Monday, June 20, 2011

First Post!!!!

Welcome to my 1st post!!!  This blog has been a few weeks in the making and I'm really excited to get this all started and share my journey and thoughts with whoever finds it interesting (it may just be me that finds it interesting, lol.  But I hope not!).  I'm VERY new to blogging, so please be patient with me.  Also, I'm definitely not a writer, so my sentences may tend to run on, my grammar may suck, and I may just rattle on and on from topic to topic.  OH, and this is a big one, let me just say right now, I may have a potty mouth at times, and my sense of humor goes from stupid and corny, to dirty and raunchy.  So, with that said, let me get started!

Anyone that knows me, knows how much I yearn to be a mother.  The fact that I am almost 42 and childless is sometimes very surreal to me.  It just doesn't seem possible, almost like it's some terrible nightmare that I am unmarried and not a mother.  That may sound overly dramatic, but that's really what it feels like.  The unmarried part doesn't bother me anymore half as much as it used to.  But the motherhood part certainly does.

Before I start from the VERY beginning and share with you my long road of getting to where I am now, I'd like to share with you what I am doing to fulfill this dream of becoming a mother.

Last February I made an appointment with Pacific Reproductive Center in Corona.  My mother joined me and we met with the infertility dr. to discuss my options.  Now, I have no idea if I'm infertile or not.  I have never been in a relationship where I was trying to get pregnant.  Believe me, that thought definitely crossed my mind a time or two, especially as I got older.  When you feel desperate, you sometimes think of doing desperate things.   But I ultimately could never bring myself to "trick" the guy I happened to be dating at the time.  It wasn't how I wanted to bring a child into the world, and I really could never live with myself if I did that.  I'm a big believer in karma, and that's some bad juju(or jizz, whichever way you want to look at it) right there!

Anyway, so we don't exactly know if I'm infertile, but since I'm doing this without a partner, and also because of my age, this is the route I have to take if I want to physically have my own child.  The dr. said that I had two options:  IVF=In vitro Fertilization; or IUI=Intrauterine Insemination (artificial insemination).  The dr. recommended IVF right off the bat.  What IVF does is retrieve my eggs, mix them with sperm in a petri dish, hope that they'll fertilize and then take the best looking embryos and insert them into my uterus.  Based on the age 41-42, the pregnancy success rate using IVF is around 20%.  Not great.  After 42 (which I'll be in October), the success rate plummets to 9%!  Considering my age, IVF is still the best route to go.  BUT, there's just one small little problem, it's VERY expensive.  $12,000 to be exact.  And that's just for one cycle.  It's crazy how expensive it all is, in fact, it's ridiculous.  According to insurance companies, infertility treatment is considered "elective" surgery.   But, even with knowing that it would be very expensive, I felt pretty confident that I would be able to come up with the money.  Once reality hit me and I knew I wasn't going to be able come up with that amount of money, I was devastated.  I literally felt like my right as a woman, my dream of being pregnant, experiencing labor, and feeling that special bond that a mother has with her baby when it is placed in her arms, was completely taken away from me.  I just can't explain to you how absolutely devastating that is.  I literally felt like my life was over.  So many different emotions were racing through me: sadness, bitterness, anger.  Anger was a big one actually.  I was angry at EVERYONE!  I mean, I was irrationally angry at pregnant women, mothers, babies, children, women buying baby items, etc!  It's stupid I know, but it's how I felt.  I didn't even want to hold or look at one of my relatives newborn baby.  I don't really feel that way anymore, but I do sometimes have my days.

So, my next step is either IUI, or adoption, and I'll get to adoption later.  IUI is considerably less money than IVF, around $3500 per cycle.  But again, the success rate is very, very low.  Much lower than IVF.  However, I asked the nurse her honest opinion, "How often do you see this work on the first try for people", she replied very hesitantly, "It happens".  GREAT, THAT'S reassuring!  The good news though is that my chances of getting pregnant on the first try with IUI are greater than if I were to just have sex.  And that is because I would be taking all kinds of meds, calculating my ovulation, having ultrasounds, etc.  I didn't explain IUI did I?  Well, the IUI procedure is basically just inserting sperm into my uterus and hoping those little guys meet up with my eggs and I get preggers!  There are other factors to IUI.  I would have to inject Follistim (helps my ovaries to develop and release more mature eggs) everyday for 7 days, and also take progesterone, along with some other meds.  But not nearly as much as I would have to take if I were doing IVF.  My meds alone for IVF were going to cost me $6000!  So, I'm planning to do one round of IUI once I've saved up enough money.  Hopefully sometime this summer.

So now to adoption.  After coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to be doing IVF, and that the chances of physically having my own child started to look pretty scarce, I decided to explore adoption.  I have a very good friend that adopted a little girl from China about 2 years ago and I know how difficult and expensive it was for her and her husband.  Since international adoption is very difficult (some countries won't even allow a single person to adopt), and private adoption is extremely expensive, I chose to look into adopting through the county.  Since I know that adopting is a long process, I wanted to get it all started as soon as possible, even while I'm going through infertility.  I went to my first orientation last month and found out lots of info that was both surprising and very exciting at the same time.  If I could pick my baby, it would be a white infant girl, directly from the hospital, and completely healthy.  Unfortunately, that's not always how it works.  95% of the counties children that are up for adoption have been exposed to drugs; either in-utero, or in their environment.  And, the county usually never knows what they're going to get.  One month they could have an influx of infant boys, the next month, an influx of toddler girls.  And the more strict my criteria, obviously the longer it will be for me to be matched with a baby. 

But with all that said, when it really comes down to it, I just want a baby and I just want to be a mommy.  And at the end of the day, whichever way God wants to bring her or him to me doesn't matter.  Whether they are white, black, orange, green, or blue doesn't matter either.  I just know that someday, one way or another, I will be a mother to wonderful child.  And I can't wait for that day to come!!!

4 comments:

  1. Heidi, I love that you're doing this blog, and I love you... You're going to make such a wonderful mom. Some soon-to-be-determined little one is going to be very lucky to have you as a mother.

    I'm excited to follow your journey. I'll be sending you lots of love and good thoughts.

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  2. I LOVE it!!! I think this is an awesome way for you to express your feelings on all of this. I hope you get all the support and love you need to help you through this journey to what I KNOW will end up with you being a mommy. (you know you have mine!)

    Love you!!
    Dawn

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  3. Hi Heidi!
    Thank you for candidly, humorously, and poignantly sharing your thoughts and the beginning of your journey to mommyhood. I pray that you are blessed soon with a precious little one - he or she couldn't be in better hands that yours!
    Sandy Granger

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  4. Cousin Heidi! I am not kidding, I just thought the other day "I wonder if Heidi wants kids, she really should have her own".. No JOKE! This is so exciting and I can tell you I have MANY MANY friends age 39 to even 50 who have conceived in MANY MANY alternative fashions...home insemination w turkey baster (worked first time),home insemination w needle-less syringe, anonymous donor IUI @ MD's office, known donor IUI @ MD's office, IVF. I can think of at least 10 personal friends in this age group who had success. I know for certain the the numbers game that the MD's give ALWAYS makes us feel like our chances are slim, but it really is possible! 42 is NOT too old at all!

    100% support and All kinds of good thoughts coming your way!

    Love,

    Catherine

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