SCORPIONZ

For the past several years, Philip and I have been involved in a small-group Bible study. Group has essentially served as "church" for Philip and me, as we don't have a real church home right now. Group is what has kept us studying the Bible together, reading books about spiritual growth, praying, and staying accountable to friends who also follow Jesus.

It's gone through many changes over time. Couples have had kids; they've moved on to other groups, other cities. Philip and I are now the longest standing members. For the last several months, we've been down to six members (us and two other couples), and we've fought to keep meeting despite each couple's other commitments with work and family.

I think the six of us could all sense that our time was winding down. We didn't have a clear vision anymore for what our focus should be or how to grow, and we are feeling the pull of finding more permanent church homes and plugging in. We decided as a group to continue meeting until the end of 2012 and then move on.

Last night was our final regular study. We wrapped up our discussion on the book of Ecclesiastes, helped each other process the heartbreaking, mind-blowing scandal rocking Summit Church this week, and split up guys/girls for a prayer time.

During the prayer time, I shared about my frustration with my follicles. I had since talked to the nurse, who said the doctor wants me to come back in on Friday for a follow-up ultrasound at no charge. I was thrilled that I wouldn't be charged for the scan, but the timing of the treatment was still stressing me out. The nurse said if one or two follicles had grown enough by Friday, we would likely do the IUI on Sunday morning. I'm supposed to leave on Sunday to drive down to Palm Beach for a wedding-industry conference, so the timing isn't ideal, but could work. However, if the IUI needs to happen on Monday, that would be a problem.

Amber and Laura were, as always, attentive listeners. They asked good questions, prompting me to consider options I hadn't thought of. Then they prayed for me. During the prayer, I thought of a verse from Proverbs that had come up during our discussion:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding; 
 in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

It's so hard to trust God in the midst of fertility treatment. When you're going through it, you're essentially trying to control your body and make it do things it won't do on its own -- things, by the way, that God created it to do. You're taking medications that replace or trump natural hormones, and you're undergoing procedures that supersede sex. How do I let go and trust God while also making these complicated plans?

But as often happens, the girls' prayer for me brought peace, and I left feeling that I just needed to be honest with my boss and then trust that God would work it out one way or the other -- and I needed to be okay with wherever the chips fell.

So, this morning I explained the situation to my boss, and without missing a beat, she said it was fine for me to drive to the conference a day late if needed. She really couldn't have been more understanding.

On Friday I'll find out the status of my follicles. It's possible that they'll still be way too small, or that too many of them will have matured (my nurse literally said the clinic won't let me become an Octomom), and that the whole cycle will get canceled anyway. But I'm on this wild path with God, and I know I'll be a lot more at rest if I can trust that he's really in control and that he works all things out for the good of those who love him and that he has plans to prosper me and not to harm me.

It's a day-to-day thing for sure. Some days I curse him. Some days I want to give up. Some days I'm so unhappy that I worry I might sabotage my marriage and all my friendships. But other days I feel hopeful, halfway normal, open-handed for whatever God wants to give or take away.

And I definitely feel thankful for the years of pursuing God together with the other couples, especially the women, in the small group. Thank you, ladies. Your prayers and friendship have kept me from falling off the deep end. You've helped me hang onto my weak thread of faith, and you've been a bridge of support during a vulnerable time when being part of a larger church body just didn't seem emotionally possible. I will be watching with great curiosity to see where God leads us all next, and I want to stay close -- you can ask me about my follicles anytime.

LAZY-ASS FOLLICLES

I'm really down today. Because my follicles are too small. I actually went and sat in my boss' office and told her I was upset because my follicles are too small. She doesn't have kids and has never tried to have kids, as far as I know. Her response was, "What's a follicle?"

I SO wish I didn't know what a follicle was. But not only do I know what it is, but I'm also upset because at this point in my cycle (day 12), one follicle should be at least 15 or 16mm, and it's only 9.5mm. What is my body doing? While other women's bodies are busy producing hormones and getting ready to ovulate in a couple days, mine is just lazily lolling about. "Maybe I'll ovulate on day 21 again, like I did last month," it thinks. "What's the rush? Who minds having a 35-day cycle?"

