(photos forthcoming)
A year ago, we had our fourth and last embryo transfer. First transfer of two blastocysts on the 11th anniversary of daddy and I meeting, resulted in a week-long pregnancy followed by a chemical loss. Second transfer of two blastocysts, about four months later, resulted in a "BFN" - big fat negative (pregnancy test). Third transfer of two blastocysts from a second batch resulted in our miracle 3 year old daughter, your genetic sister Maya. And our last transfer was also planned for two blastocysts, but only one survived the thaw. That last little embryo was you Fernandito!
Just like with your sister three years earlier, daddy had to wait across the hall while I went in for transfer. My bladder was bursting and I was certain that I would pee on the doctor, for which I wouldn't have felt bad since he made me drink twice the recommended amount of water and then had me wait on the transfer bed. I walked on the wild side this time, and secretly took a photo of myself just before transfer. (What'd you think I was going to say? I videotaped the transfer? I wish! Our first two transfers were videotaped, but alas that's irrelevant to you, I guess.) Luckily this time I wasn't made to lay there for 30 minutes, so I was up and with daddy and Maya in no time.
We had made the whole trip into a family vacation. We visited my brother and his family, Alex's grandpa and some cousins, aunts and uncles, and we managed a quick day trip to the beach the day before transfer. I squeezed in an acupuncture session on the morning of the transfer, just in case it would help. It certainly helped me relax and put me in the right frame of mind, if nothing else.
As we were leaving the hospital after transfer, we had someone take a lovely photo of us - first photo of us as a family of four! I knew that no matter what, this was the last time I was undergoing any sort of fertility treatment, and all that was left was to find out what the good Lord had in mind for the future of our family.
I'm not sure what to think of the embryo that didn't get transferred. All of the other embryos we "adopted" were in my body for however brief a moment in time. I sort of thought of them as little angel companions for each other, especially for my Maya. But Fernando, you were in there all alone. So silly how the mind can weave crazy stories out of nothing.
Your batch of four embryos, I called the Franciscans, after the newly elected Pope Francis. Maya's companion embryo I named Raquelita after my late best friend, Rachel. We called Maya "Dee or Dino", alternating months during the pregnancy, since we weren't finding out her sex until after birth. Your would-be companion embryo I named Francis. We found out you were a boy in mid-pregnancy, at which point we started to think of names. We had decided not to name you the boy names we had prepared three years earlier when expecting Maya. You were not some fantasy but a real boy, our son, and everything had to be reset. Until then, you were a "Franciscan" ;)
I'm going to go ahead and put it out there, though I went back and forth about it.... I started to suspect right after your transfer that you may receive a calling to the priesthood. (Since we're Catholic, this also meant that I suspected you were a boy!) You see, after your sister was born and we moved to a new state, I became distant in my faith for a long time. I had all but given up being able to recapture that sense of spirituality going into your embryo transfer. Literally within days, I felt something spiritual. I cannot explain what it was, because it wasn't anything concrete. I just felt God's presence, I guess. For the first time in years, I felt hope that I may one day truly "be Catholic" again.
I had a terrible first trimester as far as nausea and prenatal depression. It was so bad that I had to request prescription medication, because the ginger root tea that finally helped when I was pregnant with Maya only made things worse this time! I was thinking all sorts of nonesense about my lack of worth and I dreaded the idea of being responsible for two small children. I tried to sleep most of the time to avoid facing these thoughts. But two Sundays in a row, before and after we moved into the house where you were born, the nausea and depression let up, to the point that I felt well enough to pack and move some of our stuff the first time it happened, and to unpack and put some things away the second time it happened.
Because these were Sundays, I again thought this was a sign of a possible religious vocation for you. Whether or not the Lord calls you to the priesthood or not, He clearly called you to help bring me back to the faith! I went on a spiritual retreat while pregnant with you, which helped tremendously in edging me in the right direction (namely, towards God). As I write this, I am in my third week of spiritual direction, and I have started to call Jesus my friend.
In one of your sonograms, you resemble your sister Maya. It is most uncanny, the lip and chin area in particular. With Maya, I didn't think she looked anything like her sonos, but with you, wow! I hope that you and Maya will be very close friends and are able to find comfort in each other's shared journey as donor conceived adoptees. I have been working on locating your genetic family, in case you or Maya ever want more information about your genetic roots. The Lord even put in my life a lady at our church who loves doing geneology and who has been working on your genetic family tree for many months. I was also able to get a little more information from the clinic where your and Maya's embryos were stored, which has been a great joy to me, and I'm hoping it can help us locate your and Maya's three older genetic siblings, if not your donors as well.
So Fernando, thank you for showing me that just when I thought my heart couldn't possibly grow to accomodate loving another child as much as I love Maya, you proved me wrong! My heart has been cloned, and each of you have their own mommy-heart in my chest. I don't know how else to describe it. I love you, and I'm so very happy that you're here and we're all together as a family now!
Showing posts with label infertility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infertility. Show all posts
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Friday, March 18, 2016
Leaving Online Groups
Weighing the pros and cons of membership of an online group. I recently chose not to rejoin a group that was very educational in terms of race relations and adoptee perspectives, because of the uneven playing field, for which I don't fault the administration at all. I just feel like my continued presence was having a toxic effect on me. I am a bit too literal and can't always decode the appropriate context, and when I hear something is offensive to someone, I run with it, even if it means risking destroying long-standing relationships. The privileged voices in this group were volunteers, so they didn't need to consider my intention or give me the benefit of the doubt. But in real life, I should extend those courtesies to others. And since I don't like to maintain a double standard, the way I am in one arena is the way I want to be in all of them, which was proving quite troublesome in my personal life.
So I opted to find other groups that deal equally well in terms of racial issues, but also covers issues of disability, sexism, and LGBTQ concerns much more so than the other group did (though they did occasionally come up). I find that even though the group rules sound pretty much the same as those of the group I left, I have not come across anyone telling someone else to sit on their hands and be quiet, no name-calling, no "you should Google before you speak" (as if we know what we don't know until someone points it out to us). So I'm very happy with these other race-issues groups, and decided I didn't need to put up with being made to feel like the disenfranchised groups just to prove a point.
I'm one of those people who doesn't need to visit the Holocaust museum to understand the gravity of what happened. It doesn't take much for me to see the light, because I do always assume I have room to grow and don't know everything. It pisses me off when people treat me like "just another white girl", and whatever stereotypes that conveys for them.
That said, there is another group that I am now thinking I may want to reconsider. The opposite problem is happening there. It's a group for those involved with embryo donation, but it is entirely from the perspective of the recipient parents. Rainbows and unicorns, as was the saying in the race group I left. I've brought up serious issues to try to get people to consider the perspective of their children, and I've been dismissed as being too negative and in a recent thread, there was actually an onslaught of people who came to comment specifically - it seems - in an effort to minimize the importance of what I said, ignoring it altogether. And yes, I see the irony of my problem with this group versus my problem with the other group I left.
I have to wonder what's the point of my staying in this group. It's a lot of oohing and ahhing and prayers and baby dust for those still trying, sharing pictures and merchandise ad nauseum of anything snowflake related, and really no education seems to be allowed. I don't need support, I'm done "trying" - and I feel that way even as I sit here in my "two-week wait", 7dp5dt. I don't need people's condolences over the embryo that didn't survive the thaw. I don't need people praying to Santa-Genie-God to show favor on me. It's nice to share the specifics of where I'm at during this cycle, but this cycle is just about over with, and I don't see any long-term advantages to continued membership in this group.
It's a shame, too. I really want to mingle with other EA parents, but I see they have got to be similarly-minded, too. As in, they have to want to parent by taking the child's perspective into consideration. They cannot be of the mind-frame that as the parents, their word is law, that they know better, that the child is to be seen and not heard.
So I opted to find other groups that deal equally well in terms of racial issues, but also covers issues of disability, sexism, and LGBTQ concerns much more so than the other group did (though they did occasionally come up). I find that even though the group rules sound pretty much the same as those of the group I left, I have not come across anyone telling someone else to sit on their hands and be quiet, no name-calling, no "you should Google before you speak" (as if we know what we don't know until someone points it out to us). So I'm very happy with these other race-issues groups, and decided I didn't need to put up with being made to feel like the disenfranchised groups just to prove a point.
I'm one of those people who doesn't need to visit the Holocaust museum to understand the gravity of what happened. It doesn't take much for me to see the light, because I do always assume I have room to grow and don't know everything. It pisses me off when people treat me like "just another white girl", and whatever stereotypes that conveys for them.
That said, there is another group that I am now thinking I may want to reconsider. The opposite problem is happening there. It's a group for those involved with embryo donation, but it is entirely from the perspective of the recipient parents. Rainbows and unicorns, as was the saying in the race group I left. I've brought up serious issues to try to get people to consider the perspective of their children, and I've been dismissed as being too negative and in a recent thread, there was actually an onslaught of people who came to comment specifically - it seems - in an effort to minimize the importance of what I said, ignoring it altogether. And yes, I see the irony of my problem with this group versus my problem with the other group I left.
It's a shame, too. I really want to mingle with other EA parents, but I see they have got to be similarly-minded, too. As in, they have to want to parent by taking the child's perspective into consideration. They cannot be of the mind-frame that as the parents, their word is law, that they know better, that the child is to be seen and not heard.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Trying for a Sibling
I haven't written about this subject before because, quite honestly, I've been mostly ambivalent about the idea of having another child. In my mind, our infertility simply meant "childlessness". Now that we have a daughter, I consider us "cured". Selfishly speaking, I don't really want to go through the newborn phase again, or anticipate another childbirth, even though I think my homebirth with our daughter went quite well.
Then again, I feel bad for the new kid, if this embryo transfer is successful, because I don't want her/him to feel like second best. I'm sure that my heart will grow to accommodate two awesome kids, if the need arises, though.
But for now, the three reasons we are doing one last embryo transfer are 1) to attempt to give our daughter a genetic sibling, a blood relative she could grow up with, 2) because we made a commitment to the batch of four, and two remain, and 3) because the alternatives - storing them indefinitely or returning them to our clinic's anonymous donor embryo program are not viable options for us.
Storing indefinitely provides no closure, something that is important for me. It's a main reason I'm excited about this transfer, because in a matter of weeks, we will officially be able to put our infertility struggle behind us. We won't have to hem and haw when people ask about when we're having another one - we'll just be able to categorically say nope, we're done. We are raising an only child, thank you very much. Or if the transfer works, people are less likely to ask about a third child, unless of course we have two girls, but some people are never happy so whatever.
Returning the remaining two embryos to the clinic's anonymous donor embryo program would introduce another obstacle in that we would always wonder if there's another genetic sibling out there. Right now, we know she has three siblings with her donors. If we find one of them, we find the whole bunch. But if we let the clinic have them back, we'll never know what happened to them unless another family receives them and reaches out to us on the DSR (Donor Sibling Registry).
Having said all of that, we are traveling for the transfer and chose to come early to do my monitoring at the clinic, since we are being charged a flat fee this time, with no discount for doing outside monitoring. In between the monitoring (which consisted of blood work measuring my hormone levels and a sonogram to check my lining, which was a whopping 11cm and they like to see at least 7cm), we have been driving around Florida visiting with family. We're spending several days with my brother, which is allowing our daughter to hang out with her soon-to-be 6 year old cousin and his two soon-to-be step-sisters, aged 9 and almost 6. While it is utter chaos with four kids expressing their excitement, it has been amazing to watch Maya observe the other kids, enjoy interacting with them, and therefore keeping busy without insisting on my constant presence or being zonked out in front of her show. It is exhausting to try to make sure she is getting social interaction with peers, because it means leaving the house and making an effort, and for an introvert like me, I'd rather not!
So now, as we count down to this Friday's transfer, I'm starting to actually hope that it works, that Maya gets a little sibling (sister ideally! Alex and I agree that we know what to expect from a little girl and are too old to reinvent the wheel with a little boy! Though originally of course we wanted "one of each")
I've been getting used to not carrying Maya this week, in preparation for after transfer, when I will be limited to what I should be lifting, and it's been tough. I've noticed how much I still pick her up, so we've been having Alex lift her when need be or encouraging her to get around on her own. Apparently she can get in and out of her car seat on her own, if given enough time and motivation.
I've also been noticing that nursing Maya is bothering my nipples, and since the meds I'm on may be messing with my milk supply, she's been wanting to nurse quite frequently, at night in particular. I'm not ready for her to wean yet, but I sure do wish she'd keep it to daylight hours only!
