My dear Reesey,
In the spirit that sometimes we have to ask to receive and because I can't send all my pregnant friends a card picture of a saint mother cradling a new-born with messages inside like "I hope you know how lucky you are, Happy Fcking Mother's Day from your best jealous and bitter infertile friend", I decided to write you a letter instead.
I'm writing this now, so that I get it off my mind, but also so that one day, when you have asked me But why or are colicky, or stumble over a basic math question for the 100th time, when I notice the sticky fingerprints everywhere over the walls and the dents in my beautiful coffee table where you jammed your spoon repeatedly against the wood grain, when you are intolerably selfish or obnoxious or I am aching, sick, thirsty and have screamed at everyone in the house, when I wonder whether it was a child I really wanted or just to be in love with my womb and family photos, I can read it and remember what this felt like.
We finished the first part of the IVF process now almost a month ago, in early April. It feels like ages. To not take my temperature daily, not have to go back to the doctor's, to just lead a fairly untrammelled, regular life, made the time fly by. I've had to take birth control pills this month, in preparation for a transfer hopefully in the coming weeks. Ironically, in this carefree month, we've been stymied in trying naturally, since I'm anyway on the pill to better time my cycle.
We were hoping to do this last cycle but wouldn't you know it, the one time that you need a dominant follicle to track when to replace the embryo, on Day 8, I didn't have any dominant follicles. What do you mean, no dominant follicles, I wanted to yell at the ultrasound screen. I always have dominant follicles, that's precisely why the IVF cycles and retrievals always yield such a mixed batch.
Tomorrow I have to go back to Dr N's after a month's break and take a Lupron jab which will shut down my natural ovulation cycle and allow the doctor to more accurately monitor the uterus lining and follicle development. Last night, I looked at the picture of you, the 4 3-day embryos and the 1 6-day poor blastocyte and I found myself just tearing hysterically at your uneven, unclear blastomeres, and what the embryologist had written, that all ten eggs had "severe cytoplasmic granularity".
For a few weeks I had been able to avoid googling all these terms, but now that the days are drawing near, I'm scared. It's the same fear, I guess, that the Un-Mother's Days are piling up. I'm scared that my eggs were all too cytoplasmically fragmented, which is indicative that they are poor quality and not viable embryos. I'm scared that the three day, rather than a five day freeze, means that our chances aren't good or that the poor quality of the eggs means that they aren't chromomally normal.
I am trying to tell myself that the embryologist did say that he has seen worse eggs than this succeed on IVF and that he froze them, must mean that they have some viability. I am trying to hold on to hope, to tell myself not to be negative or jinx this process before we even begin.
I am trying to tell myself that even though my symptoms line up with having a poor diminishing ovarian reserve, poor response and a low AMH and high FSH, that we can get past the line, we were what IVF was made for and it can help us still, to make you. I don't expect, I can't expect to ever do what women naturally do every month, I am just praying that all this help, is good enough to get us across the line. The truth is, if the eggs were not granulated, we probably wouldn't be going through this, so we just have to hope that it works.
But of course, I'm struggling. I'm worried about the Lupron jab to shut down my cycle, scared about its effects, and scared also of the outcome. I don't want to take this jab to shut down my whole cycle, of course it scares me and I would rather have a period and try naturally. I'm trying not to ask the question, what if this is for nothing? I'm trying to tell myself that these eggs are there, they are good, they are waiting for you and they will try their best.
So that's what I want to tell you, my love. And I'm sure this won't be the last time I say it, through your life and mine, but it is I think, the most important time. Please try your best, to be a sticky bean. I know that if it doesn't work, if you don't result, I will have to pick up the pieces and tell myself that we gave it our best shot, that the quality just wasn't good enough, that it may never be good enough because after many rounds, this is all we have, and that the eggs were just too granular for them to be normal or viable. But they did all fertilize and they did grow, so at least we are here. We are trying our best to give you a warm, thick comfortable lining to nurture you and we want you to reach out and grab that lifeline, if you can.
