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The American Fertility Association Blog
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall…
November 28, 2007 - Wednesday
Posted by Pamela
So...the pictures of The Kokopelli Ball are on line.
Take a peek...it’s an opportunity to see all the wonderful people that supported The AFA that glamorous November evening. I am sure that you will recognize many faces...But don’t go yet...take a minute..and read the rest of this...I have an invitation to all of you...so read on…
First a personal disclosure...I always have a love/hate relationship with the pictures...and that is really about me. I think that I have been every size through the past ten years of this Ball....I have been smaller...and I have been larger!!!
This year....I was kind of medium/large. I could almost look at myself without wanting to throw myself from the window...especially if I squinted my eyes…
I have been on Atkins for six months. It’s a part of me becoming whole with myself. I have lost five inches on my waist...I am eight pounds from being the size that I WAS in the picture to the right....So...soon I will look like THAT again! Only with more wrinkles…
My experience with infertility really took a toll on my self esteem...and I gained weight with fertility medications...and then my pregnancies...with kids who are now 19 and 15...I can no longer blame my weight on “I just had a baby!!!”
I used that for years!!!
I have always self medicated with food. I know that I am not alone. And change is not easy...and giving up what helps us cope...is really hard. Especially when we are stressed...and if you are trying to conceive...you might be feeling a little stress....now add in the Holidays! Can anyone say “Let’s gain ten pounds?”
Yesterday I watched Oprah. She was doing one of her inspirational shows on weight loss. You know the ones..the one where people literally lose enough weight to create another human being?
And they do it on their own...or with a book...no surgery...and I have got to tell you...I sat and watched completely fascinated. The sheer determination....and one women lost 200 pounds so that she could adopt a child! In one year!!! And yes...there are weight restrictions for some adoptions...really fat people need not apply.
So...where am I leading with all of this? Well, I hate to say this...but I will...a healthy weight is really important for conceiving...or adopting. And I am talking to all of you REALLY skinny people too! With fertility...you really need to be in a normal weight range...too thin or too fat...and you could really have trouble…
I may be past my child bearing years...but I am still dealing with my child bearing weight issues....so I will partner with you....Once a week I will tell you how I am doing...and I invite you to join me.
Let’s get healthy now...before the ten pounds start to come on...I know that I started a little ahead of you...but that doesn’t matter...I am a really, really slow loser....like...if there was some kind of disaster...I would live for weeks after everyone else...with no food.
It’s really not just about the mirror...even though let’s face it...I am as vain as anyone...it’s really about our health...our heart health...keeping away diabetes...high blood pressure...and yes...it is also about fertility and having a healthy pregnancy....
So..who is in???
And who knows..maybe we will get on Oprah!!!
Until Tomorrow,
Pamela
Categories
Adoption •
Fertility •
Fertility Drugs •
Infertility
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The Last Miracle
November 20, 2007 - Tuesday
Posted by Pamela
There seems to be a feeling among people who are going through infertility that everybody else got the last miracle. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have had “success story"conversations with friends and acquaintances. They go something that like this, “Did you hear? Rebecca who is 93 and in menopause? Yes, the Rebecca whose husband has no sperm.....Well, she conceived all by herself last month after completing seven IVF attempts.”
The conversation always ends with someone saying “Oh great, she got the last miracle”. It sometimes seems that instead of feeling good for the other guy, we count their good fortune as an indicator of doom for ourselves. If it happened to them, it can’t possibly happen to me.
I have pretended that I am above such base feelings. But I, too, have felt that sinking feeling that the other guy won that round. I remember when I was trying to conceive my second son...I felt that since I had already been successful in my attempts to conceive Tyler through IVF...that I was somehow competing with my own good fortune.
Sometimes it felt to me as though I had the ultimate chutzpah… “Hey God! Remember me? Miracle 30,278 on October 18, 1988? Yeah,that’s me. Well, can I have another one?”
My husband said to me...during that time...that we were like the woman who is working by the ocean with her son and a great wave sweeps her son away. She pleads with God, telling Him that she is a good woman who has always done her best, prayed and done good works. How could God do this to her? After much pleading, a great wave sweeps back and deposits her son back in front of her. The woman looks up at the sky and grumbles “He had a hat.”
When I did my second IVF attempt to try and have a second child… I was torn between knowing deep in my heart that it could really work, and knowing deep in my heart that it could never happen again. I had forgotten how difficult the entire process was; how badly the drugs could make you feel, the intensity of emotions, and how frightening it could feel to climb onto an operating table of your own feel will.
After all, this was “voluntary.” When, the pregnancy results came back negative, I was both surprised and not surprised at all. But I just knew I had to continue if I was going to give this a fair shake.
I was very lucky to have been able to produce enough eggs to create embryos for an additional cryopreservation cycle.
I must admit that it was the knowledge of this additional chance at getting pregnant that kept me sane. I would not have to go through the entire process again. This time there would be no injections and drug induced mood swings. I came in for four or five blood tests and scans to monitor my natural cycle, and when my body showed it was ready to ovulate naturally, the embryos were put inside me.