Two days and a wake-up to Homecoming Day!
Then again, I feel bad for the new kid, if this embryo transfer is successful, because I don't want her/him to feel like second best. I'm sure that my heart will grow to accommodate two awesome kids, if the need arises, though.
But for now, the three reasons we are doing one last embryo transfer are 1) to attempt to give our daughter a genetic sibling, a blood relative she could grow up with, 2) because we made a commitment to the batch of four, and two remain, and 3) because the alternatives - storing them indefinitely or returning them to our clinic's anonymous donor embryo program are not viable options for us.
Storing indefinitely provides no closure, something that is important for me. It's a main reason I'm excited about this transfer, because in a matter of weeks, we will officially be able to put our infertility struggle behind us. We won't have to hem and haw when people ask about when we're having another one - we'll just be able to categorically say nope, we're done. We are raising an only child, thank you very much. Or if the transfer works, people are less likely to ask about a third child, unless of course we have two girls, but some people are never happy so whatever.
Returning the remaining two embryos to the clinic's anonymous donor embryo program would introduce another obstacle in that we would always wonder if there's another genetic sibling out there. Right now, we know she has three siblings with her donors. If we find one of them, we find the whole bunch. But if we let the clinic have them back, we'll never know what happened to them unless another family receives them and reaches out to us on the DSR (Donor Sibling Registry).
Having said all of that, we are traveling for the transfer and chose to come early to do my monitoring at the clinic, since we are being charged a flat fee this time, with no discount for doing outside monitoring. In between the monitoring (which consisted of blood work measuring my hormone levels and a sonogram to check my lining, which was a whopping 11cm and they like to see at least 7cm), we have been driving around Florida visiting with family. We're spending several days with my brother, which is allowing our daughter to hang out with her soon-to-be 6 year old cousin and his two soon-to-be step-sisters, aged 9 and almost 6. While it is utter chaos with four kids expressing their excitement, it has been amazing to watch Maya observe the other kids, enjoy interacting with them, and therefore keeping busy without insisting on my constant presence or being zonked out in front of her show. It is exhausting to try to make sure she is getting social interaction with peers, because it means leaving the house and making an effort, and for an introvert like me, I'd rather not!
So now, as we count down to this Friday's transfer, I'm starting to actually hope that it works, that Maya gets a little sibling (sister ideally! Alex and I agree that we know what to expect from a little girl and are too old to reinvent the wheel with a little boy! Though originally of course we wanted "one of each")
I've been getting used to not carrying Maya this week, in preparation for after transfer, when I will be limited to what I should be lifting, and it's been tough. I've noticed how much I still pick her up, so we've been having Alex lift her when need be or encouraging her to get around on her own. Apparently she can get in and out of her car seat on her own, if given enough time and motivation.
I've also been noticing that nursing Maya is bothering my nipples, and since the meds I'm on may be messing with my milk supply, she's been wanting to nurse quite frequently, at night in particular. I'm not ready for her to wean yet, but I sure do wish she'd keep it to daylight hours only!
Two days and a wake-up to Homecoming Day!
Thursday, February 4, 2016
On My Fifth Life
I'm going to attempt to put into words something that I know will be elusive without having personally experienced the idea yourself. I'm sure you've heard people reflect back on some past phase of their life and say that it was a different life, or that they were a different person back then. Well, I actually think there is a lot more truth to this than meets the eye.
Take my "life" for instance. We already know that our physical bodies replace all their cells in a span of something like 7 years, so we are literally not the same physical person that we were seven years ago. But when I think of being a different person, I think of my circumstances, the people that were most influential on me during that phase of life, my attitudes and values of the time, how I saw the world and my place in it.
According to my completely nonscientific calculations and estimations, I am currently on life #5. My first "life within this life" started in the womb and continued during my childhood in Poland. It smoothly transitioned into life #2 when I immigrated to the United States. These two lives may be the easiest to compare due to the drastic geographical relocation. But there was so much more to that. There was an ending - death, if you will - to my Polish life, and a beginning - birth, if you will - to my American life. I did travel across with my parents, but other than that, I left behind other people with whom I had close relationships - my grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt. I also left behind people with whom I wasn't as close, but who nonetheless had a significant influence on who I was - my teacher and friends from school, my grandpa and my dad's side of the family, even my neighbors and really, random strangers on the street.
Being outside the house in my Polish life and being outside the home in my American life meant completely different experiences. In Poland, there were sidewalks and public transportation, and a greater freedom as to with whom I was out and about. There were always other people also walking around, taking the trolley or the bus like us, and with that came inevitable pleasantries or even just quiet observations of others.
In contrast, my American life meant the home, school, and the grocery store with my parents or the mall with my friends. I had to depend on a school bus to take me to school and back, no independence with that. I had to depend on my parents to drive me to meet my friends, so again, no independence. The people I grew up around were strictly limited to my close neighbors, my parents' friends, and people I saw in school or on the school bus. We went to church, but after the first couple of years we stopped attending a Polish parish, and once at an American church, we never developed a community with the people there. It was just in and out for our Sunday mass obligation I didn't really make friends at my Confirmation classes, which didn't last long anyway.
And so there was a huge gulf of experiences that divided my first and second life, and I haven't even mentioned the language difference! My second life lasted roughly until about age 16.
After the first two years of high school, we moved (for third time inside the US) and I had to change high schools. It was here that I remember wanting to "start fresh" where no one knew me. I had fumbled my reputation at my old high school while trying to fit in with my peers while simultaneously not letting my parents down. At the new school, I didn't have to worry about previous expectations. My third life began as I started to try to establish my independence after years of having no access to independence due to to way American society in my area was set up. Had I stayed in Poland, I would've been much more independent and responsible by then, but as it was, I had a late start.
In my third life, I had all new friends yet again. I met my best friend, Rachel, who was pivotal in helping me navigate life outside of school and home. She was allowed to drive me around before I got my license (at 18!), and thanks to her I experienced eating out, dance clubs, bowling alleys, and the homes of people I never would've otherwise seen. I didn't know it at the time, but I was trying to become an American adult without any real American role models. I was expected to stay Polish by my family, who also didn't provide any Polish role models to that end, and so I embarked on a journey of self-discovery that bled into my fourth life even. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My third life went from my junior year of high school up to just before I got married. I graduated high school, I spent 5 months in my native Poland, I worked in retail, tutoring, and telemarketing. I went to community college where I was recruited into the Army. My father had a tragic vehicular accident that left him brain injured and unable to work or communicate well. I met my now-husband, we moved back to somehow help my family, we moved in together. I graduated college and my wild days of trying to figure out who I was settled down into a sort of background hum of uncertainty.
My third life smoothly moved into my fourth life. I graduated college, Alex and I bought a house, and we got married, all within the space of a month. I spent a bit of time in admin work before starting on a decade-long teaching career and graduate school. I thought I had an idea of what my future held, or at least what I wanted it to hold, and I patiently and naively hammered away at my goal without much thought to reality or practicality. For 11 years this was my life. We found that we had severe infertility and began to try to adopt. We spent 5 years struggling with various forms of adoption, having four false starts, before finally turning to infertility treatments. In the process, we both became more religious and began to share that religious faith with each other, which helped us make a bit more sense of our struggles. I was an adult, an American, but it sort of just plateaued that way. It wasn't due to any concrete intentions, and so without any mentors, I still didn't really know why I did what I did. I knew I didn't "feel" like a grown-up, but I attributed it to the American way, with the extended adolescence that is so common among high school through college graduates and 20-somethings. This fourth life died sometime after my best friend Rachel's suicide, the year before our daughter was born.
My current life, my fifth within this Earthly journey, began when I became pregnant with our daughter...or maybe with her birth. The transitions from life to life have usually been somewhat gradual, with the exception of the transition from my first, Polish life to my second, American life. That happened on December 19th, 1986, the day we arrived in the US.
My current life is that of a mother. This has brought a whole new set of challenges along with the blessings, and it has helped me to unpack some of my old identity issues from previous lives and try to make sense of where I've come from and where I'm going. It's thanks to insights from raising my daughter that I am able to look back on my own upbringing and deal with things I didn't have names for or didn't know were the issues at hand. I imagine that my current life will continue for some time, with the next transition taking place sometime when my daughter is a teenager or moves out on her own.
As I think about these five lives of mine, I can't help but think of the parallels between these lives-within-my-life and our Earthly lives. I'm not convinced of any details regarding various afterlife theories, including the different reincarnation theories that are out there, but I do believe we are eternal beings, and that in some way, we continue on after our physical death. I also don't believe that our souls are created at the moment of conception, because I think we existed before our current incarnations. Not necessarily in another human life, but possibly.
Anyway, the point is that every death, every ending, is difficult and sad. Sometimes such transitions are bittersweet. Looking back, I see that my life with Rachel as my best friend had to end before my life as a mother to Maya could begin. This hurts my heart. I couldn't have had a life with both of them in it. Yet here I am, and as I move from life to life, very few people actually travel with me. It's tempting to think that it's those people who give us a sense of continuity withing our incarnated identity, but this can't be true. I think of adoptees who had their ties to biological relatives severed upon their adoption. They have no one from their old life in their new life. Of course, I can't speak to that experience. I only know that in my life, one thing that has helped me sense a continuity from life to life has been the people who traveled with me across the bridges.
But really, the bottom line is that just like there are multiple deaths and rebirths within our Earthly life, there is always another existence to look forward to after our physical death. But believing that doesn't make the transition any easier, not for those who go before us, nor for us as we consider our own mortality. It's always sad to say goodbye, but that's life. We cannot keep adding and adding without some emptying to make room for new - new experiences, new people, new lives.
Take my "life" for instance. We already know that our physical bodies replace all their cells in a span of something like 7 years, so we are literally not the same physical person that we were seven years ago. But when I think of being a different person, I think of my circumstances, the people that were most influential on me during that phase of life, my attitudes and values of the time, how I saw the world and my place in it.
According to my completely nonscientific calculations and estimations, I am currently on life #5. My first "life within this life" started in the womb and continued during my childhood in Poland. It smoothly transitioned into life #2 when I immigrated to the United States. These two lives may be the easiest to compare due to the drastic geographical relocation. But there was so much more to that. There was an ending - death, if you will - to my Polish life, and a beginning - birth, if you will - to my American life. I did travel across with my parents, but other than that, I left behind other people with whom I had close relationships - my grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt. I also left behind people with whom I wasn't as close, but who nonetheless had a significant influence on who I was - my teacher and friends from school, my grandpa and my dad's side of the family, even my neighbors and really, random strangers on the street.
Being outside the house in my Polish life and being outside the home in my American life meant completely different experiences. In Poland, there were sidewalks and public transportation, and a greater freedom as to with whom I was out and about. There were always other people also walking around, taking the trolley or the bus like us, and with that came inevitable pleasantries or even just quiet observations of others.
In contrast, my American life meant the home, school, and the grocery store with my parents or the mall with my friends. I had to depend on a school bus to take me to school and back, no independence with that. I had to depend on my parents to drive me to meet my friends, so again, no independence. The people I grew up around were strictly limited to my close neighbors, my parents' friends, and people I saw in school or on the school bus. We went to church, but after the first couple of years we stopped attending a Polish parish, and once at an American church, we never developed a community with the people there. It was just in and out for our Sunday mass obligation I didn't really make friends at my Confirmation classes, which didn't last long anyway.
And so there was a huge gulf of experiences that divided my first and second life, and I haven't even mentioned the language difference! My second life lasted roughly until about age 16.
After the first two years of high school, we moved (for third time inside the US) and I had to change high schools. It was here that I remember wanting to "start fresh" where no one knew me. I had fumbled my reputation at my old high school while trying to fit in with my peers while simultaneously not letting my parents down. At the new school, I didn't have to worry about previous expectations. My third life began as I started to try to establish my independence after years of having no access to independence due to to way American society in my area was set up. Had I stayed in Poland, I would've been much more independent and responsible by then, but as it was, I had a late start.
