The Reason

Thursday we saw the best fertility doctor in the city, and probably the state. It took a long time to get an appointment with him, but I kept hearing that if anyone could get us pregnant it would be him. Plus I knew he'd figure out a way to stop the bleeding. I filled out a huge amount of paperwork and answered all sorts of questions about myself and Jon for our file. They took blood for various tests. We spoke with the Dr. for a good long time and he answered a lot of questions. Then it was time for the ultrasound.

If you haven't had a vaginal ultrasound before let me tell you, it's no treat. I've had plenty over the last year and it's still a bit shocking. And cold! Have they not figured out how to warm up that lube? Anyway, there on the screen were all of my problems. Here's your left ovary (on the side where they removed my fallopian tube) and see all those black balls? Those are cysts. They are eggs that grow but never get released (no tube). And there's your right ovary. It's worse than your left. Look at all those cysts. Your body isn't releasing the eggs into the tube because your hormones don't tell the ovary to let them go. So they grow into large cysts.

He confirmed that I have PCOS, which we knew. He told me the only way we could get pregnant is through in-vitro and to expect 3-4 tries and a success rate of around 40%. My insurance doesn't cover in-vitro. Neither does the insurance offered by Jon's job. We don't have the money to pay thousands and thousands of dollars up front and hope we're in that 40%. And that's delivery rate. Not pregnancy rate. He said I could get pregnant through IVF but miscarry once, twice, a few times before it takes. No thank you. We aren't financially or emotionally equipped to handle those odds.

You may be wondering, but what about IUI or those fertility shots they give? Well, because of the PCOS he said that was out of the question. If I'm given drugs to force my ovaries to release the eggs he's worried that they'd release 5-7 eggs and then it's possible I could be pregnant with 5-7 babies and he said that would be very dangerous with my hormonal history but we could talk about selective reduction and I'm sorry but no we can't go in and selectively reduce the amount of babies. Not us. Not when we've been dreaming for so long of just one. Or two if we're really lucky. I can't reduce my pregnancy to 2-3 and then hope they survive.

He changed my medication around a bit to fix the bleeding. He's thinking this will work. He won't do a hysterectomy until I've been on this new cocktail for 6 months and I'm still having problems. I haven't bled for a week now, so it's a start.

We're left we what we'd figured would be the outcome. We're adopting. And we're ok with that. Really. I don't ache to give birth, I just ache to be a Mom. But I can't deny that I wasn't hoping for some small miracle. Some tiny thing that the other doctors missed. Some medical treatment or process that could mean we could just get pregnant somehow then bring home a baby like so many other people do. It seems so easy when I think of people getting pregnant and having babies. And so unfair. Why is it feast or famine? Why do these people on tv have 7 kids then get a new house from ABC and we can't have one? And we aren't asking for a new house. Why can't it be more even? Let all of us who want kids have them, even if that means we all just get one. So now we'll continue to save our pennies and prepare for the long, hard, expensive road that very few choose if given the option. For us it's not an option, it's the only way.

It was so hard to see myself on that ultrasound screen. The machine that normally prints out sweet little blurry pictures for parents to take home. My screen just showed how broken I am. All of my missing parts. All of my parts that for so long have been denying us the one thing we've always wanted. The only part that the Dr. deemed normal was my uterus. Lying there empty, never to know it's purpose. Lying there healthy while being taunted by two screwed up ovaries pockmarked by black cysts. I wish there was a better reason for all of this. Something to blame it on. But there's not. The only reason is me.