The best of my life

The meanest thing

What was the meanest thing that you ever heard after you began with your infertility journey? I will tell you mine. 

Just before going to the Czech Republic for an egg donation I had a date with two ex-coworkers (both my age, both mothers).

I was full of hormones (fertility drugs that you have to take before egg donation are devastating, I found them much worse then drugs that I took during previous 9 classic IVFs).

I haven't told them that that particular treatment is different. Egg donation was my & DH's secret.

I started telling them my fears that I would never be a mother. That that was our last attempt. That 10th tries are enough and that if the 10th  try will not work out, we will stop (just a note: my DH wanted to stop at the attempt number 4 or 5, but I just couldn't).

I told them how I dread facing childless life.

One of the woman is wise. She knew I just needed somebody to listen to. So she did what expected - she listened to me.

But the other (mother of three pre-school boys!) said: "You are making too much deal out of you infertility. It is no such big deal. I also thought I would never have children with my ex-husband and I was OK with it."

Just a note: she was obviously not OK being childless since she (aged 29 then) divorced seriously sick husband and found a new, healthy one (that was able to give her three sons).

Her comment hurt me.

It is the same as if I told a friend with terminal cancer that I know exactly how it feels to have cancer. Since I was afraid for one month that they found something wrong on my mammography.

***
Needless to say I avoided this colleague for some time. I ignored her invitations for coffee. But then in summer I finally accepted her invitation, just to see what happens. It was nice - at least until she started a topic that she really shouldn't discuss with me. She started to explain me how sad she was since she wishes to have a forth child (hopefully girl), but her husband thinks three children are enough. So they agreed not to have any child more. But she was sad since having to say goodbye for good to her fertility.

I wanted to scream. I didn't. But I left as soon as I could. And never returned to this colleague.

I really really really prefer to be alone as lonely in a company.

Goodbye, books!

Some books just do not belong to our appartment any more. I never throw away books that used to mean something to me. So I have a project of finding new owners.

I had Zita West's book with lots of useful advices how to get pregnant. Obviously the book does not belong to my life any more, so I put an advertisment online and sold it today. I am glad that the book might help somebody.

I love Lisa's I am taking my eggs and going home. I read it once and loved it. But I knew I would never re-read it (it would bring too many memories back). I had coffee last week with my schoolfriend from high school, she has had a birthday, so I wrapped the book as a present.  She is a lovely person, we got along perfectly already in high school. And now she is the only one besides me in the class that is childless. She has great cinical sense of humour... we don't see each other often, but whenever we do, we have fun together. She laughed so much when se saw the title, she loved the book immediately.

I just packed Sinead Moriarty's trilogy for a friend that works in a library. The books are about an Irish woman who couldn't conceive. She tried IVF. It didn't work. Then she adopted from Russia. She was so happy when she got a little boy from Russia. Then she finally relaxed - and guess what - she got pregnant!!! Can't believe that I actually loved these books 8 years ago. They gave me hope. Now I just want them out of my shelves. Such a cliché! I am just fed up with clichés!

Snow & my beloved Wolf

Here it is .... today's photo.
Wolf is feeling better. It was lovely to go with him for a short walk.
The snow is still falling...


PS:  Wolf is saying thank you for all of your kind wishes. He is sure they helped!!!

The world is not a wish-granting factory

It is a beautiful Sunday morning, it is snowing outside (during the night we got  50 cm of new snow). I just finished reading The fault in our stars. A beautiful book! I really recommend it.

I loved this sentence in the book:
"The world is not a wish-granting factory."
So true!

I will not tell you anything about the book.... since it is so wonderful that you should read it.

There was one information in the book: how many people have died so far? I realized that I never thought about it.  Approx. 100 billion! 7 billion are alive now which means that  107 billion were born so far. An article about it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16870579 

And for me even giving life for one single child was mission impossible. As it is written in the book: The world is not a wish-granting factory.

I am not sad. It is, what it is. I will never have a life that I planned. But this does not mean that my life will not be beautiful.

(There are things that are much worse then my infertility. Having a child with terminal cancer would break my heart forever.)

