Needles and ART and feeling alone

We (my husband and I) have spent large sums of money attempting to have a baby. IUI, IVF w/ ICSI and Assisted Hatching, many vials of Follistim and HCG and Lupron and Clomid and progestrone in oil and progrestrone suppositories. I have several large plastic bags in my bathroom closet emblazoned with the ‘IVP Care’ logo, full of alcohol wipes, needle packages and boxes of have half-empty medicine. I also have a sharps container that holds the needle waste created by the IUI and IVF cycles. In my day to day world I don’t know anyone who has ever dealt with this mess of infertility treatments. All of the people in my world have had children the ‘old-fashioned’ way and have never in their wildest dreams considered the possibility of having to have their eggs/sperm harvested from their bodies and mixed together by embryologists in a fertility lab. Most of my friends and family have tried to be very supportive and sent prayers and good wishes to me but they don’t understand the reality of actually going through a cycle. The pain of a multiple negative pregnancy tests, sobbing in the bathroom at work because you got the phonecall, the heartbreak of realizing you may never have your own biological child. People try to be really helpful and say “have you thought about adoption?” And while it’s absolutely an option, we’re not in the place where it is our option yet. I don’t think they understand the grieving that one has to go through sometimes when dealing with IF failure. It makes me feel very alone in the world.

I read blogs of other women who are going through or have gone through the kinds of things I have – some with success and some without. I was looking at a blog earlier and found a link to this YouTube video about PIO injections. It struck me because it made me see, physically see, another woman dealing with what I’ve dealt with. I do feel alone because everyone I ‘know’ with IF is online but this video made them a little more real for me. I ‘know’ there are other couples all over the place having the same doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds and injections I am. There are other women crying in the bathroom on their lunch breaks and trying to keep their mascara from smudging so everyone doesn’t ask “what’s wrong?”

I keep thinking it’ll get easier, but it hasn’t yet. November will mark 4 years since our first RE visit and still no pregnancy. We have another RE appointment next week to go back and discuss doing more IUI’s, possibly with donor sperm. I can’t help but feel pessimistic about it though. More hemorrhaging of money, more 7:30AM ultrasounds and blood draws, more hormones and more disappointment. Oddly enough Doug is more optimistic than I am. Usually it’s the opposite, I’m the cheerleader and he’s the emo kid. I guess we’ll see who’s right and who isn’t.