Project Melbee: Confessions

There is an organization here in the states that people dealing with infertility can turn to for information/support groups/seminars, etc.; called RESOLVE. RESOLVE is launching a campaign this week to get the word out about National Infertility Awareness Week and their yearly award for bloggers whose main topic deals with the trials and tribulations of infertility, which they've call Project IF. Here's the explanation of the project as written on the Resolve sister site stirrup-queens.com:

Participating in the newly created Project IF is quite simple and will be held in two parts. Today kicks off the first part and the second part will go up on April 21st, just in time for NIAW, National Infertility Awareness Week (April 24–May 1).
All you have to do to participate in the first part is leave a comment below stating your biggest “what if” in regards to infertility: what if I never get to experience pregnancy? What if we can’t gather enough money to fund another adoption? What if we didn’t choose the best clinic? What if my child feels strange about being created via IVF?

I know I've gone a long way around to get to this point, but I wanted to share with you all my little contribution to that blog; which goes as follows:

What If acupuncture is our last hope? What if, after all the pain, heartache, and sacrifice we still don’t know the joy of seeing that first positive pregnancy test, of feeling our baby kick me from the inside, of holding him/her for the first time? What if we never get to see him/her play in his/her first little league game? What if Simon's family name dies with him? What if I never forgive myself for not being able to “make” it happen?

If you're interested in reading other people's comments on Project IF feel free to visit the blog site at:

www.stirrup-queens.com/2010/04/bloggers-unite-project-if/ Or if you would like more information on NIAW or RESOLVE you can visit their website at: www.resolve.org

As you go through life you hear stories of and meet people who have had trying times of some sort or another. Most of the time you can sympathize with such people/or persons, but usually you tell yourself that that could never/would never happen to yourself; and then come up with several reasons as to why that could or would never happen to you. For me, it's the issue of "fertility" or "infertility" as it were. My parents couldn't wash their underwear in the same load of laundry together without getting pregnant. (They had three children) My sister and her husband, apparently had the same "problem" (They had four children, and probably would have had a lot more if it weren't for the new-fangled sterility procedures they have these days.) My other sister and her husband thought they were sterile, but that certainly wasn't the case. (They had two children, although she miscarried once or twice.) Seeing the uber-fertileness that the women in my family seemed to have had, I was scared to death of having a boyfriend as a teenager and well into my twenties. I didn't want to have any "accidental" children. When I finally did get a steady boyfriend, we decided that birth control was a REALLY smart option because we certainly weren't ready for children yet. Alas, as I started to get into my mid to later twenties the old biological clock started ticking and Simon and I had been together a few years, we decided we wanted children after all, and were ready to give it a go. We stopped the birth control and figured it would be a matter of days before we were pregnant. Nearly two years later we decided it was time to see my doctor and find out what the problem could be. Simon had his swimmer's tested (which were totally normal) and I had a quick test to see if the 'ol tubes were open and unblocked. Since everything turned out well there, my doctor started me on a beginner fertility drug called Clomid; figuring that our problem had to do with me not ovulating on a normal basis. After several more months of nothing happening, my doctor sent me to a "fertility specialist" where several more tests were performed, each successively more embarrassing than the next. We were deemed "unexplained infertility" and offered some more options, each successively more expensive. We started with the lowest costing procedure and tried it a couple months and still nothing happened. At that point we decided that perhaps IVF is the only way we were ever going to have children. After discussing this option with our doctor at length, we decided to go for it. The doctor just needed to run one more test and we would be "on our way" to 60-70 % odds of getting pregnant. Of course, nothing is easy with me, the doctor saw something that didn't look quite right so we had to go into surgery to make sure it was nothing really serious. It turns out I had a patch of endometriosis, which she removed. If we would have went ahead with the IVF, it very likely would have not worked or I would have miscarried. After three years of not a single positive pregnancy test, we found out the likely culprit was a rather small-ish black blob-looking sort of thing in my uterus. How fickle life can be at times. So now we wait five weeks to heal and then we'll try our first round of IVF. After all the heartache and depression and difficult days of feeling barren and unable to have my own children, things are really looking up.........I'm looking forward to being In Fertility.