One foot in front of the other

Wow, it's been a rough time lately. Thanks for your thoughts and comments on our situation. We've really appreciated it. It still completely sucks to find out that we can't use my sister as an egg donor and further that her fertility status is worrisome. It sucks even more that this comes on the heels of finding out our perfect egg donor turned out to have a rare genetic abnormality (but only after we'd sunk a huge amount of emotional capital and an even huger amount of money into her and her agency). The holidays are approaching and with them, the growing sense of loss that we are celebrating yet another child-centered holiday, surrounded by our families' children and without children of our own. And my 40th birthday is just around the corner...creeping up like an enormous, dreaded milestone to mark five years of trying for a baby, six pregnancy losses, and no end in sight. And, not to whine, but geez being on Depot Lupron for two months makes dealing with all of these things inexorably harder.

Add to those difficulties the fact that the stars are aligning (or misaligning?) workwise so that I have been dealing with an unprecedented amount of psychological crises the past week clinically, including coping with a serious suicide attempt last weekend, having to provide a large-scale crisis intervention for a group of people following a gruesome murder, and needing to help one of my trainees who is struggling to deal effectively and competently with a patient in increasing distress. All in a week's work, I guess, but boy it's been a tough time.

Will and I spent the weekend trying to climb back out of the emotional hole we have recently found ourselves in. And for me, I knew I had to do something to de-stress massively. We brainstormed what would feel most immersive, what would call us to be present, what would allow us to just be mindful for a time and let all these problems sit to the side for a bit. And we came up with two ideas. One was going ice skating Saturday - which turned out to be very fun. The second was to go indoor rock climbing on Sunday, which was super tough and scary (I'm deathly afraid of heights), but ultimately liberating and enthralling. Several times at the beginning, I thought I would give up, that it was too frightening, that I wasn't strong enough, or agile enough, to find the next handhold or foothold, to keep moving forward. But I stuck it out and reached the top of the walls several times. I even learned to not panic when letting go and allowing the rope to hold my weight as I was lowered down to the ground. I think there's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'll leave it to you.

Mo halfway up the wall

It was great to have a break from all the stresses and losses facing us this weekend. But we didn't want to wait too long to begin to process and problem-solve this situation we find ourselves in infertility-wise. Right now things feel hopeless, but I know the situation is only truly is hopeless if we give up.

So, we have devised a multi-pronged attack on what we have officially dubbed the "End Mo and Will's Childlessness Campaign."

• Rather than continue to scour dozens of agencies ourselves for the donor we are seeking, we signed up with a service that searches agencies for you. We spoke to the owner late last week, sent a bunch of pics of me and described what we are looking for. They go out there and do the footwork and try to find a number of donor candidates who are currently available who would be a good match. We've found one who we are highly interested in, and a few runners up...no one who seems a "perfect" match yet in terms of the mix of qualities we hope to find (of course, we know no one would be a "perfect" match...but still...). We are hoping to get a few of them started with basic blood testing in the hopes that at least one of them will demonstrate the ability to actually pass the Denver screening process. We are only taking another donor to Denver who we are fairly certain will pass the screen.

• We continue to search the Denver database...still not so hopeful about this and no good matches there for us at this time.

• We have a call in to a NYC clinic to begin the process of getting on their donor recipient list. Not super optimistic about it, but figure it would maybe allow us a way out of this if all else fails.

• We have a phone appt with Dr. Schl. on Thursday. This was originally to discuss using my sis as a donor but now may center on how and what to tell her about the news we found out about her fertility. We also want to discuss the pros/cons of transferring my own embryos back to me (since I've been doing Depot Lupron prepping for a transfer) and whether there is any point to me trying to do one last IVF cycle to make more normal embryos, which would make it feel safer to risk transferring some of our embryos into my body... we may or may not attempt this...but if not...we need to come to closure with it.

• Our potential gestational carrier, should we find out I can't carry even a donor egg pregnancy, is getting her medical records together to send to Denver for review (G_d bless her for this), so hopefully we can start to get a sense if she would be eligible.

So we're working on things on a few fronts. It feels good not to sit still, but feels terrible if I let myself stop and just experience the emotions of it all. I'm back to feeling somewhat uncomfortable with using an egg donor at all and deeply sad that it looks like my family line may die out with my generation if it turns out neither my sis or I are able to reproduce.

One foot in front of the other. Hopefully we can find a way out the other side. I am so, so ready to be in a different place with this.

So ready.

Mo


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