Things change

Once I thought it is not possible live happy & childless life.
Once I thought that infertility breaks your heart forever.
Once I though I wanted to have a child conceived by egg donation.
I don't think neither of it any more.

The fault in our stars

"So what's your story" he asked.
"I already told you my story. I was diagnosed when-"
"No, not your cancer story. Your story. Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes, etcetera."

***
One of best things in my life is friendship with my best friend Mattie. Her passion is buying and reading books in English that are on New York Times Bestseller list. I am always the first in the waiting list for her books (we share a bit of snobbism: yesterday we had a long conversation while driving to work how we do not understand people who read books originally written in English, translated in our language).

I started reading The fault in our stars yesterday and I just love it.

I just loved the quoted sentences from the book. In the last few years I let infertility to completely overwhelm me. My infertility became my life. But - I am so much more then that!

It is OK to loose 10 years because of infertility. But I am not willing to loose any day more.

Off to work... nice day in the office is waiting for me.

I am back

Home, sweet home!

I like having work that includes at least one short business trip per month abroad. I also like coming back home.

I had a good time, everything went well.

The picture is from the blog of my bloggie friend from Norway (the world became so small since I can read blog in Norwegian with the help of google translator). The picture shows exactly how I felt during small talks with colleagues. I met lots of colleagues on this 5-day-event, so there was lots of small talk. I envied people with children. Not because they have children. But because it is so easy for them to make small talk. 

I survived. As years are passing by I learned how to deal with painful small talks (and how to slip away if it becomes too much to bear..).

Once I finished working early and two colleagues (women my age, both with kids) asked me where I am going.  I replied I will  go to a famous store with clothes for kids. And both looked at me very meaningfully and happy. Then I quickly replied that I always buy something for my nieces in February (on winter sales). One commented that she thought I might be pregnant. Then I replied that I regret, but I am too old for that. Her answer was: "Didn't you hear? It was in the news that in our country one woman gave birth this week to her first baby, aged 53. So you have still lots of time!".

I just replied that technically speaking this was not really her baby (at least not regarding the genes). And that I do not have time since is 53 is way to old for the first baby, at least for my opinion. And I said goodbye and went.

Those two women are otherwise really nice. I know they wanted to be just helpful.

***
Excellent news. My beloved Wolf decided to live for another few years, despite the kidneys. He even gained 3 kilos! It was lovely to meet him yesterday after coming back home.

Goodbye for one week

I have to go for one week abroad*, on a business trip. Usually I love to go. Not this time. I am afraid that tomorrow morning, when I go, will be the last time that I see my beloved Wolf.

We had two short walks today, in the snow (we have lots and lots of snow this winter). How I miss time when he was healthy and we could walk around for 4-5 hours. Now his maximum is 15 minutes, then he is already tired.

Watching my beloved Wolf made me think how short life is. How everything passes by so quickly.

I decided already more then a year ago, but I will write it down again.

Life is just too short to waist any second for being miserable because of my infertility.



*abroad: even if I go only 150 kilometers away, this is already abroad (=another country, where they speak German, Italian, Croatian or Hungarian... depends on which direction I take :)

Juice master

I spent a lovely afternoon with my Mum few days ago. I invited her for a lecture about growing organic vegetables. My Mum obviously knows a lot about it but went anyway, to keep me company. It was great (I learnt lots of new things)- there were approx. 100 people listening to 3-hour-long lecture. I was the youngest :)

I just can't wait for spring to come, so I can start works on my vegetable garden (I got some a piece of garden from my mother-in-law three years ago).

Just last weekend I used my last Hokkaido pumpkin. It is priceless - to eat a delicious soup from my own pumpkin in the middle of the winter.

I was quite inspired by juice master. A coworker bought this juicer last year and said it is really good. New year resolution: to drink every day one vegetable juice!

Eating healthy really makes me feel better.

***
Do you perhaps have a good juicer? Ideas welcome! It is great - everything can be bought online, so borders are not a problem any more.

Great discussion

I came back home from work a bit early today (=to avoid traffic jams since the roads are full of snow). Had lunch. Then vanilla tea with my favorite cookies and then I listened to great discussion:

http://bitterinfertiles.podomatic.com/entry/2013-02-05T13_34_37-08_00

It was lovely to hear two of my bloggie friends (Pamela & Loribeth).