In my third life, I had all new friends yet again. I met my best friend, Rachel, who was pivotal in helping me navigate life outside of school and home. She was allowed to drive me around before I got my license (at 18!), and thanks to her I experienced eating out, dance clubs, bowling alleys, and the homes of people I never would've otherwise seen. I didn't know it at the time, but I was trying to become an American adult without any real American role models. I was expected to stay Polish by my family, who also didn't provide any Polish role models to that end, and so I embarked on a journey of self-discovery that bled into my fourth life even. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My third life went from my junior year of high school up to just before I got married. I graduated high school, I spent 5 months in my native Poland, I worked in retail, tutoring, and telemarketing. I went to community college where I was recruited into the Army. My father had a tragic vehicular accident that left him brain injured and unable to work or communicate well. I met my now-husband, we moved back to somehow help my family, we moved in together. I graduated college and my wild days of trying to figure out who I was settled down into a sort of background hum of uncertainty.
My third life smoothly moved into my fourth life. I graduated college, Alex and I bought a house, and we got married, all within the space of a month. I spent a bit of time in admin work before starting on a decade-long teaching career and graduate school. I thought I had an idea of what my future held, or at least what I wanted it to hold, and I patiently and naively hammered away at my goal without much thought to reality or practicality. For 11 years this was my life. We found that we had severe infertility and began to try to adopt. We spent 5 years struggling with various forms of adoption, having four false starts, before finally turning to infertility treatments. In the process, we both became more religious and began to share that religious faith with each other, which helped us make a bit more sense of our struggles. I was an adult, an American, but it sort of just plateaued that way. It wasn't due to any concrete intentions, and so without any mentors, I still didn't really know why I did what I did. I knew I didn't "feel" like a grown-up, but I attributed it to the American way, with the extended adolescence that is so common among high school through college graduates and 20-somethings. This fourth life died sometime after my best friend Rachel's suicide, the year before our daughter was born.
My current life, my fifth within this Earthly journey, began when I became pregnant with our daughter...or maybe with her birth. The transitions from life to life have usually been somewhat gradual, with the exception of the transition from my first, Polish life to my second, American life. That happened on December 19th, 1986, the day we arrived in the US.
My current life is that of a mother. This has brought a whole new set of challenges along with the blessings, and it has helped me to unpack some of my old identity issues from previous lives and try to make sense of where I've come from and where I'm going. It's thanks to insights from raising my daughter that I am able to look back on my own upbringing and deal with things I didn't have names for or didn't know were the issues at hand. I imagine that my current life will continue for some time, with the next transition taking place sometime when my daughter is a teenager or moves out on her own.
As I think about these five lives of mine, I can't help but think of the parallels between these lives-within-my-life and our Earthly lives. I'm not convinced of any details regarding various afterlife theories, including the different reincarnation theories that are out there, but I do believe we are eternal beings, and that in some way, we continue on after our physical death. I also don't believe that our souls are created at the moment of conception, because I think we existed before our current incarnations. Not necessarily in another human life, but possibly.
Anyway, the point is that every death, every ending, is difficult and sad. Sometimes such transitions are bittersweet. Looking back, I see that my life with Rachel as my best friend had to end before my life as a mother to Maya could begin. This hurts my heart. I couldn't have had a life with both of them in it. Yet here I am, and as I move from life to life, very few people actually travel with me. It's tempting to think that it's those people who give us a sense of continuity withing our incarnated identity, but this can't be true. I think of adoptees who had their ties to biological relatives severed upon their adoption. They have no one from their old life in their new life. Of course, I can't speak to that experience. I only know that in my life, one thing that has helped me sense a continuity from life to life has been the people who traveled with me across the bridges.
But really, the bottom line is that just like there are multiple deaths and rebirths within our Earthly life, there is always another existence to look forward to after our physical death. But believing that doesn't make the transition any easier, not for those who go before us, nor for us as we consider our own mortality. It's always sad to say goodbye, but that's life. We cannot keep adding and adding without some emptying to make room for new - new experiences, new people, new lives.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Happy New Year
So I thought I'd say adieu to the old year with a bang today.... After getting some bloodwork done (as the first step towards an embryo transfer looming in the near future), I passed out. And apparently fell to the ground, leaving a big oh colorful bump on my forehead and a cut by my eye from my glasses. In the aftermath of coming to, I realized today's date and joked to my hubby, thank goodness it's the LAST day of the year! Let's get this sort of nonesense out of the way and make way for a fresh start in the new year.
I used to spend New Year's Eve doing various activities prompted by, well, superstition. I called it tradition, but let's be honest. Today, I realized that I'm not worried about any of it. I don't believe anything magical is going to happen tonight at midnight, since it's been turning midnight for hours now around the world. How can one part of the world already be in 2016 while other parts are still in last year? I tell you how, time is a human construct.
As I was coming to from my little incident today, I felt exactly as if I were waking from a dream. I actually remember the dream. There were a lot of people, it was a sort of convention or something, there were some stairs and balconies, and an event with a ginormous whale was about to start. It felt like a pretty long dream, though apparently I was only unconscious for a minute or two. During the chatter of the phlebotomist and nurse and hubby, I just marveled at how time essentially stood still as I mentally checked out of this reality on my way to the floor. I marveled at how this time (not my first encounter with blacking out, I'm afraid), I knew I felt queasy, but I didn't see it coming. One second, I'm sitting there confirming that I want a bit of water, the next second I'm in a parallel universe getting ready for some giant whale show?!
I smirked to myself a bit. What we think of as reality, that's the real dream, isn't it? ;)
Today, as the sun set on the year 2015, I didn't even peak outside to bid it farewell, as I've done in years past. (I've welcomed the first day after high school graduation by photographing that "first sunrise of freedom" as I called it. I also photographed my last sunset on my way home after being discharged from the Army, another "freedom shot".) I just thought to myself, hmm, I'm no longer superstitious, am I? I'm not religious anymore. I'm sure they're related. Not terribly sentimental either, at least not as much as I once was.
Ever since my daughter was born, I've been trying to figure myself out. I feel more grounded now, as a mother. My life feels more real. Looks like I got exactly what I had hoped to get by becoming a mother: a meaningful life.
And yet. And yet I'm still here, ruminating about the ever mysterious spiritual things. Part of it is that I don't want to teach my daughter things I now consider lies, or at best, fairy tales, but at the same time, I do want her to have a spiritual sense of self. Part of it is that I realize my daughter will not be so little forever, and eventually I will have to be OK with whomever I am besides her mother. So I should figure out what that is.
Interestingly, it seems just as a sense of a new normal finally descended on our home, and hubby and I have gotten into a rhythm as a family of three, we are now embarking on the journey of another embryo transfer. This will be our last one. This will finally conclude our long journey to parenthood. Either we will remain a family of three, and continue raising our little girl as an only child - something we are both perfectly happy doing - or we will add to our brood and have to relearn all over again how to function with multiple kids on our hands. But these last two embryos, they are genetically related to our daughter. We owe her the attempt to have a genetic sibling for her. If it doesn't work, c'est la vie. But it is the only right thing to do. And so we're doing it, and praying that whatever may come, God will walk us through it, just like God walked us through these last three years, since the last transfer, through the pregnancy and birth of our daughter, and these last two+ years with her.
It has been amazing, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, stressful, joyful, difficult, yet second-nature. Our daughter stretches us in new ways, pushes us to grow in ways we otherwise wouldn't have grown. Every day we look at her and think (or say out loud) how amazing she is, and how lucky we are to have been blessed with the job of being her parents. And to think, we might get another bundle of joy like this? "We don't want to be greedy", my hubby says. We are happy with one child, if one child is all we have. But as difficult as having a newborn would be, especially with a toddler/preschooler, I think of how much joy the kids may bring to each other down the road, and I'm torn between hoping for a successful transfer, and hoping that we can just end this chapter of our lives and focus all our attention on our daughter.
In a way, we're both glad that it's not up to us. It's in the hands of God.
Here's to the great unknown that is 2016. We will be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary, and 13 being my lucky number (our daughter was born in 2013!), whatever the future holds for us, I know it will be awesome, and rewarding, and worth the work.
Happy New Year, blogosphere!
I used to spend New Year's Eve doing various activities prompted by, well, superstition. I called it tradition, but let's be honest. Today, I realized that I'm not worried about any of it. I don't believe anything magical is going to happen tonight at midnight, since it's been turning midnight for hours now around the world. How can one part of the world already be in 2016 while other parts are still in last year? I tell you how, time is a human construct.
As I was coming to from my little incident today, I felt exactly as if I were waking from a dream. I actually remember the dream. There were a lot of people, it was a sort of convention or something, there were some stairs and balconies, and an event with a ginormous whale was about to start. It felt like a pretty long dream, though apparently I was only unconscious for a minute or two. During the chatter of the phlebotomist and nurse and hubby, I just marveled at how time essentially stood still as I mentally checked out of this reality on my way to the floor. I marveled at how this time (not my first encounter with blacking out, I'm afraid), I knew I felt queasy, but I didn't see it coming. One second, I'm sitting there confirming that I want a bit of water, the next second I'm in a parallel universe getting ready for some giant whale show?!
I smirked to myself a bit. What we think of as reality, that's the real dream, isn't it? ;)
Today, as the sun set on the year 2015, I didn't even peak outside to bid it farewell, as I've done in years past. (I've welcomed the first day after high school graduation by photographing that "first sunrise of freedom" as I called it. I also photographed my last sunset on my way home after being discharged from the Army, another "freedom shot".) I just thought to myself, hmm, I'm no longer superstitious, am I? I'm not religious anymore. I'm sure they're related. Not terribly sentimental either, at least not as much as I once was.
Ever since my daughter was born, I've been trying to figure myself out. I feel more grounded now, as a mother. My life feels more real. Looks like I got exactly what I had hoped to get by becoming a mother: a meaningful life.
And yet. And yet I'm still here, ruminating about the ever mysterious spiritual things. Part of it is that I don't want to teach my daughter things I now consider lies, or at best, fairy tales, but at the same time, I do want her to have a spiritual sense of self. Part of it is that I realize my daughter will not be so little forever, and eventually I will have to be OK with whomever I am besides her mother. So I should figure out what that is.
Interestingly, it seems just as a sense of a new normal finally descended on our home, and hubby and I have gotten into a rhythm as a family of three, we are now embarking on the journey of another embryo transfer. This will be our last one. This will finally conclude our long journey to parenthood. Either we will remain a family of three, and continue raising our little girl as an only child - something we are both perfectly happy doing - or we will add to our brood and have to relearn all over again how to function with multiple kids on our hands. But these last two embryos, they are genetically related to our daughter. We owe her the attempt to have a genetic sibling for her. If it doesn't work, c'est la vie. But it is the only right thing to do. And so we're doing it, and praying that whatever may come, God will walk us through it, just like God walked us through these last three years, since the last transfer, through the pregnancy and birth of our daughter, and these last two+ years with her.
It has been amazing, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, stressful, joyful, difficult, yet second-nature. Our daughter stretches us in new ways, pushes us to grow in ways we otherwise wouldn't have grown. Every day we look at her and think (or say out loud) how amazing she is, and how lucky we are to have been blessed with the job of being her parents. And to think, we might get another bundle of joy like this? "We don't want to be greedy", my hubby says. We are happy with one child, if one child is all we have. But as difficult as having a newborn would be, especially with a toddler/preschooler, I think of how much joy the kids may bring to each other down the road, and I'm torn between hoping for a successful transfer, and hoping that we can just end this chapter of our lives and focus all our attention on our daughter.
In a way, we're both glad that it's not up to us. It's in the hands of God.
Here's to the great unknown that is 2016. We will be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary, and 13 being my lucky number (our daughter was born in 2013!), whatever the future holds for us, I know it will be awesome, and rewarding, and worth the work.
Happy New Year, blogosphere!
Sunday, October 18, 2015
We Should Be Coming Out of the EA Closet Soon
I've been struggling with the discussion of embryo donation/adoption lately. Before our daughter was born, I was very open about our journey and what avenues we were considering in our pursuit to parenthood. But now that she's here, it's her story too, and I'm afraid of giving too much away without her consent.
I know too many ignorant people who do not censor their thoughts before they speak. Case in point. Last night we were getting our check at a restaurant when the waitress, looking at Maya, asked, "Who does she look like?" Awkward pause... "She doesn't look like either of you!"
Hmm, I chickened out and took the chance to focus on my daughter not spilling her drink so that I wouldn't have to address the waitress. Alex, luckily, responded with a vague truth that seemed to satisfy our rude inquirer, "She's got a little mix in her."
Apparently, as Maya gets older, she is growing more into her Filipino looks. To be honest, we both assumed that we could bank on her being mistaken for Hispanic and therefore, since Alex is Latino, not have to face these sort of questions. We've been getting comments about her beauty since the beginning, and I've had two different men ask me - when Alex wasn't with us - if she were "mine". Alex generally sailed by on their daddy-and-me escapades, until just this month.
