egg scramble

forward ho! (34 weeks)

2007-04-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

So I'm still here. And still pregnant ... a fact which continues to amaze me when I wake up each morning, toss back the covers, discover that great big mountain of a belly -- my belly! -- hiding underneath the sheets. Mornings have become my favorite time. The aches of carrying all this extra weight have been temporarily cured by the night's sleep; the boy snuggles next to me, shifting closer or farther each time there's another kick or wriggle from the babies, depending on which side of the wake/sleep spectrum he wants to be in at the time. He says he doesn't know how I can fall asleep at all these days, with all that hubbub going on inside. Me, I love those pokes and pinches and weird rolling waves; on days when the babes are more quiet, I find I miss the action.

This makes me wonder what it'll be like, just a few weeks from now, when the action moves from inside to outside, and I'm no longer pregnant. I think I feel a little sad -- is that strange? -- that this will soon be over. Unlike my lucky friends who are now on pregnancies number two, this will likely be it for me. I'm so excited to find out what these babies of mine are like, but at the same time, these last few months have been among the happiest ever. For the first time since losing my ovaries, I find I'm not angry with my body anymore. We've made peace, my flawed insides and I. From the belly getting bigger and bigger and the boobs doing the same, to the not-so-fun stuff, like numb fingers and aching back, I can't stop marveling -- that my body can actually do this, grow two lovely tiny humans inside. Each ultrasound report that confirms this still feels like a small miracle.

So this pregnancy thing? It's been great. Somewhat to my surprise, things have gone relatively smoothly since those early scares; I feel healthy and strong and beautiful and good. Still, I've gotten so used to thinking one milestone at a time that looking ahead to the next stage feels strange. Thirteen weeks: end of first trimester. Twenty weeks: halfway there! Twenty-six weeks: babies born could still survive. And now 34 weeks: the point at which if labor starts, there'll be no attempt to stop it, since babies born after this point have a high chance of doing just fine.

34 weeks feels simultaneously reassuring, and scary as all get out. Because after all this time of focusing on getting pregnant, staying pregnant, helping these mysterious beings inside me grow big and strong, we're getting close to the thing that's been the goal all along: meeting our children, our two little girls. Becoming a mom. And I don't know if I'm ready.

There's a crib all set up in our bedroom; our apartment is an explosion of baby gear. We've done the prenatal classes, read stacks of books. But on weekend mornings as the boy and I lie lazily in bed, I think about how long it's been just him and me, and how good this life together has been. It's hard to picture what our lives will be like in just a few short weeks.

make it a double (8 weeks)

2006-10-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

It's one of those things you know is more than possible but still, when it takes this much just to get pregnant, it seems greedy to hope for it too much. But when we go in for our first ultrasound last week, the ultrasound tech asks, all low-key and chitchat like, So how big is your apartment?

Three bedrooms, I answer, trying to ignore the cold probe pinching at my insides as she twists it for a better view, Two are pretty small though.

Well, she continues, I hope you're ready to make some more space. She turns to us with a big smile and announces, You're having twins!

The boy squeezes my hand and grins; I'm shaking. Down by the machine, the tech continues to take her measurements, says she'll show us what she's seeing after she gets all the numbers (the boy is already leaning over to peek). Good as her word, she soon rotates the screen.

And there they are. Two tiny white blobs nestled in bigger black blobs, pulsing away.

o o o

The next day is our fifth wedding anniversary. We haven't planned much; between ivf stresses and new job stresses and moving to a new country stresses, the last thing either of us has felt like doing is planning some big elaborate getaway. The boy comes home early with a big bunch of fresh sunflowers; we make last-minute reservations for a nice dinner. We're plunked down on our bed in a warm lazy snuggle when I glance at the clock. I need to change, I say, disentangling myself reluctantly. So change, says the boy, uncooperatively continuing to hold tight. I need to pee first though, I announce. He laughs, So pee. Then lets me go.

On the toilet, I do my usual post-wipe inspection. At first I think I'm imagining it: a pinkish tinge. Get a fresh piece of toilet paper; wipe again. Look closer. Still pink. Don't panic, I tell myself. A few weeks ago I had light brown spotting; implantation bleeding, the nurse had said, totally normally, everything fine.

I think I'm spotting, I tell the boy. Spotting? he asks. Spotting, I confirm, Just lightly, but it's not brown like the last time.

