Where

I'm too tired and drained to post much right now...we had a farm tragedy last night that resulted in the stillbirth of our first calf of the year, and that after two years of cow infertility at our place. Given our personal infertility and our two dead babies last year, it's a lot to f*cking take. It's very hard not to take it all personally. And that on top of news earlier this week that someone in our babyloss community lost her husband to a tragic accident. To say life is unfair is an absolute understatement. Life makes no sense to me at all sometimes. Our hearts are so broken for this woman and her children, who have already been through more than enough.

*******

We are proceeding forward with the IVF...although times like this, I have a hard time believing that it'll work, that we'll EVER have a living baby in our family. Last night I told Paul, "I love you, but I hate our life." It's been a very true feeling for me lot of the time over the last year, coming and going...right now it's here again. I never asked for any of this shit; neither of us have. And what the f*ck did we do wrong in a past life to deserve all of this? If all the bad wasn't concentrated around our and our cow herd's infertility and now babyloss, I wouldn't feel so doomed, but for God's sake, this cannot be coincidental. I just want to rip out all my hair and scream. Maybe it will help.

Anyway, because I'm going to move forward in the hopes that some miracle will overcome us and stop this ridiculous, beyond-unfair run of really bad luck, I will take my second birth control pill tonight, the first step toward IVF. The BCPs are to synchronize my cycle and give Dr. Z. "control" of the timing (but we all know how medical control of my body has worked in the past, right?). My recominant human growth hormone prescription is ready and waiting for me at a pharmacy in Maine; I have only to call them and give them my credit card number and confirm shipping plans before it arrives on our doorstep in mid-September.

Tuesday we'll go to University of Washington for three appointments: two for Paul and one (duo) for me. We've decided to bank a frozen back-up sperm sample in the event whatever eggs they get from me (provided they do) don't fertilize the first time. I will have a saline sonohystogram and a mock transfer to make sure my uterus is properly healed from my hysteroscopy last month and to give Dr. Z. a chance to get to know the lay of the land, so to speak.

If all is well, I should finish the BCPs on the 19th and start the stimulation protocol on the 21st with Menopur, Gonal-F, Cetrotide and the rHGH. With any luck, we'll get decent follicle development and make it to egg retrieval the first week (thereabouts) of October.

We have decided to go ahead with the PGD. Therefore, if we get any eggs and any of them fertilize and make to day 3 embryo stage, each will be biopsied and a single cell shipped to a lab in California for DNA testing to see if we have any that are normal (i.e. not too many genes, not too few, not the wrong kind in the wrong places). The results would be made available on the morning of day 5, and a single normal embryo - if we have one - transferred into my uterus, probably right around the due date of our next calf (October 8th, oh, the irony).

As I researched the PGD a little bit and saw the type of results other couples have gotten ("Fragile X - XXY, female"; "Trisomy-21, male", "Trisomy 13, female"), I realized that we would hear the sex of each embryo before it was even available to transfer. Do we want to have to choose, potentially, between a male or female embryo? Would we want to have to decide whether to try and bring a son or a daughter into the world? Paul and I talked and decided absolutely not, so I called Dr. Z.'s nurse and asked her to note that we won't want to know the sex of the embryos. Too much information. We'd both rather have the opportunity most normal people get these days to learn through an anatomy scan ultrasound at 18-20 weeks pregnant...if we get there.

So many ifs...