I remember thinking that this could not possibly work. First of all, there was not enough suffering involved. It was simply too easy.
If you have gone through an IVF attempt, you can understand what I mean. The only thing that was the same, was the waiting time.
The waiting was filled with exactly the same anxiety, fantasies (both positive and negative), and premature grieving.
I spent the day of the pregnancy test working busily on an upcoming Fertility Symposium. Back in those days...I was a volunteer...and a full time grade school teacher.
I took the day off from teaching because I was frightened of killing some poor unsuspecting kindergartner. When the call came, bearing a positive pregnancy test, the only thought that kept going through my head, was I had thought I had used up all my miracles.
I guess G-d had not been counting. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I should share my good news with my infertility comrades...because it is often hard to hear of another’s success…
I could almost hear the “Oh great, she got the last miracle” line. But...I remember at the time...when I shared my experiences with my infertility buddies...that I did so that knowing it can happen, if not the first time maybe the next, and maybe...if I shared...it might give someone else hope.
I really believe my success in family building was not an indicator of someone else’s failure, but of their possible future resolution.
I also believe that everybody has their own personal journey, their own medical profiles and personal beliefs that will guide their own miracle of resolution.
Miracles can come in many packages, we just have to be ready to open them. My miracle belonged to me, and in no way replaces your own.
I too, can be a slow learner, but God has shown me there are no “last miracles”.
Categories
Fertility Drugs •
Infertility •
IVF •
Surrogacy
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The Full Body Project….
November 7, 2007 - Wednesday
Posted by Pamela
So...maybe you have not heard....but there is big news a float....Leonard Nimoy of Spock Fame is also a photographer...actually a wonderful photographer....but the reason that he is making news...is that....now are you sitting down? He photographed FAT women! And not just fat women....but fat naked women!!!! Oh My!!! Can you imagine that? He had the nerve to do something as controversial as see women who were fat as beautiful? Through Leonard Nimoy’s lens....you see beautiful...sexy....women of size...dancing! Smiling into the camera...almost daring us to truly see them! They seem to be saying to us....that they exist...that they are not invisible...and more than that...that they feel beautiful....and what is more...they are.
So much of how we feel as sexual beings does not come from the inside...we are so badly influenced by the media of our times...that we often do not see what is before our eyes....in “The Full Body Project”....Mr. Nimoy challenges us to do just that...simply see...simply feel...and I challenge you not to see beauty and wanton sexuality in these images....Click here to view the photos....http://www.leonardnimoyphotography.com/7body.htm
When was the last time you felt sexy? I mean really sexy?
One of the hardest consequences of trying to conceive...and having our efforts not work… is what it does to your own sense of femaleness or maleness.
I am not just talking about the general depression that can come from dealing with a chronic illness like unresolved infertility. But rather, about what the inability to fulfill your sexual role in reproduction can do to your feelings of personal beauty and your own body image. Not to be ignored are the very real body changes that can come from hormone therapy and surgery to repair or explore.
When I was in treatment, I put on twenty pounds in a year of intensive hormone therapy. I did a cycle of fertility drugs...every other month for one year. With each cycle, my body reacted strongly. My breasts would enlarge (I had to have bras for alternate months), my stomach would swell as my ovaries did overtime, and I would gain as much as ten pounds at the peak of each cycle.
I clearly remember one day, trying to look pretty, going into my doctor’s office with my husband for an insemination. My doctor looked up at me and smiled. I smiled back. And then she said to me, “Gee, Pam, you sure look puffy.” Okay, I was already emotionally fragile and sensitive about my weight. But I was devastated. Not only was I infertile, but I was also “puffy”.
Often times, even our actual clinical diagnoses can actually alter how we feel about our bodies. My diagnosis, “hostile cervical mucus”, doesn’t do much for making a woman feel very sexy. Sometimes, when my husband and I made love, I used to have to consciously erase the picture in my mind of his healthy and virile sperm being knocked unconscious by my inhospitable and rather nasty cervical mucus. My mental imagery probably wasn’t helped by viewing his motile sperm before a post coital test and then after. As the doctor put it as she looked up from the microscope, “it looks like Bunker Hill”.
I was able to combat these negative mental images about my body by consciously telling myself in a firm voice to cut it out! That my cervical mucus was not representative of myself as a woman. But it took some time.
Several years later, when I went for my second IVF cycle, my doctor found my left tube was now adhered to some other internal organs with scar tissue. My tubes, that were once perfect and a source of pride for this infertile person, who was trying not to feel defective as a woman, were no longer perfect.
The feelings that accompanied this news were not just upsetting for what they meant to the outcome of the cycle, but it was upsetting again to my self-image.
Now, not only did I have “funky mucus”, but my left tube had decided to redecorate! Still groggy from the effects of the anaesthesia, I remember feeling ugly. In retrospect, this sounds silly. Obviously, no one but my doctor saw this less than perfect tube, and even in the best of conditions, my left tube held no physical beauty.