I'm still telling myself not to panic when I go to the bathroom again twenty minutes later. I wipe. And this time my heart's in my throat: Red blood. Like period blood. I'm bleeding, I whisper, Oh no, oh no, I'm bleeding.

I cry from the bathroom, the boy rushes in. Soon he's running downstairs to dig up my doctors' numbers. I'm calling the family doctor here in Toronto, my clinic back in Massachusetts, trying to figure out what this means, what I'm supposed to do, if one day after our happy ultrasound news it's all gone, all over. After calling and waiting, calling and waiting, hanging up and waiting some more, the consensus seems to be to sit tight. I'm told it could just be from having recently lowered my progesterone dosage and stopping the low-dose aspirin; it might also just be weird uterus stretching stuff. It's not uncommon, everyone assures me, don't go to the emergency room; take it easy, try to relax. (What's unspoken is that if the worst is what's happening, there's nothing anyone can do anyway. I know this rationally, but still, it's not much comfort.)

Which is why the boy and I spend our fifth-anniversary eating take-out Thai in bed, watching a really dumb comedy about paintball, trying not to think about what I'll find the next time I get up to go the bathroom.

As it turns out, the bleeding only lasts an hour, doesn't even soak the skimpy pantiliner I've slapped into my underwear. The red soon makes way for dark-brown; by the next morning, it's just medium brown spotting when I wipe. The brown lingers over the next few days; it gets lighter and lighter, starts to appear only after I've been moving around during the day.

When I finally go in for my follow-up ultrasound, the spotting's been gone for a couple of days. The little beans still look fine; measuring perfectly, all is well. There's a little bit of blood they can see behind the placenta; a subchorionic hematoma, incredibly common amongst IVF patients I'm told. Doesn't generally cause any problems with the babies, they assure me ... but add, there might be more spotting in the weeks to come.

So I'm trying not to worry too much, stress too much about what I'll find on the toilet paper next, overanalyze every tummy twinge. I' m eight weeks now, still pregnant, with twins, and this is cause for celebration, news to let myself enjoy.

still going (6 weeks)

2006-09-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's a testament to how good a job I'd been doing with the whole one-step-at-a-time philosophy. But when we told the family, it never even occurred to us that the family would then proceed to tell other folks. I was still so nervous; it had only been a little over a week. The night before my second beta, worry writhed its way in a dance marathon through my brain before I finally nodded off to a restless sleep, sometime past 3 in the morning, four hours of watching the numbers on my bedside clock advance ever more slowly forward. I panicked when something was weird. (What was that twinge?!?) I angsted when I didn't feel anything at all. (Why aren't I nauseous?) I couldn't bring myself to say the words "I'm" and "pregnant" together out loud, for fear that doing so might chase the good news away.

So when we turned up at the boy's cousin's wedding, I was in no way prepared. Congratulations! We heard the great news! We're so excited for you! As we made the rounds with aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins, the well-wishers just kept on coming, a crush of squeals and hugs and big wide grins. And this was so sweet, and so lovely, that everyone was so obviously thrilled for us. But I? Was totally. Freaked. Out.

Everyone knows! I whispered to the boy. Everyone knows! The boy hugged me closer as we made our way to the next beaming set of relatives. I took a deep breath, put on my smile, got ready for another round of well-meaning congrats.

How are you feeling? Everyone wanted to know. And the first few times, all I could do was smile and nod and shrug my shoulders, say, We're so happy, so excited, it's wonderful. Which is true. But the thing is, that's only part of it. When it's taken all this to get to this still-precarious point, it's hard to suddenly stop worrying; experience has taught you too well that bad things can and do happen, most of all when you let your guard down. I'm not sure most of the boy's family fully gets this; they've always struck me as preternaturally fertile, new babies popping up here and there and everywhere. They're fortunate, and I don't begrudge them this fecundity. But when they ask me how I'm feeling, I'm not sure they have a clue just how loaded a question this is.

So when the boy's cousin J's wife threw her own well wishes our way, I wasn't expecting her to pause to add: Oh no, was that all right? Is this too much? Are you okay? And as it turned out, that was all I really needed; acknowledgment that I might be nervous, permission to let my crazy nagging worries out.

No, no, I told her truthfully, We're so excited. But yeah, it's hard.

