The check's in the mail

I couldn't do it.
So I made my husband do it.
I guess it's a lot like that earlier post about our wedding vows and the letter that we expected to write to our donor.
This time, though, I had him make the call to our donor agency.
It was just too hard to make the ultimate call to end our journey. But I knew I couldn't go forward unless I had some confidence that it really would move forward.
Too many disappointments with too similar of circumstances in too short of time.
So he told them we just couldn't move forward. And we wanted our money back.
People ask me how I feel about it .. do I feel good about the decision.
No.
Not even a little. Not even for a second.
I feel angry and frustrated and confused and disappointed.
At one time or another, I've heard just about every one of my girlfriends tell me they were "done" having children. They felt their family was complete. They didn't want to go through childbirth. They didn't want to go through the baby stage. They didn't want to overextend themselves financially. Their career was too taxing.
I'm never ever ever going to feel done.
There will always be questions.
There will always be regret.
There will always be anger and frustration and confusion and disappointment.
Always. Forever. Without question.

That's something I've never really faced before.
I felt more peace when I made my toughest career decision -- leaving jou.rnali.sm for what I thought would be forever. I was in a bind financially. I was working at a place surrounded by uninspired and unmotivated people with no interest in helping me grow. It was time for a drastic change, so I quit.
Then the phone rang with an opportunity to make double the money and write a book. I thought it was the end of my ne.wspa.per career.
By all accounts, it should have been. You can't go to PR and then come back again.
I did that for 15 months and then made the easiest -- and best -- decision of my professional life:
Cut my salary in more than half and get back to where I belong .. in a ne.wsro.om.
If you look at the hours I work and the pay I get, I think my hourly pay is still lower than what I made in 1991-1992. And I've never regretted it for a second.
Here's the difference between that choice in 1991 and this choice in 2008: In 1991, My decision was based on changing something that needed changing. I had to get out of a bad situation.
Today, my decision maintains the status quo. It is based on fear of more disappointment.
I'm not sure that's a great way to live a life. It's not the way I do things. But I just can't bear the thought of going through this again. It's too hard. Too emotional. Too costly with a relatively low rate of success.
My head won over my heart.
But my heart will pay the price.
Maybe some surprising opportunity will present itself. Maybe my phone will ring because someone knows someone who has embryos leftover from IVF. They've been frozen for years and the couple wants to donate them. Maybe we'll win the lottery and pursue adoption. Maybe I'll wake up one day and decide that one kid is the perfect number, even if she'll never have a sibling to share the excitement of Christmas morning.
Or maybe I'll just move on. Reinvest in my career. Take more free time for myself. Maybe travel to Europe with my daughter when she's a teenager because, well, we won't have anything holding us back.
And while all these things could be good -- even great, there will always be that part of me that wonders about that second baby that was never born.
And maybe, at some point, I'll feel like that's OK.
That just doesn't seem likely.

Even if times are bad, life is good. More talk about being grateful.

It's been a week since I've posted. I know there are a lot of people out there who check-in everyday. Thank you for your loyalty, your interest and -- most importantly -- your support.

Today I'm going to get back to my grateful list. There was a time in my life that I would start out every single day writing down three things that make me grateful for my life. Boy, I'd love to see that notebook now.

That was late 1991 to early 1992 ... not long after my father died. His death took me completely by surprise. There were kids I knew whose parents died when they were really young. But, of my friends in my 20s, I think I was the first to lose a parent. It sounds stupid, but it never occurred to me that one of my parents would die. And it never occurred to me that the death of a parent would be so devastating. His death has defined every day of the rest of my life.

I suppose I also never thought I'd struggle with infertility. I never thought it would hurt the way it has. And I know I never thought a struggle with infertility would define every single day of the rest of my life.

But that's not what I'm trying to write about today.

Today, I'm going to brainstorm. I'm taking 15 minutes and writing down all the things that make me grateful for my life.

Go!

