Just Keep Swimming A wife trying to keep a positive outlook on male-factor infertility

Yesterday morning, I paid the final bill for our IVF cycle.  (Well, not entirely final – there’s one charge we’re disputing with the hospital.)  I finally took the time to sit down and total up all the receipts I’ve so diligently kept in a shiny blue “IVF” folder, something I’ve been rather scared to actually do.  Here is the breakdown of our total out-of-pocket costs:

1,247.48 – copayments for office visits, bloodwork, and ultrasounds
1,733.31 – meds, both for IVF stimulation and Bobby’s post-surgery
620 – two vials of donor sperm
9,608.40 – IVF with ICSI for 12 embryos, assisted hatching for 5 embryos, and cryopreservation for the remaining 3 embryos
3,988 – TESE

Grand Total = 17,197.19

That number is nauseating to me, even considering the fact that we ended up with our miracle baby and three frozen embryos at the end of it all.  I can’t imagine what I would be feeling right now if I weren’t pregnant.  There are so many people who are in that boat right now, who have done multiple cycles at this same cost and no closer to their someday families.

There are other, intangible costs associated with IVF that cannot be accurately measured.  The countless tears, the hours of work time lost either due to doctor’s appointments or mental stress that prevents you from being optimally productive.  The friendships I let fall by the wayside because I couldn’t handle hearing about their new babies.  The emotional scars that will never completely go away.  The plans that were put on hold, or canceled.  The dreams that were crushed, the youthful optimism and visions of a perfect family that was destroyed in an instant with that first phone call that said “zero sperm.”  Ideas about “the way life was supposed to happen.”

In all my time reading infertility blogs in this community, so much of what we blog about is related to measuring.  How many days since I first started trying to conceive?  How many cycles have I attempted? How many follicles, how much medication, how much estrogen, how much has my beta grown? How many weeks pregnant am I?  How much money have I spent?

How do you really measure the cost of infertility treatments?  Does tallying up the bills give you a real idea?  Can you really compare your cost to what others have incurred? Should we track the statistics of our treatments? What about the things you can’t measure, how do they figure in to the grand total?   It’s almost as if we are trying to justify ourselves and make sense of this bizarre, unfair journey by finding something to quantify.

I think the truth is that you can’t reduce a life-changing tragedy like this, or any other serious illness, down to a sum total.  I don’t want to wear $17,000 as a badge proving how badly I wanted a family, and I don’t want to compare my totals with anybody else’s.  I want to measure the cost of this baby in LOVE.  How much did I love my husband in order to go through all this with him? How much love did we show each other as we tried to support each other?  How much will I love this child when it becomes part of our family?

Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred moments so dear.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes.
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee?
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?
In five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes,
How do you measure a year in the life?

How about love? Measure in love,
Seasons of love.

The first time I ever heard this song was when I saw Rent performed live on Broadway in New York City.  Bobby was deployed overseas at the time, and I remember sitting in the theater, shaking with emotion, because this song spoke to me so deeply about my relationship with this man I had been dating for three years.  One day when my children ask me for advice and they say, “How did you know that Daddy was the one?” I’ll say, it was because of this song.  It’s only fitting that this song, which once helped me understand that I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving this man, is now the same song that helps me understand the true cost of what has been one of the most trying experiences of our lives together.

So the next time I ever think to myself, or anyone ever asks me, how much did infertility cost? I will answer, “It took a lot of love.”

You might regret clicking on this post title.  If so, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize preemptively.

About two years ago, I herniated a disk in my neck. One day I woke up, got out of bed, went to the bathroom, stood up, and felt a pull.  I went through about 5 months of misdiagnosis – the first doc I saw had me pegged as suffering from too much stress and wanted to prescribe me Zanex(sp?) within five minutes of meeting me.  He then sent me for physical therapy and massage for neck strain – the exact opposite of the treatment for herniations.  No surprise, there was no improvement for months, and finally I end up in the emergency room for intense, extreme pain.  My new doctor orderd a CT scan and sure enough – herniation. Stress my ass.  Four months of traction later and I was cured.

Until last Friday.  I woke up, got out of bed, went to the bathroom, stood up, and felt a familiar pull.  At least this time I recognize the pain and know exactly what’s wrong.  I’ve already got a neurosurgeon (who actually doesn’t want to operate on me) and I’ve got an appointment booked for next Wednesday.  And Bobby’s already set up my traction system for me to start as soon as I get the ok.  The thing is, I think it’s the pregnancy that has brought my old injury back to haunt me.

You see, my uterus is retroverted. So the baby and all accompanying support systems are sitting directly on top of my tailbone.  I’ve had some really specific lower back pain since about 9 weeks in.  The back pain is causing me to stand differently, and since I spend most of my day either on my feed or perched on top of a stool, I think that change in posture has caused my poor cervical vertebrae to rub against each other again.  So as a result, I spent the entire weekend laid up on the couch, propped with pillows and icing my neck, taking the only weapon we poor preggos have against pain – Tylenol.

Warning – TMI ahead.

Then last night, I went to the bathroom to have a boom boom.  And while I was booming, I had the most intense pain… ever.  Right in my rectum.  And in the center of my uterus.  The pain was very specifically tied to my booms, and it stopped after I stopped.  And there was no blood.  But nonetheless, it was really scary.  And even though the pain hasn’t come back, I still feel tender.

So, pain in the neck, and the rectum.  Yep.  That’s where I am right now.

My husband should be a comedian.