And it is, but maybe that's not such a bad thing either. Because with every test that comes back with good numbers assuring me that everything actually is progressing exactly the way it should, I'm more aware than ever: I'm so, so lucky. Life can be amazing and lovely and good.

the best secret in the world

2006-09-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

I'd debated it back-and-forth for days. Was I going to wait it out till the official Friday morning blood test or cheat with the pee stick? Twelve days isn't that long to wait, I kept telling myself; twelve days of being able to keep hoping, I knew, might be all I would get. But the more I thought about it and the longer each day seemed to get, the louder that pee stick sang its siren call. Every other step of this trying-to-get-pregnant process had involved so many other people; this one thing, I reasoned, was the one thing I could do all by myself.

So Tuesday afternoon, day 9 for those of us keeping track, I snuck out to the drugstore. Looked both ways out of the corners of my eyes, grabbed a pink hpt box, brought it up to the cash register feeling all furtive. Back home, though, I tucked it deep deep into the underwear drawer out of sight. I was still waffling; hope is a good thing; and no matter how many times I told myself it might still be too early to tell, I knew a big fat negative was going to be crushing, no way around it, no rationalizing would help. Tuesday night went by, and I said nothing about those pee sticks to the boy. I didn't know if I was ready; I wasn't sure what I'd do.

But Wednesday morning I wake up early for the first time since the progesterone shots began. (It's a cruel cruel trick: the progesterone makes me sleep terribly, but when I'm awake I'm just dead tired zonked-out.) The sun is low. The house is quiet. I have to pee.

In a rare brave moment, I pull the pink box out from my drawer, shuffle over to the bathroom. (No looking back now, kids.) Cold hands, jittery heart: I sit on the toilet tearing open the foil, popping off the pink cap, holding the white tip down. Let it go, let it go, let the bladder go: five-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, one-one-thousand. Done.

In the end, it doesn't even take the three minutes the box insert tells me to expect. Two lines. Two strong pink lines. And this, the handy key printed on the stick itself told me, is good.

You're so sneaky! the boy faux-chides when I show him not long after. Sneaky girl! I love you so much!

And from now until test day, the two of us have the best secret in the world. By the time the nurse rings up Friday afternoon with the good news -- test positive! hCG numbers great! -- the secret's out; it's no longer just ours alone. But still, the confirmation is good. And while the next few weeks there'll be more tests and more waiting and more hoping that things just keep going the way they're supposed to go, for now, at least, I guess it's official. I'm, um, pregnant.

hello there

2006-08-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

Watch that screen, she tells me, they'll be coming up in just a moment.

I'm flat on my back in a small, dim room, knees hooked up in stirrups, calves dangling down, swaddled in crisp white sheets for "modesty". There's a doctor down at the far end, an ultrasound technician to my right. The embryologist, who I've just met, has disappeared into the back hallway.

I turn my eyes to the TV screen, which is blue and blank.

The screen flickers.

And then they're there. Two little round embryos filled with little round cells, captured in all their black-and-white glory.

They're so cute! I breathe, looking over at A, who's smiling first at the screen, then at me.

And for those few seconds, everything is perfect. I'm not thinking about the doctors or the nurses or the vast team of other medical professionals who have helped us get to this point; I'm not noticing the machines, or the hospital bed, or the faint hum of the electrical equipment. I'm not even thinking about the two weeks that await, when I'll get tense, and anxious, and wonder whether our two little embryos are finding their new environs in my uterus to their liking, whether they'll grow and take root, settle in, make themselves comfortable. It's just me and A and a whole lot of hope.

rollercoaster

2006-08-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

I'd been doing a good job of remaining cool thus far. hCG shot delivered Tuesday: check. (With minor confusion prefacing, but still.) First PIO: easy-breezy. So maybe this is what happens when things go just a little too smoothly. Because as A and I sit outside waiting for news of R's egg retrieval this morning, I feel calm, I feel collected, I feel sure that things are going exactly the way things are supposed to go. I feel good.

Then we get the news: they've aspirated five of the big follicles on one side. And nada. No eggs. Zip, zero, zilch. Nothing. I'm going numb. A puts his arm around me, tries to look at me; I stare at the far corner of the room.

Zero is the emptiest feeling in the world.

Did the shot go all right? the nurse asks. Was there a problem mixing? Every once in awhile, patients have issues with the mixing, or with the batch itself; it's very rare, but it happens; we're checking her hCG levels now. I'm only half listening as she tries to reassure me. A patient this happened to a few months back is pregnant now. This only makes me feel worse: I'm sure it's not going to happen for me.

