Eat. Pray. Laugh. - My Journey through Infertility

Before you say anything, I know the name of this blog sounds like a best-selling novel or movie starring Julia Roberts. And perhaps, if it's written well-enough it will become that.  Since Valerie Bertineli and I resemble each other (a lot), she could play me. (Valerie have your people call my people).  Anyway....the novel you're thinking of is Eat. Pray. LOVE.  But after thinking of all that I've been through over the last nearly 6 years of fertility testing, infertility diagnosis, surgeries to help infertility, infertility treatments, infertility acupuncture, surgery to remove my one good ovary that the last doctor destroyed, more tears than one person could possibly cry in a lifetime, more time, more tests, more treatments, TONS of hormones mostly given as shots to myself (after the first 3 IVF rounds I had given or had given to me about 150 injections), and a small fortune all in the hopes of getting pregnant...well, there was nothing I loved about any of that. So - I replaced LOVE with LAUGH...because without laughter at moments throughout this whole journey, I'm not sure I would've made it through. After all, you can only cry so much and we don't have flood insurance, so the sobbing had to stop after a while. 



For the last month and a half, I've been hormonally manipulated, scoped, poked and prodded more than something that gets scoped, poked and prodded a lot. I can't think of any funny analogy to use here, so if you have one...let me know. Fertility treatments are not for the faint-hearted. Or for the shy. Since I started just this round of IVF, I've lost count of the number of people who have seen my lady parts.  My vajay-jay, my hoo ha.  Not just the doctor (who happens to be a dead ringer for my high school boyfriend KRB...talk about awkard), but also the 10 or so nurses, the ultrasonographers, the interns, and who knows who was watching during my hysteroscopy last month! Fertility treatments are NOT for the shy. After going through IVF treatment three other times, plus practically every two to three days for the last month, on a recent visit to the ER this weekend (MOM - I AM FINE), I hardly noticed I was walking down the hall with the gown wide open in the back. I just thought it was really cold in there. With my jacked-up hormones, my body doesn't know if it is at the North Pole or having it's own personal summer (borrowed from my sister-in-law).  


To be clear - there's nothing funny about infertility.  But you can't help but laugh at some of the stuff you go through.  One good thing is that I can, for at least a short period of time, chalk up some behavior that's not typical of me as "the hormones."   Wonder how long I can use that excuse??  On the the next topic of this blog....


Eat.  While this isn't the focus of this blog, because it's in the title of it - I feel compelled to give it a shout-out.  Food is often what brings my family to the table (figuratively and literally).  I come from a family of great cooks, and I love to cook.  I am blessed with a husband who is not a picky eater and who is a master at the grill and holds his own with anything else he cooks. I love when I come home on days he's off and he's got a healthy, delicious dinner prepared for me (and cleans the kitchen along the way).  We actually met at a local Mexican food restaurant and will probably eat there for our 5th anniversary this week.  Sharing meals with and baking for those I love is something I love to do. The holiday season is where I usually go crazy with the baking, but this holiday season may bring about a different type of bun in the oven.  It's likely that foods I make or eat somewhere else will show up on the way in this blog.   For example, this weekend I have to make a bazillion peanut butter bon bons for the Junior League's Holiday Market which is next weekend.  I've never made these bon bons so it looks like The Mistakery Bakery will be open late hours....

Pray.  Quite simply, I need your prayers. Next week(-ish) Michael & I will be doing our 4th in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure. The previous three IVFs all failed due to my egg quality.  And due to the fact that with the 3rd IVF procedure the doctor retrieved my eggs with what I think was a crow bar which resulted in a life-threatening abdominal blood clot (and subsequent ovary removal), I have no good eggs left. I couldn't put all my eggs in one basket if I COULD find them because there are none. This said, I am using an egg donor. [Gasp]. Yes, after looking through pages of potential egg donors, I selected one that looks practically identical to me: gorgeous, young, 5'9", blond hair, blue eyes.... [I'm 42, 5'3" on a good day, brunette, brown eyes].  Actually she does favor me to a great extent and has a similar personality based on a few questions she answered.  


Her donor # is 604. When I think of her as #604, I can't help but insert an imaginary tag in her ear like our cows have. #604 is anonymous to me and has been screened for psych issues, infectious disease, certain genetic conditions, etc. In fact, she's probably more sane that I am after under-going three freaking rounds of IVF!   All those hormones tend to do a number on you.  Anyway, back to #604 - she has children of her own and is 26. She is really beautiful and petite.  I know little else about #604 except her medical history. However, I have an amazingly good feeling about this donor.  I wish I could let her know that there are a lot of people praying for her.  I had to sign a waiver that I wouldn't try to find out who she was, but if anyone out there reading this is donor #604 with Houston Fertility Institute - thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing your eggs. 


The way is works essentially is that #604 will take a lot of hormones to cause her body to produce a lot of eggs. Soon, her eggs will be retrieved from her body (by a different no-crowbar weilding doctor) where they will then be fertilized in the lab using Michael's sperm. After 5 days, the best 1-2 embryos will be transferred to my uterus. And then we wait....for a long several weeks to see if it worked. During that time, I'll closely watch for every possible sign and symptom of early pregnancy. I'll watch the my body like it's never been watched (at least not in this past decade) to see if I detect any minute changes.  I'll worry about twinges of cramping that I'll surely feel and in fact, I'll probably imagine some symptoms. It's probably a good thing that Michael will be deer hunting a lot during this time as I'll still be very hormonally jacked-up and basically a nut. 


As a Christian, I am a firm believer in the power of prayer. As a behavioral scientist, I read a lot of studies - multiple studies have examined the effect of prayer on IVF treatment - specifically involving the embryo transfer part (which is what I'm having done). Many of these studies have shown statistically significant differences for the effect of prayer on the outcome of IVF-embryo transfer (50% positive outcome vs. 26% - which is really good) For my fellow statistic geeks p=.0013.  This number basically means that it wasn't a fluke.  


So - if you pray, please specifically thank God for the doctors and for the technology to enable infertile couples to fulfill lifelong dreams of having a family, and for the donors who share a very personal part of themselves with someone they'll never know. Pray for #604 to produce an adequate number of good quality eggs that become fertilized. Pray for Michael - he's had to deal with a very hormonal me for a while and has been a huge support to me. And lastly - pray for me. Ask that my body be prepared for the receipt of a precious embryo and that it is able to provide it with the perfect home to grow. I don't know the exact date of the procedure yet, but it looks like it will be the end of next week.


I feel very confident that this will work this time. At least I really really really hope it does. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Eat. Pray. Hope. After all, I've held on to hope for so long that I fear I may get rope burn.  But I have this crazy confidence this time- like the glass is full and overflowing confidence (and I'm not usually an optimist) - that it WILL work.  I have #604.  And we have a ton of friends and family praying for us.   If you're still reading this blog, I hope that you'll join the prayer chain and pray for #604, the doctors, and my uterus.