How happy I am to have found new friends online!

The empty picture frame

This is the first novel that describes a life of a couple going through IVF treatments that  I have ever read. I really liked it (I read it while being in the middle of IVF treatments).

Does anybody know: did Jenna's dreams come true? I hope they have.

Mine haven't. And I am OK with that (at least most of the time).

News: It is possible NEVER ever get pregnant

I got a letter on Friday (but forgot about it) so I opened it today. It was from the leading clinic in our country where I had hysteroscopy and laparoscopy before I began IVF treatments.

It is a long letter, with request to fill a short questionnaire. In the letter it is written several times that their mission is to analyze all  my pregnancies before the operation and after operation.

When reading it I really wanted to scream: " &%/??#"! (=lots of ugly words)"

I will fill up the questionnaire for the leading gynecologistss in my country later on - just to let them know that this (=never ever to achieve desired pregnancy) is also an option.

Bad genes

My beloved Wolf has excellent pedigree. His grandmother was even world championship, from Germany. The sad part of excellent pedigrees is that they always take the most beautiful dogs for reproduction (not the healthiest ones).

Wolf's kidneys are doing a bit better (values are now on the border between moderate and severe kidneys failure). But he got an infection and should be treated with antibiotics. But he can not take antibiotics because of kidneys.  It is sad to watch my beloved dog. He won't make it. He might live for another month, perhaps longer. But we are sure that he doesn't have much chance to fully recover.

He just has bad luck - to get bad combination of the genes.

***

I just read Pamela's blog: http://blog.silentsorority.com/what-i-wish-id-known-then/#comment-2657 
(congratulations Pamela for the 6th anniversary!).
I haven't read it from the beginning (at that time I didn't even want to know that there is even a possibility that after many IVF treatments anybody is left without a baby).
So I checked my calendar from the year 2007 so I have seen that on the 2nd and 3rd of February 2007 I was with my DH in Oviedo, visiting my friend Maria and her husband.
http://thenext15000days.blogspot.com/2012/04/maria.html

Maria also wasn't lucky with her genes, she was born with heart disease written in her genes (she just didn't know that, since the first symptom was when she had heart attack and died few minutes later).

***
I can only hope & pray that there are plenty of healthy years in front of me & my DH.

Regarding the Wolf - we continue to do what we were doing for the last two weeks. To take each day as it comes. Not to think to much in advance. The Wolf has seen the vet for 8 times in the last two weeks. But, as long as we can see joy in his eyes and see that he is not in pain, we just can't say goodbye to him. 

Grbavica: Land of My Dreams

 

Grbavica is a 2006 film about the life of a single mother in contemporary Sarajevo in the aftermath of systematic rapes of Muslim women by Serbian troops during the war. It was released in the  UK as Esma's Secret: Grbavica, and in USA as Grbavica: Land of My Dreams.

The film shows, through the eyes of the main character Esma, her teenage daughter Sara, and others, how everyday life is still being shaped by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

Esma got pregnant when being raped and gave birth to a daughter (she couldn't have an abortion since being held as a hostage). She told her daughter the truth about her father when the daughter was already a teenager.

The sadest part begins in this youtube trailer, at 4 minutes 11 seconds.

In the beginning there is a group of women during the theraphy. They all lost somebody and something in the war.

The sadest part of the movie (that made me cry so much) when Esma starts talking for the first time in this support group (she attended the sessions for many years, but never could share her story before).

She talks how she felt during the pregnancy. How she kicked her belly in order to kill the baby. How she rejected the baby when she was born. After two days after the birth she could hear her baby crying through the walls. So she said to nurses that she would breastfeed her, but only once. But when she saw the baby for the first time, she fell in love with her. So she kept her.

I just cried with Esma, I could feel her pain.

If you never heard Bosnian language ever before - you have opportunity to hear it for the first time.

I spent the whole day thinking, how lucky are we, who have never ever experienced the evil of war. And how sad it is to think how many Esmas are there out there. There are so many war zones & conflict zones.