Apparently, he recently got his first comment questioning where Maya gets her looks from. There was a guess that I - his wife - may be Chinese. He got the exact same comment from someone else just the day before the restaurant situation. So if even he's getting these comments now, we have to be proactively prepared to respond in a way that lets our daughter know 1) that she absolutely belongs in our family regardless of resemblance, and 2) what an appropriate response to such a nosy question would be if she ever gets asked something like this directly.
The other piece of the puzzle is that we do want to celebrate her British and Filipino ancestry. We want her to be proud of it, though to be honest, I don't know what that means. What does it mean to be proud of a group that you belong to? To be proud of the accomplishments of those who share your DNA? Your ethnicity? Your cultural history? Why is that something to be proud of? I'm not saying it's not, I'm just wondering what makes this phenomenon relevant in a person's life.
Regardless, we can no longer ignore that Maya's ethnicity is not Polish-Latina. Don't get me wrong - she absolutely still is Polish, by virtue of having a Polish mother who speaks Polish to her, and she absolutely still is Latina, by virtue of having a Latino father who speaks Spanish to her. Furthermore, she is American - that which unites the three of us. But to think that this last identity would take precedence over race, ethnicity, or culture is a bit naive.
Several months ago, Alex and I agreed that if the topic of conversation naturally presented an opportunity to share Maya's unique beginnings, we would matter-of-factly share. I had the chance to do just that with a new friend whose husband is Filipino. It made more sense for me to share this information with her than to go out of my way to hide it, since I was asking all sorts of questions about Filipino culture!
But there are other friends, both old and new, who don't yet know. Not because we're hiding it, but because we don't think of how she came to be in our family anymore. I don't want anyone to ever question how "real" our relationships to each other are. I don't know what I would do if someone said something like "does she know her 'real' parents". Would I cry? Would I curse? Would I start yelling or even lash out with a backhanded slap to the back of the accuser's head? I honestly don't think I could just calmly correct the person.
Quick aside. I was recently asked if I "just stay home" with my daughter. I tried to make light of the phrasing. As in, yeah, I don't really do anything much. But it didn't catch on and the person asked if I did anything before having Maya. I took the bait and responded that I taught ESL, and the moment was gone after that. But the implication was heavy and is still with me, though I don't think what I do is easy at all (hence the word "just").
Based on my lack of a witty yet polite reaction to the "just staying home" conversation, or the "she doesn't look like either of you" exchange, I can't say that I would know what the best way to respond would be to a "real parent/own child" interaction.
I think the best defense is offense, as counter intuitive as that may sound. I should probably test the waters one person at a time, until I am very comfortable sharing just enough but not too much information, so that I am prepared for the inevitable stranger comments and questions.
By the way, here's what I've come up with regarding any future comments about our family's resemblance to each other:
1. Yeah, I don't look like my mom either.
2. Really? You don't think? Everyone else says she's a spitting image of her dad!
3. No, she looks like herself.
4. I know, aren't genetics a fascinating phenomenon?
5.Well, she's all ours! I gave birth to her myself, naturally at home, even.
6. Why do you ask? What makes you say that?
I know too many ignorant people who do not censor their thoughts before they speak. Case in point. Last night we were getting our check at a restaurant when the waitress, looking at Maya, asked, "Who does she look like?" Awkward pause... "She doesn't look like either of you!"
Hmm, I chickened out and took the chance to focus on my daughter not spilling her drink so that I wouldn't have to address the waitress. Alex, luckily, responded with a vague truth that seemed to satisfy our rude inquirer, "She's got a little mix in her."
Apparently, as Maya gets older, she is growing more into her Filipino looks. To be honest, we both assumed that we could bank on her being mistaken for Hispanic and therefore, since Alex is Latino, not have to face these sort of questions. We've been getting comments about her beauty since the beginning, and I've had two different men ask me - when Alex wasn't with us - if she were "mine". Alex generally sailed by on their daddy-and-me escapades, until just this month.
Apparently, he recently got his first comment questioning where Maya gets her looks from. There was a guess that I - his wife - may be Chinese. He got the exact same comment from someone else just the day before the restaurant situation. So if even he's getting these comments now, we have to be proactively prepared to respond in a way that lets our daughter know 1) that she absolutely belongs in our family regardless of resemblance, and 2) what an appropriate response to such a nosy question would be if she ever gets asked something like this directly.
The other piece of the puzzle is that we do want to celebrate her British and Filipino ancestry. We want her to be proud of it, though to be honest, I don't know what that means. What does it mean to be proud of a group that you belong to? To be proud of the accomplishments of those who share your DNA? Your ethnicity? Your cultural history? Why is that something to be proud of? I'm not saying it's not, I'm just wondering what makes this phenomenon relevant in a person's life.
Regardless, we can no longer ignore that Maya's ethnicity is not Polish-Latina. Don't get me wrong - she absolutely still is Polish, by virtue of having a Polish mother who speaks Polish to her, and she absolutely still is Latina, by virtue of having a Latino father who speaks Spanish to her. Furthermore, she is American - that which unites the three of us. But to think that this last identity would take precedence over race, ethnicity, or culture is a bit naive.
Several months ago, Alex and I agreed that if the topic of conversation naturally presented an opportunity to share Maya's unique beginnings, we would matter-of-factly share. I had the chance to do just that with a new friend whose husband is Filipino. It made more sense for me to share this information with her than to go out of my way to hide it, since I was asking all sorts of questions about Filipino culture!
But there are other friends, both old and new, who don't yet know. Not because we're hiding it, but because we don't think of how she came to be in our family anymore. I don't want anyone to ever question how "real" our relationships to each other are. I don't know what I would do if someone said something like "does she know her 'real' parents". Would I cry? Would I curse? Would I start yelling or even lash out with a backhanded slap to the back of the accuser's head? I honestly don't think I could just calmly correct the person.
Quick aside. I was recently asked if I "just stay home" with my daughter. I tried to make light of the phrasing. As in, yeah, I don't really do anything much. But it didn't catch on and the person asked if I did anything before having Maya. I took the bait and responded that I taught ESL, and the moment was gone after that. But the implication was heavy and is still with me, though I don't think what I do is easy at all (hence the word "just").
Based on my lack of a witty yet polite reaction to the "just staying home" conversation, or the "she doesn't look like either of you" exchange, I can't say that I would know what the best way to respond would be to a "real parent/own child" interaction.
I think the best defense is offense, as counter intuitive as that may sound. I should probably test the waters one person at a time, until I am very comfortable sharing just enough but not too much information, so that I am prepared for the inevitable stranger comments and questions.
By the way, here's what I've come up with regarding any future comments about our family's resemblance to each other:
1. Yeah, I don't look like my mom either.
2. Really? You don't think? Everyone else says she's a spitting image of her dad!
3. No, she looks like herself.
4. I know, aren't genetics a fascinating phenomenon?
5.Well, she's all ours! I gave birth to her myself, naturally at home, even.
6. Why do you ask? What makes you say that?
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Adoption, Donor Conception, Both, or Neither? (Part 2)
In part one of this two-part series, I talked about how our daughter's conception via donor embryo is not quite like adoption, the way I had originally believed when first pursuing this alternative to parenthood. Here, I cover how it's not exactly the same as sperm- or ova-donation conception either.
The first and most obvious difference is that most donor conceived individuals still share half of their genetics with one of their parents. (Except, of course, for those families who were built via "double donor", meaning sperm donor and egg donor, neither of whom know each other or the intended recipient parents (at least not in anonymous donation). But that actually presents a still further complication when it comes to ethics, so I'll leave it alone here.) In embryo donation, the child born to the parents shares neither of their genetics. This is precisely why the first part of this mini-series dealt with a comparison with adoption. Adopted individuals likewise don't share either of their adoptive parents' genetics (again, except for step-parent or kinship adoption... seems like there's always an exception to everything, isn't there?)
This lack of any genetic linkage can be good or bad, depending on ones' perspective. From the intended parent's perspective, I couldn't imagine mixing my own DNA with that of any man other than my husband. On some level, it felt as though I would've had a child "with" this other man, putting my husband in a sort of step-parent role. I know not everyone sees it that way, but I do, and that's why we didn't pursue single-gamete (sperm) donation.
From the child's perspective, I did consider that it may be better to at least grow up with half of your genetic relatives rather than with none. Yet the gulf that the resulting implication (discussed above) would have left in my husband's and my relationship would've surely had a negative impact on our child. Furthermore, the difference of knowing some genetic relatives versus none at all may have had an unbalanced effect on the child's relationship with the genetic versus non-genetic parent. By utilizing embryo donation, the playing field was balanced out.
Another difference between embryo donation and gamete donation - at least the kind we utilized - is that my daughter was not specifically conceived with the intent of growing up not knowing some of her genetic relatives. She was not conceived specifically so that she would grow up in a "less than ideal" situation. These are perspectives I'm reading from donor-conceived adults, which is how I know these are things they think about. This process of being created on-demand, as it were, makes them feel manufactured, like a commodity. It affects the entire sense of self worth for some. And while there are "embryo donation" programs that are essentially double donor programs that are started before the intended parents come onto the scene, the "traditional" embryo donation is a lot more straightforward.
Our daughter's donors are a married couple who faced secondary infertility. They turned to IVF and surrogacy to complete their family. After three years, they decided they weren't going to transfer the remaining embryos created with their family-completion IVF in mind. It took three years for them to place the embryos into the embryo donation program, which tells me that they must have agonized over the decision. They didn't choose to destroy them or donate them to science, which tells me they either believed the human life present in their pre-embryos deserved a chance to fulfill their potential, or they wanted to give another family struggling with infertility a chance to grow their family, or both. This is very different from a gamete donor providing their DNA in exchange for money. This sort of information gets internalized by the donor conceived offspring. How their donors came to the decision to donate effects how the offspring feel about their conception, and by extension, their self-worth.
Finally, most donor conceived offspring have many, many genetic half-siblings "out there", which creates a need for a lifetime of searching (for those curious about their genetic relatives and whose donors were anonymous). The real risk of inadvertently meeting and marrying a genetic half-sibling grows with the more "popular" donors and/or less regulated/ethical sperm banks. (Due to the nature of egg donation, there generally can't be more than a handful of genetic half-siblings due to egg donation.) In embryo donation, on the one hand, all siblings are full genetic siblings, but on the other hand, there are only a very limited number of them. If the donors had a large number of pre-embryos they donated, these may have gone to several different recipient families. Otherwise, all pre-embryos were donated to the same recipient family, and the only genetic siblings the donor-conceived offspring has "out there" are the children of their own donors. If they find one of them they find them both.
To sum up, embryo donation - where "left over" pre-embryos from the donor family's own IVF treatment go to a recipient family - differs from gamete (sperm or egg) donation in these three ways:
1. The embryo donor conceived offspring does not share genes with either of her/his parents.
2. The nature of the embryo donor conceived offspring's conception is not marred by material gain or purposeful creation into a subpar situation.
3. The embryo donor conceived offspring has one group of genetic relatives - both donors and siblings - that if found, are found in one fell swoop.
From what I read, donor conceived offspring's most common concerns are the ethics surrounding their creation and the sheer volume of possible genetic half-siblings, neither of which applies to my daughter. The first difference - that she doesn't share genetics with either of us - is why I considered if her situation was more like traditional adoption. Yet based on my reading of concerns adult adoptees often have, I don't expect her to share a lot of those concerns.
So where does that leave us? Only she can decide for herself as she matures with which group(s) she chooses to identify, if either. Until then, I will need to continue to listen to both adult adoptees and donor conceived adults and take to heart the issues they describe and consider if and to what degree they may affect my daughter.
The first and most obvious difference is that most donor conceived individuals still share half of their genetics with one of their parents. (Except, of course, for those families who were built via "double donor", meaning sperm donor and egg donor, neither of whom know each other or the intended recipient parents (at least not in anonymous donation). But that actually presents a still further complication when it comes to ethics, so I'll leave it alone here.) In embryo donation, the child born to the parents shares neither of their genetics. This is precisely why the first part of this mini-series dealt with a comparison with adoption. Adopted individuals likewise don't share either of their adoptive parents' genetics (again, except for step-parent or kinship adoption... seems like there's always an exception to everything, isn't there?)
