Is it really different?

I've been afraid to post. I'm afraid to talk about what is happening in ttc because things have been going so smoothly that it seems all too simple right now. I guess, after 5 1/2 years of fertility angst, I feel I might jinx any smooth sailing we have. If I manage to get pregnant I'm guessing I will feel this even more. But I'm trying to embrace the positive so here is what is up in our queer ttc-land.

I healed up from my polyp removal procedure very well. I had my post-op check up four weeks after the surgery and the doc cleared me to start trying again. With in a week I was hunting for a new known donor. Last week we met with a finalist on our potential donors and by the end of the meeting we were setting up the first insemination date..which happened to be less than a week later. That was this past Monday. Wednesday was the second insem. Timing was perfect and I ovulated Thursday.

Now for a bit about Mr Donor. He prefers to be pretty quiet about all this but I can say that we are only his second donor experience. The first couple he worked with was last month and they got pregnant on the first try after a long time trying with frozen. He is kind of Conservative which is a little strange but he seems to be a bit Libertarain leaning so the whole "live and let live" thing makes him okay with us being queer, poly, tattooed and pierced weirdos. His only rule is he wants to know the relationship is solid and stable. Well, Monkey and I have been together for 12+ years so we passed that requirement. :) He met Author and, after some questions about how we structure our family, he said he thought it was unique. That was it.

Every donor brings a unique and often hilarious situations. Mr Donor prefers to keep exchanges during working hours and in public places. This is so it doesn't take time away from his family. As a result, we are doing the sperm pass-off at a local mall food court. Yes, really. As long as there is less than an hour between creation and insemination, and is in a dark jar with a lid and kept warm, it is still viable. Author has decided that if I get pregnant the belly name will be "mall rat".

So I'm back in it! Next cycle I'll be doing a Clomid challenge test with lots of blood work and insems with Mr. Donor. I'm on the last leg of my ttc journey. I either get pregnant or I accept a new future without children. Now I just have to wait to find out which one it is.

The last chapter

Bee contacted us last week to officially end our donor relationship. He's sorry. He wishes things hadn't worked out this way. Blah, Blah, Blah. Whatever. Really, I'm not upset with him. A little annoyed but I can't work up much anger at him. I've been through this before and I don't get terribly attached to donors anymore. After last month I expected this.

So, here is where we are: I'm done with donors. I can't muster up the energy or hope it takes to slog through and find a match. We feel we've done all we can ourselves. We have two Clomid/Trigger/IUI cycles waiting for us with our NP. We think that Feb/March 2012 will be a good time to do those. As I've said before, these are our "no regrets" cycles. The last thing we need to check off our list to feel like we did the best we could manage. We will use frozen sperm and jump through all the fertility clinic hoops for those last two cycles but if those don't work, well, not every infertility story ends with a baby. Actually, a majority of them don't.

After that we will go on with our lives. Our hearts will break, and mend. We will grieve our loss of the child that never was and then move on to celebrate the life we already have. Until then, I try take care of myself and to start learning to let go.

Leaves aren't the only thing changing

I think the biggest change is how I'm feeling about trying to get pregnant. As of right now we are planning to do one insem each cycle with Bee until early next year. Once we've saved up enough we will do my last two clinic infertility cycles. I'm already thinking beyond those cycles to giving up. Of course, I've been thinking about that for awhile but, well, I guess I'm making the assumption that they won't work. I don't expect to get pregnant but I have to try. I have to check it off the list so I don't feel regret sometime later. Grief I will feel no matter what I do but I don't want to have regrets.

As a result of my lack of hope, I'm feeling pretty detached from the process. This weekend starts my fertile period. We emailed the dates to Bee and he hasn't gotten back to us yet. I'm indifferent. We could do an insem this cycle or not. Monkey, however, is not making the "it won't work" assumption. He can't really think about after the infertility cycles to giving up. Though he says he would be fine to give up I don't think he ever imagined we'd get to this point. It isn't a real possibility in his mind yet. He truly believes that, somehow, between now and then I will get pregnant and have a baby. I don't believe that at all. As I said before, I'm only doing these last attempts so that I know in my heart and my mind that I did whatever I was capable of to get pregnant. If Monkey is right and I do get pregnant in this process I will be completely and utterly shocked. It will actually require me to shift my life view back to what it was before I lost hope. Well, some of it anyway. I rather like some of the downsizing ideas that have come out of planning a different life.

