Uh oh, there's been poetry!

I started feeling pretty sorry for myself yesterday. I know I've got to guard against sliding down into a BCP-induced pit of bitchiness and self-pity, but then again, I figure it's healthy to let some of the feelings out. Because they could be real, and could just be IVF#4 anxiety rather than hormone-fuelled rantings.

I even wrote a poem about the pain of infertility. I thought of posting it here, but as I haven't written any poetry since I was an angst-ridden 15-year old, it's probably just as sucky as my previous attempts. I think the internet is, on the whole, better off without my poetic attempts. Maybe if this drags on into IVF#5 and I end up with a small volume of sucky poems, maybe then I'll "treat" you to one or two of them. But maybe not, eh.

But, you know, it keeps hitting me. Wow, this is my fourth fucking cycle. My fourth! Although I've "only" had two that went to ER and ET, I'm still going to count the cancelled cycle because the drug protocols and build-up were the same, and the crushing pain of cancellation is pretty nasty. Who'd have thought that it would get to this? I know none of us multiple-IVF'ers ever imagined it not working the first, or maybe the second, go-around. I know that none of us infertiles ever imagined that we'd have problems getting pregnant in the first place, so it's just that continued "not surprised but devastated all the same" feeling every single month which just builds and builds until it takes over your life. So, how did it end up like this? How is it that I am still plowing on, still getting ready to shoot up, still not pregnant? How is it that I even resent people whose first IVF worked, and think of them as fertile myrtles. When I know they're not fertile myrtles, because the whole having to do IVF thing is pretty much a dead giveaway, don't you think? And let's not get started on the "finally" issue, which I always told myself I'd never ever harp on about, but some of the people out there really have no business saying "finally" when they get their positive pregnancy test. I know, I know, at the time it really feels like "finally", and probably I'd have said it myself in my naïvety if I'd got knocked up on the 5th IUI, but looked at from the perspective of where I am now, and where so many women before me and around me have been, some women just don't have a clue and it really hurts to see anyone say "finally" when it's been less than a year. Or two. I'd like to be above such pettiness, but you know, jealousy trumps logic, so my brain can't quite stop my heart from being wrapped up in its own pity.

I'm going to refrain from asking the "why me?" question, because I know there's no answer to that. Or at least no answer that I can either comprehend or am ready to hear.

But seriously folks, how much money is this going to take? How much time? How much pain? What really is my chance of success? They say the success rate doesn't go down with each cycle, but you hear of so few higher-order IVF cycle successes that it's hard to keep hope alive sometimes. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am hopeful. I don't see any reason why it can't work this time. I'm still in my thirties. I have good FSH levels. Everything pretty much checks out OK. If my egg quality is failing, then surely at some point if we throw enough eggs at the problem, we'll find a good one. Surely?

I used to feel sad for older women who went through fertility treatments and were only able to have one child. I thought about how they probably wanted siblings, and how they weren't able to have the family that they wanted, and how sad was that, how sad that their kid would be an only child. Now I think they are lucky, lucky women. I have rearranged my idea of what type of family I want. I used to think I'd be devastated if I could only have one child - now I know I'll be ecstatic. Sure, I'd like two. Sure, if this IVF miraculously works I'll be thinking about trying again for a sibling. Sure, there'll be sadness if I can't have that sibling. But honestly, after all this, just to get one healthy child would be so wonderful and so miraculous that if that's "all" I get, that's going to be enough. I don't want to deny the pain of secondary infertility, especially when there was no primary infertility, because I know I'd have felt it probably just as badly as this. But I think after primary infertility, secondary infertility takes on a different hue, because you expect there to be trouble so you're more prepared for it not working. Maybe. I'm talking out of my arse here because I really have no clue. But here I am, I'm staring in the face of living without children in my life at all. I'm staring right at a future that involves being the crazy cat lady and the dried up old spinster and that's just not funny. And I don't want that for myself. So please, universe, please can this IVF work?