This lack of any genetic linkage can be good or bad, depending on ones' perspective. From the intended parent's perspective, I couldn't imagine mixing my own DNA with that of any man other than my husband. On some level, it felt as though I would've had a child "with" this other man, putting my husband in a sort of step-parent role. I know not everyone sees it that way, but I do, and that's why we didn't pursue single-gamete (sperm) donation.
From the child's perspective, I did consider that it may be better to at least grow up with half of your genetic relatives rather than with none. Yet the gulf that the resulting implication (discussed above) would have left in my husband's and my relationship would've surely had a negative impact on our child. Furthermore, the difference of knowing some genetic relatives versus none at all may have had an unbalanced effect on the child's relationship with the genetic versus non-genetic parent. By utilizing embryo donation, the playing field was balanced out.
Another difference between embryo donation and gamete donation - at least the kind we utilized - is that my daughter was not specifically conceived with the intent of growing up not knowing some of her genetic relatives. She was not conceived specifically so that she would grow up in a "less than ideal" situation. These are perspectives I'm reading from donor-conceived adults, which is how I know these are things they think about. This process of being created on-demand, as it were, makes them feel manufactured, like a commodity. It affects the entire sense of self worth for some. And while there are "embryo donation" programs that are essentially double donor programs that are started before the intended parents come onto the scene, the "traditional" embryo donation is a lot more straightforward.
Our daughter's donors are a married couple who faced secondary infertility. They turned to IVF and surrogacy to complete their family. After three years, they decided they weren't going to transfer the remaining embryos created with their family-completion IVF in mind. It took three years for them to place the embryos into the embryo donation program, which tells me that they must have agonized over the decision. They didn't choose to destroy them or donate them to science, which tells me they either believed the human life present in their pre-embryos deserved a chance to fulfill their potential, or they wanted to give another family struggling with infertility a chance to grow their family, or both. This is very different from a gamete donor providing their DNA in exchange for money. This sort of information gets internalized by the donor conceived offspring. How their donors came to the decision to donate effects how the offspring feel about their conception, and by extension, their self-worth.
Finally, most donor conceived offspring have many, many genetic half-siblings "out there", which creates a need for a lifetime of searching (for those curious about their genetic relatives and whose donors were anonymous). The real risk of inadvertently meeting and marrying a genetic half-sibling grows with the more "popular" donors and/or less regulated/ethical sperm banks. (Due to the nature of egg donation, there generally can't be more than a handful of genetic half-siblings due to egg donation.) In embryo donation, on the one hand, all siblings are full genetic siblings, but on the other hand, there are only a very limited number of them. If the donors had a large number of pre-embryos they donated, these may have gone to several different recipient families. Otherwise, all pre-embryos were donated to the same recipient family, and the only genetic siblings the donor-conceived offspring has "out there" are the children of their own donors. If they find one of them they find them both.
To sum up, embryo donation - where "left over" pre-embryos from the donor family's own IVF treatment go to a recipient family - differs from gamete (sperm or egg) donation in these three ways:
1. The embryo donor conceived offspring does not share genes with either of her/his parents.
2. The nature of the embryo donor conceived offspring's conception is not marred by material gain or purposeful creation into a subpar situation.
3. The embryo donor conceived offspring has one group of genetic relatives - both donors and siblings - that if found, are found in one fell swoop.
From what I read, donor conceived offspring's most common concerns are the ethics surrounding their creation and the sheer volume of possible genetic half-siblings, neither of which applies to my daughter. The first difference - that she doesn't share genetics with either of us - is why I considered if her situation was more like traditional adoption. Yet based on my reading of concerns adult adoptees often have, I don't expect her to share a lot of those concerns.
So where does that leave us? Only she can decide for herself as she matures with which group(s) she chooses to identify, if either. Until then, I will need to continue to listen to both adult adoptees and donor conceived adults and take to heart the issues they describe and consider if and to what degree they may affect my daughter.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Adoption, Donor Conception, Both, or Neither? (Part 1)
When we first got our infertility diagnosis, we proceeded straight to trying to adopt. We pursued private domestic infant adoption, international adoption, adoption from foster care.... all with false starts and dashed dreams and money down the drain, but also with valuable lessons learned. Five years after first learning of our fertility challenge, our daughter entered our lives.
We had slowly made our way from open adoption to closed adoption back to open adoption with our first donor embryo match. Two transfers and four embryos later, we were still childless, and I was ready to embrace anonymity once again. Coming from a strong, Catholic-inspired pro-life stance, I fully believed that the tiny embryos awaiting "adoption" were already humans. This belief helped me reason why it was morally acceptable for me to "adopt" them even though my then-strong Catholic faith taught that anything related to artificial reproductive technologies was wrong. I even posted here about how our EA FETs were not IVF. So desperately I tried to fit into my faith community while still pursuing our dream of parenting a child.
But then I got pregnant with our daughter. And then I gave birth to her, at home. And since then I've nursed her at my breast for over a year and a half now. Recently, I joined a transracial adoption group to try to continue my education in the area of raising a confident, well-adjusted child whose ethnicity I didn't share. In the process, I've come to see that I actually didn't adopt my daughter.
There was no legal adoption proceeding, no homestudy, no social worker visits, no one granting us permission to take her into our home and hearts. No one told us where she must sleep, what she should be fed, or who is allowed to care for her when Alex or I are unavailable. These are all issues that adoptive parents face as they are entrusted with someone else's child, and often social workers follow arbitrary guidelines as to what is appropriate and safe for a child.
I wouldn't have been able to cosleep with my daughter had she been adopted. Not openly, anyway. I may not have been allowed to breastfeed her either, even if I had been able to induce lactation. Perhaps after finalization of the adoption, I would've been allowed to finally choose who can babysit her, and I'm sure homeschooling wouldn't have been an issue by the time she was old enough to start academics. But had she been older coming to us, or had her adoption gotten delayed for some reason, these are not decisions I would've been able to make based on my mother instinct of what's good for her. Rather, I'd constantly be second guessing myself, wondering if this or that decision could be used against me to have my daughter removed from my home.
Another reason I no longer believe that our daughter was adopted is that she simply doesn't share the same often deeply painful losses that many adoptees have. The woman who carried her for 8 months, with whom she bonded, whose heartbeat and voice she was intimately familiar with by the time she was born - that woman was none other than me! She was never separated from someone who was once her entire world. She never has to deal with being rejected by her genetic family. Her name was never changed. Her birth certificate was never falsified or sealed. And there was probably little chance of a genetic relative being taking it upon herself to keep any resulting children in the original family by transferring the pre-embryos herself. She does still have the loss of that genetic family, to be sure. But it is not compounded by implications of rejection.
A third reason I now don't believe I am an adoptive mom is based on an evolution of my spiritual beliefs. In pursuing embryo donation and undergoing three frozen embryo transfers, I was deeply interested in the early development of human beings, starting from fertilization onward. And through this research, I concluded that while human "life" begins at fertilization, human "personhood" doesn't start until implantation. Here's why.
A blastocyst, which is what an egg fertilized 5-6 days earlier is called as its cells divide, is capable of two fascinating feats prior to implantation. The first is that it can split into two separate blastocysts which then implant separately, growing and being born as identical twins. One embryo --> two human beings. Likewise, two ova that are both fertilized at about the same time can proceed to divide and develop into two blastocysts who somehow merge together into a single blastocyst just prior to implantation. The result is a singleton baby born with two sets of DNA, also known as a chimera. So two embryos --> one human being. (Note that we are not talking about two embryos where one simply stops growing, or twins where one simply dies and the other continues towards birth. We're talking about the physical, genetic merging of two sets of DNA into a single human body.)
Because of these two phenomenon that occur in nature, I was forced to conclude that human personhood does not begin immediately upon conception, but rather once these two phenomenon have had a chance to take place. Therefore, once a blastocyst is implanted in the uterine wall, it becomes known as an embryo, and only then does it become a unique human being, one that only needs time and a continuous supply of a healthy environment of the womb in order to grow into a fetus and then a newborn, toddler, preschooler, etc. The same cannot be said of a zygote or morula or blastocyst (earlier stages of human development). (See here for my post mentioning how problematic it is to use the term "embryo" for earlier stages of development."
I mentioned that my understanding of human personhood was based on a spiritual outlook. So far I've only established the science leading up to my point. Once an embryo is implanted, it is then that I believe God begins to work on that specific individual, forming her or him in their mother's womb. (I'm going to ignore surrogacy here for simplicity's sake, as it comes with its own set of complex considerations.)
The Biblical verses I used to refer to when thinking about how "life begins at conception" are actually more nuanced now. Psalm 139:13, for instance, states: "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." Until I learned about chimeras and was reminded of identical twins, I took it for granted that God's job began immediately, with sperm in one divine hand and ovum in the other. But now I see that while I don't deny God's ongoing role in all of creation at all of its stages, it does not mean that the moment God put his hands together with the necessary gametes, a new person was created. Rather, it is a process, much like baking, if you will. And there is a preparation phase that, if interrupted, does not result in a fully baked cake, no matter how much time you give it and even if all the necessary ingredients were there. You still have to mix, measure, pour, and finally put in a functioning oven. Then and only then does the timer begin and you can say that you have a cake baking in the oven.
At any rate, adoption is nothing like this process. Adoption takes place once a fully formed human being is born into a family that for one reason or another does not end up raising that baby. Adoption leaves nothing to the imagination - a baby is born in one family, but another family takes the child home with them. It is an artificial way to build a family (by which I don't mean "negative", just that it's not what was intended originally). Which brings me to another perspective I see often missing from potential adoptive parent discourse.
Adoption is often framed as a "loving option" or a way to "start" or "grow" your family. The audience for this discourse is of course the potentially adoptive parent. It's their family that is being grown through adoption. The child's family is actually being taken away first, before being replaced by the adoptive family. The child's first mother's family is likewise being taken away - period - and not being replaced with anything. The goal of pro-adoption terminology is to normalize adoption so that infertile parents can feel comfortable in their role as a "real" parent.
I remember the discussion of "real" versus some other qualifier before the words "parent" and "child". Mostly it's adoptive parents who are defensive about having someone imply that they are not a "real" parent. Many don't like the idea of saying "adopted child" or "adoptive parent" because they feel it takes away from the parent-child relationship. I was one of these potential adoptive parents. Yet these same people often don't have a problem demoting the first mother to "birth mother", "bmom", or worst of all, the acronym "BM" (which if it isn't clear is also an acronym for "bowel movement", something most awful to associate any human being with, much less the woman who gave birth to one's adopted child!)
The adoption industry is biased in favor of where the money is. Sorry, but that's the truth, a truth I already started to realize even as I still hoped to benefit from it. It is the adopting parents - not the first parents or children - who fund the adoption industry's profit, and so it shouldn't come as a surprise that what potential adoptive parents hear from adoption agencies is precisely meant to be music to their ears, anything to help them feel good about the idea of adopting.
You may question that potential adoptive parents actually need encouragement in this decision. Perhaps you associate adoptive parents with infertile couples whose only hope of a family is through adoption. I was often also ignorant of the fact that there is a whole other family-building industry out there that provides an alternative to adoption and is often preferable to adopting: artificial reproductive technology, including donor conception and surrogacy.
To sum up, embryo donation differs from traditional adoption in these ways:
1. There was no legal proceeding to form a familial bond between us and our daughter. Likewise, there is no involvement of social services judging us worthy - or not - or suggesting how we ought to parent.
2. Our daughter has never bonded with any of her genetic relatives. She was born to the woman who carried her and who is parenting her. There was never any separation or loss of current relationship.
3. Due to my current spiritual views, my daughter didn't come into existence until her pre-embryo implanted in my uterus. It was my body that nourished her into life; she is quite literally made of my own flesh and blood.
To sum up, embryo donation differs from traditional adoption in these ways:
1. There was no legal proceeding to form a familial bond between us and our daughter. Likewise, there is no involvement of social services judging us worthy - or not - or suggesting how we ought to parent.
2. Our daughter has never bonded with any of her genetic relatives. She was born to the woman who carried her and who is parenting her. There was never any separation or loss of current relationship.
3. Due to my current spiritual views, my daughter didn't come into existence until her pre-embryo implanted in my uterus. It was my body that nourished her into life; she is quite literally made of my own flesh and blood.
It may sound as though I am implying through this post's discussion of adoption that I consider my daughter to have been "donor-conceived". However, it is actually not as simple as that, either. In my next post, I'll discuss how embryo donation carries different considerations from sperm- or egg-donation.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
What's an Embryo and is it a Person?
