Weeding Out the Bad People

As I sit here on the couch trying to do homework so that I may be ready for class tonight my mind wonders. The last several days my mind has been wondering a lot and I'm waging a war between my subconscious and my heart. I've been cramping a lot today and the thought that this IVF cycle isn't going to work is looming high on my head. I've felt these same cramps before...the same ones I felt with each failed IUI done in the past...11 to be exact.

I did have one successful positive pregnancy test in March 2005. I had never seen a positive pregnancy test before and I was delighted to see the dark line on the stick I had just peed on. Jim even took a picture of it...kind of gross but he felt the need. A few days later I began to bleed...I will never forget that day. As you can imagine, I was devastated. I raced home and I was bleeding so bad that at one point I decided to just sit on the toilet and let the blood flow freely from me like someone had just turned on the water faucet. I didn't think it would ever end and I didn't think the emotional pain would subside. Of course with the passage of time the bleeding stopped and somehow I manged to move on with my life.

Jim, the doctors, and myself had high hopes for this IVF cycle. My body responded well to the meds and I was feeling pretty good knowing this was our only shot at getting pregnant. Financially, this was the only chance we had. I even had to take out a loan to pay for everything and I walked away from the casino empty handed and nothing to show for our lost time.

As I sit here today (I really should be doing homework) I'm filled with the same dread that I had in 2005....knowing this isn't going to work. I'm still thinking back to those 11 IUI's I had and wonder why I even wasted my time. I could have saved so many years of my life had I known that my follicles would malfunction. For ten years my infertility was classified as "unexplained" and I always said I could cope better if I knew the exact cause of my infertility. Well, here I am with the cause and it's just as hard to cope. I also could have married Jim and told him that my fertility status would prevent the two of us from having children and I would have avoided letting him down.

Above all I'm strangely reminded of a comment made by my ex-husband when we first "discovered" we couldn't get pregnant. His comment was, "It's God's way of weeding out the bad people." I guess he was referring to nature running it's own selection course so to speak. Either way, that comment has never left my head and I'm more so now reminded of it and his callous ways.

So, I ask myself why has this happened to me? What could I have done differently? Was my car accident as I child to blame? My years of smoking? How about the fact that my Grandmother took the dreaded DES drug now linked to infertility? Did any of my sexual choices in my past play apart? What about my age? These are questions I will probably never know the answer to. The one thing I do know for sure is I will never have a child that is biologically linked to me.

Jim and I walked out of Dr. Thompsons office with our instructions for the next few weeks and two pictures of the embryos. Yes, you read that correctly, we were able to get pictures of our two slow dividing embryos. One pictures was taken from the ultrasound immediately after they were placed inside my uterus (an event Jim was proud to view) and the second picture was taken by the embryologist while they were still in the incubator. You can clearly see that they were only two-cell embryos at the time of transfer, but still they are my hope and faith that given the small 5% chance that they might survive.

And to top off everything else going on in our lives, the tea pot between Jim and I has been running over for days (a culmination between numerous issues I suppose) and I will no longer be joining him in Canada next week. Instead he will be going alone and I will be having a nice private vacation in some place far from here. In a strange way I'm looking forward to the seclusion of the week and being able to regain my thoughts.

Until next time....