Well, body, I DO. A normal cycle is 28 days, not 35. You cause all kinds of problems when you wait around and don't do what you're supposed to do. For one, when you finally get around to ovulating, it's now considered a weak ovulation. That's no good. Also, you screw up the timing of everything. Philip and I have to travel frequently because of our jobs, and we try to plan our trips so that they won't interfere with treatment cycles. When you're a week behind schedule, that throws a major wrench in the works. And besides all the technical stuff, do you understand that it drives me BANANAS to have to wait even longer to move this glacier of a process forward? Every month, my two-week wait feels like an eternity, and you're just dragging things out even more.

This treatment cycle, which we were hoping would be our first IUI, is now threatened. Best-case scenario, I'll have to go back for yet ANOTHER $275 ultrasound to hopefully confirm you've gotten your act together. Worst-case scenario, the cycle will be canceled all together, and we'll have wasted the $425 we've already spent on pelvic scans. Do you know how much I enjoy flushing $425 down the toilet? I DO NOT ENJOY THAT AT ALL.

I've about had it up to here with my seemingly healthy but clearly defective body. I thought we were done with these erratic cycles. Maybe I will punish my busted anatomy by having a fourth piece of chocolate before 11:30 a.m.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

I feel a bit shaky because I just got off the phone with the offices of Congressman Daniel Webster and senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio. It was my first time ever calling a government office to express support for a bill, and I was so nervous! Dumb. But very cool to play a small role in the workings of government, and I truly support the bills about which I was calling: the Family Act and the Making Adoption Affordable Act.

Big props to Keiko Zoll of The Infertility Voice for advocating for these bills and making it so easy to show my support. Click here to read her excellent summary of what these bills are and what they'll do if they pass. She also gives easy steps on how YOU TOO can voice your support. Many of you feel lost as to how to help me -- this is your chance to do something that could make a real difference in my fertility journey!

Via Keiko: Tuesday through Thursday of this week, RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association is hosting a Congressional Call Week. Helping to support The Family Act and saving the Adoption Tax Credit is as easy as picking up the phone.

It took me about 15 minutes to make my calls. (I emailed too. Gold star.) Many thanks!

FAQs

Q: How have you been? (Read: Are you secretly pregnant?!?)

A: I am not that great, but I try not to live my life like a giant sad sack all the time. I go to work, I run, I plan trips, I watch my favorite TV shows. Infertility is always there in the back of my mind, often the front. Pregnant bellies, cute babies and happy families are literally everywhere I go, constantly reminding me of my unfulfilled desires. Seeing them fills me with despair, which is twisted and makes me feel like and alien, like the sinister kind from Prometheus, not the cute kind from Toy Story. It seems like the easiest, most natural thing in the world for most people to conceive, but it’s something we can’t manage to do no matter what we try, which is heartbreaking and helpless-feeling and frustrating and very scary. But like I said, I just keep getting up and going about my day, and I try to make the best of my life.

And I assure you, I am not secretly pregnant. If Philip and I do manage to become pregnant by means of some expensive treatment, there is no way I will be able to keep it private for three months. I promise you, you will find out very soon after we find out — and you’ll get to follow me as I fret and agonize over the very real chance that the pregnancy won’t last.

Q: Have you been to a fertility specialist?

A: Yes, we are seeing Dr. DeVane at the Center forReproductive Medicine in Orlando. We liked him very much at our initial two-hour consultation. And we haven’t laid eyes on him since. That’s not entirely true — I did see him from a distance a couple times at the clinic, and I felt like I was seeing a mirage or an angel in a dream. Hopefully we’ll get to interact with him more once we start more aggressive treatments.

Q: Did they find anything wrong with you?