Monkey and I have always been on different stages in this ttc process. I always feel like I'm a step or two ahead of him in it. I guess that isn't unusual since it is my body we are working with. I have to think ahead every two weeks and beyond. He has less to do in the theoretical stages of becoming a parent this way. He is thinking about it more now because he is trying to prepare for the possibility that it really won't happen. It makes me sad to see him trying to hold back the grief. I know all too well what it feels like.

To a certain extent I'm just ready for this to be over. I consider the possibility of giving up before the IF cycles but only for a moment. I need that closure. I need that final option behind me to let go. So now I'm in a ttc limbo with nothing to do but go through the motions and wait to see what happens.

The beginning of the end of another beginning.

October marks five years of my life focused on trying to get pregnant. I've had a few long breaks in those years. One break was almost a whole year its self. However the thoughts, emotions and planning of ttc was never very far off even on the breaks.

October also brings my 37th birthday. About a year and a half ago I decided that 37 was a good age to seriously reconsider continuing the babyquest.

Monday I got an email from our donor, Bee, saying that his life has been taking some crazy stressful turns. As a result, though he would really like to continue helping us, he can only do it if we are able to do a "more targeted approach". We have yet to hear from him exactly what he means by that. We assume it means doing one insemination a cycle. Though I do not blame him for the sudden turn in his life (a big part of it is a family illness) I'm still very disappointed. I really thought things were set for a good long try with this donor.

So all of these things hit me at once. The five year anniversary of our first ttc cycle, my 37th birthday in a few weeks and my donor limiting access unexpectedly. Usually when setbacks hit me on this ttc journey I bounce back, after a "life is fucking unfair why can't I have a baby" tantrum, with an adjusted course on the quest. This time was a little different. This time I didn't have the tantrum, though I did end up crying a little. This time I started to wonder "Is it time to start thinking about giving up"? I've never thought this particular thing before. I've thought about what it would mean to give up. I've even wondered how I would know when it was the right time to give up. However, this is the first time I've actually thought "is it time"? I feel like this is a sign that the time for giving up is getting closer.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not giving up yet. Monkey and I have decided that, for now, we will keep trying with Bee until January. At that time we will do our last two Clo.mid/trigger/IUI cycles available to us. After that, well, I'm starting to explore the other possible ending of my ttc journey. The one that doesn't end with the birth of a baby. I've mentioned before that adoption would be, at best, complicated if not impossible due to my open poly household. I'm not sure I want to go through that. As a result, most of what I'm considering is what my life would be like if I don't become a parent.

How would I feel about that in the long term? I know in the short term I would be heartbroken and grieving but I would work through that. When I hit menopause would I regret giving up before my cycles did? Would I always have that knife to the heart feeling when I see babies? Would I regret not jumping through all the hoops to attempt adoption? I'm big on researching. I went hunting for books and blogs on living childfree after infertility. There are very few that exist. Even fewer are available at my, usually well stocked, county library. I know there are lots of people who go through infertility and don't end up with a baby at the end. Where are all their stories? It feels rather lonely in this place in between giving up and going on.

The perfect cycle

The perfect cycle means nothing in trying to get pregnant. When donor visits are timed perfectly with fertile windows, you are feeling relaxed and healthy it feels like it should guarantee success. That isn't how this works. But still, when you have the perfect cycle, hope raises just a little. It all seems more possible that it will end with a positive pregnancy test, a worry-free pregnancy and a healthy birth. If only.

I've had more perfect cycles than I can remember. Obviously, it didn't mean anything about success. The one time I managed to get pregnant over the last 4 1/2 years of trying it was a comedy of errors. My cycle started while I was at a conference, at which I caught the worst stomach flu I've ever had in my life and my donor was out of town for my prime fertile days. Yet, this imperfect cycle resulted in, at least, a conception and a brief implantation.

You can't count on perfect cycles. I know that from painful experience. Yet I can't help but feel a bit more hopeful when everything falls into place so smoothly. I usually fight against this extra hope but this time I think I will embrace it. Who knows, maybe that will help too!

The Bee is cleared for flight.

The test results are back! That was really fast. It took less than 24 hours from blood draw to results. I'm impressed. Bee is clean, as we figured he would be since his risk factors are way low. So, now, it appears I have a donor. He will be coming over for tea and snacks on Sunday to sign the contract, talk details and setup our first inseminations.

