Where have you gone?

Where have you gone my sweet little angel?

A speck of light and hope frozen in time

You were inside my warm and embrace

But left us to mourn you in the dimmed lights

Where have you gone my sweet little angel?

The hope and the dreams born in my heart

An empty space that has no ending

The tears that flow through my empty palms

Where have you gone my sweet little angel?

I'm looking for you in every side of the line

We want you to know we are still waiting

We want you to know you are loved, you are in our hearts

Where have you gone my sweet little angel?

My tears and our hugs are all that we have

We miss you, we need you

You are all that we are

Where have you gone my sweet little angel?

Make us parents of your sweet little heart

We are tired of waiting and waiting 

A miracle is what you are

Where have you gone my sweet little angel?

Donde te has ido mi dulce angelito?

Our tears is all you have left in our broken hearts.

Hope is a strange thing

I am in the 2 week wait again, in the waiting hell we have to live going through this process. We did the transfer last week and the pregnancy test is next week. Meanwhile I just go insane thinking of the possibilities and feeling all the cramps, nervousness, nausea, and bad sleeping. Hoping against reason that this is it, that all I'm feeling is because we are pregnant and not because I'm getting my period or using progesterone.

I hope this is it, but it's so hard to keep positive with so many failed cycles, or when I keep feeling that every moment now I'll get my period. I have read so many of the symptoms of a positive cycle and they are silly. They are the exact same symptoms as a negative cycle, just with a possible happy ending.

Right now I'm using Progesterone suppositories 3 times a day, which yes, I do end up having to do at least 1 at work because that's where I am during the day. It adds a certain element of distress having to do that in a public bathroom. I am feeling nauseous, because I'm getting my period or because I'm pregnant? I am feeling cramps, because my uterus is expanding with life or because is preparing to shed? I am feeling anxious, and stressed. There is no happy or relaxed at this moment. I just keep waiting for the hammer to fall. The moment I go "there you are, I guess now I know the result of this cycle" but I don't want that! I hate that :(

I also ate pineapple core because so many people talking about it got to me, but granted I did it only for 4 days. I keep my feet warm even though I prefer them cold, and I drink only room temperature water because life does that to you while going through this. It makes you do things you don't believe in just because you are desperate, and you are willing to try anything and everything.

I try to keep a smile on my face and not to cry, to come to work even though I don't want to get out of bed, to keep living even though I want to sleep until the end of the cycle. I want to know and I want this to work. This is our last chance for now. If this doesn't work we'll chance clinics, run tests again and see if maybe we spend 5 figures again to try one more time. We start the adoption process so we don't wait forever for a chance that might not come. We understand the realities better, that IVF does not work for everyone and worse of all it doesn't even work for someone that technically is perfectly healthy.

If this work, our life as we know it will be different and will be the happiest life ever, because our miracle will be coming to us.

FET or how to feel crazy when not in drugs

This is how I feel. Like a little girl doing a peace offering to a giant and strange thing. Every time I am in this place I am reminded of this image, it just comes naturally. Can the giant being be nice to me just once, or is going to continue ignoring me or crushing me?

I am in the middle of a natural FET or unmedicated cycle. Basically I go for day 3 ultrasounds and blood work, then go back again on day 9 and every day after that until I ovulate. After they see I ovulate, I start the progesterone and come back on day 7 after ovulation for my baby's transfer. Then its the 2 weeks from hell all over again.

I thought this would be a much easier cycle, at least at the beginning, because I don't have to face injections, or be pumped in drugs, bloated and having all sort of side effects. It's just a normal month but I go for ultrasounds and blood work when necessary. I thought wrong.

Even though I don't miss all the side effects and injections, my mental state is as bad as the other cycles. I can't stop thinking about the cycle, the "what if"s, what's going on my body, and checking the results of the tests in the mornings. I keep wondering if I should go sugar free, eat pineapple core, never be barefoot, and just get into the train of all the crazy things we try when we are desperate. I feel extremely tired, sad, worried, distracted, and just want to cry.

There is no reason to cry, we are just in a cycle, a possibility of pregnancy, a few days of being PUPO again. Yet there is a chance of failure, of this baby not implanting, of this baby not even thawing, of being "pregnant" for a few days and get bad news at the end, of losing hope.

We have plan B and plan C. Change fertility clinics and adoption. I would be perfectly happy with adoption, but I am scared of the waiting times, and being so close I can touch the dream but end up shattered at the end. I have hope on the second fertility clinic, but again is a shot in the dark, just more chances of maybe working.