A: Not really. My ovarian reserve was too high, which suggests an ovulatory problem and made the doctor suspect PCOS. However, further testing showed I most likely do not have PCOS, as my insulin levels were normal. I have all the signs of ovulation every month — cervical fluid, elevated temperatures, normal progesterone levels and a regular period. The doctor suggested that although I may be ovulating, the eggs may not actually be rupturing out of the follicles. We don’t know for sure though, and the only way to find out would be to perform a series of ultrasounds. Ultrasounds run about $150 to $275 a pop (and our insurance doesn’t cover any fertility treatment), so I’m not really interested in doing that — especially since, whether my follicles are rupturing or not, the treatments are the same. P.S. My fallopian tubes are not blocked. Yay.

Q: Did they find anything wrong with Philip?

A: Not really. His morphology was a little out of normal range, but not enough to warrant him seeing a urologist or to start any medication.

Q: Are you doing any treatments?

A: We have done two cycles of medication plus “timed relations.” Both months, I took 2.5mg of Letrozole for five days. Letrozole is a breast-cancer drug that lowers estrogen levels, similar to Clomid. Philip also gave me an injection of Ovidrel in my stomach both months. Ovidrel stimulates ovulation. Fun fact: Its production process involves the expansion of genetically modified Chinese Hamster Ovary cells. Don’t be jealous. Then we had sex. This approach did not work for us.

Q: What’s the latest with fertility stuff?

A: We are taking a month off from treatment this month because of personal travel that conflicted with ovulation. Taking a month off has been a nice break, and I don’t miss going to get poked and prodded at the clinic every few days. It is also making me feel hella impatient and completely crazed, but I keep trying to remind myself that this was the decision we made, and we prioritized other things this month. The plan right now is to try our first IUI next month.

Q: Oh, I think my friend did that! Is that where they make the baby in like a … test tube or something?

A: No. IUI stands for Intrauterine Insemination. What you are thinking of is IVF (more on that in a moment). It used to be called “artificial insemination”; thank God they abandoned that moniker. Philip will create a semen sample, and then lab technicians will “wash” it, essentially weeding out the champs from the losers. Then they’ll put the little guys in a centrifuge and get them all wound up, then inject them directly into my uterus. This way, they won’t be subjected to the hostile, acidic environment of my big, bad vag, and they’ll be a lot closer to the end goal, so they don’t wimp out too soon. From what I’ve read, about 10 percent of IUI cycles result in a pregnancy. Those are not great odds. However, I ended up in the 10 percent of people who are infertile, so anything is possible.

Usually a fertility doctor recommends three cycles of IUI before moving on to IVF. That stands for In Vitro Fertilization, and that is when they’ll retrieve my eggs and mix them with Philip’s sperm in a Petri dish. After the eggs are fertilized, the doctor will take the one or two most promising-looking blastocysts and transfer them directly into my uterus, hoping they’ll implant. About half of all IVF cycles in my age group result in a pregnancy. These are much better odds, but as you can see, still not a guarantee by any means. Also, an IUI cycle costs about $1,000. An IFV cycle costs about $12-20K. So there’s that.

Q: Well, at least you know you WILL be a mother someday, even if it’s through adoption, right?

A: Actually, I don’t know that, which is largely what makes this so difficult. Statistically, 5 percent of women won’t be able to conceive, even with treatment. And to conceive with my own body is what I want. To be frank, I want to carry a baby in my own uterus that is made up of my egg and Philip’s sperm. I want to go through everything that pregnancy entails — the getting fatter, the throwing up, the feeling of the baby moving around inside, and the giving birth, no matter how painful it is. The thought of going through multiple cycles of IVF without success overwhelms me and brings me to tears, and we’re nowhere near IVF yet. When it comes to treatment, I don’t know how far is too far for us. I don’t know when we finally surrender and start looking at other options — and other options are just as emotionally grueling, uncertain, expensive and drawn out. If I KNEW we would be parents someday, and it was just a matter of waiting, it would be difficult, but it would be much more bearable. It’s the fear that after all of this — and so much more — we still may have to face the fact that we’ll forever be a family of two. People tell me all the time, “It’ll happen,” and I appreciate that they’re just trying to be reassuring. But I don’t know that it will happen. And that’s what’s so terrifying.

Q: What if you did IVF and ended up having twins?

A: I would be THRILLED!!!!!!!!