Blog for Choice Day 2008

...one of the things I love most about my friend Andrea (med school mama) is that she keeps me in the loop of things like blog for choice day. Appropriately timed for me as I have been making my way (tearfully) through an amazing collection of essays on issues of reproductive choice including adoption, abortion, parenthood, pregnancy, childbirth and infertility. Kim asked me last night if I had ever thought about writing my story of reproductive choice, and then here today is...blogging for choice. And don't all women have a story to tell, choicing to have children, choosing not to, choosing to continue with or terminate pregnancies....I think these stories are fasinating. They bring me to tears, they make me smile and giggle, they make me envious and thankful.

My own struggle with reproductive choice long and trying and heartbreaking and in the end miraculous. I made a choice to continue trying despite the best efforts and pursuasion otherwise of many well meaning friends, providers and family members. I was tested again and again on my ability to continue seeking fertility treatments, after my first miscarriage, after my second, after the discovery of a "maternal thrombophilia" (maternal I thought, hah, doesn't that imply the ability to conceive in the first place?), after a stay in the hospital with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome following my first (cancelled) IVF cycle, after fight after fight with my insurance company to keep paying, after the first FET which left me in tears on the way to Boston thankful that one of my two embroys had survived the thaw, only to be disappointed yet again two weeks later. I chose to continue. Infertility ruled my life, it encompassed my thoughts, it was my driving force, it was heartache and hurt and more tears than I ever thought possible, it became me, it overwhelmed me.

When I found out I was pregnant in March of 2005, after my second IVF cycle, I cried and cried. Not because I was happy, oh I had been told I was pregnant before, I was scared, so scared. The fear never left. The fear that something would go wrong, the fear that at my next visit with my OB my baby would be dead. The fear that my "maternal thrombophilia" would terminate my pregnancy prematurely. And when I ended up in the hospital at 31 weeks with a severely low amniotic fluid level, I wasn't the least bit surprised. Here was the other shoe, it was too good to be true. The only thing that surprised me the entire 36 5/7 weeks was the birth of my beautiful, healthy son. Because my body had felt to me like so much of a failure, I didn't really expect that it was capable of doing someting so incredibly right. He was here, and perfect, and a miracle.

I still carry infertility with me. It doesn't rule my life anymore, now my two year old does that, but it's always there and I suspect it always will be. It changed me forever. And as we stand on the brink of beginning this arduous journey yet again I am fearful of course and I wonder if I have the strength to do it again, but I know the happy ending, and I hope lightning will strike twice in the same place.

There was a slideshow someone sent me during my struggle trying to conceive Simon and I share it with you because it's so important. It still makes me cry, it still brings me back to a place I never want to return to again, but in the end it makes me so thankful that I had a choice.
http://www.tearsandhope.com/emptyarms_video.html