My period is due in three days or so. This has lined up so perfectly I'm a little freaked out by it. I'm a little weirded out by feeling optimistic. After all this time, all these attempts, I still find myself feeling hopeful again with a new donor. It is true that I have more to be optimistic about this time. As I mentioned, I'm healthier in so many ways this time. That can't hurt.

So here I am, 4 1/2 years since that first ttc cycle. I have a new donor...again. Time to jump back in.

Donor karma

I feel like I've done something very good and am getting rewarded by our, soon to be, new donor. Maybe I've just burned off all my bad karma by having to weed through some really asshats to find this guy.

I think I'm going to call him Bee because he is both a "busy bee" and a "worker bee" in the project. Plus there is the whole "Birds & the Bees" thing that amuses me. (Though I guess with me it would be the Bears and the Bees!) So Bee is, hopefully, our new donor. Pending testing, which is in the works starting today. He should be getting the blood draws today and then it is just a matter of waiting for the results. I don't think there will be any problems but you have to check. Due diligence and all that.

Bee reminds me of my first donor. Eager, invested, accommodating and engaged. This makes me very happy. A little part of me is still waiting for it to all fall apart. I won't entirely believe this is worked out until he shows up for the first insemination. I do think that the decreased stress I felt about our first donor contributed to the one pregnancy that I managed to have, however briefly. Monkey is over the moon about Bee and is suddenly very optimistic again that I will be pregnant soon. I'm definitely more optimistic about the donor but that hasn't carried over to it actually working. We'll see though. I'm healthier than I've ever been, both mentally and physically. That certainly won't hurt our chances. I'm older and Bee is older than any other donor we've had but neither of us are completely out of the realm of likelihood to produce a child.

If the tests go as planned, as I expect they will, we will be starting next cycle. Since my cycle is due to start in a week that is right around the corner!

Pleasantly surpised

Well, pending std testing, it would appear we have a very eager and communicative donor set up. I'm still a little shocked. He is very communicative, engaged and thoughtful. He has a sense of humor about the process. He was curious about our poly situation and our gender identity but was respectful and open-minded. He wanted to know some basics about our family life and poly with kids stuff. He feels that if he is to participate in creating a child he has a responsibility to make sure the family is a good one. I can respect that. His only requirement is that he get a picture of the kid, however, he is open to being more involved if we are comfortable with it. We are leaving that open for now.

A strange thing, he sets off all of our gaydar something fierce but he has been very careful not to let on to his sexuality. We are confused by this but have chosen not to ask about it. I mean, if anyone is going to be accepting of this it is us. If he is gay/bi/queer he doesn't want to talk about it and that is fine with us. We respect his choice to keep sexual identity out of the donor relationship.

He is currently waiting for us to set up his tests. He has already asked "because I'm a planner!" when my next fertile window may be so he can mark it on his calendar.

I am pleasantly, cautiously hopeful that this will work out. If the test results get back in time we may be inseminating at the end of July.

I've got to figure out a blog name for him.

The hopeful skeptic

I have a meeting with a potential donor this week. I don't know much about him except that he says he is willing to meet our requirements, will communicate well and can show up during my fertile time. This is all I really care about. But I've had potential donors say all these things before and have them not be true. I no longer entirely believe it will be true but, well, if I wasn't still hopeful I wouldn't bother with the search any more. I am a skeptic but a hopeful one. I think that pretty much sums up my feelings about ttc in general. I am a hopeful skeptic.

The hunt

The time has come. Monkey is no longer working 50 hr weeks. He is down to just his full time job. The cold he came down with while stressed to his limits is starting to fade away. His first real weekend in about 3 months starts tomorrow night.

It is time to hunt for a new sperm donor.

Monkey and Author are my sperm wranglers. Well, Monkey is the wrangler and Author helps with separating the good from the bad. We consider this a division of labor. He deals with the sperm and I will deal with..well..the labor ::chuckle:: plus everything else that goes along with the whole pregnancy package. As a result of this deal I'm not involved in the first few screenings of potential donors. When we use frozen we have so little control that we actually don't care who we get as long as they have a history of pregnancies. Known donors are a lot more complicated but there are other advantages. The one time I actually did get pregnant (I miscarried) was with a known donor. I wish we still had access to him. Damn dream job offer in the UAE. Pttht.

