helen8: My story....This is the first draft of a story we are writing for a major women's
magazine. Not sure yet if/when they will print it. I welcome all comments
because I can still make changes. I cried when the home pregnancy test line turned dark purple. And not because I was thrilled by this unequivocal confirmation of pregnancy. I was angry. All I saw ahead was more failure. More doctors, more tests, more anxiety. And, somewhere around eight weeks from now, a clipped conversation about the “termination” of my pregnancy that would send me, clutching Kleenex, to my darkened bedroom, as far as possible from a street clotted with mothers and babies. The bliss of biological motherhood? I was done with all that. After three failed in vitro fertilization procedures, two miscarriages,hundreds of hormone shots, months of 6 AM trips to the fertility clinic for bloodletting, invasive ultra-sounds, daily prayers and long days waiting by the phone for a 20-second call from a nameless nurse --- after all that, I knew I could not risk that kind of pain again. This is why we had decided against a pregnancy try using a donor egg, and against domestic adoption. Three years into the baby lottery, we wanted a sure thing. And so we had enrolled with an agency that would soon have us going to Cambodia as two and coming home as three. But now, against all odds, we were pregnant. A miracle. I had never really wanted to have children until, at 41, I started living with XXXXX and suddenly wanted nothing more than to create a family. By then, I was at the far end of the “elderly gravid” cohort. We had no time to waste --- we became clients of the Center of Reproductive Medicine at Cornell University. What were we thinking? The CDC gave me a take-home-baby chance in the single digits. My ovarian reserves tested high for my age; the Doctor said I had a 12% chance of becoming a mother. We were so blinded by science we never questioned the wisdom of betting against an 88% chance of failure. Want to be a mom? All it takes is $16,000 and a dream. And, in my case, the Internet. I am a ferocious researcher;when I commit to a project, I try to be the world expert. My husband was an extremely youthful 52, but he tested like an old man: low count, sluggish motility, less than 1% “healthy” sperm. Through my internet research, I had Jesse adding 60 mg of Zinc to his vitamin intake. In six months, his sperm count and motility doubled. Considering that men are the reason for as many as 40% of infertile marriages, this seemed like significant progress. Cornell found this “anecdotal.” But then, Cornell was heavy on science and light on hand-holding. I know: this has to be. The longing in the clinic’s waiting room was stifling. Sometimes I was overwhelmed by sadness as I looked around at the women who were hoping against hope for a child. And the silence! “It’s better not to talk to anyone,” a nurse told me. “You don’t want to hear the stories.” So I took my emotions to my husband at night and to the Internet all day, every day. I lived at INCIID.org (The InterNational Councilon Infertility Information Dissemination), a non-profit organization that notonly provides up to date information on the whole range of fertility andadoption issues, but also has what I found to be the best message and supportboards on the web. “IVF Waiting Room,” “Fertility after Forty” --- there, women like me became instant sisters. It isn’t just that there are some experiences that can only be shared with People Who Know. It’s that on this particular matter, experience gives way to the wildest, most improbable search for hope. Has anyone gotten pregnant with only one 4-celled embryo? A lone hand would go up. Any success with hormone levels so low they’re almost subliminal? Inevitably, someone has a story. As wrenching as these questions were --- because you knew,in your heart, these pregnancies were doomed --- worse yet were the reports of failure. The subject line in the message board post often said it all. BFN: Big Fucking Negative. I read of couples taking out second mortgages, borrowing from families and fighting with insurance companies to get funding for one more try.And others, broken-hearted, because they no longer had even $600 for another procedure. Money standing between people and their hopes for a family --- it just kills you. What I mostly remember is feeling like a science experiment.My husband produces his 10 ccs. My doctor removes a dozen or so of my eggs. In the lab, sperm meets egg. Objective: embryo. Three days later, I’m back in surgery for the transfer. Here comes the lab technician, holding a syringe withour baby --- or babies --- in it. The doctor aims. He shoots the embryos into the uterus. And that’s it. The biggest moment of your life, and it feels like nothing happened. But something did occur. First IVF: My pregnancy test was positive. Well, of course! Don’t I always succeed when it really matters? I called everyone to share the news. And had to call again two days later, whenmy numbers weren’t doubling and it was clear the pregnancy was over. Second IVF: The embryos had the cell count and quality of a younger woman, this was a lock. Soon enough... BFN. Why, then, did we do a third IVF? Because... well, why not? This time my research had pushed me to ask our fertility doctor about the possible benefits of acupuncture and Chinese herbs. Turned out he was writing apaper with a Chinese doctor who ran an acupuncture clinic. So, twice a week, I got needled; every morning, I drank a foul-tasting tea. And I got pregnant. In week six, we went to a conference in California. I started spotting. I took a cab to a clinicin a strip mall for blood work. Once again, no baby. The roller coaster had taken its toll. Three times, I had left Cornell with a photo of the transferred embryos --- a cluster of uneven circles. They were beautiful. I burst into tears every time they gave me that picture. When I got home, I put that picture on my prayer shrine, hoping I’d be lucky enough to put it in my baby’s book as her first photo. For two weeks, I’d beg God for good news. Then the call from the clinic would come, and I’d burn the picture. Three strikes. I was out. I quit my job and dedicated myself to healing and to the monstrous paperwork of adoption. My husband takes an annual trip with his stepchildren. Last year, I went along. We zoomed around Sardinia in a Zodiac, followed the Bernini trail in Rome.And, on our last night in Italy,this 44 year-old woman and her 55 year-old husband hit the jackpot. It’s the perfect cliché. Quit your stressful job, plan an adoption, go on vacation to “relax” --- of course, you’ll get pregnant. Maybe it was the hormones still coursing through my body. Maybe it was the tea and acupuncture. Maybe it was something in the most expensive fish we ever had in our lives, on our last night in Rome. We’ll never know. I ordered a home Fetal Doppler and, against my doctor’s advice, listened to the heartbeat every day. But I didn’t dare believe: We kept moving forward on the adoption until I passed all the tests. Irony: Cambodian adoptions, then under scrutiny by the INS, were shut down for a time. If we wanted to adopt before Jesse was using the stroller as a walker, we’d have to start again in another country. And then, suddenly, 40 weeks had passed and we were at New York Hospital, just around the corner from Cornell, waiting our turn for a cesarean. A sheet went up. A few minutes later, Helen Alexandra entered the world and bit the doctor --- twice. They say women forget the pain of childbirth. I’ve forgotten that, and more. Here’s this perfect little girl; I don’t understand where she came from. I push her in her stroller through the legion of mommys and kids on upper Madison Avenue, and we blend right in. I observe all the little milestones.The moral of my story isn’t the one you’ve read in articles by supermodels who conceived long after their sell-by date.You can’t wait forever and, with lots of money and a bit of luck, produce a child. Just the opposite. This sort of thing doesn’t really happen. The baby playing at my feet? She is, literally, a miracle. |