Long-Awaited Update

Well, I don’t have a pregnant belly to show you. By my calculations I would have been 8 months or so by now. Things kind of went downhill from my last post. Here’s what happened next:

My belly got worse. Bigger. Much, much bigger. On Thanksgiving day, I was in bed trying to swallow chicken broth without throwing up. I could barely breath, walking was very very hard and forget sleeping. The next day (Friday) we went in for a check-up. The doctor, seeing I was in extreme distress, recommended a surgical procedure whereby she extracted two-and-a-half litres of fluid from my abdomen. In my groggy haze, I remember saying before the surgery, “I’m so sorry … I haven’t showered in a week.” The next thing I remember is looking in the doorway at a visiting Swedish doctor who was holding up two large containers of bloody fluid with a big smile on his face, exclaiming, “We took all of this out of you!” or something like that. I asked if I could take a picture and then passed out.

Needless to say, I felt MUCH better after that. I even went out to eat. Having only had chicken broth for several days, everything tasted magnificent. My belly was still huge, but it didn’t hurt anymore. I actually enjoyed looking pregnant and pretended that I was. People looked at me like I was pregnant, that was a fun moment … albeit short-lived.

None of the embryos took. I fell off a very deep end, hormones coursing, no anti-crazy pills. Should we try again right away? I became extremely depressed. Christmas was just a couple weeks away and my husband’s family would be visiting from Canada. I couldn’t deal with doing all “that” again while also doing all the other.

Then when Christmas was over, I was even more depressed. I talked to my doctor about Zoloft, which is supposed to be safeER for pregnancy. In other words, if you really must, Zoloft is the best of the bad.

I tried it for a few months and it wasn’t doing the job.

We finally decided that being pregnant while wanting to kill myself would not be a good combination. So I went back on the meds that work and took pregnancy off the table.

While friends all around me are either pregnant or have babies, I’m forced to consider a life without. Sure, we can adopt. But interestingly, after aaaaallllllll that effort, time and money, I’m settling into the reality that my husband and I might not have children at all. We will be that couple who loves their dogs and enjoys visiting their nieces and nephews.

So that’s where I am right now. And here are my final thoughts on this process: If it is meant to be, you will get pregnant. Part of that “meant to be” is the amount of crap you are willing to put yourself through. You will know when you have met your limit. And if you meet your limit and you are still not pregnant, you will find peace in knowing that you did everything you were capable of doing. I met my limit. I am not willing to put myself through any of that crap again. It is not meant to be for me. And I am finding peace with that.

Would I recommend the Beer Clinic for “unexplained” fertility? I don’t think so. It’s too many tests and too confusing and too overwhelming and too expensive and too unproven. Plus, most of the procedures are not recommended by the experts I consulted with (see So Many Decisions and More Opinions).

That is just my opinion.

Would I recommend IVF? Until you’ve gone thru the process with the stimulation and transfer and all of that you really can’t understand how difficult it all is … physically and emotionally. A month and THOUsands of dollars later, we were worse off than when we started. But I’m only one story. I guess I would try it once. For some people it’s easy-breezy. But if it’s too much for you to bear, don’t feel obligated to do it again.

I wish you the wisdom to know when enough is enough, the strength to stop when you need to, and the best of luck in your journey.