The meaning of it all

I was interested to see that yesterday someone found this blog by searching on “ivf existential crisis”. I have used this phrase before but haven’t posted lately on the subject. And yet amid all the blood tests and the multi-vitamins this is very much what this experience comes down to for me. I am in a constant state of confusion about how I feel. And while I appreciate that no two people ever feel exactly the same, I suspect I am not the only one who struggles with the weight of not just the grief, anger, resentment and frustration that can come with the IVF territory, but also with the strangeness of what it means to be put in this position in the first place . When I think about this, combined with the fuzzy headed-ness brought on by the drugs, I want to congratulate us all for ever managing to leave the house.

If you read some of the professional literature around treating IVF patients, you will find our condition referred to as “a hidden disability”. I had realised for myself that my identity was uncertain in the face of infertility; it is still shocking to me that I can’t conceive. It still doesn’t seem to fit the image I have of myself. As many times it has been proven to me over the last few years, I still don’t feel like it’s real. Sometimes I still find myself baffled that I’m doing IVF. Me.

So I think the term “hidden” is important here. My infertility is hidden – through my choice – from most people in my life. I protect it from the curiosity and assumptions of people I don’t trust to understand. I also think society keeps the reality of infertility hidden from itself because, like me, it doesn’t know how to integrate it into the realms of normal experience. What could be less normal than the inability to reproduce? Our very existence depends on the fact that we can do so. On a very deep level, I think most people don’t know what to make of the reality of infertility.

So no wonder some of us feel existential angst. Our experience doesn’t make any sense. One of the most important parts of grieving is thought to be that ultimately some sort of meaning is made from what you go through. In some way, the traumatic event will come to make some kind of sense in your life. You will relinquish suffering and find acceptance. I haven’t found that place.

As I’ve mentioned before; I don’t feel like I can’t survive if I don’t have kids. On the contrary; part of my struggle has been to choose to even try. I’m caught between wondering if it’s really not meant to be – there’s something else I’m meant to be doing – and feeling like I have been deemed by some greater power to be unworthy, faulty. That my infertility is natural selection, because there is something fundamentally wrong with me that doesn’t belong in the gene pool.

Existential angst is borne of the struggle to find meaning in a meaningless world. I don’t feel I need children to discover the meaning of my life, but I do need to find the meaning of being required to think so carefully about the idea of having them at all.

First bloods; So far so good

Had the first blood tests of this second cycle today. I had a conversation with the doctor too, in which she said that basically what the approach this time is, is to up the dose of Puregon. That’s it. I don’t know what I expected. I guess that’s what it all comes down to. Growing eggs. She did explain that there are three options in the follicle stimulating approach; the standard one – that I’m having, the aggressive one where you start the stimulation earlier and the flare; where you start the Lucrin and the Puregon on the same day. I don’t remember the details; I can barely keep what’s going on with me in my head. I try to make sure Big H is present for the important conversations because I get out to the car and say “So, what are we doing?”

My Estrogen is at 1000 apparently. Which is better than it was this time, last cycle. It might mean that this time I have a good number of follicles, or it might mean that there is only one or two that have taken off quickly, but won’t come to much. I know I’m being a bit pessimistic. Her words were “I’m sure we’ll get to egg harvesting this time”. So there you go. I say, one day at time.

Change is afoot

Just in case anyone was concerned – yes, I have changed the design of the blog. Maybe it’s the unseasonably warm weather, or maybe it’s an expression of my shifting internal landscape, but I realised I wanted something a bit more open, less brooding. So I hope I didn’t lose anyone in the process, and if you read this blog, I hope you like the new look.

Back!

Oh my god I can’t believe I let that happen! Moving house, loss of internet access, a steady stream of visitors and daily blogging goes completely out the window. It was agonising because I promised myself I’d do it almost daily. I’ll sum up quickly;

Fertility

None to speak of. In fact it’s Ibuprofen and alcohol week again.

Diet

As I predicted I lapsed on the coffee front and had three cups last week. Also eaten more highly processed foods and wheat bread than I’m supposed to.

Yoga

Fell out of rythym almost as soon as I had got into one due to visitors and time limitations brought on by moving house. Must. Go. Back.

