Today, I'm having a bit of a rant on how it is not normal and so unfair. And how I just want to be normal. I feel like I've spent so many months reassuring myself that many people are not 'normal' and I've just came to a point where, you know, sometimes when you're different you just want to see differences, and appreciation for differences. Heck that. Lots of people are, in fact, normal. Most people, in fact, are normal.
We've got to the point where pretty much all my friends on IVF have succeeded. One pair are 40 and 36, after 3 years of being married, yes, less married time than us. We are the abnormal, even of the unlucky. There are times that us being here, with absolutely no progress, after almost two years, makes me want to scream. It makes me, in my darkest moments, wish they weren't successful, too.
We went for a consultation at Dr N's, our original private-care doctor. After a protracted discussion, he asked me to do a scan and, lo, although I was on the 33rd of a cycle that was royally screwed up (period stain only two days before, for one evening, then it was gone and a stain a week ago and then gone, and pre-ovulation temps as late as Day 21–22, even though the lining was dense (thus seemingly on the verge of a period), there were actually antral follicles in there. And also, surprise surprise, two larger follicles and one really large, mature follicle.
Apparently, this might be the lead follicle from the IVF cycle. Amazingly, it would have been 8mm as of Day 8 and somehow on Day 33, it had yet to really reach maturity. So not only were the meds not encouraging follicle growth, they might actually have slowed down the process. Or, they might be the secondary follicle on the left ovary or one of the tiny follicles from the right ovary. Or, I might actually have produced more follicles eventually, just more slowly.
In some cases, you can have your lining and ovulation be out of sync. The estradiol levels were low, so it's conceivable the eggs would have taken a long time to develop, so long that it overshot the lining cycle and the drop in estradiol causes breakthrough bleeding. Thus, you can have a period and be ovulating; similarly, you can have a period and get pregnant or be pregnant.
Logic says that this egg, produced in said circumstance, would probably be of fairly poor quality. It might not even contain an egg. But Dr N, being the rather aggressive, pro-medication doctor, wanted us to take a jab of Pregnyl and try naturally anyway, through the period, then use progesterone Crinone sticks and Duphaston to support the womb lining. Which all seems like a hyperbolic amount of medication and effort, when as we've ascertained, there may not be fertilization anyway, certainly with the spermies swimming in there with all the blood and a random egg maybe, somewhere, but I've long given up questioning or trying to understand these processes. You just do it because no sense wasting a good cycle and you have to think positive, you never know! (If I sound just a tad sarcastic, I really am. I'm on my second week of being crabby and tired from terrific Progesterone-induced migraines, having my chest so over-inflated that all my shirts gap tightly open and I've had fierce red acne breakouts over my face and body — and it's all been for nothing, as my period came bang on target).
Incidentally, this is why I'm quite cynical about the public-care NUH: they never even called me back for a check-up after cancelling the cycle, which was inspected by Dr W's stand-in doctor, without which how on earth would I or they have known what had been going on? I suppose that's why one pays for private care, and it's really expensive too, the sum total of the consultation, ultrasound, progesterone medication and other medications? A cool $480.
So, we know that my eggs are old and poor quality and diminishing, but they are still eggs and they are still there. I am not in my twenties but I am in my first years of my thirties, yet chronologically, despite my fairly young age, I'm experiencing these characteristics. We know that because of these conditions, response to IVF meds and process is poor and ultimately may not produce enough response to be effective. Z's sperm is poor in motility and very poor in morphology but very high in count. In theory, we are still unexplained. Two years of inexplicable infertility, in a world where many people conceive on their honeymoon, first month, first few months and first year.
We're going for a pre-adoption briefing in November. Astonishingly, that was the closest dated slot I could procure. I'm predisposed toward a baby girl from China because I feel the country has given me some incredible experiences. This is a tougher process and with fewer accredited agencies than if we were to adopt a baby from Malaysia. (Singapore has relatively few babies for adoption, the education system is fairly pervasive so detection tends to be earlier and abortion is legal). The process can take as short as 2.5 months or as long as 1 year and the first step seems to be choosing which agency to use. You can use a public agency or engage a private agent, which speeds up the process and may give you more choice in the baby, whereas public agencies, certainly in China, dole out infants without choice and your only sluice gate is the China-conducted health check. It sounds like a pit hole of lemons and car dealers.
On one hand, I'm all factual and efficient. The process, though long, is arguably much more efficient than actually getting pregnant and bringing more souls into the world. On the other hand, I'm seething at having to go through this process. I can't decide if it's happy or humiliating, or both.
In my worst of days, I ask myself why do I want to become one of those mums that complains every day and sends out these truly ridiculous (real-life examples quoted here) articles about being respectful and trusting your child's body signals of food, not feeding them rice cereal because it hardwires them for sugar for life, and how to wire your child's approach to technology with brain research, only pausing for breath to "share the daily doses of joy and cuteness". It's so irritating to people around them and no one really gives a damn but them — why would I want that, when it's already unfair that I have to actively seek it?
At times, I think maybe this (just being two of us) is just the choice that God made for us and that this is the way it's supposed to be. That your life shouldn't be defined by more roles, more stress, more demands on your time, and having to be a mother. Why do I want to do this to myself, it it didn't come from a natural process, or even the foregone necessity of already having conceived?