My beautiful, spirited, funny daughter.
My loving, funny and brilliant husband.
Even if jou.rnalism is dying, I have had 20 great years living my dream by working at a daily ne.wspaper.
Even if some ne.wspapers are dying, ours is still making money.
That means I might have another 20 years living my dream working at a ne.wspaper.
I have had the opportunity to travel a little bit.
I will have more opportunities to travel in the future.
I've seen the Grand Canyon twice .. and I know I'll see it again.
Been to DisneyWorld 10 times ... and probably will go 10 more times in my lifetime.
My 1992 blue Honda Civic, wherever it may be now.
All the places that Civic took me -- details omitted to protect the innocent ;)
Good friends.
Honest friends.
Family I would choose if they weren't already chosen for me.
The opportunity to live in a house ... even if I dream of someday living in an apartment steps away from the beach in Chicago again.
My high school, which took me as a sophomore despite my rocky start as a freshman.
My college, which taught me to love subjects I hated and introduced me to my mentor.
My college and grad school, which introduced me to lifelong friends.
Did I mention my husband, who always makes me laugh?
My oldest friend, who just got engaged.

Time's up.

'Maybe we should try having one the regular way'

That's what my husbnd said to me a week or so ago.
Honestly, it sounded like a crazy, far-fetched idea. I guess I'm just resigned to the idea that my eggs are stale.
Going with a donor also erased almost all the risks that come with old eggs -- birth defects like Down syndrome in particular. I liked that idea. It was something to put in the "pro" column for ending the IVF efforts and moving toward egg donation.
Watching that creepy Sarah Palin lie her way through that speech last night, I was reminded of the risks of getting pregnant at 42. I don't know the extent of her child's challenges. But seeing the four children she had in her 30s, contrasted with the son she had in her 40s, it's clear that that risk of Down's really is higher for older mothers.
Seeing her beautiful little baby, though, also made me wish we hadn't wasted the last year on egg donation. If someone offered me the chance to adopt a baby with Downs today, I wouldn't hesitate. My husband probably is unsure what he'd say, but I know him well enough to know he'd be right there with me.
So why did we stop trying with IVF after one cycle? I mean, we could have tried it two more times and still had a cycle on our insurance for the egg donation.
Maybe it was the sorry statistic ... that even the best stats put our chances of conception at 15 percent with a live birth rate of maybe 12 percent.
Maybe now we should try it the regular way. What the heck, right? My college roommate had one failed IVF cycle and then got pregnant by accident. She's got a lovely baby boy now.
I stayed on the pill after my cycle was canceled because it makes everything lighter and more predictable, if you know what I mean. But as long as I'm on it, there's absolutely no hope at all.
Maybe it's time to toss out that package.

Sorting through the rubble after the avalanche: Take a week, or two, or three ...

It's been three weeks since my cycle was canceled. It's hard to believe that at one point, I had such strong faith that it would move forward --- that I marked my calendar for this coming Thursday ... blood test????

No. There will be no blood test this week. And probably not ever. I haven't made a commitment to a decision yet. But it's been three weeks, and I still haven't found the courage to commit to moving forward.

I took time this weekend to clean out the room that was a nursery when we bought our house in 2002 -- a room that I envisioned would be a nursery for our second child. Cute bee wallpaper with a sweet yellow striped valance from Pottery Barn makes it suitable for a boy or a girl. I even had bedding picked out -- animals with sweet little smiles.

It was my daughter's room until she moved into a bed in 2003. Then it was a guest room. And a scrapbooking room. As my daughter grew out of toys and books, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them. So they stacked up in boxes, making that room useless.

Cleaning it out represents surrender. If I get up the courage to donate the stuff, that will mean defeat.

For now, the room will be a guest room/scrapbooking room.

My daughter had asked about moving in there. She wants to take down the wallpaper and paint it lime green and grape purple (ironic for a kid who doesn't like fruit, right?). I told her we had to hold off on that plan because I didn't have time. That was a lie.

I was waiting to see if I got pregnant. If I was having one baby, that would be the nursery. If I was having two, I'd move my daughter in there and use her current room (the bigger room/bigger closet) as the nursery.

Maybe it would be easier to just close the door and pretend like that room doesn't exist. Our house is plenty big without it.

But sometimes it makes more sense to open that door ... even if it means having to clean up the avalanche of board books and emotions that spills out. It's the only way to stop thinking about the hard choices that await.

A day at the lake is the best therapy

Still haven't come to any conclusion. Still haven't been back to work. Still not sure if I'm going to be part-time or full-time.
But I do know that spending a day or two next to a lake, listening to the waves and enjoying the breeze, is the most calming experience ever.
Back at home now. Cleaning out my linen closet at 1 a.m.
Trying to figure out what to do with all the boxes of progesterone suppositories that I've been holding onto in case I ever actually get to a transfer and need them.