The nurse is so kind; she looks like the women in the boy's family, jolly and solid and comfortingly round. We'll know more soon, she says. And then she's gone.

I have no body; I can't feel my arms, my legs, my head, my heart. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Let's go for a walk, the boy says, guiding my elbow, holding me close.

And so we walk. Down the stairs, out the door, past the other anxious couples who are trying not to look at me now. (The tears have started.) And because we still have to wait for R to drive her home (how will I face her? I'm sure she must be feeling awful too) we're stuck there at the clinic, hugging in the parking lot, walking concrete circles. The sky is blue; the sun is bright. And this is the worst view in the world.

Then, my cell phone rings. It's my mom (who's been waiting with R; they're close; when I'd asked R a couple of days earlier if she wanted anyone else with her on retrieval day, she'd requested my mom without missing a beat). The doctor's looking for you, Mom says. Then pauses. Says softer, Good news.

And so we race back into the clinic, ask for the doctor, get hustled straight into his office.

Ten eggs, he says, smiling.

And my heart that was somewhere in my stomach seems to be back where it's supposed to be, beating again, thump thump, thump thump. I'm so tired, and the next couple of days will be hard, hard, hard. But we're still in the game. One more step forward. And this is good.

tiptoe

2006-08-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

It's not that I'm superstitious, not really, not usually, I swear. But each time I've signed in here the past few weeks to give the update, I've chickened out. I think I'm afraid that if I think too much, say things too loud, get my hopes up too high, that's when things will go crash. So I've been moving with toes inching forward, holding my breath, hoarding my thoughts in a great big knot in the stomach.

But yeah, I'm still here. And things are going. Really going. I'm back in Boston doing my cycle.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been dutifully popping tiny purple Estrace tabs left and right, knocking back folic acid and low-dose aspirin, turning up for occasional blood draw jabs and ultrasounds at ungodly early hours of the morning. To be honest, it's all been so easy on my part that things haven't felt quite real; most of what needs to happen has been happening to our donor. (Who's proved to be amazing, a total trooper, though it's obvious seeing how tired she's looked since starting the Follistim that this is all hard, hard work for her.) Meanwhile I'm the understudy, twiddling my thumbs in the wings, hoping I'll get to step up and take over soon.

So each afternoon after she's been in for tests, I sit by the phone between 2 and 5, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the latest report. E2's and follicle counts and more words and numbers that are only now starting to make some semblance of sense to me. My perch, by the coffee table, is awash in hastily scrawed post-it notes.

This afternoon though, the latest news: a whole heap of follicles are looking ready to go. Tonight we help her with the hCG trigger shot, which I'm studying up on (IVF newbie that I am, the whole world of powders and diluents and needles still freaks me out). All of which means that come Thursday, with any luck, we'll be gathering us some eggs at last.

Knock on wood, fingers crossed, keeping that bubble of hope close to my heart as we tiptoe one step closer still...

breathe

2006-04-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

I've been keeping very very quiet out here. (You may have noticed.) For months and months, it was because I had nothing new to say, and thinking too much about all the nothing was doing me more bad than good. So I stayed mum while I browsed egg donor databases for possible candidates, hunkered down inside myself as I tried to come to terms with picking a donor based on 15 pages of scribbling and a few blurry photographs, tried to stay upbeat whenever friends asked me how the search was going, told myself I was in no rush. A good friend had her baby. The boy's sister announced she was pregnant. I was happy for them, but sad for me. I turned 31, and that was harder than 30, when I still had an ovary, and the boy and I had just started talking seriously about me going off the pill, and I took it for granted that I could have anything in the world.

Then, sometime around Christmas: something happened.

A friend of a friend of a family friend had heard our story. R was from Taiwan, but just happened to be in Boston doing a year of graduate studies; she told her friend, who told our friend, who told my mom, that she'd like to donate for us. I gave my mom the go-ahead to give her my email, leaving things in her court; I didn't want to be pushy, convinced this was too good to be true. But two days after Christmas, she got in touch. A few emails and a long voice chat later, it was settled: she was in. The only hitch?She would only be available for the three months of the summer, after the main school year was over, and before she headed back to Taiwan. This would be tricky for us -- we'd be moving from Edinburgh to Toronto around then -- but never mind the logistics; this was the dream donor, the next best thing to having a relative step up to the plate, and as far as the boy and I were concerned, we'd juggle whatever crazy schedule necessary to try to make this happen.

