I'm really scared of being a Mom.
That's the truth if why I've delayed it so long.
Next week I turn 44.
But I'm not one of the helpless sort.
I have excellent blood test results for my age.
Excellent hormone test results.
I didn't get pregnant from the two IUIs I triend (where they squirt the sperm into you with a syringe).
So off I am pushed to the IVF train. The first IVF round, they extract from me 18 eggs and I am in shock. 6 turn into foetuses and I am in total shock. But none of them made it. Three died in the lab. Three died inside of me. The first time was just there days after the operation where they extract the eggs. They put in two but it was a somber occasion I think because these were day threes. The doctor ans nurse on duty are well aware of the chances, particularly given my age, of success. These are very very low chances. A woman my age has less than a five per cent of getting pregnant. One of those two foetuses from the first try took a grip. I knew it because I was exhausted but maybe that was the aftermath of the month after egg extraction. But I really knew is because I downloaded a spreadsheet of my minute by minute heartbeat from the date they put the foetuses into me. And my heartbeat was going steadily up right until the date that I felt something change. My body seemed to shift a gear down from the crazy hormone changes. That was when I lost it. Of course that was just to day 9 or so. The earliest I could take a pregnancy test was day 12 so I never had the official "pregnant!!!!" result on the test stick. Within four or five days of discovering the loss I had to see the doctor. This was the same doctor that was part of the hospital team that I'd seen on my intake. I daydreamed about him, the last vestages of the world I have left behind forever. Getting married in your twenties or thirties. Starting a family together. Being a young family together. Choosing a house together. Your first day as a married couple together. Getting used to being in a couple, as a couple. Trusting, trust growing over time. Confidence in the other person, that this is someone you can utterly trust. All these dreams, goodbye. So this handsome intake Doctor. I googled him. Elite army unit, check. Beautiful, wholesome wife, check. Super nice check (she helped me when the nurses made a mistake far more than she need have). Why, why, why did I not meet a man like this? How could it be that I am alone? That handsome doctor now was opposite me as I made my appointment for the next IVF procedure, implanting the remaining embryo. And for the first time since I'd received the negative blood test result, I began to cry. The poor man. He wanted to hug me and it would have been the most natural thing in the world. But he can't he says I'm sorry I am restricted but I hear you and I'm so sorry I know how hard it is. And then I felt better and then I cried some more. And then we went on to discuss the next procedure.
On the day of the next time they did the implantation, the mood in the procedure room was much more festive.
To explain, when it comes to foetus implantation it goes like this. You go to the hospital. Get called in for identity check. Wait. Get called to another admissions desk by the procedure room. At a precise time, must enter a changing cupboard and wear a hospital gown. At a precise time later I an called into the procedure room. It is a square room and there is a gynecologist seat with foot rests you and stirrups. So I slide in and the nurse is at the bottom right of the bed and smiling and is welcoming. The doctor is to the bottom left and he is momentarily turned away, looking towards the lab. He is turning towards a hole in the wall which leads to the embryology lab. The embryology is giving him the defrosted foetus. He puts the vial on the end of a rubber tube that also has a camera. There is a screen one the wall in the bottom right, behind the nurse. The doctor is pushing the tube into me and releasing the foetus into my room, and I can see it all happening on the screen. Poof! There is that moment when the foetus is released in my woman and he is she has four or five days to bury him or herself into the lining of my womb, for the cells to multiply and the beginning of a brain and heart and placenta and ooooooohhhhh. It's just so crazy.
But that little one didn't take. I know that because the Fitbit data showed that my temperature didn't go up. It steadily dropped as my body sighed with relief at no longer being quite so blasted with ivf hormones, but had no naturally generated pregnancy hormones because that little one didn't get to implant. There was no implantation bleeding, that victorious Schrodinger's Party cat, that bleeding that occurs five days in and maybe yes, maybe no means you are pregnant.
Ivf is hell. Psychological hell...
After that disappointment it was once again rushing pronto to see the IVF doctor. To do the second round.
Why the rush? Everything is according to the pregnancy cycle. I find out I'm not pregnant pretty much the day my period comes and three days into that I have to start the drug protocol for the ivf.
I'll skip to the end of IVF round two. 16 eggs. 10 fertilize.
Ten. Ten.
This is unheard of at my age. It's a statistical outlier.
And what is more, there's no guarantee, egg quality, age, DNA degeneration...
I made to important decisions along the way.
First I decided to not do genetically testing. More on that in another post.
And, I decided secondly to freeze the embryos. Give my body a chance to recover.
Well...it's been three months.
Technically, I could have tried last month. But I didn't and hey for good reason. I needed that month for heavy lifting and DIY...
And now there's this month.
And I'm sitting here trying it find excuses why not.
And the thing is, I really feel like I have no moral choice right now. I have to give those ten embryos a chance. Of course, the chances are that none of these embryos will be healthy enough that they will continue to develop in the womb. The odds are, actually, that I will have ten or dewer miscarriages and that there will be no baby from this.
And what if I do get pregnant. I am at a loss as to how I will cope. And here's the really weird thing. My terror that I will not cope has absolutely nothing to do with my abilities as a nurturing loving mother. You don't understand. It's like babies are drawn to me, and children m I know how to talk to babies and children. I'm a natural. No it's the mediocre things in life, things with the ability to immobilize me now. Accountants and lawyers and taxes. Anything official looking. Unless I'm writing the official thing. My psychology is fixated by authority and power. I detest it yet am continually attracted by it. I always hate my job. I want to leave all this, am dying to leave all this. But it keeps dragging me in. It's because I still haven't decided what I want to do. All I do is write without publishing. Except this, of course.
So next week in 44. And there really is no time. And it really is better to start trying again sooner rather than later. Because in a year's time I will kick myself for wasting these months. The fact I don't have a job doesn't matter. Work will work out.
But OMG am I terrified of being a mother.