I don't think "pre-embryos" are people for the same reason I don't think cake mix is the same as cake. There's all the ingredients, there's potential, but the fact that you still need a proper environment to develop, and that you can freeze embryos but not people (and expect them to survive), means there's a distinct difference between the seed and the seedling.
It needs to actually be clarified that fertility circles misuse the term embryo. Truth be told, I actually do believe real embryos are the tiniest beginning of people. But only when embryo is used correctly to refer to post implantation. Pre implantation, we have a fertilized egg, a morula, finally a blastocyst, depending on number of times cell division has taken place. Mere cell division doesn't turn a fertilized egg into a baby. For that, you need the womb. Only when planted in the lush uterine wall of a woman does a seed stand the chance to grow into a seedling.
Furthermore, the fact that before implantation, a blastocyst can split into two separate blastocysts, possibly resulting in the implantation of both and resulting in identical twins, this should tell us personhood doesn't begin until we are certain only one individual will result. Not only that, but two blasts can also fuse into one, forming a person known as a chamera, or an individual with two sets of DNA. This should prove that a singular unique DNA doesn't equal an individual, as is commonly thought.
This has little implication for the pro-life movement when it comes to abortion, since many women don't seek abortion until they miss their period, which means implantation has already taken place and - according to the above reasoning - there is a tiny baby at stake.
But this reasoning does have implications for contraception-as-an-abortificant that is cited as one reason against contraception by the Catholic church. Birth control pills can indeed prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, but if we were to accept implantation as the point of personhood, this should have no bearing.
This reasoning also has implications for in-vitro fertilization. Many people who complete their fertility treatment and are left with pre-embryos they do not plan on transferring in hopes of another baby are faced with a dilemma, at least those who believe that life begins at conception. They don't want to keep the pre-embryos for themselves, either by transferring them or paying storage indefinitely. But they don't want to destroy them or donate them to science either, since this would be synonymous with murder for those who believe a fertilized egg is a human person. The third alternative is to allow the pre-embryos to be "adopted" into another family who will transfer them and hope to grow and raise their own baby. Sounds like the perfect solution, right?
Yes and no. See, while pre-embryos are in the pre-implantation stage, it's one thing. But once they are implanted and develop into a true embryo and later fetus, there is no going back - there won't be two out of one or one out of two. However many implantations took place, that's how many babies are growing. And if those babies have DNA from a family other than the one they are being born into and raised by, then issues of identity and medical history and general access to the child's genetic relatives and ethnic heritage become issues. These are not things that can easily be figured out after the fact, and yet many people don't think about the potential future child's sense of self when choosing fertility treatment options. I'm not saying third party reproduction should or shouldn't happen. I'm saying that when it does, the potential child's best interest needs to be paramount, both from the perspective of the donors (that they be willing to be known, at least when child turns 18), and from the parents (that they be open with child about their background and willing to support contact with genetic family).
I don't expect us to all come to an agreement on when human personhood begins any time soon. People make rationalizations for killing each other at all stages of growth and development, way past the in-the-womb stage, so there will always be those who simply don't care about the experiences of the in-utero fetus.
A side note, I used to cringe at the term "fetus", as I thought it belittled the humanity of the unborn baby. But I realize now that it's merely a stage of development, just like newborn, infant, toddler.... Interestingly, when I was at a store with my newborn daughter, a teenage girl approached us and with a squealing voice announced, "what a little fetus!" I was horrified, but in retrospect I see that she clearly wasn't saying that my daughter wasn't a human being! She was saying that she was so small she could easily still fit in the womb, which was true, as she was born weighing less than 6 pounds!
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
What's so great about "Natural"?
Having gone through fertility treatment in order to bring our
daughter Maya into the world, I felt drawn to natural childbirth as a
sort of equalizer. I often hear romanticized rhetoric about children
being conceived in love, yet generally these refer very specifically to
the ... marital embrace, if you will. During our childbirth preparation
classes, whenever someone would allude to doing "what got the baby in"
as a way to help get the baby out (sex), I couldn't help but notice a slight
twinge of disappointment. Even though no one needed to know that we had
to jump through various hurdles in order to conceive, I knew, and that
always seemed to remind me of what some people say about how our
daughter came to us - namely, that it's "unnatural". But really, what's
so great about things that are natural over things that are not?
We are born in our birthday suits - this is natural. Yet I don't hear anyone, not even avid nudists, complaining that everyone is going against what nature intended by covering up their bodies with cloth and linens instead of going a la natural. I'm thinking in particular here about religious folk who, over the years, have given me grief about embracing modern medicine and technology in an effort to have a child. It's not the way God intended, I'd hear. (Ok, technically, I wouldn't hear this; I'd read it, predominantly online.) If God had intended for us to have children, He'd have said "poof", and there Maya would be. But since He didn't (they'd claim), we had no business putting forth any effort outside of the bedroom to become parents, because it wasn't "natural".
Phoey, I say to that. With that line of thinking, giving birth likewise ought to be natural. And frankly, when the epidural was first introduced, there were religious folk putting forth exactly this argument - that it was going against God's will to try to eliminate the pain of childbirth. They quoted Genesis 3:16 as "proof", where God says to Eve: “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children." But I think this only means that we have to work that much harder to get what we want (in this case, a less painful childbirth). Frankly, the added effort and the millenia that it took for humanity to arrive at anesthesia of any sort is punishment enough, I think.
Very few ultra religious folk give a second glance to a woman's use of pain medication during labor anymore. Some segments may encourage natural childbirth, but few consider opting out of the natural experience to be a sin. So if delivering the baby to the outside world can be done with the assistance of modern medicine and technology, why can't the same be true for bringing the baby into the womb in the first place?
It took experiencing natural childbirth for me to look back and question if it really did equalize anything for me. I cannot say that my husband and I simply did what was natural for a married couple to do, and that our physical expression of love for one another manifested itself in the form of our daughter. Yet I can say that our emotional, intellectual, and spiritual love for each other did indeed manifest in the form of our daughter. Is physical love the only kind of natural love? No! I won't argue that God's plan of 1+1=3 is anything other than divine. Indeed, it's a beautiful demonstration of the mystery of the Trinity. But that doesn't mean there is no room for those of us who have been left out of this equation to nonetheless experience God's love in the form of a child.
But to be honest, it's not the fact that I had my daughter without medication that brought about this observation; it's our struggles with breastfeeding.
Maya is now 6 weeks old, and while nursing is no longer the gut-wrenching pain that it was in the beginning, the challenges have not resolved themselves. Due to the damage that started the whole fiasco (described here), my milk supply has been unable to keep up with my daughter's demand. Every time I have to rush around trying to warm up her bottle, I bemoan having to make her cry when nature didn't intend for it to be so.
If I were feeding my daughter the "natural" way, there would be no need to warm anything up, no preparation time, no cleaning of bottles. I wouldn't have to guess how much she was hungry for, or even if it was hunger that prompted her to want to nurse. I'd just offer her the breast. That's the way nature intended it. And this is the message I hear everywhere I turn. Don't get me wrong, I know that breast milk is the obvious choice for babies too young for solid food. Yet it's not the obvious choice for every mom. There are plenty of modern day obstacles that make exclusive breastfeeding nearly impossible. (For one thing, it requires no separation between mother and baby for 6-12 months. With most American women in the workforce, this ideal immediately becomes problematic.)
I lamented introducing formula, grieving my inability to be my daughter's only source of nutrition. After all, that's what is natural. I lamented it again recently, when trying to reintroduce breastfeeding after weeks of pumping, when it became clear that my supply didn't keep up with her demand. Formula is unnatural, right? Feeding a baby with a bottle is also unnatural. Expressing my milk with the use of a breast pump... unnatural. It may be OK to milk a cow, but a human?!
As the list of "unnatural" decisions I've introduced into my daughter's life started to add up, I finally took a step back and asked myself - so what? So what if these things are unnatural? And I'd argue to the contrary. Bottles, formula, breast pumps - these are tools that human ingenuity invented to assist us when challenges come up. It takes more effort, even more money, to not breastfeed a baby exclusively. But does that make it unnatural? Does using utensils instead of one's hands make a meal unnatural? It takes more effort to set the table, then wash the dishes, rather than just dig into whatever pot dinner is in with one's bare hands. Yet no one bemoans how much more natural finger food is!
My conclusion? Natural choices have their place. But if one needs to be convinced to do something, doesn't that automatically make said decision unnatural for the individual in question? Maybe our focus shouldn't be on isolated choices we make, but on the bigger picture. Let's enjoy motherhood in it's entirety, and not only bits and pieces of it that have been pre-approved by any group claiming to have "the" answers. Let's appreciate the forest as a whole, and not get fixated on individual trees; it's only natural.
We are born in our birthday suits - this is natural. Yet I don't hear anyone, not even avid nudists, complaining that everyone is going against what nature intended by covering up their bodies with cloth and linens instead of going a la natural. I'm thinking in particular here about religious folk who, over the years, have given me grief about embracing modern medicine and technology in an effort to have a child. It's not the way God intended, I'd hear. (Ok, technically, I wouldn't hear this; I'd read it, predominantly online.) If God had intended for us to have children, He'd have said "poof", and there Maya would be. But since He didn't (they'd claim), we had no business putting forth any effort outside of the bedroom to become parents, because it wasn't "natural".
Phoey, I say to that. With that line of thinking, giving birth likewise ought to be natural. And frankly, when the epidural was first introduced, there were religious folk putting forth exactly this argument - that it was going against God's will to try to eliminate the pain of childbirth. They quoted Genesis 3:16 as "proof", where God says to Eve: “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children." But I think this only means that we have to work that much harder to get what we want (in this case, a less painful childbirth). Frankly, the added effort and the millenia that it took for humanity to arrive at anesthesia of any sort is punishment enough, I think.
Very few ultra religious folk give a second glance to a woman's use of pain medication during labor anymore. Some segments may encourage natural childbirth, but few consider opting out of the natural experience to be a sin. So if delivering the baby to the outside world can be done with the assistance of modern medicine and technology, why can't the same be true for bringing the baby into the womb in the first place?
It took experiencing natural childbirth for me to look back and question if it really did equalize anything for me. I cannot say that my husband and I simply did what was natural for a married couple to do, and that our physical expression of love for one another manifested itself in the form of our daughter. Yet I can say that our emotional, intellectual, and spiritual love for each other did indeed manifest in the form of our daughter. Is physical love the only kind of natural love? No! I won't argue that God's plan of 1+1=3 is anything other than divine. Indeed, it's a beautiful demonstration of the mystery of the Trinity. But that doesn't mean there is no room for those of us who have been left out of this equation to nonetheless experience God's love in the form of a child.
But to be honest, it's not the fact that I had my daughter without medication that brought about this observation; it's our struggles with breastfeeding.
Maya is now 6 weeks old, and while nursing is no longer the gut-wrenching pain that it was in the beginning, the challenges have not resolved themselves. Due to the damage that started the whole fiasco (described here), my milk supply has been unable to keep up with my daughter's demand. Every time I have to rush around trying to warm up her bottle, I bemoan having to make her cry when nature didn't intend for it to be so.
If I were feeding my daughter the "natural" way, there would be no need to warm anything up, no preparation time, no cleaning of bottles. I wouldn't have to guess how much she was hungry for, or even if it was hunger that prompted her to want to nurse. I'd just offer her the breast. That's the way nature intended it. And this is the message I hear everywhere I turn. Don't get me wrong, I know that breast milk is the obvious choice for babies too young for solid food. Yet it's not the obvious choice for every mom. There are plenty of modern day obstacles that make exclusive breastfeeding nearly impossible. (For one thing, it requires no separation between mother and baby for 6-12 months. With most American women in the workforce, this ideal immediately becomes problematic.)
I lamented introducing formula, grieving my inability to be my daughter's only source of nutrition. After all, that's what is natural. I lamented it again recently, when trying to reintroduce breastfeeding after weeks of pumping, when it became clear that my supply didn't keep up with her demand. Formula is unnatural, right? Feeding a baby with a bottle is also unnatural. Expressing my milk with the use of a breast pump... unnatural. It may be OK to milk a cow, but a human?!
As the list of "unnatural" decisions I've introduced into my daughter's life started to add up, I finally took a step back and asked myself - so what? So what if these things are unnatural? And I'd argue to the contrary. Bottles, formula, breast pumps - these are tools that human ingenuity invented to assist us when challenges come up. It takes more effort, even more money, to not breastfeed a baby exclusively. But does that make it unnatural? Does using utensils instead of one's hands make a meal unnatural? It takes more effort to set the table, then wash the dishes, rather than just dig into whatever pot dinner is in with one's bare hands. Yet no one bemoans how much more natural finger food is!