What is the meaning of Mother's Day? Is it all that you do for your child after becoming a mother? Or maybe for some of us, the things that we do, to become mothers. Are we celebrating the choice to become a mother, since most of their children after all, didn't choose them? Do we really think of the children when we have them, or are we thinking mostly of ourselves?
Daddy and Mummy have done everything to give you a fighting chance and we would do everything. I would do all the injections, all the medication, all the hours and hours of waiting, all over again just to have a chance to welcome you in our lives. With every pill I take, I tell myself that I am getting closer and if it gives you a chance, I will do whatever it takes. I never understood my own mother so well, as going through this process. We can't though, do everything. I have to simply let go of this last stage, and know that God is in control. He is in control of the result and He alone will determine that spark of life.
It is what it is and what it will be. I know that, I just want you to try, as hard as you can. I pray that if it is enough for you to survive, that you will. I pray that in our little batch, is that elusive good-enough egg. I pray that you will come to us.
I miss you so much. I miss you in the quiet emptiness of early evening, and sometimes late at night, when Daddy and I are in the study and I wish you were here in the next room so we could hear you cry. I miss you when I'm walking in a supermarket, and when I leave work and think you would be great to come home to. I miss you when I turn around in a crowd and wonder which little girl you are, what you will like and who your friends will be. Ok, if you are a boy, I admit I don't imagine you as much, because I think you would be like your father — you would have small kind eyes, and be ever so sweaty.
Your daddy and I love you so much. We cannot wait to meet you and to look at your face. Daddy cannot wait to watch soccer on the couch with you, or for you to give him a jam-filled kiss, or to have you huff around him in an aggrieved sulk. We miss you so much more than we know and we hope you will be a sticky, sticky bean, because we are wishing on you so, very much.
I read this lady's blog [Waiting for Baby Bird] over the last week and her story and message, which is to trust in God and his timing, just really humbled me. As I went through this last tedious week, with the copious, almost unrelenting pregnancy and delivery announcements from everyone near and far, from as present as my work teammate whose wedding I attended last year, to ghosts of Christmases past, like my ex-boyfriend's wife, of course, it made me ask *why* *and* how many more times. Is it possible to look past sadness to gladness? Her point, which is that God never answers such searing questions about who gets pregnant and who can't because these questions don't change anything and they don't make you a better person, made me think about whether I have an open heart for God and whether I really believe that he delights in life and beauty.
Her stern perspective really resonated with me, that we choose what we love, that I can choose to love Mother's Day and rejoice in friendships. That it is easier to be pitiful, than to worship God when it hurts. For me too, there have been many days when my circumstances have spoken louder than God and often, I have had more fear than faith. I guess one offshoot of medical intervention is that if it doesn't work, you're left with many reasons and overwhelming probability that would be increasingly difficult to overcome. As much as I ever asked God for healing, I was also often just trying to push through being told so many negative things, that it was hard to remember that I'm supposed to ever be a mother.
It sounds very hokey and preachy doesn't it? But what I most took away, is that I am not sufficiently excited about how God is going to bring you into our lives and the journey of it, if I am always bitter about how much I seem to be doing for myself. And that speaks to me because I want to welcome you into an environment that is energetic and positive, not one that is overshadowed by dread, sadness or the feeling of being 'stuck'. In that vein of being hopeful and believing in the best, I've been praying that you're twins. Preferably twin girls, since if it's twin boys, Daddy might make me do IVF again (kidding, kidding).
One thing that she subscribes to, is putting aside a day to put your reality into action, as it were. She isn't pursuing treatment, but she has a nominated 'Josiah Day', a day where she has a crazy party with baby-themed foods, baby backed ribs and baby potatoes and buys or researches one thing for her as yet-unborn child. And that made me laugh, the decidedly joyful, if creepy gesture of filling a wardrobe with your swaddles, books, playschool rosters or wall stickers. All of which we've done and we will continue to do. You know, it can make you cry, or it can make you laugh but the touchstone is the same. To trust in God, trust in his timing and celebrate, and to get ready to have you.
And one day we will. One day, it will be Mother's Day. It will be Mother's Day every day.
Love,
Mama
