Maybe not

Well, as the ambitious young businessman, H is now travelling with his laptop and so this has been the most connected holiday that I have had. It's nice actually. We can look up addresses of places we want to go. I can check my email. I can even post to my blog. It's a brave new world for me.

So far so good, but you haven't heard about our trip to the surrogacy agency and Super Duper Fertility Specialist. That was not so good.

It started off well. We flew in and as we flew over the city, I looked down and thought, "My child could be born here." It was a weird thought. We drove to the hotel and I wondered if good things could happen in this place but I felt nothing but apprehension. I burst into tears at breakfast out of sheer nerves and H calmed me down as he always does. I calmed down and we went to the agency first. Everyone there was very nice and extremely chatty and the meetings went well. Then we went to the Super Duper Doctor. We chatted in his office and he asked a few questions. Then there was the standard stirrup examination and he could only count 3 baseline follicules. "How many do you expect to see usually?" I asked him. "At least six," he said. To summarise, he wants me to do an FSH test and then we go on according to the results but the dreaded words "donor eggs" were mentioned, as well as "reduced success rate".

It seems so innocuous as I write it here but I was devastated. I am devastated. It's not a surprise. I expect the bad news now but I still hate having it confirmed. I took to my bed for the afternoon and it was not pretty, I was a horrible, nasty mess. I don't even understand it myself but having a baby has become the thng I want to achieve most in my life and I seem totally and completely unable to do it. I have never subscribed to the view that a woman's total fulfilment is to be found in being a wife and mother but not being to achieve motherhood devastates me more than any other failure yet. Maybe it is the repetition. Every year there seems to be another confirmation that I cannot do this and every year the confirmation seems to hint that my body is pretty much screwed.

I spoke to a relative who funnily enough had her children with donor eggs last night. She even said that in the end it hardly matters; your children are your children, you don't ask how they were conceived. It helps. It will just take a while to accept.

H is positive. He says it worked last year, can so much have changed? He says to wait for the FSH test results. I am just worrying.

Comments

[meg]

Carlynn, I feel your pain. Truly. BUT I am with H. It worked last year. It will work again. And as for donor eggs, your relative is right. They are your children.

I know you are worrying, but try and enjoy the rest of your holiday, a little. Thinking of you.

[luna]

carlynn, I am so sorry you had to hear those words. but FSH is not the be-all end-all test and yes it worked last year is right. I hope you get better news and if not then maybe a second opinion.

as an aside, my step-SIL just gave birth to twins vis DEs and they are HER children, no doubt. (they're not even telling anyone about the DEs either.)

wishing you well. ~luna

[Geohde]

I think there is a bit of a long bow drawn between three follicles and donor eggs there. And as the others have pointed out, it worked, not long ago.

J

[niobe]

I'm sure this sounds too cheery and optimistic (and I'm not trying to minimize your feelings), but maybe there's a way to think of DE as a kind of back up option.

As in: okay, I can try with my own eggs. And that might very well work out. But even if, for whatever reason, it doesn't, I won't have to give up, because there's another way of getting the baby I want.

[Kami]

I'm sorry about the bad news. I hope it was a fluke. I have heard of one cycle looking bad in terms of the number of follicles, but looking good the next month.

On the other hand, is it possible the previous losses could be related to an egg issue? Maybe it would feel better if you needed DE, but got to carry the child.

I hope the "bad news" days are mostly behind you.

[Becky]

*hugs*