Connections

Remember way back in January 2009, when I started going to the Over Forty IVF Support Group even though I was, and continue to be, younger than forty?

Well, would you believe this group is still going strong? We long ago shed the group leader and became more like a group of friends than a technical support group but we still meet a couple of times a month.

It is such a pleasure to meet with these women, to see how people's trajectories have developed over the past year and a half, to just continue to show up for and encourage each other.

It's funny too how our roads are turning out to be quite different. It seems that of the six of us, many of us are taking different paths to becoming parents. Sitting with four of the group this week, I was struck by how we could almost represent an HBO documentary at this point, something like "Extreme Infertility Stories: the heartbreak version." Because none of us has turned out to be the typical IVFer, who does treatment once or twice and has a happy ending. We're all veterans at this point.

There are two "successes" so far: One woman, after multiple IVFs, did donor egg at 43 and now has a son. And another got pregnant naturally and had a daughter, but this after three IVFs and four miscarriages (one at 19 weeks).

And then there are the rest of us:

One woman, after multiple IVFs and miscarriages, has been waiting 9 months so far for a referral for domestic adoption.

One, also after multiple IVFs and no pregnancies, has just been matched for an anonymous donor egg and is about to transfer in a couple of weeks.

One has major health issues and POF and so is using a gestational carrier in addition to anonymous donor egg. Her situation is complicated even more so by the fact that she is from a minority ethnicity, which has made finding the right donor egg situation super complicated.

And then there is me. The under 40 person. The one still trying with my own eggs in my own body. The one doing the frankenstein lab maneuvers to try to get some normal embryos ready to go.

What a group, huh? Kind of a motley crew in a certain way, but a roomful of women who have made it so much easier to go through all of this, because every other week or so, I can count on sitting down in one of their living rooms and just sharing how hard it is, knowing that they all get it, are going through their version of it, and are getting through it somehow. Some days better than others, but getting through it nonetheless.

You guys, too, are such a godsend. To find all of you out here on the Internet, some of you bloggers, some of you just commenters, some in situations similar to mine, some in very different circumstances. To find that we can reach across our experiences and connect. I wish we weren't here, not a single one of us. But since we are, what a wonderful thing to have found each other.

Mo

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