Anyway, Monkey is on the lookout again starting this weekend. We aren't counting on finding some one for summer inseminations so I have a back up plan. We have two Clo.mid cycles left with my NP. She will only do them if I go for monitoring and do a trigger shot. I think it is time we took those last couple tries. We'll use frozen and do the IUI at home. (Yay for having a nurse practitioner for a partner!) I'm aiming for the cycle in mid-July. August has too many concerts and out of town things so that will be my rest cycle between medicated cycles. If by some amazing chance we have a donor by then, well, we may just do one anyway but with fresh.

I'm so tired of this. I just wish I knew what the result would be. I wish some one could tell me "Keep trying! You will be a mama bear yet!" Or "It is time to hang up the speculum and move on to accepting that you won't have a baby." I guess since I'm not so tired of ttc to give up then all I can do is keep trying until I get that pregnancy.

Getting impatient.

After 4 1/2 years of trying to get pregnant I think I'm finally getting impatient.

That isn't entirely true. I haven't really been patient by choice during that time. If we had the resources to get my ass into a fertility clinic I think we would have. If our insurance covered more infertility treatments/IVF or we could have gotten into a study. We could have the resources if we wanted to change our lifestyle and choice in work. Monkey could go work for some private clinic than only takes rich or over-insured people. I could go back to work full or part time to bring in more cash. But we like the way we live and what we do. Some people will pay any price, monetarily or emotionally, for a shot at having a baby. I guess Monkey and I have lower line. Life is too short and too unpredictable for us to make choices that would mean we'd be miserable.

Anyway, back to the main subject. Impatience. I'm ready to give those last two Clo.mid/monitor/trigger/IUI cycles a try. This isn't much of a big deal to a lot of infertility people but for me it is big. This will be the most intense thing I've done. I've done 4 Clo.mid/IUI cycles before but we didn't monitor or trigger. We plan on doing it in July/August.

We keep looking for a known donor. Well, we are kind of on hold until Monkey stops working 50+ hours a week. That should happen in 2 weeks. He'll get back to it again then. The summer cycles will likely be frozen sperm though.

::sigh:: I'm feeling a little hopeless...and very, very impatient.

Deserving

One of the comments I hate the most on ttc/infertility communities is "you deserve this." It is used to absolve any guilt people have of getting lucky and leaving the rest of us behind. It is a good thing to elevate guilt, especially in the infertility community, but the flip side of this statement is troubling. It implies that somehow those of us who haven't gotten pregnant don't deserve it yet. That we haven't suffered enough or we aren't good enough. That we aren't deserving. That disturbs me.

I've been striving, working, suffering for a pregnancy for the last four years. I've been taking care of my body to the best of my ability. Eating well, taking vitamins and cutting back on alcohol and caffeine. I have tracked my cycles, agonized over donor choices, coordinated schedules and read every conception, pregnancy and parenting book I could get my hands on. If this concept of "deserving" is true then what have I done to not deserve this? Why do good people, who have gone through a hell of a lot more than I have, not deserve this? Why do drug-addicted criminals with no interest in improving their lives get knocked up wily-nilly, keep doing drugs and living crazy deserve parenthood?

The answer is that deserving doesn't come into getting pregnant. There are great people, caring and dedicated to becoming wonderful parents, who never have a child. There are horrible people who only care about themselves, are abusive and hateful, who have a gaggle of kids. Even adoption isn't really about deserving, even though the system tries to say it is. (Trust me, I know enough adoptive parents to have seen that "deserving" only gets you the application.) Becoming a parent is a huge amount of luck. Maybe it is bad luck if you didn't want to be a parent or maybe it is the best luck in the world when you've been trying for 4 years and thousands (or tens of thousands for some people) of dollars of treatments. But ultimately that luck, that element of chance, is the biggest factor in whether or not you become a parent, deserving or not.

I am deserving. Monkey and I will make wonderful parents. We just have to hold out for our luck to change.

New Possibilities

Monkey and Author met with a potential donor last night. I will call him "Fixer," not only because he is an engineer, but because fixing problems seems to be a core of his identity. Fixer's wife was a surrogate for a couple they are friends with. He was very inspired by her gift to them and decided he should become a sperm donor. He also recently took a class on gender and sexuality that opened his mind to all that queer people have to deal with in a straight-based society so he decided that helping a queer family would be where his help was most needed. This is a problem he could help "fix."

