Welcome to ICLW! Excuse the typos- I'm typing this post from my phone.
A quick introduction- my story has to strech back to when I was 25, when I decided that if I did not meet the right guy in the next 5 years, I was going to try to have a baby by myself. To my own shock, I went ahead with this audacious plan the month I turned 30. I tried to get pregnant. I succeeded on my first try. I lost that pregnancy. I tried again two months later. I lost that too. I took a year long break and tried again, only to have the worst pregnancy/loss ever. At this point, I had severe pregnancy PTSD, and the thought of having an ultrasound to see if there was still a beating heartbeat made me sick with anxiety. I returned to my India (the country I grew up in) for the more affordable fertility treatments (including surrogacy) and the support of my family. My first IVF was an unmitigated disaster. The second (where I designed my protocol myself) resulted in about as good a response as one could hope for, and a surrogate, after rejecting 3 of my high grade day-5 blasts, got pregnant with one of them.
That pregnancy hits 26 weeks tomorrow. It took a lot of superstition squishing to get me to participate in ICLW-- the first time I signed up for this, I discovered a pregnancy loss about 2 days in. I'm trying to recite this mantra from one of my favorite books: Hope strengthens, Fear kills. Well, not literally, but you can miss out on quite a bit just because of your stupid, irrational fears. So here I am, kicking one of my superstitions in the nuts and hoping it does not reciprocate.
My blog is not just a recounting of my story...I'm a scientist and an information junkie, and I'm determined to make this experience as positive as possible by dispersing how much ever information I can. And this I have done, to the point of making your eyes glaze over. If you are so interested, the 'Science of Infertility' page summarizes a good part of it.
So welcome. Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to reading your stories!
A quick introduction- my story has to strech back to when I was 25, when I decided that if I did not meet the right guy in the next 5 years, I was going to try to have a baby by myself. To my own shock, I went ahead with this audacious plan the month I turned 30. I tried to get pregnant. I succeeded on my first try. I lost that pregnancy. I tried again two months later. I lost that too. I took a year long break and tried again, only to have the worst pregnancy/loss ever. At this point, I had severe pregnancy PTSD, and the thought of having an ultrasound to see if there was still a beating heartbeat made me sick with anxiety. I returned to my India (the country I grew up in) for the more affordable fertility treatments (including surrogacy) and the support of my family. My first IVF was an unmitigated disaster. The second (where I designed my protocol myself) resulted in about as good a response as one could hope for, and a surrogate, after rejecting 3 of my high grade day-5 blasts, got pregnant with one of them.
That pregnancy hits 26 weeks tomorrow. It took a lot of superstition squishing to get me to participate in ICLW-- the first time I signed up for this, I discovered a pregnancy loss about 2 days in. I'm trying to recite this mantra from one of my favorite books: Hope strengthens, Fear kills. Well, not literally, but you can miss out on quite a bit just because of your stupid, irrational fears. So here I am, kicking one of my superstitions in the nuts and hoping it does not reciprocate.
My blog is not just a recounting of my story...I'm a scientist and an information junkie, and I'm determined to make this experience as positive as possible by dispersing how much ever information I can. And this I have done, to the point of making your eyes glaze over. If you are so interested, the 'Science of Infertility' page summarizes a good part of it.
So welcome. Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to reading your stories!
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