It is actually a little embarrassing talking about these feelings. They sound ridiculous and self indulgent on paper. But if I have learned anything about my experience with infertility, it is that there is very little I have felt, that someone else hasn’t also felt or isn’t presently feeling.
The feelings I had, before I found out that I had Hostile Mucus… of a free flowing sexuality were over. They were taken with my diagnosis. And it took years to get it back....
I want to say to you, that you are not your diagnosis nor your treatment. You are a sexy man whether you have sperm in your testicles or not. You are a beautiful woman whether your eggs are in low reserve or your tubes are closed (yes, even if your mucus is a little unfriendly!) We have to stop punishing ourselves with ugly mental images of our bodies.
I am not a therapist. But I have felt the pain and have tried to deal with it on my own terms. My terms were to stop the negative images and replace them with positive images. Perhaps we should be like the women in “The Full Body Project” and dance naked!!! For the joy in ourselves...comes from a place deep inside of us....it is there....just look at their faces.
Until Tomorrow,
Pamela
Categories
Fertility Drugs •
Infertility •
IVF •
Violence Against Women
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Sometimes…I Can Still Feel The Sadness….
November 6, 2007 - Tuesday
Posted by Pamela
The flood of emotions still take me by surprise. I can be doing anything. Cooking, reading, cleaning the house, when seemingly innocuous media hits me in the face and I feel this tiny well of tears come up from the pit of my stomach and nestle around my throat for a minute. The sadness flees and I am left with a sense of wonderment about how television and print ads about pregnancy testing can still jar me.
You must know the ones, “These people are not actors, they are real people about to find out the results of their pregnancy test”. The advertisement goes on to give you a sample of why they do or do not want to be pregnant. And then the disappointment. Or the joy. It gets me every time. Then used to be this one for Clearblue Easy (I used to hate the name, nothing about pregnancy or even pregnancy testing was ever easy for me!), “Is a new life in your tomorrow?”
I wonder about this pregnancy thing sometimes. What is it that hooks us in so totally? I have spoken to fertile women about their feelings concerning pregnancy and other women’s pregnancies. What surprised me is that they are like us, they also experience envy when they hear about another woman’s pregnancies; just like we do. This must be an innate emotion. Something deeply built into us, through evolution, to keep the species alive. What we want, is something so basic to our beings, that to be denied that natural desire to reproduce can have a profound impact on our emotional lives.
When most of us are confronted with a pregnant woman (whether we are infertile or not) we react. Pregnancy is a highly visible and social event. Everyone has something to say to a pregnant woman. Whether it is advice or questions, the state of pregnancy evokes some kind of emotion in most people. For us, pregnancy is the visible reminder of what we desire. I am so attune to the state of pregnancy, that I can usually tell a woman is pregnant before she announces it. During my infertility, pregnant woman represented all things that are literally round and right with the world. Ripeness and growth. All things fresh and full of potential. Sweet magical secrets. This was something that I longed for, to be a part of the fertile life cycle of the earth.
This became something separate than a parenting issue for me. This was a issue of biology.
Woman who are fertile, have told many of us who are not, that they understand our pain (of course, we don’t believe them), After all, it took them three months to conceive and they were so depressed and worried the entire time! We can trivialize their emotional reaction to waiting for their conceptions, but these fertile woman really felt the way they felt; even if it was for a very limited amount of time. Is it no wonder that couples become “obsessed” with pregnancy when it is denied month after month?
My favorite story is as follows: My friend who was pregnant after infertility looking into a shop window. She sees a pregnant women and is instantly jealous. She gripes to herself, “I wonder what she did, bet it was nothing”. Then she realizes that she is seeing her own reflection in the window! She relates to me “ I was jealous of myself!”
But maybe it helps to know that our feelings of longing and envy are common and very normal (even if we are a bit more intense!) Even Roseanne had her moment. Do you remember the episode? I know...Roseanne went off the air a long time ago...but maybe you have seen this in re runs...Can you remember back?
Roseanne thought that she might be pregnant again. Everybody is in an uproar over it. Nobody wants the baby. Dan is out of work. Roseanne is convinced that she is pregnant, after all, she is never late. Everyone waits for the pregnancy test to be ready with the results. The test is negative. Dan asks everyone to leave. The kids are stunned. Roseanne looks like she might cry; Dan is quiet. He asks “What would you have named the baby?” Roseanne answers, “Priscilla if it was a girl, Jack for a boy”
We know Roseanne; it hurts. You know when it would have been born, what you would have named it. We know Roseanne. I sat on the couch and cried for you. I felt like a fool. It was 3:00 in the afternoon. I was crying over a rerun! I called a friend, and started to tell her about it. She said, “Oh, the one when Roseanne says Priscilla for a girl and Jack for a boy? I cried at that one too.” Oh, well. Maybe it’s just part of being a woman.
Until Tomorrow,
Pamela Madsen
Categories
Fertility Drugs •
Infertility •
Pregnancy
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