It's time to talk about being grateful (a post about jealousy and offending people I respect)

I've always been grateful that the jealousy gene passed me over.
I've never envied people with bigger houses. I've never wanted a fancy car because someone else drove home something new and loaded. I never measured my own success by the size of my salary, the ranking of my college or the tag on my blue jeans.
Somehow, I actually believed it when people told me that happiness comes from within.
It's a great stroke of luck.
Unlike a lot of women who struggle with infertility or secondary infertility, I don't get upset when I see pregnant women. I can be genuinely happy for friends having babies.
This is something I'm especially grateful for now, when it would be easy for me to withdraw -- something I'm prone to do anyway.
I'm grateful for this because it allows me to look at my options without weighing the "how would you feel if" issues. It allows me to see my future under the three possible scenarios and measure my raw emotions without having to consider all these messy unknown factors.
Here are the possible outcomes:
* Quit and be happy with our family of three.
* Roll the dice on another donor and succeed.
* Roll the dice on another donor and come up empty.
Is there one option that I can cross off this list as unacceptable?

Not quite yet.

On another subject ....

My last post wasn't meant to imply that I think egg donation is something that will ultimately lead to a terrible outcome for the donors.
It was just my personal reaction to some very personal testimony from a woman who was looking for answers after losing her daughter to a terrible cancer.
Do I believe that the hormones injected during IVF or egg donation treatment can cause cancer? I really don't know.
But I really don't know that anyone knows -- or that anyone can really make an educated guess.
Does that mean I should give up? I'm not even saying that.
Does that mean it's wrong for others to turn to egg donation while building a family? No. Of course not.
It's just another factor for me to weigh while I'm making a decision that could rewrite my life plan.
I'm just so desperate for some bit of information that will lead me to the correct conclusion.
This is a time when I wish I had faith -- I wish I believed in God or some other sort of great equalizer or higher power to point me in the direction of the answer that I won't regret.

What are the risks for egg donors?

For me, Catholic school means something completely different than what it means for most of the world.
That's probably the case for most women who were fortunate enough to attend the all-girls Catholic high school that I attended.
It was full of enlightened, open-minded mostly female teachers who encouraged us to think about the consequences of our actions.
We heard from nuns who spent time in jail for protesting the military buildup at the time (early 1980s). We marched in peace walks with teachers and nuns. We were encouraged to volunteer to help out people in our communities.
Our school had a social justice club. It didn't have cheerleaders.
I wish my daughter could attend that school.
Anyway, why are we taking this trip in the way-back machine?
It's some background on why I tend to over-analyze the consequences of my actions.
I didn't step into the world of egg donation blindly. I tried to do some research into the consequences for the girls who donate. What happens to a young woman's body when she fills it will these hormones? What are the psychological effects of donating your DNA to complete strangers.
I've touched on all these issues in the blog. That represents just a fraction of the amount of consideration I've given to the ultimate cost of this -- the cost to the donor.
I'm a feminist. I'm supportive of reproductive freedom. I generally believe that women need to put focus on women's issues because it won't otherwise happen in what is still largely a "man's world." I'm all for women's rights.
This egg donation issue has created conflict for me. My desire to use an egg donor has not really fit neatly into the traditional liberal interpretation of how feminist women should look at things. I've struggled with it. I've talked to people about it. And I came to the conclusion that I need to make up my own mind on this issue.
Today I came across an article on the ourbodiesourblog.com site. It led me to a more detailed article on the site connected to the great ourbodiesourselves.com site.
This is testimony from a woman whose daughter developed colon cancer after three rounds of donations. She was testifying before Congress in support of a general registry for donors (I am very much in support of that as well.)
This touched me for many reasons.
Among them, one of my dearest friends died of colon cancer this year. She suffered through a year of treatment and pain before her body just couldn't fight anymore.
The thought of someone going through that as a result of a contract with me is unimaginable.
I'm not sure if there is a real medical link between massive amounts of hormones and colon cancer. No one is -- because there haven't been any studies.
But here's the link .. you can decide for yourself:
http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/companion.asp?id=31&compID=97&page=4