“Hey Dory, I saw CS at work last night.  Apparently he got caught cheating on his wife and now he’s getting a divorce.  He got her pregnant or something, and they sold their house and his wife moved to another city and he’s living in an apartment now.”

“Holy cow, that’s awful. What a douche.”

“Yeah, he said he’s trying to put his life back together and maybe save his marriage.  He cut off all his hair so he wouldn’t worry about how he looks, and he stopped listening to rap and only listens to Christian music.  I guess he found God or something.”

“Still, maybe it’s a good thing you never became friends with him.  He’s a jackass. I can’t believe he got another woman pregnant.”

“Well Dory, you don’t have anything to worry about.  I will NEVER get another woman pregnant!”

HAR. HAR. HAR. 😉

Hey, remember me?  The lovable, humorous, slightly neurotic chick who used to post blog updates every day or so?  Yeah, hi!  Sorry it’s been so long.  I’ve been in a haze of nausea and exhaustion for the past month that I have never experienced before, and could barely muster up the strength to scroll my Facebook feed, let alone compose a coherent blog post.  But the fog has lifted and I am starting to resemble myself again, and here I am.  Nothing much has changed since my last update a few weeks ago.  I guess that’s also why I haven’t posted – nothing new happened!  I haven’t commented on too many blogs, but I promise I’ve been reading every one of them.

It’s less than 60 degrees outside here in sunny Northern Florida, the first truly cold day we’ve had this season.  After a really, really rough week, I rushed home and threw on sweat pants, a fleece, and warm socks, and parked myself on the porch with a tall mug of homemade-on-the-stove hot chocolate.  The weather today has made me feel invigorated in a way I haven’t felt since…??

As I sat on my porch, I looked up at the huge tree that towers over our apartment building.  Our view of this tree is framed perfectly by the sliding glass windows, and it’s the main thing you see when you look outside of our place.  I looked up at its leaves and realized they were starting to brown.  They’ll be falling off very shortly, which makes me sad.  I remember at the end of last winter, looking out from the porch every single day to spot the first green buds of new leaves on this tree’s naked, stubbly arms.  Green tree leaves are possibly one of my favorite things on this earth, and I sorely missed them during the five months they were hibernating.  I felt so much happiness when they returned; I missed their contrast with the blue of the sky, and the sighing sound that they make when the wind blows.  The color of new leaves is my favorite color on earth.  I love when the sunlight shines through them, and I take spring drives the way people in the north drive to see the colors changing in autumn.  I drive down the country roads and just drink in that new-green color.

This got me thinking about seasons, and of course I started humming the Byrds’ famous tune.  Life’s seasons are often spent the way I look forward each spring to the regrowth of the leaves on my tree.  Always looking forward and hoping for a change that we desperately desire, very rarely being truly happy just where we are.  For many of us, infertility has plunged our lives into an endless winter, and we spend our days standing by the window, desperately searching the branches of our trees for any sign of new-green life.

Wouldn’t it be nice if life’s seasons were as predictable as the ones nature graces us with each year?  If we could measure their beginning and end? If we could predict their effects and outcomes, and stock up on emergency supplies before hand?  Forecasters can tell us when dry spells are coming, or when the winter will be particularly harsh.  In the south, we know what months to expect dangerous hurricanes, and we have enough advance notice to fortify our homes to withstand the winds before the storm hits.  In the north, we know when the leaves will change from dark summer green to bright autumn golds, and we know when the barren branches will return with spots of bright green.

But life’s seasons hit without warning, and we never know how long they will stay.  The winter of our infertility was much shorter than most – we were diagnosed in April, and pregnant by September.  But our short winter was brutally harsh, at times leaving us standing naked outside, totally unprepared, holding on to each other against the blowing wind and snow.  For so many of you, your winters have lasted for years, and I cannot even imagine the endurance it takes to withstand so much for so long.  It must even make some of you mad, that Bobby and I met with success after only one IVF and one TESE.  I wish I had an answer.  All I know is that we can’t predict when the seasons of our life will change.  We can only protect ourselves as best we can, and stand at the window, and hope for a sign that spring is near.

After a truly devastating winter, when farmers lose their citrus crops to freezes and people freeze to death in their own homes, spring brings with it a different set of feelings.  Relief, instead of joy; gratefulness, instead of a promise; a twinge of fear, instead of safety.  The memory of a hard winter stays with us in the spring, and taints the gladness we used to feel.  We came too close to losing everything, and have lost, for a time, the child-like joy that the first leaves of spring have always brought in the past.  We fear it will happen again, can still feel the chill in our bones even though a warm wind now blows on our skin.  My pregnancy after infertility feels much this same way.  I can’t just be happy.  I can’t just let people at work gush over my belly that’s starting to poke out of my jeans, tease me about my voracious appetite, or ask how I’m feeling today.  I can’t explain it – I just still feel that chill in my bones, even though the cold has passed.  We came too close to losing everything for me look at those leaves on the branches the same way I did before.  I’m not the same person that I was at this time last year, and I don’t think I ever will be again.  Winter changes us, makes us less optimistic and more guarded.

But seasons continue to change.  Spring will turn into summer, and next year our little chicklet will be with us.  The memory of this winter will hopefully fade a little, and I’ll just enjoy being a mom.  And when the next winter comes, when we decide to defrost our ice-babies and try for #2, we’ll know from experience how to fortify our house and prepare for the uncertainty of that storm.

And for all of you who are still waiting for spring, thank you for letting me continue to write this blog, and share a cup of hot chocolate with you while you wait.