Funny. When I read my blog it doesn't really sound like me. I sound rather unhappy about motherhood, I sound stressed out and frustrated. I am not really, at least not all the time. I use this blog to vent, maybe I should write more of the good things.
Anise turning one has had me reminiscing a lot about giving birth, which in turn reminds me of my struggle with "infertility". I hate that word. Fertility issues is better maybe. Just like my birth story, my conception story was just as unusual.
We started trying in January when we were still living in Paris, I was 28 years old and never had a late or missed period. I could feel when I ovulate, and I hadn't been on the pill for a long time. we tried so hard not to get pregnant that I just assumed we would conceive right away. Now thinking back, I think I was already devastated right from the very first month that it didn't work. We were moving to Montreal in September, everyone said it would work when we moved back home (back home for me, away from home for Husband). It didn't until December, which felt really long. I miscarried at 6 weeks. It wasn't so bad, miscarriage was so common, at least I could get pregnant. What was weird though was the thought that not only had I had life in me, even if only for a bit, I also had death take place in me.
I conceived again in April, miscarried at 6 weeks. Then I went to a fertility clinic and I was officially infertile! (Well not really, I hadn't had 3 miscarriages, and I hadn't been trying for 1 year, arbitrary labels set up by doctors to try to define something which has no logic or definition). It took a year to conceive again, with one failed IUI mixed in (which I subsequently learned that is no more effective than having sex if no male factor infertility is involved, but at least the clinic made some money, and doctors could feel they were "doing" something). I miscarried again at 6 weeks.
That's when we hit a low. It seemed there was nothing to be done. I was fertile, ovulating so we believed that there was no treatment available. But there was! IVF with PDG (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis). We went for it one year after the third miscarriage. The egg collection was uneventful, things seemed to be going well, we had 12 eggs, 11 conceived, 10 survived. However, on day 5 the test results were in: 8 out of 10 embryos has a genetic malformation, and each of them a different abnormality. they named some of the problems, one had downs, one turners etc. It was really weird to hear them say that. There was one embryo that was fine, and a second for which there was no result (that sometimes happens). It sounds bad, but if PGD were to be done on every IVF there would always be some embryos that were abnormal, what was unusual were the number of abnormalities for our age, and the fact that they all had different problems. It seemed they had only seen this a couple of times before, and there is no explanation. we both had genetic testing done and we were fine, it seems it is the combination of us that created this problem. In other words we could potentially have conceived naturally, it is all chance. It could have taken us 10 years or 1 month. The geneticist explained that we could do this again and have 10 healthy embryos, or none. It also explained the miscarriages, and the difficulty conceiving. I suspect more people have this problem but don't know it. When you hear stories of people going for treatment, nothing works, and then a couple of years later they conceive naturally, it could be the same problem.
How lucky we were! Lucky amongst the already unlucky, it worked! And on the first try.
How I tortured myself trying to find a mind/body connection. I went for acupuncture, took herbs, I went for therapy, posture techniques, homeopathy etc. I think my Chinese doctor was wrong, it wasn't my liver. It was purely a technical genetic issue.
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Thank you for the food for thought. You've prompted notes to self that I'm recording here so I can find them when I do the teleconference, if you don't mind:
ReplyDelete1. A fertility clinic is where you go to find out you are infertile.
It's what you do with that idea that makes all the difference.
2. There is no need to go looking for a mind/body connection. The mind and the body are connected; they are the same thing. If you can find out where they separate, then that would truly be something!
3. If we go looking for a mind/body connection what we usually mean is a mind/body explanation. We are desperate to arrive at an "understanding" of conception so we can outsmart it and engineer the outcome we want.
4. As your doctors told you, all is chance. All is chance. All is potential.
5. Because it is only chance/potential/unknowing/unfolding, we try everything we can and mostly in vain. The last thing we try is inevitably the thing that works (and because it works it is the last thing we try.)
6. We are equally mistaken if we label the chance-that-worked as the answer. It is just an explanation for an inexplicable event.
7. The fertility question has become yet another case of amassing explanation and technology which appears to be quite significant, until you compare it to the scope of the inexplicable and unknowable that is life itself.
Of course, you are absolutely right!
ReplyDeleteWe mistakenly misinterpret the mind/body connection theory as a means to regain control. "If my mind is doing it, I can control it. Therefore I am responsible and it is my fault".
Everything is in the mind, and everything in the body!
How awful to be told that a miscarriage, or inability to conceive is due to the fact that deep down we do not really want a child. How many women have been told to that? How many people who conceive really want a child?
The more I think about mind/body health, the more I realize that I don't know what that means. Does it mean being open to other therapies? We know depression affects the outcome of fertility treatments, but optimism doesn't. Neither does stress (something that would be impossible to control for because everyone undergoing treatment is stressed).
What a great topic. I will try to listen to your conference.
Thank-you for sharing this. What a story, a journey.
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the mind-body mumbo jumbo that is out there and how when you are seeking, you are so willing to try anything.
For me it was cancer, not infertility, and yet it was the same premise. And I found it to be no different then the rest of what was out there, still telling me I was broken and needing them, needing the cure. What if nothing is wrong. Even it is not what we want, what we hope for, what if it is not a problem to be fixed?
And as for feeling like it isn't your voice, that you sound so unhappy with motherhood, even though you longed for it and loved it? I think most moms would be this way, if they were honest. Because it is hard does not mean anything about love.