Monday, November 02, 2009

Moving forward

It was the real deal; on Saturday AF flowed like a river. I emailed the clinic this morning and let them know that I wouldn’t be in for my beta nor would I be there for this month. At least that’s settled. This weekend wasn’t stellar. In fact, except for a couple of events it was pretty boring. H. ran the Angus Glen half marathon yesterday. It was a beautiful day for it. I was there to cheer him on and he ran a personal best of 2 hours 3 minutes and seventeen seconds. Woohoo! He is really trying to get down under 2 hours and is working really hard at it. I know it will happen for him. We then went out for lunch and then went home to watch the football. Go Fav.re go! Saturday was Halloween. Last year we ran out of candy so I made sure to stock up this year. It was a bit of a disappointment because we only had around 30 to 35 kids. I was expecting around 90. The last kid knocked on our door around 8:15. Shrug. Maybe because it was a Saturday people were keeping their kids home for a party instead or the swine flu had everyone scared. Who knows?

Yesterday at lunch H. and I had a discussion about kids and where we go from here. We are going to go forward with donor eggs. We’ll still try on our own, but we are both losing hope for it to happen for us. We are going to take a loan out against the house. Scary. And we are going to make this happen for us as soon as possible. Again scary. Donor eggs will happen early in the new year.

I cried this morning on the way to work as I was telling H. how I am grieving a biological child. I grew up knowing that I look just like my Mom. I have her hands and her legs, we walk the same way and I have my Dad’s forehead and personality (and his prematurely gray hair). If you saw a picture of her at age 3 or 4 and then saw a picture of me at the same age, you would swear it’s the same kid. It breaks my heart, my soul that I will never have a little girl who looks just like me. Once we go down the donor egg route, that’s it for a biological child for me. The other thing is that I didn’t know how much this meant to me. How could I not know that it was so important to me to be able to look at my child and see me reflected there? Doesn’t that sound incredibly egotistical? I don’t think it’s an ego thing… I think it’s more of a continuation type thing. I think it’s just normal.

I find it amazing that I am yearning for normal. I am not reaching for the stars; I didn’t think that in wanting children we’d be “dreaming the impossible dream”. Who knew normal could be so difficult a goal?

4 comments:

CHAR said...

Oh honey- I am here if you ever need to talk. FB me anytime. It is an incredibly difficult thing to come to terms with the possibility of not have a biological child. I would assume it is like greiving a loss. This my friend, may take time to deal with. Al your feelings are very very normal.

The donor route sounds great & may make your dreams come true to be a mom. You deserve it & have tried so hard.

Hugs (())

Fran said...

Oh sweetie...I have tears streaming down my face reading your post. I can feel your pain which today is also my pain. I don't have the hope at all of a natural miracle for us as I lost both tubes. I thought I was ok with it, relieved in fact. But it hurts thinking that I'll never be surprised. I hope that once you do get your positive test, once you see your baby, your love will be so overwhelming that it won't matter. Love, Fran

Kate said...

I don't know how well I would deal with the idea of donor 'stuff' either. I know I would need some time to mourn the lack of genetic connection, even though I would know that I would love and cherish any child of mine (by adoption or birth, with donor eggs or mine) equally.
Will they make you do counselling before proceeding? Might be helpful to sort through your feelings a little. And talking to other parents of DE/DS children might help a little too.
And though your future child might not have your forehead or big toe, I'd bet they'll take on some of your personality traits and mannerisms. And heck, maybe they'll be like my brother's first and be a spitting image of him as a kid, with nothing of the Mom to be seen in him at all.
Hope you and DH are able to work through the challenges of this, so that you can embark on your new path in a very positive frame of mind.

Phoebe said...

Sending you a big hug to help you with this loss. I understand about grieving the loss of your own eggs, your own genetics.

The information that gals have sent me on epigenetics has been very helpful. When you carry your baby that was conceived with DE, you help to turn on certain genes during pregnancy. So you will influence the gene expression to some degree.