He’s Back!

Oh what a relief. I didn’t get married to spend weeks at a time by myself. Every time he comes back we say “never again” but we both know there will be a next time.

Now I have to start convincing him that it isn’t really espresso that wakes him up in the morning and allows him to function and perform his demanding job, and that if he just gives the dandelion tea a chance the nausea will pass and he will start to feel better.

Singapore Sling

Absent husband’s trip gets extended and in recognition of my long-sufferingness, I score a trip to visit him in Singapore…

I’m a pathetic excuse for a vegetarian. I don’t even deserve the Fish and Chip’ocrite moniker anymore.. Faced with the choice of chicken or beef on the plane over here (having booked the flight too last minute to make a meal request) I chose the beef. My logic was; I am so hungry I have to eat something before I pass out, and I’d rather avoid the known evils of growth hormone and antibiotics in the chicken, and go for the probably equally offensive concoction that lurks in commercial red meat but that I haven’t done the research on yet.

Thank you, Chicken

Fast forward twenty four hours. Having had a brief interlude with husband who did very well to come to the airport to meet my plane and who said and did all the right things right through to breakfast the next day, I found myself suddenly alone again standing on Orchard Road while he sped back to the office.

I cut a rather tragic figure as I stand on the corner in one of the great shopping districts of the world; lonely western woman with credit card and no desire to use it. As much as I try to blame the humidity; I have a fever and feel like crap. Must have been the beef. Better eat something else. And as everybody knows, the best thing to eat when you’re sick is chicken. And as everybody in Singapore knows, the best dish to eat is Chicken rice. It’s clean, simple and delicious.

So I find a food court, head straight for the Chicken rice stall, avert my eyes from the rows of ruthlessly skewered dead bodies swinging above the cash register, kid myself that they don’t use growth hormones here and three dollars later walk away with a plate of delicate white flesh soaked in soy sauce and a bowl of steaming broth. Ten minutes later I’m rejuvinated. And not just in a oh-I-really-needed-to-eat-something kind of way, I mean in a blood energy kind of way. My chinese acupuncturist had regularly chastised me for not at least eating some chicken when I was run down, and especially once I began trying to conceive. And I think he was probably right. I think that chicken donated (albeit unknowingly and no doubt unwillingly) to me and a few other people (I only ate one breast) it’s very life force. And I’m truly grateful.

Time on my hands

Growing things; garlic and lentils

I was reading recently about the chemicals used in garlic production and how so much of it is imported. This goes for so many of the vegetables I use and most of the time I succumb to the appeal of convenience and try not to become paralysed by the wider ramifications of every purchase I make. But there are many things I can do that give me huge satisfaction and reduce my participation in the great pesticide-soaked-imported-produce system, and I’ve discovered that growing my own garlic is one of them!

I use heaps of the stuff and about a week ago I went to the organic produce place and bought a small bunch for about sixty cents. I broke up the cloves and planted them in a pot and now I’ve got gorgeous green sprouts, some of which I’ll chop off and use for a mild garlic flavour in salads and some of which I’ll allow to grow into fully fledged bunches. So satisfying.

I’m a sprouter; there’s usually a jar on the kitchen bench with a bunch of seeds in some stage of germination. I only do the easy ones; I’m too disorganised for anything that requires serious monitoring, so it’s usually alfalfa and lentils. Yesterday I planted the last of the lentils which had started to grow green leaves. They’re shoved in at one end of the garlic pot. They seem to be taking off. I wonder what they’ll do?

Deep and Meaningful 

I spend so much time alone, and it’s tempting to think that I’m a victim of circumstance; flung from city to city because of my partner’s work with no capacity to get on with my own life. But I’m beginning to realise that this isn’t accurate. However unlikely it might have been that I would take another path, for example leave my partner when his job began to require a lot of travel, the fact is that I continue to choose my situation and therefore have to take responsibility for it. And what I’m beginning to realise is that it’s that very freedom to choose that I’ve been afraid of. It’s been so much easier to stew in  frustration and resentment because I don’t have the life I was “meant to have” than to truly accept that I’m creating my own life every day. Heavy stuff huh? I’m going to leave it at that for now in case I disappear into my own navel.