It is actually kind of a sweet motivation and one that makes sense to me. The fact that he participated in helping his wife go through the surrogacy means he has seen the kind of legal hoops that are not nearly as involved as ours would be. Our sex and std rules all make perfect sense to him, as does our contract and our legal needs. (He loves our contract. Everything is spelled out. It is pretty detailed.) He is older than our past donors, early 40's, but in good health. I think this is why he isn't just donating to a sperm bank. They can pretty narrow on the age thing. For me age matters less. I always put the line at 50 because that is pretty standard. After that you really see a statistical spike in issues. He has kids, his youngest is about 6, so it hasn't been that long since he produced a kid.

Monkey and Author think this has an 80%-85% chance of working out. He doesn't live locally but is in our city every weekday and will happily commit to a schedule. He is very enthusiastic about this and very positive that this will work for us. I've decided to be hopeful.

So here is to hoping that next cycle I'll have a new donor and, hopefully, a positive pregnancy test not long after.

Donor Disappointment

There is nothing that drags me down like looking for a known donor. Every time we do it we have to wade through a swamp of horrid responses but those aren't the worst. The really terrible responses are actually kind of entertaining and, at the very least, are easy to spot and discard. Next are the responses who are outside our, clearly mentioned, age range (20-45) or are not in our area. Then we usually are down to a handful of people we will actually contact.

This is where I really end up getting my faith in people tested. There is always one who thinks that asking if some one is disease-free equals practicing safer sex. Then there is one who is just now realizing that the part of the ad where we say "you must be willing to sign a legal document to relinquish your parental rights to the child so the non-bio partner can do a second-parent adoption" that we really do mean you are expected to sign a legal document...with your name. No, you can't just not tell me your name. My kid needs support and health insurance that Monkey can provide but only if he is allowed to adopt the damn kid and he can't do that unless you sign away your claim of parental rights! (Can you tell this last issue is the one that we ran into last night?) These two are the most common issues we run into. Usually, it wipes the list clean and we have to start all over again. However, things can get stranger. I had one potential donor crossed off because we go.o.gled him (yes, we go.o.gle all our donors) and found out he was convicted of a felony and lots of shady dealings.

::Sigh:: There are still a few guys on the list that might pan out. I'm not terribly hopeful.

This is our last cycle out of the game. If we don't have a new donor by my next CD1 then we are going back to donor boy and his severe lack of communication and very limited schedule. I suppose I should be thankful I even have that. I just really miss my first known donor.

A break is as good as a rest.

I've found this ttc break to be exactly what I needed.

TTC fatigue is real, ask anyone who's been trying to get pregnant for more than a year (more than 4 years in my case.) You just get to this "fuck it" point where all the extra things you've been doing to supposedly help the process (but isn't obviously) becomes too much. Every prenatal pill that you've been taking for years without being, you know, actually prenatal becomes a reminder of failure. Other supplements, pills and potions are some sort of infertility punishment rather than hope. Every decaf latte you drowsily sip becomes a futile attempt to pretend you could be pregnant...this time, but you don't really believe it.

But, of course, you still do it. You keep swallowing those prenatals. You keep taking Chaste Tree Extract, False Unicorn Root, extra iron, DHA, Ume Plum Pills and anything else that seems to help some one else get pregnant. You keep ordering your coffee "decaf" and avoiding booze at least the second half of the cycle, if not entirely.

Taking a break relieves you of all that responsibility. You can stop taking all those vitamins and extracts. You can have a double mocha. You can have a glass of wine, a rum & coke, a martini without checking which cycle day you're on.

For the last 3 weeks I've been on a ttc break. I've had booze and caffeine. I didn't take my prenatals and skipped my extracts. I was so very much on break that I thought my period was due this weekend. I was shocked to check my tracker and find that I still wasn't due for another week! It felt so good to not be counting down the days from ovulation to period. I plan on taking next cycle off as well.

The funny thing about taking a break is, now that I've had a few weeks, I have found myself starting up with the prenatals, extracts and pills again. I still go for the caffeine-filled coffee and you better believe that a martini will be made this weekend but I don't feel as bogged down by the rest of the routine. It just seems usual.

I'm hoping that, when we start up again, I will have a feeling of newness. It will be fully spring, I'll be healthier than I have been before in body and mind, we will (hopefully) have a new local donor and Monkey will be in a new, less stressful job. Maybe we will get new results. Who knows! Stranger things have happened.