My conclusion? Natural choices have their place. But if one needs to be convinced to do something, doesn't that automatically make said decision unnatural for the individual in question? Maybe our focus shouldn't be on isolated choices we make, but on the bigger picture. Let's enjoy motherhood in it's entirety, and not only bits and pieces of it that have been pre-approved by any group claiming to have "the" answers. Let's appreciate the forest as a whole, and not get fixated on individual trees; it's only natural.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Thinking Catholic on ARTs
A while back, I wrote a post explaining why I take issue with being told that we have done IVF when in fact we have only done FETs (frozen embryo transfers). You can read the post here. At the time, I still believed that I could reconcile the official Catholic teaching with my personal discernment on the subject. My intended audience for that post was fellow Catholics who are too quick to judge when the idea of ARTs (artificial reproductive technologies) comes up.
I got flamed by a non-Catholic (at least a non-practicing Catholic) who went out of her way to accuse me of being self-righteous when all I was trying to do was explain WHAT the RCC teaches and HOW embryo adoption via FET is in line with that teaching. I was not in any way trying to insinuate that those who actually do IVF are in any way less holy than me, because I know that is poppycock.
However, having been unable to convince the more narrow-minded "orthdox" Catholics to use their God-given reasoning abilities, I've realized that I was going to have to re-access the value of trying to convince haters to love.
Truth be told, when I was explaining how an FET is not the same as IVF, it was not to highlight how brilliant I am in remaining within the confines drawn out for me by the Church. No. I was simply stating facts. But to be honest, this doesn't mean that I wouldn't have done IVF if I actually had the chance. I might have. In fact, we were going to.
This is no secret. I discuss this aspect of our journey here and here. Granted, at the time, I was not fully knowledgeable on the Catholic church's teaching of ARTs. However, I certainly discerned the next steps carefully. I have said that the temptation to do IVF was removed from us by virtue of our SCOS dx. However, honestly, this is a bit of a cop-out. Now I see that in spite of all my well-meaning attempts to explain to the uninitiated how we ended up staying within the confines of Church teaching, I am still being judged. I finally see that there is no pleasing some people.
I'm glad that the reason we didn't do IVF was for practical reasons and not theological ones. Otherwise, I might be resenting the Church big time right now.
There are two reasons the Church opposes IVF. One has to do with the creation of more embryos than can reasonably be transferred in a fresh cycle, leading to various additional moral dilemmas such as cryopreservation, possibilities of lab mishaps, and possible eventual adoption or destruction of "extra" embryos. I fully agree with this reasoning. There are too many things that can go wrong to fully protect created life outside the womb.
However, the other reasoning against IVF is a stretch. While I am all for the sanctity of marriage and keeping marriage, sex, and babies all together in an Earthly trinity, we cannot pretend that marriage is a simple algebraic equation that cannot function without the right combination of factors. Sometimes in life, we have to compromise. Sometimes we have to improvise. Obviously, separating sex from procreation is not ideal. But to say that the spouses "deserve better" when that better is to remain childless and have that be a daily reminder of how the sex isn't leading to procreation? That's absurd. How exactly is that honoring the marital bond between the spouses?
And, dare I ask, where is the overwhelming support in our church communities for childless married couples, so that it can be abundantly clear how they are a complete family without children, how they are fully valued members of the parish, how they have many gifts to offer us and lessons to teach us? I'm at a very friendly, "liberal" Franciscan parish, and even here this sort of climate simply doesn't exit.
Childless married couples are seen as social lepers. Oftentimes, they are first assumed to be contracepting, and therefore are judged for that. When it becomes evident that they are infertile, they are then judged for not adopting. Few people bother to consider what adoption entails or that not every family is eligible to adopt. When pushed into a corner with this knowledge, that's when the "here's your chance to shine as a saint" commentaries come out.
At any rate, let's be honest. The way Catholic life actually plays itself out on the ground, outside of theological books and encyclicals, is that to be a married Catholic means to be a parent. Otherwise, the Church doesn't know what to do with you. Catholics have a lot more options than many others when it comes to life vocations. Many religions simply assume that everyone must get married and have kids. Catholics have callings to the religious life, to the single lay life, and to married life. Unfortunately, the married life does assume children. So we still get stuck with the short end of the stick, even in Catholicism.
I believe that our understanding of suffering as redemptive can only be useful for childless married couples when they have truly exhausted all of their options. We are not supposed to strive for martyrdom! If we can avoid suffering, or alleviate the suffering of someone else, then we are to do so, as long as in so doing we do not commit a grave sin. And this is where I have to part ways with my fellow Catholics who consider a married couple who employ modern technology and medicine in their attempt to "be fruitful and multiply" (as God commanded) as committing a grave sin.
When it comes to sex and sexuality, I really think it best to leave the philosophizing to those who are able to apply first-hand experience to the subject at hand. Only the spouses involved can decide if a certain decision will improve or deteriorate their relationship when it comes to their sex lives. Well-meaning celibate theologians: let my husband and me be the judge of just how important the unitive aspect of our sexual intimacy is when weighed against our desire to be co-creators with God Almighty, per His command.
And so, I'm done apologizing for the choices we've made as part of our five year discernment process as we traveled the infertility road that we were placed upon. The truth is that I love Jesus more than I love the Church, and I don't think He is upset to hear that. In Mark 2:27, Jesus said that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Likewise, the teachings of the Church are there for our benefit. They are there to help us grow in holiness. They are not there to make us slaves to them. We should definitely consider what the Church teaches and why before making our decisions, but we have to trust the movement of the Holy Spirit within us.
I'm still a practicing Catholic, mind you. But I think I'll stop co-oping my conscience to theologians and take responsibility for my own discernment process. I'm a thinking Catholic now.
I got flamed by a non-Catholic (at least a non-practicing Catholic) who went out of her way to accuse me of being self-righteous when all I was trying to do was explain WHAT the RCC teaches and HOW embryo adoption via FET is in line with that teaching. I was not in any way trying to insinuate that those who actually do IVF are in any way less holy than me, because I know that is poppycock.
However, having been unable to convince the more narrow-minded "orthdox" Catholics to use their God-given reasoning abilities, I've realized that I was going to have to re-access the value of trying to convince haters to love.
Truth be told, when I was explaining how an FET is not the same as IVF, it was not to highlight how brilliant I am in remaining within the confines drawn out for me by the Church. No. I was simply stating facts. But to be honest, this doesn't mean that I wouldn't have done IVF if I actually had the chance. I might have. In fact, we were going to.
This is no secret. I discuss this aspect of our journey here and here. Granted, at the time, I was not fully knowledgeable on the Catholic church's teaching of ARTs. However, I certainly discerned the next steps carefully. I have said that the temptation to do IVF was removed from us by virtue of our SCOS dx. However, honestly, this is a bit of a cop-out. Now I see that in spite of all my well-meaning attempts to explain to the uninitiated how we ended up staying within the confines of Church teaching, I am still being judged. I finally see that there is no pleasing some people.
I'm glad that the reason we didn't do IVF was for practical reasons and not theological ones. Otherwise, I might be resenting the Church big time right now.
There are two reasons the Church opposes IVF. One has to do with the creation of more embryos than can reasonably be transferred in a fresh cycle, leading to various additional moral dilemmas such as cryopreservation, possibilities of lab mishaps, and possible eventual adoption or destruction of "extra" embryos. I fully agree with this reasoning. There are too many things that can go wrong to fully protect created life outside the womb.
However, the other reasoning against IVF is a stretch. While I am all for the sanctity of marriage and keeping marriage, sex, and babies all together in an Earthly trinity, we cannot pretend that marriage is a simple algebraic equation that cannot function without the right combination of factors. Sometimes in life, we have to compromise. Sometimes we have to improvise. Obviously, separating sex from procreation is not ideal. But to say that the spouses "deserve better" when that better is to remain childless and have that be a daily reminder of how the sex isn't leading to procreation? That's absurd. How exactly is that honoring the marital bond between the spouses?
And, dare I ask, where is the overwhelming support in our church communities for childless married couples, so that it can be abundantly clear how they are a complete family without children, how they are fully valued members of the parish, how they have many gifts to offer us and lessons to teach us? I'm at a very friendly, "liberal" Franciscan parish, and even here this sort of climate simply doesn't exit.
Childless married couples are seen as social lepers. Oftentimes, they are first assumed to be contracepting, and therefore are judged for that. When it becomes evident that they are infertile, they are then judged for not adopting. Few people bother to consider what adoption entails or that not every family is eligible to adopt. When pushed into a corner with this knowledge, that's when the "here's your chance to shine as a saint" commentaries come out.
At any rate, let's be honest. The way Catholic life actually plays itself out on the ground, outside of theological books and encyclicals, is that to be a married Catholic means to be a parent. Otherwise, the Church doesn't know what to do with you. Catholics have a lot more options than many others when it comes to life vocations. Many religions simply assume that everyone must get married and have kids. Catholics have callings to the religious life, to the single lay life, and to married life. Unfortunately, the married life does assume children. So we still get stuck with the short end of the stick, even in Catholicism.
I believe that our understanding of suffering as redemptive can only be useful for childless married couples when they have truly exhausted all of their options. We are not supposed to strive for martyrdom! If we can avoid suffering, or alleviate the suffering of someone else, then we are to do so, as long as in so doing we do not commit a grave sin. And this is where I have to part ways with my fellow Catholics who consider a married couple who employ modern technology and medicine in their attempt to "be fruitful and multiply" (as God commanded) as committing a grave sin.
When it comes to sex and sexuality, I really think it best to leave the philosophizing to those who are able to apply first-hand experience to the subject at hand. Only the spouses involved can decide if a certain decision will improve or deteriorate their relationship when it comes to their sex lives. Well-meaning celibate theologians: let my husband and me be the judge of just how important the unitive aspect of our sexual intimacy is when weighed against our desire to be co-creators with God Almighty, per His command.
And so, I'm done apologizing for the choices we've made as part of our five year discernment process as we traveled the infertility road that we were placed upon. The truth is that I love Jesus more than I love the Church, and I don't think He is upset to hear that. In Mark 2:27, Jesus said that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Likewise, the teachings of the Church are there for our benefit. They are there to help us grow in holiness. They are not there to make us slaves to them. We should definitely consider what the Church teaches and why before making our decisions, but we have to trust the movement of the Holy Spirit within us.
I'm still a practicing Catholic, mind you. But I think I'll stop co-oping my conscience to theologians and take responsibility for my own discernment process. I'm a thinking Catholic now.
Monday, April 8, 2013
The Other Two-Week Wait
Ignorance is bliss, yet wisdom comes from experience. The million dollar question is - would you rather be wise or happy? I have come to the conclusion that this is the question that Adam and Eve answered incorrectly when they opted to try to know more than they needed to. But in my case, it's not exactly my "fault" that I know what I know. The experience of a previous pregnancy loss, however early on, plus the knowledge of what can happen based on all of my online buddies' experiences, keeps my pregnancy bliss at bay.
People who have never had to struggle to get pregnant find it hard to understand why I can't just rejoice, why I have to be so pessimistic. But I think I'm being realistic. In reality, the statistics say that not every embryo conceived is born. There isn't a magical point at which the risk is turned off. Rather, it's a gradual change over time, with the greatest risk of miscarriage passing with the first trimester. This is why women are advised to wait until the end of their first trimester before announcing their pregnancy, since at that point their risk of miscarriage drops to below 2%.
In the case of women who used artificial reproductive technology, there are additional questions forming a whirlwind in our minds as we anxiously await that first ultrasound. The first milestone to pass once a pregnancy is confirmed is to eliminate the possibility of a chemical pregnancy. This is where an embryo burrows itself into the uterine lining but then calls it a day. The initial hcg level in the blood may be lower than expected or it may be normal. The second beta blood draw will show that the hcg level has dropped or is not doubling according to plan.
Other times, the embryo burrows and grows just fine, but the location of implantation is such that the baby is unable to grow, develop, and be born. This is an ectopic pregnancy, or one where the embryo implants in the fallopian tube (most commonly), or anywhere else outside the uterus (on the ovary, in the cervix, or even in a cesarian scar). The likelihood of bringing a baby to term is almost entirely impossible. I believe the few instances of it happening have either been due to an initial misdiagnosis or the location of implantation being less than ideal but still such that the baby was able to grow within the womb (as opposed to trying to grow in a fallopian tube).
