Certain events in the last few weeks have brought home to me how very weird the world can be. Things move in mysterious ways, guys (all things, not just that woman that Bono was jones-ing on). Sometimes even as a secular person it can be hard to believe that things happen the way they do just by chance (while knowing that, of course, they usually do).
If you’ve been following my last few posts, you’ll know that I recently went through the process of doing an egg donation.
Well, it didn’t work out. If you want the long story, read on. If you want the short one, here it is: I have pretty much run out of eggs. And I’m not even 30. And everyone thinks you’ve got til 35 or even 40 to have kids, but I will be lucky if I have another baby ever, and I’m 29 freaking years old, dammit.
Here’s how I found out:
I had zero response to the Gonal F injections – not a single follicle did grow. This got the gynae very worried, especially considering my age. So after a number of scans, off I trundled for more blood tests.
The egg donation was cancelled after the blood analysis showed that I had very low estrogen levels. I was quite devastated. I’d so badly wanted to help my recipient, and I was really emotionally invested in the process – I was totally committed. The gynae then went above and beyond his duty to me as a “failed” (I can’t think of another way to put it) donor by requesting an AMH test on my bloods. Apparently this test, which is quite involved and advanced, tends only to be run on women who have been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for about a year.
The results came back two weeks later, and the upshot of all of this is that, relatively speaking, I have a much lower ovarian reserve than most other 29-year-old otherwise completely healthy women. Which means that, basically, my eggs have almost all run out. As in, I don’t have many more left – even if the ones that are there are all good eggs (as evidenced by the perfection of my Lil A).
So the gynae advised that if I plan on having another child, I shouldn’t waste any time.
But! But! I do want another baby, but not until, like, 2015. That was the plan! I’m not ready for another baby yet! I’m not ready for another pregnancy, we’re not financially ready for another child yet, I want to spend more time enjoying Lil A as she grows more and more into her own person, I don’t think I could handle another 6 months of breastfeeding and no sleep and I was just getting into shape again and what about all the fretting about miscarriages and what about my 30th birthday party and and and and. You get the idea. Basically, I’m not ready for all of that again right now.
But in a few years, when I feel I am ready, my biological clock will have struck 12 and my ovaries will have turned into pumpkins.
So I’ve got to either seize the day and try to make use of my few remaining eggs and adjust to the idea of having a second baby sooner than planned, or settle on the idea that there might never be a second baby. Although, when you think about it (and I’ve been trying not to, to be honest), I’ll probably have to do both of these things at once.
Emotions and all of that aside, the irony of this whole situation is just astounding. I’m caught between being a bit angry, a bit relieved, and really awe-struck at the weirdness of the way things work.
This is where I come to write 