exactly like me."
Me: "How cute. He seems very happy."
My Head: "Oh, god, he's fat. My kids are going to be fat."

My Donor: "I was a really funny-looking kid. I had a big head. And then I grew up, and I got skinny and pretty."
Me: "..."
My Head: "You're not that skinny. Or that pretty."

My Donor: "I'm really glad you're pretty. I was hoping the recipient was going to be pretty. I don't know why. I just was."
Me: "..."
My Head: "How I look doesn't matter at all because my genes die with me. Yours, on the other hand, will live on in this arrangement. Lucky me."

My Donor: "From my last cycle, the lady's having twins. I love the idea that there are all these kids from me all over the country because I know I'm a really great person."
Me: "..."
My Head: "Holy shit. I'm breeding a narcissist."

My Donor: "I might get a glass of wine when our food comes. I know they said not to, but I don't think it matters. I drank wine throughout my whole cycle last time, and they still got, like, 26 eggs."
Me: "..."
My Head: "What?
"Also, WHAT?
"Also, they may have retrieved 25 eggs (not 26), but only 18 fertilized, and only 5 made it to transfer. That's the number that really matters. Five.
"Also, who knows how alcohol affects the eggs with all this medication?
"Also, how much have you had to drink during this cycle?
"Also, if you're drinking, what else are you doing that you aren't supposed to?
"Also, do you know this is costing me $40,000 that I don't really have?
"Also, WHAT THE FUCK?!"

~~~

On the bright side, I finally have a distraction from the panic that embryos won't implant because my uterine lining is only 6.3 mm thick when it should be over 7. I'm not even sure if I want them to implant.

I should have chosen another donor.
I should have tried IVF sooner rather than wasting all that time with inseminations.
I should have tried to get pregnant when I was younger.
I should have planned my life better.

Why did I do this donor egg thing again? Maybe being childless wouldn't have been that bad. Better than having overweight, not-too-bright, narcissistic children. Better than raising kids that aren't my own.

And all the while, egg retrieval day is tomorrow.
Ugh.

Positive Thinking

I wish I could say that I'm optimistic about this donor egg cycle, but I just can't let myself go there. My pregnancy test is in 4 weeks, and I've started to prepare for the worst; only a fool would count on a positive.

To be honest, I'm loaded with fear and vulnerability, and I'm doing everything I can to protect myself against rosy thinking. I never let myself fantasize about baby names or and imagine what it'll be like to post a photo of a little one on my Facebook page because things so rarely end up the way you hope. Of course I know that this cycle can work, but so allowing myself get giddy about it is just not something I can do.

My donor's egg retrieval is tentatively scheduled for June 7, which - in IVF terms - is considered Day 14 of a pregnancy. By those same calculations, 13 days before retrieval is Day 1 of a pregnancy, which - incidentally - is today.

Yes, I know it's a twisted logic, and not at all based in reality, but by a certain fantasy yardstick, today I'm one day pregnant.

I realize it's a nutty thing to think, but a small part of me occasionally succumbs to false hope, and I imagine what it would be like to announce it to the world. I know I can hardly anticipate a positive outcome since the odds are not great, and my result can easily fall on the side I don't want.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not a huge fan of positive thinking because I just don't see the point; I know too much about all the things that can go wrong at every step of the process, and the reality is that anything can happen.

But try as I might to suppress the optimism, there are brief moments where I can't help but think happy, hopeful, giggly thoughts. A positive is possible, after all, and a positive in 27 days means that I'm one day pregnant today.

Still, it's a crazy mindset, and there's no way I'm going to let myself imagine that!!!

Plagiarizing Frankenstein

I could have written Frankenstein.

If we're talking about the story of someone who is overwhelmed by grief, who can't accept life's fate, who wants so desperately to defy the limitations of our bodies that the only escape is to create a human composite made of other people's body parts, then yes, I could have written Frankenstein.



Like the eponymous Victor Frankenstein, I'm doing everything I can to bring an unnaturally conceived person into this world: a brand new life spliced together from other people's body parts by combining painstakingly selected pieces in order to create my very own monster.

Two centuries ago, this was a horror story. Some argue it was the original tale of science fiction. Today it's science fact.

There are those who don't like science facts, however, and many of them strongly oppose egg donor in vitro. They see the procedure as a severe encroachment on the laws of nature and an ungodly experimentation on human life.

They're not entirely wrong.

I'm aware that donor egg IVF is some freaky shit. I recently got pretty skeeved out myself after reading an article about how donor egg babies are more strongly linked to pre-eclampsia - a condition that was essentially described as the uterus rejecting a foreign body that it doesn't recognize as its own.

I read "foreign body" as "Frankensteinian monster."

All of which brings to mind the last time I read Frankenstein during a college course on The Gothic Imagination where the professor drove home an essential question:

In the book, the monster is actually a loving, emotional, and vulnerable being, whereas Victor himself is an arrogant man who ignores the grotesqueness of his scientific interventions because he's too much of a self-absorbed coward to accept the limitations of the human body's vulnerabilities. If this is the case, then who is the real monster? The creature or Victor?

Or, since we're plagiarizing: my baby or me?

But before we demonize me or Vic too quickly, it bears keeping in mind that most medical procedures were once thought creepy and weird. The first organ transplants were over 100 years ago, and I don't imagine those went over too well. Isn't it possible that donor egg in vitro won't always be met with the same cocked heads and scrunched faces that I get today?

Either way, I'm doing it. My donor's egg retrieval is in 3½ weeks, and my embryo transfer is in four. In 5½ weeks, I'll have my first pregnancy test, and at that point we'll know if there's a little monster in the works.

Copyright laws be damned.