The Birds' Tale

Hi friends.  I've added a new page to this blog - see the link up there that says "our story?"  I wrote it for anyone who's wondered about the early days of our infertility journey, before I started writing about it.  And I wrote it for myself, to let all the words out so they can stop rattling around in my head.  If you're interested in the tale of Jenny and Mr Wren, you can click the link up top or this one here.

I'm Just Not That Into My Doctor

My doctor is not a unicorn, and this is not a fairy tale.  If it were, I would be the fair lady banished to the Barren Wasteland and my doctor would be, not the magical unicorn on which she rides safely to the Fertile Valley, but the scheming goblin who promises to remove the curse in exchange for all her gold and future riches and demands a series of impossible tasks. But after she meets all his conditions and masters his challenges through her outstanding determination strength and will, after she has given everything she has, he twists and grins and finds a loophole to slither through.  "Sorry, sweetheart, but you danced by the light of the full moon, not the new moon, so our contract is null and void. But if you want to try again I have another quest in mind.....bwahahahahah"

This Post Is Brought To You By The Letter "F"

F as in Failure.  F as in Freak.  F as in Faulty, Fatigued, and Forlorn.  F as in Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, I failed my mock cycle.

Shopping for Eggs

For the past two weeks we've been trying to select an egg donor.

In some ways, it's not so different from shopping for anything else online.

On the Road

I just took a week off.  I declared a vacation from work and worry and went on the road with Mr Wren.  He had business in Chicago and I had never been there, so I asked for the time off work and packed my bags.

We were heading to the Windy City, so of course I packed a jacket. But in another (metaphorical) suitcase I also packed away all thoughts of babies, lack of babies, lost babies, potential babies, and the terrifying possibility of life without babies. This latter suitcase, and as much excess emotional baggage as I could shed, I happily left on the curb as we set off on our road trip.

Caught In the Undertow



Life's a beach.


Yesterday was a bad day.   I left work early, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  I had one of those moments where not only did I feel the pain of losing a pregnancy, I felt like I was drowning beneath the weight of all these years of wanting and trying and praying and wishing and failing and failing and failing.  The phone call from Memphis was just one frustration too many and I was completely overwhelmed.

Oh Baby: It's Not You, It's Me

It's all my fault. 

We found out today that there was nothing wrong with our baby.  It was chromosomally normal.  (It is, however, still an "it," since the doctor didn't reveal the gender and we decided we didn't want to ask, because what's the point?)

It's like being in a neverending heavyweight boxing match.  Every time I start to get to my feet, I get knocked on my ass again.  I've been physically and emotionally pummeled beyond recognition.  The doctor had anticipated that the results would show a genetically abnormal embryo, and I was holding on to that hope.  It would mean that the miscarriage was not my fault, that I was capable of getting pregnant, and if we just could just get a healthy embryo then we could have a healthy pregnancy.

But no.  Something is wrong with me and we don't know what and that something killed my baby. 

I'm so frustrated I could scream.   My self-loathing knows no bounds.   My other-loathing is fairly boundless, too.  I'm angry at God, every pregnant woman on the planet, and especially my doctor.  Today he ordered a series of blood tests that I've been requesting for over a year.  Every other time I asked about them he said it was a waste of time and money.  Now, however, he thinks they are indicated.  If one of them turns out to be positive, and I have a clotting or other immunology issue that could have been addressed before now, possibly preventing this miscarriage from occurring....well, wouldn't that be just my luck?

I've filled in my infertility bingo card.  I've gotten one or more items in every column:  failed IUIs, failed IVFs, fibroids, chemical pregnancy, and now miscarriage/loss and likely immunological issues.  Bingo!  Did I win a baby yet?   No?   Fuck.  I'm so tempted to quit the game, just walk away from it all.  But by now I've invested so much (time, energy, money, emotions) that I really have to see it through to the bitter end.

Although, if I become any more bitter, I'm going to turn into a horseradish. 

Don't Tell Me

In two hours, Mr Wren and I will go to the fertility clinic for yet another WTF meeting.  It will be the 8th time that we have dragged our defeated selves through those doors to sit in Dr S's back office and discuss why our expensive, invasive, complicated fertility treatment didn't work as anticipated.  Science has failed us and we've failed it.

This will be the first time, though, that we have to discuss a might-have-been.  After 8 different procedures, I only got pregnant this once.   This was my first miscarriage.  I had the d&c so baby could be tested for chromosomal abnormalities, because I want to understand why it happened.   If there was something wrong with baby, then there was nothing I could have done to save it.  But if that turns out not to be the case, and baby was normal, then, well, it's pretty much my fault, right?  For some reason my body rejected baby.  Or baby rejected me. 

Baby stopped growing the same day I stopped taking the additional hormones, the estrogen and progesterone I had been taking 3 times a day to help me stay pregnant.  Did the hormones sustain an ultimately unviable pregnancy longer than nature intended, or did my little one just need more time and help than we gave it before it started producing those hormones on its own?   Would staying on the meds for another two weeks have kept baby alive?  Some fertility patients take progesterone through the entire first trimester (or so people on the internet tell me.)  I stopped at nine weeks.

I'll find out the answers soon enough.  I'll probably even find out what gender baby was so I can start using the appropriate pronoun when I talk about it.

But here's the thing:  I don't want to know.   

Well, that's not entirely true.  I want to know.  I always want to know.  I've been hungry for information since I was a little kid - I was that annoying little kid who was always asking WHY?   I need the world to make sense.  I need to understand.  

But I don't know if I can handle it.  I'm beyond humiliated to return to that clinic, where just 3 weeks ago everyone was cheering and hugging me, all so excited that I was graduating to the OB and telling me to bring my baby back to visit them.  I know they'll all be giving me the sad eyes today and that makes me cringe.  But I can feign stoicism for long enough to get through the awkward encounters with the receptionist and lab techs.  The thought, however, of sitting in that back office and finding out what went wrong - or possibly finding out that WE DON'T KNOW for certain what went wrong which in its way is even worse - either way, having to discuss how my baby lived and died, the entire arc of its too-short existence, well that just makes me want to put my head in the sand and blow off the appointment entirely.