I've thought about this mostly around my decision not to pursue IVF, and as I get closer to actually doing DI and attempting to get pregnant in a way other than just having sex and hoping against hope that Manny's sperm have been miraculously restored, I've been having times where I've really questioned that decision. What if my kids are angry about being donor conceived, and ask me whether I tried IVF? What if I regret not trying it? Why am I seemingly the only one who doesn't try to exhaust every option of biological baby-making with my spouse before moving on to donor gametes?
I was having a freak out with my counsellor a few weeks ago about this very thing - what if I'm making the wrong decision by pursuing DI? In the midst of my rampage of semi-rhetorical questions, she wisely just stopped me and reminded me that I'm intuitive. That I don't need to doubt the wisdom of my decision just because it didn't come out of a hyper-rational decision-making matrix in which all outcomes were carefully weighted with both postives and negatives and seeing which one came out on top. But sometimes, even though I wouldn't know how to make a rational decision if my life depended on it, it is very hard to trust my intuition when it comes to decisions like this one which will impact my entire life and the life of my potential children. I feel like I should be thoughtful and logical so that I can make the right choice.
So to get back to the excellent questions Kate posed in her post, when it comes to where I would stop in my quest to have a child, I would probably approach it the same way, i.e. intuitively. I wonder sometimes how I'd feel about IVF if doing IUI with donor sperm doesn't work, and I'm really not sure what my answer would be. Right now I am unemployed and putting all my energy towards becoming a mother, because that is the one job I truly want right now. I'm working on healing myself and making my marriage and other relationships stronger, and I'm taking care of parts of myself that I've neglected for a long time. All so that I will be able to be as good a mother as I can.
I can't say for sure that my boundaries of what I feel are acceptable to me right now won't change, but the many reasons I have for choosing DI over IVF with my husband's sperm (if they exist in sufficient number and condition to be useful) will still give me serious pause. To me (and I stress that this is strictly my personal feeling about this and by no means is a judgement of any kind on the paths other people choose), I feel very uncomfortable risking a huge amount of money on a procedure that involves a lot of medical and pharmaceutical interventions of whose long term safety I am unconvinced when the success rate is at best about 50%. I think about what that money could mean for me and Manny and hopefully our future kids - pursuing further education, travel, the basic happiness of not being in a ton of debt. I think about how hard I have worked to heal my body without resorting to allopathic medicine, to learn to understand what my body needs and to respond with care and gentleness and I think about how I don't want to disrupt that by bombarding myself with hormones. I think about my mental health - how I've gone through enough anxiety and depression in the past few years, and how I'm not sure I could withstand much more if we pursued IVF and it didn't work.
Someone said in my meditation class today that she realized being generous and loving toward herself made it much easier for her to be generous and loving with others. This reminded me of this beautiful post from Spicy Sister - a true and gentle reflection on, among other things, how grief can wake us up to love. (See, Spicy Sister, I told you I'd carry your words around with me all day!) And I've so often found this to be my experience - that when I take care of myself, I make better decisions and I take better care of others around me.
So when I think about the possibility of living child-free, I think about all this stuff again. Would I be willing to put myself through all of that if I believed it was my last chance to have a biological child of my own? I don't really know, but I have experienced glimpses of what living child-free would mean to me. I would be heart-broken. I would be transformed by my grief. I would rage. But I also know that my life would not be without happiness. I would find a way to make peace with it, as hard as that would be. I know that my purpose in life is to be a mother, and I also know that I have many purposes in life. In the past year especially, I've been devoting a lot of energy to finding out who I am. I've learned that there is a lot in me that is worth celebrating and loving and cultivating. I'm not a mother yet, so if I never become one, there is still a beautiful, fertile garden inside me that requires care.
And I guess this is my balance point - that I will always try to include that care for myself in the decisions I make around the whole baby thing. That I will not leave myself out of the decision. That I'll try to treat myself as a whole person and continue to check in with myself to see whether my desire for a child is still strong enough to warrant saying yes to whatever choice about treatment or adoption I'm facing. That's the best I can imagine doing at this point.
9 comments:
Very thought-provoking post. I think you have to do what is right for you at any moment in time and that can change as you move through your life and change. Just like IVF isn't right for you now, DI may not be right for someone else, or adoption may not be right.
