Surviving The Thaw

Ugh.

Many of you have written asking about our next steps, and I wish I had more to report, but unfortunately, right now we are in a bit of a holding pattern.

I guess I should be used to this right?

Our next IVF attempt will be at transferring two of the four embryos frozen from last month's cycle. The doctor tells me that approximately 80 percent of frozen embryos thaw successfully, so hopefully this means that at least three (if not all four) of them will survive. 

Our greatest hope, of course, is that this next cycle works and we get pregnant, and then in a few years we go back and transfer the remaining embryos to complete our family. That being said, we are being a little more emotionally cautious this time around, or trying to be at least, because we know all too well the price of getting our hopes up.

The good news is that we have the embryos and can try again. The bad news is that doing a frozen cycle delays us even further. The drugs for this cycle are intended to do the opposite (suppress my cycle) of last month's drugs, and because of that, are on a completely different timeline. I will start taking Lupron on the 21st day of this cycle, and then continue it for 18 days. This unfortunately means that our next shot at a transfer won't be until mid June.

Ugh.

More waiting.

This is the point where I am going to whine for a minute.

Let me just say, for the record, that it really sucks to go from:

"well, no babies for us in 2009, but at least there is 2010." 

to: 

"we are infertile so a baby in 2010 is unlikely but possible." 

to:

"our only chance at a baby in 2010 is end of December if this cycle works."

to where we are now:

"if this works, maybe a baby mid 2011." 

It's like the carrot of parenthood that has been dangling in front of our faces the last few years seems to be getting further and further out of view with each step we take towards it, and watching the months and years tick away just adds to the frustration.

I think about how this journey started in 2007, and while I know that trying to control the uncontrollable doesn't do me any good, I am human, and overwhelmed, and it just happens. 

A few people wrote last week (here and in emails to me) that maybe I should get that a baby is not in God's plan for me, or that they believe I can't get pregnant because my grief and inability to get over it has hardened me too much. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and believe that their words are coming from what they feel to be a good and helpful place, but sometimes those comments just feel really unfair and full of blame. 

I wish life was that cut and dry for me, but the reality of my situation is that even if I skipped down the street, handing out balloons and whistling dixie all day, my tubes would still be scarred from bottom to top, and getting pregnant without a great deal of difficulty and medical intervention is just-not-possible.

I understand and respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but also think that to say those things when fertility has not been an issue for you, and you have your own children at home to love and mother, just feels awfully judgmental to me. The truth of the matter is that the only thing that separates my situation from that of the person saying these things is a little bit of bad luck. 

As far as wanting to go ahead with trying to get pregnant and have more children, I cannot (and will not) apologize. Why shouldn't I want them? Am I, for some reason, no longer entitled to be a mother because my husband and I were dealt the shitty hands of child loss and infertility? Have these last few painful years, for some reason, negated our right to want what seems to come so easily to others? To want what we envisioned in our life together- a family of our own? Is that the message we should be sending, if you are dealt a tough hand, give up?

Would I be more entitled to have another child if I had moved right on from Peyton? Would that honestly have made me a better mother - forgetting all that she went through, or acting as if she was never born?

Last week, a man learning through a friend of my loss implied that I should count myself lucky that losing Peyton wasn't a true tragedy  like losing a child that I had known for ten or fifteen years would have been.

Excuse me?

Is that when we are expected to start loving our children, only after they have been here ten or fifteen years? Why hold them as infants? Why even bother with their young childhood?

I think this is a sad stigma, and one that is sort of unique to the babylost community, that there is this segment of society who believe that just because our children were here for such a short time we should get over them more easily, or feel that their lives were somehow less significant just because they were cut so short. 

I know that this is only my opinion, but it is my belief that whether an embryo, a fetus, an infant, a child, a teenager, an adult, or a senior citizen, these are all stages of human life, and no stage is any more or any less important or deserving of respect than the next. I didn't love Peyton less at 28 days, than I would have at 29 days, and I don't count myself lucky that at least I lost her so young as others have implied that I should, nor will I ever get over her just because she was little, and weak, and dealt a lousy hand at only having a month here on earth with us.

Peyton was my child, and is my child, and loving, mothering, and missing her immensely, is not something I will ever apologize for, not in real life, and certainly not here, and if that makes someone uncomfortable - tough.

There is no way for me to know what the future holds in terms of our family building. I don't know if this next round of IVF will be a success, or the round after that. I don't know if we will adopt, or have children, or both. Very few answers have been easy to come by these last few years, but what I do know is that my daughter is gone and I miss her like hell and grieve her everyday and none of that makes me any less deserving of being a mother again, even though my grief takes me there sometimes.

Since September 3rd, 2008, Hubs and I have been sort of frozen in time, stuck on pause just crying out to press play and move forward. We want to do what we set out to do when we left for the hospital that day. We want to do what we expected we would do - to come home with a baby, to start our family life, and watch our children grow.

Peyton's passing, and our subsequent battle with infertility, have spun us around. We have been cooled to the core and left to sit and wait on the rack, and while there are days when seeing other couples moving on and creating families with ease may make it seem that this frozen place is forever, we have to remind ourselves that anything is possible. We have to believe that we, like our little embryos, will survive the thaw, and once we have, something beautiful will be born.