It’s a constant whirwind of thoughts in my mind, all of this. It’s so amazingly hard to take in, while at the same time it’s the one thing that is never far from my mind, ever.
As the follicles grow my discomfort is growing, too. Standing, walking, lifting things, it’s all very difficult. When I walk I waddle a bit from side to side, I have a swollen abdomen and suffer from bouts of nausea from the medications. That I have the symptoms of pregnancy but none of the end benefits is an irony that’s not lost on me.
My final egg count is something that I won’t know until they go in and get them all out on Wednesday. I won’t know about it until then but it doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it a million times a day. I can’t stop thinking about how many I will wind up with in the end. Even more than that, I can’t stop worrying about how many will fertilize. Further to that, the one-egg/two-egg issue is doing my head in-I dwell on it constantly and with some sense of complete confusion and concern.
I think I’ve thought about the woman who is receiving half of my eggs almost as much as I’ve been thinking about everything I’m going through. I wonder if she’s as nervous, as hopeful, as excited or as scared as I am. I wonder if she and her husband link fingers and dream about it together at night or if they silently accept her aches and pains and medicated moods, which is the scenario we live in. I wonder if she has to change the channel from shows where a woman is giving birth, announcing her pregnancy, or beaming about how fucking fabulous it is to be a mom. I wonder if she has told anyone in her life about what she’s going through, I wonder how many prayers and wishes and hopes she’s raised up into the air.
I wonder if she’s as constantly plagued by all of the impossible “what-if” questions as I am.
I don’t know. I will never know. I have a green piece of paper to fill out still, as the deadline is tomorrow. It’s a slippery slope from here on, once I trigger it’s all systems go. We go for retrieval and fertilization on Wednesday (most likely, to be confirmed tomorrow morning) and later in the day she and her partner show up and fertilize their eggs (they do this to ensure that we never meet up.) We don’t know each others names, where the other one lives, or any details about each other. She’ll have a green piece of paper that sums me up in half a page, but although we are entitled to know, Aidan and I long ago decided that we don’t want to know the outcome of her IVF-if she fails, I will feel terribly guilty. If she succeeds and I don’t, I have to be honest-it may feel even worse.
It’s just better to not know.
And now that I am staring the days down, now that the whole world is on the line, I have to tell the truth-I don’t think about her as much as I did before we started the cycle and in the beginning of the early one-shot-a-day phase. While it has never once crossed my mind to pull out of this process, I would never even entertain a single thought about not offering up half of my eggs to her, I am a bitch who is now only focused on my own cycle. She’s on her own, but I honestly wish her the best of luck.
Aidan again stated something we had already discussed-we don’t have many shots at this. He is older, and with older means less excitement at midnight infant feedings. We can’t go through this so many times and I feel I have to work so hard to make sure this one goes right, only I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to do to ensure that it will. Even though you get all those comments from people who say things like “You WILL be a mother! You MUST be a mother!” wishful thinking has never been something that gets translated into concrete.
I cry a lot.
I’m not ready to face the prospect that I might spend my life without ever knowing what it’s like to be a mother.
I would make bargains with god, if only I thought that would help.
We have our last scan tomorrow, and I am hoping to talk to the doctor about some of the things on my mind then.
Posted by Vanessa at April 23, 2006 11:04 AM | TrackBackYou're one of the people I mention nightly in my prayers, Vanessa. I hope you and Aidan get your baby from this.
Posted by: Polichick at April 24, 2006 02:23 PMI'm thinking of you. Loving you. Wishing I could hug you.
Posted by: Margi at April 24, 2006 05:55 AMI still can't bear to think of what it'd be like to live a life without children.
P.S. God doesn't bargin with herself.
Posted by: statia at April 24, 2006 02:48 AMHaving never gone through anything like this, I cannot truly understand, but I can sympathize with the agony of waiting. Waiting for anything important or truly desired is horribly difficult. All you can actively do is think about things, so naturally your mind is in overdrive.
You shouldn't feel like a 'bitch' for concentrating on your own cycle - you cannot possibly carry around even more stress than you have on your own.
Hang in there, and best wishes!!! Will cross my fingers for you Wednesday!
Posted by: stephanie at April 24, 2006 12:35 AMI think your thoughts on your donee's cycle are very healthy. There's so much potential for hurt, whether her cycle fails or yours does (but it won't- not with all these people in the computer hoping for you!) and neither outcome is anyone's fault, so I agree that it's best not to know. As for thinking about her, you have so much on your own plate, it's natural to wish her the best and mentally check out. You're giving her the best gift you can and I think that's more than enough.
Good luck this week!
Posted by: EJW at April 23, 2006 03:35 PM