It is hard to come to terms with the fact that things didn't turn out as we expected them too and you have to find whatever way you can to work through that. Whether it is pursuing one treatment and drawing the line there, or if it is going to the ends of the earth and sacrificing everything else in your life. It is different for everyone.
I am usually a very list-oriented person. Pros and cons and all that. But when it comes to matters of the heart, intuition rules and I usually just plow ahead trying not to let my rational side get in the way. For better or worse.
Interesting that you should post this now - as I have been doing some very serious soul searching about what's next for me if this, my 2nd IVF cycle fails.
We had always said that we would try 3 times, but I am feeling strongly lately that if this cycle is a failure, that I'm done. I just feel it in my heart that I have done all I can do. I have spent all the money that I can spend. I have endured all I can endure. I am at the point in my life where I just want to get on with my life - with or without children.
Well, that was deep!
I think the most stressful part for me is not that I am manipulating my body, or even that we are about to go into debt, but that this seems to be something that consumes a big part of my thoughts. It's a big deal now, and I just want to tackle it and move on.
I completely respect you for your decision to go with a donor--and the self-preservation of not having to go through IVF. I do have fears of how hard it will be on my body, and what the long term effects will be.
Everyone has their limits. It's good that you know yours and are in control.
I agree. I used to say exactly the same thing about IVF vs DI. Obviously, I changed my mind (a, I had to respect Hubby's desire to try IVF and b, donor sperm wasn't working) - but *totally* hear where you are coming from. It is a HUGE amount of money and it is HARRRRRD on your body. Not that I regret my decision, but would I if it hadn't worked? You bet.
This post has given me so much to ponder. SO often I wake up and wonder how we ended up here, in this exact place - deciding to do IVF. In some ways it's like we just stumbled here, but really the truth is - I listened to my heart all the way and each time took the best step I could that was in front of me. I got here through a series of baby steps that were each taken with a great deal of thought, prayer, and listening. But it is good to remember how and why we have made these choices, because sometimes it has felt like this has not been a choice at all but simply what we must do. Remembering the aspect of choice - remembering how we came to balance upon this point - it reminds me that we have some hand in all of it. Because sometimes, it feels as if this is all just happening to us instead of with us. There is just such a loss of control and a shock of continually ending up where you never thought you would be.
Sigh....these words are really sticking with me and I will carry them in my heart for a long time: "there is still a beautiful, fertile garden inside me that requires care."
Thank you.
IVF is very expensive and you don't even know if your husband has any little guys floating around. Using a donor...and I don't mean to sound cavelier because we thought long and hard about DI. ANY way of using an alternative method to form a family carries 'baggage'. Donor egg, donor sperm, donor embryo, and adoption. They all have their own issues.
Here's the best advice I got, from a pregnant friend who adopted last year. "Someday, somehow, you will be a mother. It might not happen exactly as you planned, but it will happen. And one day, when you look back on all of these things you went through to become a mom, in the end you will never be able to imagine it happening any other way." I think of this everytime I am down on things or wonder what I am supposed to do.
Gah. I am so slow this weekend at commenting.
The great Mel had a post asking how we arrived at particular infertility path - how we chose to do IVF or DI or adoption. It's weird how little thought/discussion Al and I put into our decision. I am not opposed to adopting, but so long as I am able to have children, I don't want to give up the possibility for the ability to carry my child and have a genetic link to that child.
The DI issue is a little trickier. I would be totally fine with it. But I know that Al would chose adoption of DI. For him it's an all or nothing situation. The kid is either all genetically ours or not at all genetically ours. I think it's a fear of being left out.
I know he feel guilty about this not being easy.
I found myself kind of wishing we wouldn't find sperm, just so we could move on without IVF. But now that he has had the surgery, it would be ridiculous not to try it or it would have all been for nothing.
But yeah. I worry about the effects on my health, if it'll hurt our children, the ridiculous cost.
Blah. I don't know. I don't think any IF choices are easy. Which is just another reason IF sucks.
I'm no longer sure that it's possible to come up with any kind of pre-planned treatment programme. All any of us can do is make the decisions that feel right for us at that moment in time. Moving to IVF, using a donor, deciding to go down the adoption route or accepting childlessness each bring their own ethical dilemmas. What seems to me most important, however, is that each individual's decision is respected and supported here within the blogosphere.
Post a Comment