Why does any woman? Do they do it because it is normal, or because it is expected? Or because their lives after marriage are empty without more stuff in it or because they are boring without their children? Do little girls grow up just wanting and waiting to be mothers? Is this what they do when they can't?
I guess it's not surprising that confronting the sobriety of all the potential emotional problems and consequences you and your child would have to face, as well as the legality as to which point you are essentially responsible for the child, whether from their home country or yours, whether you can bring in your own medical doctors or not, whether allocation is done via a lottery or mutual pick system, what the accountability and transparency of private agencies is, can make you stop and really doubt or at least consider what you're doing and why.
And why it invariably leads back to the same rub that working's kind of easier and so is just ignoring it. Anything else is kind of easier, actually. Except maybe baby-themed events and viewing every second baby and child photo from my gaggle of Facebook acquaintances. No, I take that back. Even that is easier, because at least you don't have to clean up when they are sick and I can look at their photos, feel miserable but be able to take a nap any day, any time of day that you want. Is this better, or worse? All I know is, it's not by choice.
The reality is, adoption is something that I believe it; it's also an alternative to being able to have a biological child. I wouldn't be at the second if I didn't believe in the first condition. But reading stories about children running off to find their birth mother and the romantic cache that a 'real family' holds for them, terrifies me. Having to acknowledge them or navigate a relationship outside of your child is overwhelming, unnecessary and unfair, yet the idea that our child would resent the choices we made, or share handwriting, sleeping positions, facial expressions and stories with them, seems only to layer the hurt, doubt and inequity of the whole situation. It's not a reason not to do it, I just don't know that I'm ready for that. (And maybe no adoptive parent is until it actually happens). As much as I would like for us to be parents, I still sometimes can't accept why I have to deal with all of that, on top of taking care of a child and whether it's worth breaking our hearts for a few years of cuteness and joy.
There are many days when we just look forward to teaching, travelling, spending quiet evenings and days with our own child, many days when I couldn't care less what conventional or royal families do to musk over the glorious flaunting of their uncomplicated and natural parenthood. But in truth, I suppose the journey takes more than a couple months from failed IVF to recurring medications and doctor's visits to really being able to accept any other options. The two reactions I get are those who push you toward the nobility of adoption — I think you're so brave, it's such a good idea, I want to introduce you to people who've done it, birth parenting isn't perfect either (talk about rhetorical, mainly for us that isn't Possible, therefore it is a really moot point) or those who express deep disapproval — you don't know how they will turn out, the children could have deep health issues that don't surface till too late, you're too young, often coupled with "have you tried TCM", or some other magical-cure-all. Funnily enough, I notice these kinds of subjects always expose their own inherent hypocrisies and insecurities; people who aren't close to their own children worry about abandonment genes in adoption, people who are aren't maternal tell you birth parenting isn't that great.
I told my mum, for example, that we'd signed up for the pre-adoption briefing; she didn't seem upset and she has often expressed that adoption or any alternative parenting is fine and the same as any other form of parenting. But the immediate thing she said was the same as always, too. Auntie Vicky, some friend of a friend, adopted her younger daughter from an orphanage in China that she visited, because she felt such a bond with this baby. And the kid is no end of trouble. (I've heard about Auntie Vicky about five times by now).
The kid can't study. No matter how much she gets her expensive tuition and pours resources and time into bringing her up, she just fails every year, out of everything, and she has behavioral issues. She doesn't know what to do with her. Sometimes, concluded stalwart Auntie Vicky, when the genes are not there, they are just not there. That's why, mum continues, when you adopt, you don't know the background; it is so scary.
I've grown immune to these kinds of talks. It's not that I don't inherently agree with the risks and haven't thought about them. The amazing part is not that my mum doesn't see the irrationality in the story, but that she doesn't seem to have given a second thought to how repulsive it makes me feel, to be in this position, to have to hear her say all of that. How sad it feels and how insensitive it was to say something like "when the genes are not there, they are just not there". I'm not angry at what she said; I'm angry at her for not knowing the difference. I also know that she would say that and happily go off to play tennis, never giving a backward glance at what she had said, because if your own mother cannot tell you an unvarnished truth, then who can? And that, in spite of all this, when push comes to shove, she would be supportive, as my parents always are.
I feel for all these women who don't have a biological choice. You just pass every day, indeed every year, considering your options and hoping that some last-ditch try works for you before you go in to see a doctor, or before you go into IVF, or before you adopt. In a more-perfect world, we would have circumvented this with thoughtful education and proper health testing, which would enable women who test at high risk of diminished ovarian reserves to freeze their eggs at a young age. Instead, science touts an infertility cure that gets around male factor and gives the men a free pass by giving the women tons of jabs and hormones to produce more eggs, and is, at the end of it, still dependant on her being able to produce many eggs for the science process to work with.
As we've gone through the last rounds of IVF, I can see that the many options of the doctors have now narrowed to a sense of 'what else can we try?' I don't know, as time goes by, if I'm becoming more immune and disinterested. Or if I'm just becoming more depressed and resentful. I suspect it's both.
