Starting Over (again and again and again...)

There’s been a lot on my mind the past few days. I guess it started a couple months ago when my mom ran into a woman she knew with her daughter who was born through surrogacy. They got to talking and my issues came up and she highly recommended this doctor that she went to in the States. Turns out he’s one of the leaders in the field, so we finally had a chat with him on Thursday. Now, by this point in my IVF experience, after being a lab-rat for so long, I feel like quite the professional - I know the protocols inside and out, have done “everything”, and have a pretty good idea of what my problems and issues are. Well, it turns out that there is probably a better protocol and, in my words, we’ve been doing it wrong. Now, all my years of treatments have provided quite a lot of information that we didn’t have. But I’m now all confused again and I’m not sure if I can just start over. When you keep doing the same thing with the same [bad] result over and over that is pretty insane. But starting over takes a lot of work, I’ve done it so many times already, and honestly, I’m pretty fed up with it.

Infertility is not like a video game where you get a “few lives” before it’s game over and you have to start from the beginning. You can never go back to a certain point that was working, and pick it up from there. Failed embryo transfer - game over. Cancelled cycle because there’s no response to the drugs - game over. Get a yeast infection from the drugs - game over. Miscarriage - game over. No embryos that make it to Day 5 (blastocyst) - game over (even if 20 of them got fertilized like in our last cycle but didn’t make it).

Picking myself up from the bottom every time was not an easy task and well, pretty depressing. At the beginning I would just throw myself back into it. There was this sense of urgency that I felt. But my energy has worn thin over the years. It’s absolutely exhausting, and I’m never sure if I have the energy to get back into it. I tell myself a whole bunch of different things. One, it’s only 2 weeks of my life. What’s 2 weeks? I’m not afraid of needles, and I’ll just deal with the pain and the surgery and then it’ll be over. Two, it’s all mechanical. If I separate myself from all the feelings and energy and early mornings and just relate to the technical side of it, it’s sometimes a bit easier. Three, what if we just got married now and were at the beginning? We have lots of friends who only just got married or haven’t gotten married yet, so maybe I can just erase all the years of what we’ve already been through and pretend like I’m starting now. New protocol, new location, just new. Or relate to all that we’ve done as the first level of some game, we won because we got all this info, and now we’re onto the next level.

Everyone needs to find their own way to have the energy to start again. It’s important to keep the knowledge from previous cycles, remember what you did and how the body responded, and then almost everything else needs to be erased - the challenge, the difficulty, the disappointment, the pain.

If I think about my video game metaphor, you may start again after a game over, but you need to remember what steps you took in order to get to the next level.

Each time I try to think positively, and take what was, learn from it, and start again. Each person has to find the right way to start over with herself and with her partner. Sometimes it helps to be realistic, to recognize that it’s a very long process and until there’s a baby, nothing really matters along the way until the baby is out of there, it’s almost like you don’t have to start over if the process simply has ups and downs. This outlook puts hope aside for a bit, but sometimes being overly hopeful can help. I once met a woman at the clinic who believed so hard that this cycle would work that she already put together a baby’s room including clothing. Luckily, she did get pregnant, but if she hadn’t, I know I wouldn’t have been able to deal with an empty baby’s room for 4 years. Again, lots of things work, and it’s very individual.

I’m not sure where I’m going to go from here. I sometimes think that if I just ignore it, and don’t do anything, I’ll just miraculously get pregnant or a surrogate will just fall in my lap. In reality, that’s not the case, and we have to work super hard to make this baby and future babies happen.

(c) Rebecca Schwartz

At this time of year it’s much easier to think about new beginnings. It’s springtime and the buds are peeking out. We even started planting! This week we had the celebrations of Passover and Easter - 2 holidays focused on rebirth. Sitting at the Passover seder last week, I was inspired by the story of the Israelites coming out of Egypt to the unknown, to start their lives over again, in a different way, but a more beneficial way. That must have been really hard for them.

I know that I will start over again. I will find that energy somewhere to do another round. I will be open to new ideas and a different way to go about. I will stay positive and realistic. And eventually, I will pass this level and win.