No sex please, I’m infertile.

I’ll get to the sex bit in a minute, but I just wanted to clarify something about that last post. It probably came across as a little trite to anyone who suffers from depression. The whole “deciding to be happy” thing is just my way of trying to get some relief from the melancholy I seem to get drawn into most days. I’m experimenting with how much I can influence it, because it seems to me that to some degree at least, I can. Sometimes. I’m not can’t-get-out-of-bed/ can’t-stop-crying/ suicidal thoughts depressed at the moment, and I wouldn’t dream of telling someone who was, to “decide to be happy”. It’s just something I’m trying out this week. Next week it might be eating cake every day. Oh yeah, I already do that…

This week’s cake is a lemon slice. I won’t be doing that again in a hurry. Not that it was bad – in fact it was deliciously zesty – but  I need a cake I can eat in emotional-vacuum-filling quantities. Having attempted that with the lemon slice today I have broken out in a tingling cold sweat across my top lip, and my eyes are watering. This is not my idea of comfort food.

The sex bit

As for day four on Lucrin – still nothing to report.  But while we’re on the subject of hormones, I will once more gently pose the question; AM I EVER GOING TO WANT TO HAVE SEX AGAIN, EVER?! I just feel like I’m switched off. I like the idea, but I just can’t follow through. Is it the three months straight on active OCP’s? Is the Lucrin making it worse? Am I a robot? Or is my infertility now so deeply comprehensive that I will never have any kind of even vaguely sexual or reproductively oriented urge again?

Maybe I’m more depressed than I thought.

Of course, having started the Lucrin on Thursday, I stopped the OCP on Saturday, which means I’m supposed to get a period. Which is great because I always feel like having sex when I’ve got my period…(not). I think I can, as of the last two minutes feel a bit of a cramp coming on. Then again, the lemon slice OD may have consequences that are yet to be revealed. Also, in hindsight, the leftovers I ate for lunch were probably older than I wanted to admit while I was inhaling them, so I think I’ll reserve judgment for the moment.

Either way, I suspect I may be on the crest of a hormonal wave.

First days on Lucrin

First off I want to thank emilythehopeless for the first ever comment on my blog! I was very excited. It’s inspiring to know, as a writer and an IVF-er, that there are other people out there sharing the experience. I’ve been to her blog before and I can only hope mine gets as interesting.

So Big H has stuck me with a needle the past three mornings. We have been opting for the fleshy areas around my hips. I was afraid if we went for my butt I’d be too sore to sit at the desk and work all day. Because that would have been a shame…. As it turns out after the initial itchiness I haven’t noticed anything. So there you go. Nothing much to report.

I feel kind of strange about the whole thing to be honest. I’m not really thinking about it very much. And the truth is that deep down I don’t really expect it to work.

I haven’t mentioned this before – although if you’ve read some of the previous posts you probably won’t be surprised – but I get pretty depressed sometimes, and surprisingly, infertility hasn’t helped much.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with the idea of deciding to be happy. It’s hard to explain but while all my awareness around why I’m prone to depression still percolates in my mind, I have made a very simple decision to just not feel depressed anyway. I’ve been doing it for a week or so now; I’m not cured or anything and I’ve had some really crappy moments. But I think I have noticed that it’s ever so slightly easier to stop getting into a really black mood. I tell myself that the situation is only as bad as I feel about it, and I try to choose just not to feel bad, regardless. Not to deny that the situation may indeed be shitty, but just that I have some choice about how to react to it. I don’t know. I don’t intend to get all Cognitive Therapy about it, I’ve just been curious about what it is that those other people do who don’t get regularly overwhelmed by how crap things really are!

Anyway, we’ll see.

In the meantime I plan to make a lemon slice. I have not been without home made cake for a single day for the last two weeks, and it REALLY helps.

Finally starting IVF

After all that waiting I didn’t get the acting gig. Shock, horror. This means two things. 1) I am free to get my hair cut short. (Once you do an audition you are obliged to maintain your appearance until you are “released”) and 2) I am starting Lucrin injections tomorrow. Having made the always bad decision to read lots of forum entries about nasty experiences on this drug, I am now worried about the headaches, lethargy and anaphylactic rashes that await me. To be honest I haven’t been feeling particularly fabulous lately and I know it won’t take much to push me from slightly ordinary to truly pathetic. Especially on the lethargy front. I’d rather be asleep at the best of times – I don’t need further encouragement.

So having spent the last week or so feeling at a loss as to what to say about the whole IVF thing, it’s about to start for real. I expect there will be much to report soon because I’m really good at complaining. And I anticipate the first thing I will complain about will be the injection. I haven’t decided yet whether to go for  my bottom or my tummy. Stay tuned for these and other earth shattering developments.

What does my IVF ambivalence mean?

So I’m “on hold” for the acting job. Of course it’s for the role of “a young mother”. The box of Lucrin is sitting on the kitchen table. Waiting. I will know on Tuesday whether I’ve got the job. Maybe I’ll be starting the drugs on Wednesday, or maybe I’ll be waiting another month. Either way I now have more time to contemplate what it all means.

I don’t consider myself a superstitious person but I can’t help being struck by the way that after months of silence, the possibility of a professional acting gig – the thing I love to do most in the world – comes out of the blue on the day I have finally decided to go ahead with trying to have a baby. The nurse at the clinic and I tallied up the dates and realized that if I started the hormones the next day, as I was planning, and I actually got the acting job, I would be due for egg harvesting right in the middle of shooting. It was either say “yes” to the audition and put off the cycle or say “yes” to the cycle and reject a work opportunity I’ve worked long and hard for. It felt as if I was, in that moment, being asked to choose between my professional development and being a mother. What does it mean that the choice was not clear? If I’ve gone so far as to decide on IVF, shouldn’t I be more committed to the whole thing?