I hate infertility. I hate I have to go through this. It doesn't matter how many times I hear it's going to get better, or I am very strong and that's why God trusts me with this. I am tired. I am happy I have all the support I have but I am tired and want to be able to have my one miracle. Just one. As much as I would like more than one kid, my 1 miracle is all I need. It is going to be interesting if we managed to get there, at this rate I feel I will totally call the kid "My Miracle". Imagine being 30 year old and say "Hi, my name is My Miracle, nice to meet you". Never mind 30s, just go through puberty with that one. But I don't care, I want this, I am being irrational and that's ok, I am allowed. This has been a LONG and painful journey so I am allowed to be silly and irrational and mentally unstable for a bit. I know I will feel better again.

Would you tell someone you were infertile?

Today I found this really good article called Would you tell someone you were infertile?

The thing I liked the most about it is that people seem to talk more about the subject when they have overcome infertility one way or another. We don't hear about celebrities struggling with infertility, we hear about them having kids with surrogates, donor eggs, or adopting. And that's if we hear about it at all.

Where are the non success stories? As me, there are so many women struggling with infertility and with no happy ending yet. We hide in forums, and in some blogs. We might tell some close friends and family, but that's it. You don't hear about us in the news struggling to get the money for one more treatment, or about the suffering that we endure. You rarely hear about infertility classified as a medical condition with suffering equivalent to cancer, but it is there, it is real.

I am not asking that news should report about it, but it's not in TV, or movies. It is not talked about.

I do not have cable at home, but this week I stayed at a hotel for 2 nights and tried to watch TLC. The 2 main TV shows the whole time I was able to watch TV? "19 kids and counting" and "I didn't know I was pregnant". Basically everyone can have kids with only thinking about it? Where are shows like "Infertile and struggling" or "Fighting against time: An infertile journey", or my favourite name I read in a forum "Womb warriors".

Where do we fit in a society that expects you to be able to get pregnant just because you are a woman, and expects you to be a dad just because you are married?. Mother's day, father's day, church family events oriented to kids, company "bring your kids!" events. We sit on the sidelines watching and mourning. We mourn every month, we mourn every lost, we mourn every time we see a baby or a pregnant woman. We suffer in silence and wish people at the work event would just stop talking about their kids, or to please stop sending email after email about the surprise baby shower for X just because I am a woman. Stop. Being a mother is a wonderful thing, I know it, I am a mother at heart, but please stop alienating me and reminding me so much.

The daily life of our IVF journey

No words are needed. This was our life during the IVF odyssey.

The strength to go on, and the strength to stop

A lot of people talk about how much strength it takes to go on in this process, to try one more time, to give it just one more shot. I believe it takes incredible amounts of strength to stop too. To not try one more time and accept, to accept life as-is and stop trying to change it, to believe there is something else out there besides our current goal.

I am being forced again and again to contemplate that future. A future where I stop.

Before I started IVF I remember thinking how much I admired the women that didn't give up and tried one more time. Right now I don't know if I admire them, but I know I admire the women that decide to stop. The women that decide not to try IVF again and change their path. The women that decide to live life and stop trying to change it.

One IVF is enough for me. I don't know the outcome yet, but I am forced to see a future after this. I am forced to think about plan B and plan C. I have hope but hope is low. The light is low and everything is dimmed. Even though I feel like the light is gone, I feel comfort about going back to my life. To being happy again. To stop trying and let the future come.

God, I give up, I surrender. I had put my will on you, I decided to stop worrying and leave it all in your hands. Today I surrender. Today I not only put my future in your hands, and let you take care of it. Today I tell you that I will stop fighting. I will let you guide me. I will let you take me wherever you had planned all along.

I surrender.

Two week wait... again

And here we are, in the 2 week wait again. Thinking of every little thing going on in my body, obsessing, reading about it, worrying about it. This wait has been a lot better than the previous cycles, I think I'm a bit more relaxed and feel more deeply that there is nothing I can do to change the outcome at this point. I know I'm not even half way through it (but more than a third!!) but last time I was obsessing since day 1.

Today is day 5, which can be read 5dp5dt in the forums. 5 days past 5 day transfer. Instead of thinking that I have to wait week and a half to know if it works, I'm concentrated on making it until this Thursday that I have acupuncture and Friday that I have an ultrasound.

Even like that the wait it's not easy. If I'm not completely engrossed on whatever I'm doing, I'm thinking about it. For example all these days I have been keeping an eye on my OHSS, but today I woke up feeling much better. So I have pretty much spent all day reading about the possibility of OHSS getting better but still being pregnant. Obsessive.

If I'm home I can distract myself, but the car and the office are the worse. In the car I feel the temptation of talking with J about it. At work I don't actually do work and browse all day for answers, write and read in forums, and in general feel annoyed that I can't be home. J keeps insisting that I take days off, but this is just starting!! I know that's it's silly that I don't take days off work and still don't work in the office, but at least I'm here. I can be available and I do try every so often, it's just hard.

Julia Wertz

I have seen lots of ideas to make it go faster, but what to do when you are stuck in the office and don't want to work? I should remove my Internet xD Maybe that will make me concentrate on work :)

The infinite wait continues.