There are also instances of a blighted ovum, where the blastocyst implants and the placenta grows and secretes the hcg needed to signal the existence of a pregnancy, but upon ultrasound viewing, it becomes evident that there is no embryo inside.Only an ultrasound can establish a) that there is indeed an embryo growing, and b) where the baby is growing.
This is the second milestone that I am currently waiting for. In a little over a week, I will be able to rest a lot easier knowing that all is well. Until then, I simply know too much to relax.
People who have never had to struggle to get pregnant find it hard to understand why I can't just rejoice, why I have to be so pessimistic. But I think I'm being realistic. In reality, the statistics say that not every embryo conceived is born. There isn't a magical point at which the risk is turned off. Rather, it's a gradual change over time, with the greatest risk of miscarriage passing with the first trimester. This is why women are advised to wait until the end of their first trimester before announcing their pregnancy, since at that point their risk of miscarriage drops to below 2%.
In the case of women who used artificial reproductive technology, there are additional questions forming a whirlwind in our minds as we anxiously await that first ultrasound. The first milestone to pass once a pregnancy is confirmed is to eliminate the possibility of a chemical pregnancy. This is where an embryo burrows itself into the uterine lining but then calls it a day. The initial hcg level in the blood may be lower than expected or it may be normal. The second beta blood draw will show that the hcg level has dropped or is not doubling according to plan.
Other times, the embryo burrows and grows just fine, but the location of implantation is such that the baby is unable to grow, develop, and be born. This is an ectopic pregnancy, or one where the embryo implants in the fallopian tube (most commonly), or anywhere else outside the uterus (on the ovary, in the cervix, or even in a cesarian scar). The likelihood of bringing a baby to term is almost entirely impossible. I believe the few instances of it happening have either been due to an initial misdiagnosis or the location of implantation being less than ideal but still such that the baby was able to grow within the womb (as opposed to trying to grow in a fallopian tube).
There are also instances of a blighted ovum, where the blastocyst implants and the placenta grows and secretes the hcg needed to signal the existence of a pregnancy, but upon ultrasound viewing, it becomes evident that there is no embryo inside.Only an ultrasound can establish a) that there is indeed an embryo growing, and b) where the baby is growing.
This is the second milestone that I am currently waiting for. In a little over a week, I will be able to rest a lot easier knowing that all is well. Until then, I simply know too much to relax.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Easter Present
I hesitate to write an update, because I do not want to be celebrating in real life yet. You can probably guess based on that first sentence that we got the best Easter present we could've hoped for - a positive reading on a home pregnancy test! But we have been here before, so we are remaining cautiously optimistic. I don't want to have to untell anyone anything if, God forbid, these little ones end up leaving us prematurely.
In order not to repeat myself, I'd like to direct you to this post for an overview of how I'm feeling about where we currently are. Continued prayers are much appreciated!
In order not to repeat myself, I'd like to direct you to this post for an overview of how I'm feeling about where we currently are. Continued prayers are much appreciated!
Friday, March 29, 2013
Why We're Not Telling Yet, Either Way
There seems to be no pleasing a "PUPO" woman. (For the uninitiated, "PUPO" stands for "pregnant until/unless proven otherwise", and refers to the two week wait between an embryo transfer [so you know you have a baby in there] to blood test confirmation of pregnancy [when you know if the baby implanted]).
It is hard to try to keep my mind on things other than the elephant in the room, ie. the desire to know whether or not this is going to work, whether or not I'm going to STAY pregnant. So on the one hand, I do find it somewhat hurtful when those close to me, those who know about my condition, do not inquire about my state of mind. It's a huge deal, and I'd like to see that others think so too!
On the other hand, the incessant inquiries of people wanting to know how things went, especially when we are not ready to reveal the news even if we know it (we do not, yet, by the way) puts me in a very difficult situation. I don't want to get in the habit of lying, and I feel rude and/or as if I'm giving something away if I say "I don't want to say yet". But in all honesty, I DON'T want to say anything as soon as we find out the results of our test.
If it's negative, then I'll need time to grieve and process this loss before I'll be ready to talk about it, so I simply won't want to have that conversation with anyone yet.
If it's positive, as I've learned, we are not out of the woods yet, and I don't want to start celebrating by telling everyone I know only to have to untell them if it turns out to be another bust. Instead, I'd much rather wait until I feel more confident knowing that the baby is likely to stick around before I start sharing.
At the same time, I can't say that I don't want to share too soon "if" it's positive, bc that just means that if I'm not sharing, I'm giving the answer already. Otherwise, I would've shared the news!
So there's no winning. The best solution is to limit the number of people who know that you even cycled in the first place. If no one knows you did anything, they won't ask, and you won't have to figure out how to respond.
It is hard to try to keep my mind on things other than the elephant in the room, ie. the desire to know whether or not this is going to work, whether or not I'm going to STAY pregnant. So on the one hand, I do find it somewhat hurtful when those close to me, those who know about my condition, do not inquire about my state of mind. It's a huge deal, and I'd like to see that others think so too!
On the other hand, the incessant inquiries of people wanting to know how things went, especially when we are not ready to reveal the news even if we know it (we do not, yet, by the way) puts me in a very difficult situation. I don't want to get in the habit of lying, and I feel rude and/or as if I'm giving something away if I say "I don't want to say yet". But in all honesty, I DON'T want to say anything as soon as we find out the results of our test.
If it's negative, then I'll need time to grieve and process this loss before I'll be ready to talk about it, so I simply won't want to have that conversation with anyone yet.
If it's positive, as I've learned, we are not out of the woods yet, and I don't want to start celebrating by telling everyone I know only to have to untell them if it turns out to be another bust. Instead, I'd much rather wait until I feel more confident knowing that the baby is likely to stick around before I start sharing.
At the same time, I can't say that I don't want to share too soon "if" it's positive, bc that just means that if I'm not sharing, I'm giving the answer already. Otherwise, I would've shared the news!
So there's no winning. The best solution is to limit the number of people who know that you even cycled in the first place. If no one knows you did anything, they won't ask, and you won't have to figure out how to respond.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Why an FET is not IVF
I am a practicing Catholic.
As such, I look to the official teaching of my church to help guide me
on making difficult decisions. It wasn’t
always this way, but my faith has grown exponentially since beginning our quest
for parenthood. That said, I recently
noticed something interesting on one of the forms from the clinic where we will
be transferring our adopted embryos.
What I commonly have come to know as an “FET”, or frozen embryo
transfer, was being referred to as a "cryo-IVF".
I did a double take because we are not doing in-vitro
fertilization. That’s what I’ve been
explaining to my Catholic friends when explaining that I really am following our
church’s teachings. Yet according to my
clinic, what we are doing is a type of IVF.
Perhaps this is mere semantics. There is no question that our embryos were
indeed created during an in-vitro fertilization procedure. But we had nothing to do with that part. They were subsequently cryopreserved and
stored for eight years. Again, that was
not our choice. Finally, they are
getting ready to be thawed and transferred where they belong – to a mother’s
womb. This is the part we take full
responsibility for.
I suppose cryopreservation and thawing is simply a delay of
what is otherwise an IVF cycle. Our
embryos were created on the same day as their genetic sibling, who was
transferred without ever having been frozen, and who was born to our donors
nine months later. Our embryos will
likewise end up in a woman’s uterus, and hopefully, just like their genetic
sibling, they will be born. So really, they just took a
detour.
What difference does it make anyway, if we call what we are
doing IVF or not? For some people, what
a procedure is called makes no difference.
However, when the difference is between being a faithful Catholic and
not, then the name matters.We did not purposefully create these embryos outside the
human body. We did not freeze them in
time, saving them to be “used” at a later date.
While I completely sympathize with families who make these decisions, according
to my own conscience, I agree with the reasons behind why the Catholic church
teaches against both of these procedures.
It’s not so much about “playing God”, which I so simplistically used to
call it. The Catholic church teaches
that mothers and fathers are co-creators with God – what an amazing
responsibility! It is impossible to bring about a human being without the breath
of God.
So no, the Church doesn’t oppose IVF and cryopreservation
because it lets humans do what only God can do, because it is God’s will to
share in His creativity! Rather, it’s about treating human beings as if they
were commodities to be manipulated and utilized according to our own whims and
conveniences.
Technically, there is always the
possibility of equipment malfunctioning or staff error that could result in the
accidental destruction of the embryos once created. They must be entrusted to the care of the
fertility clinic where they are created, even if for only a few days, before
being transferred to the mother’s womb.
Furthermore, when creating more embryos than can safely be
transferred back in a fresh cycle, cryopreservation becomes necessary. With this comes the additional risk of a
labeling mishap that could theoretically result in embryos being transferred to
the wrong woman. Even if this worst-case
scenario doesn’t happen, what does take place as a matter of course is that
parents decide that they are finished building their families and no longer
choose to come back for the remainder of the embryos they created.
This is a difficult observation. If it weren’t for a couple doing precisely
this, we wouldn’t be in a position to be parents thanks to their generous
donation. And yet, from the perspective
of the child, their best interest would’ve been served had their genetic
parents welcomed every single one of their kids.
At any rate, yes, we are currently cycling, and yet we are
not doing IVF because we are not going to be fertilizing eggs. We are simply availing ourselves to these
embryos so that they may have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. I look forward to hopefully meeting at least
one of them later this year!
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Resolution of infertility
"My peace I give to you," says Jesus in John 14:27. And He really does.
Many people have shared obvious observations about life with
me over the years when I wasn’t yet ready to hear them.
“It could be worse.”
“Count your blessings.”
“You love to sleep
in. You hate noise.”
“Think of all the things you can do because you don’t have
kids.”
These are all true statements, and they were true several
years ago when I would get upset by them as well. What’s changed? My perspective. But it’s important to note
that this is not something that you, as a well-meaning friend or relative, can
bring about in someone who isn’t there yet.
Many people are familiar with the five stages of grief:
denial, anger, bartering, sadness, and acceptance. But many people do not
automatically think to consider infertility as something that would qualify as a life event
that would spark the grief process. Yet
it does.
Events that may set the grief process in motion include divorce,
migration, loss of job, infertility. The
death of a loved one seems to be a universal experience, whereas these other
life events are not. Maybe that’s why
people who have never experienced them find it difficult to understand that they
also mark the end of something one has grown attached to.
Telling someone who has just lost a loved one that “at least
they’re not suffering anymore” might be better left unsaid for someone whose
heart has just been wounded by their loss.
It doesn’t matter if the comment is true or well-meaning. The best thing to do when around someone who
is grieving is to be quiet, but be there, and listen if they want to pour their
heart out to you. You do not need to try
to fix this for them because you can’t.
It would seem that I have arrived at the final stage of grieving our infertility,
acceptance. It sort of snuck up on
me. For five years, I put my life on
hold and made decisions based on the assumption that just around the corner,
our forever child would show up. It sucked the life out of me. I
didn’t look forward to anything other than becoming a mother.
I didn’t go through the stages of grief in order. In fact, I was still bartering with God last
summer, as I sought solutions in desperation in a renewed state of denial! Every time I came across a parent not living
up to my expectations of what a parent ought to be, I experienced anger. Sadness crept
up every time we hit another disappointment.
I assumed that the only way our infertility would be
resolved, the only way that it COULD be resolved, is if/when we finally became
parents. But now I know parenting and
resolution of infertility are not necessarily related.
I’ve met parents who nevertheless continue to grieve the
fact that it isn’t as easy for them to conceive as it ought to be, or who didn’t
start to experience infertility until after they had their first child without
any trouble. I’ve also met folks who never did have children yet found a way to
embrace the life God gave them anyway.
The more I think about it, the more I find myself in this second
category. Maybe I will be a mother,
maybe not. But I’m already “complete”. I’m already at peace with my life as it
is. I’m already joyful with the many
blessings God has given me.
Today, I can say with full authenticity:
“Indeed, there ARE many things I can do that I probably
couldn’t do if I had children, and I ought to enjoy them to the fullest!”
“I DO love to sleep in, and I DO hate noise, and I don’t
have to feel bad for either because I don’t have children.”
“I DO have many blessings to count!”
“It COULD be a lot worse!”
There is nothing left for me to complain about. Life doesn’t always turn out the way we hope
or plan. So what? God is in control. I trust Him completely.
Numbers 6:24-26
The Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.
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