I had to take myself for a walk to gather my thoughts. It was almost dark and already raining slightly and a storm was brewing. The atmosphere lent itself to the full blown existential crisis that has become my decision to try to have children. I was having to choose between my kids and my career, and I’m not even pregnant yet.

Clearly, I opted for the audition. Big H was adamant that I should, because he knows how much it means to me. And, let’s face it, I probably won’t get the job anyway, so it’s only a week extra. I suppose one way to look at the situation is that maybe not feeling totally consumed by the IVF thing will make it easier to survive in the event that it doesn’t work…

Hormonal Haitus

I’ve been on active contraception pills for three months straight. That is, I don’t take the sugar pills, I just go straight through with the real stuff and never have a period. I started on them in March and it was supposed to be for 16 days, but a bunch of things came up including unexpected travel, illness and work issues that made us want to put the cycle off until things settled down. And it just seems to keep happening. Right now I’m waiting to hear if I have got an acting job. I haven’t had a serious audition for ages but last week, literally on the day before I was scheduled to start the injections, I get a call from my agent. If I get cast, the shoot date will coincide exactly with (potential) egg collection. So we’ve put it off again.

I rang the clinic this morning to make sure my ovaries weren’t going to explode and they said it was fine. People stay on the pills for months on end apparently and just put up with the spotting. There is something else I’m putting up with which I didn’t quite have the gumption to ask the nurse about, and that is a complete lack of sexual desire. I want to want it, but I don’t. I feel kind of numb. I wonder if that is an effect of having put my body on hold.

“We’ll be taking over your cycle from now on”.

is what the nurse at the clinic said to me sweetly as she handed me a prescription for the pill. I’m sure I’m not the first woman to appreciate the irony of going to an IVF clinic and being put on the pill, but given that the situation stopped making any sense quite some time ago I guess the best approach is to just smile and nod. The nurse didn’t mean anything by it, but her comment kind of sums up the resentment I feel about needing IVF at all. I’d rather have the opportunity than not of course, but I hate the fact that I need a bunch of people in white coats to do something for me that is supposed to just happen.

Now I’m feeling slightly bitchy

While I’m on the subject of resentment, I’ll admit it; I wish it didn’t cost so much, and I can’t help noticing how nicely furnished my doctors’ rooms are. We had to laugh a couple of weeks ago when we were there for some genetic counseling. There was a lovely little self published hard cover book about the history of the clinic and all the procedures that they developed and how the doctors had to challenge the medical culture to embrace the new technology etc. One of the more unfortunately titled chapters in the book had a photo of some of the doctors standing around with their 80’s haircuts, grinning. It was about how they developed procedures around cytoblast transfer etc “…for fun and profit” in the lead up to opening the clinic.

I have to say “fun and profit” doesn’t quite capture my experience so far, but hey, while I’m not getting a period I’m saving a fortune in tampons…

Ambivalence about IVF

As I’ve been working myself up to start posting again I’ve been trawling through other blogs about infertility and IVF. Somehow it was reassuring to see that other people too have vanished from blog-land at various points along the journey. Some of them return months later, some not. Some with happy news, some with just as much pain and frustration as when they left. And of course others not at all. I can relate to that. It turned out to be exactly a year since my last post when I found myself back on my blog last week. I’m not sure why I returned. Perhaps because I feel there is no-one in my world who really understands what I’m going through, unlike the many articulate, smart and funny women whose work I’ve been reading who I feel sure would relate to me and not say things like “just think positive”…

So I’m here again. Mostly because I love to write. And I want to be part of a community. Because it’s been so lonely sometimes.

This time last year I was on a health kick; no coffee, taking Spirulina, doing Yoga , oh I was going to be the picture of new-age natural fertility. Well bollocks to that basically, and the guilt that was driving it. The Spirulina is still in the fridge door, we moved house and I didn’t find any local yoga classes, and until 3 weeks ago I was drinking coffee like it was going out of style.

But after spending the last year coasting along, not really dealing with anything on the baby front (but not making any either, obviously), we’ve now decided to do IVF. And in some sort of gesture towards giving it a chance I have suddenly been able to survive without the caffeine. Of all the things I’m doing in my life that probably aren’t ideal for reproducing I’ve latched on to caffeine as the thing that might ruin everything. I don’t want to be sitting in the clinic with a negative result thinking “If only I’d stopped drinking coffee”.

But what I really wanted to talk about is feeling ambivalent about doing IVF. This post from years ago (thank goodness for people who start blogs and actually stick around!) at http://julia.typepad.com/julia/2004/12/ivf2.html really helped me. I figured I can’t be alone in feeling a bit numb about the whole thing, but it’s not what I expected. Maybe I’m in denial..? Maybe the stakes are so high that I can’t even bear to think about it. But either way, sometime this week I’ll start injecting myself with hormones and then maybe a couple of weeks after that we’ll be talking about eggs and… who knows… after that. Doesn’t seem real. That’s what it is; I still haven’t taken in we’re actually going to do IVF.

Bringing babies into a dangerous world.

As you can see from this post that I wrote last year, I have had serious doubts about whether what I’m about to do is right. The only reason I’m trying to have a child is because I want one. Notwithstanding situations in which choice is removed by factors such as poverty and/ or violence, it seems to me that the only reason people have children is because they want to. I might have great hopes for any child I create and believe that they will make a positive contribution to the world but basically it’s about me and what I want. And I’m not sure, with the world in the state that it’s in, that I have the right to just do what I want. As far as I can tell, there are too many of us already. What gives me the right to add to the problem?