Contact the clinic, bring on the forms, set up the screenings, she said enthusiastically way back in January. The clinic sent her the welcome packet; she mailed back her forms two days later. Progress, it seemed -- until it turned out that she didn't have any of her medical records on hand. I mentioned the clinic needed them; she promised to ask her sister back home to hunt them down. A week passed, then another. Finally, she emailed back: no luck with the records. And so I hunted down a local doctor for her, made the earliest possible appointment that fit into her schedule, tried not to get frustrated that this was two weeks away, taking us well into February. She showed up at her appointment, discovered the fun of a pap smear (apparently not routine in Taiwan), was a good sport nonetheless. More time passed, as we waited for her results (fine), then waited for the doctor to send things over to the clinic, then waited some more when it turned out they flaked out and forgot to mail the records of the physical along with the pap. By the time all the preliminary paperwork was in place, March was drawing to a close, and the clinic, I was told, wasn't booking appointments until May. Will we still make the summer cycle? I emailed anxiously. We'll try our best, the coordinator replied noncommittally. I got quiet, and still, and sad; I was sure I had been too slow, not pushed hard enough. This wasn't going to work.

But out of the blue last week, the coordinator emails me. We have an opening coming up; we can squeeze R in for her psych test, she says. After a few frantic emails and an arrangement for my parents to give her the ride she'll need, things are set.

And so, after the nothing and the waiting and the waiting and the nothing, it begins. Let out that breath I've been holding for months now; take another deep gulp of air. Things are rolling, and this is scary and wonderful, and while there's still so, so much that can still go wrong, it's time to let myself feel hopeful.

morning

2005-06-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

It's cold and rainy and gray and June. And I'm having one of those days.

Most of the time, I swear I'm fine. I work, I play; I putter around in my cute loft and wander around in this beautiful city. I laugh, I smile; I hug my husband who hugs me back and I think yeah, I'm a lucky lucky girl, to love this boy, to have this life.

But this morning I wake up cranky and crampy. Throw on a robe, shuffle to the bathroom, discover my withdrawal bleed has started.

These fake periods make me feel like a fraud. They're this annoying thing my body has done for as long as I can remember, only now they're a reminder of the other things my body can no longer do. Produce estrogen. Pass on my DNA. Make babies.

I am really, really mad at my body. It's a stupid thing to be pissed off about, I know. This body's the only one I have, and for all its failings it does an a-ok job of keeping me alive; to hate my body is to hate myself, and that makes no kinds of sense. So maybe hate isn't the right word. But disappointed? Yeah. I feel like my ovaries betrayed me, like my body's copped out. And so I'm angry and frustrated and mostly so, so sad.

Still, with the hormones, I feel healthy; with the boy, I feel strong. I know we'll still have kids, somehow, some way. I know that things aren't that bad now, and they will get better.

Which is why I'm sitting on my toilet at 8 am, reaching for a tampon, crying quietly. Getting the pity party over with first thing. So I can pull myself together, get dressed, start the day, move on.

blood ties

2005-04-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

I never thought of my ethnicity as a hindrance, that my life might somehow be easier if I were white -- until we started looking into donor egg treatment, and I discovered that an already difficult process was going to become that much more stressful because I happen to be Chinese. My people, it seems, are not terribly inclined to give anything to strangers, never mind something so precious as their own genetic material.

This shouldn't come as a terrible surprise. My mother -- one of the kindest people I know -- has often expressed her admiration that so many American families adopt children with whom they have no blood ties, children of perfect strangers from hazily-known backgrounds, backgrounds that are often radically different from the parents' own. My mother finds this amazing -- generous, but strange. This kind of adoption is not so common amongst the Chinese; there's a long history of fear of outsiders, a cultural phobia that's even built into the language. There are Chinese people, and then there are foreigners, and whether you're the one or the other depends not on citizenship but on blood.

If I had a sister, I have no doubt: because we were family, she would offer me her eggs without me having to ask. And I would be thrilled, take her up on the offer without any reservation at all. The boy and I, we have no inherent need to keep our child/children's genetic roots anonymous; we'll tell them as much as we possibly can, because we believe strongly that knowledge is good.

But I only have brothers. And while there are cousins, it's just not the same. They won't offer and I won't ask, at least not directly, because that's just not the done thing; this is too big and too private, and we respect each other far too much. The boy still doesn't quite understand this; he's American to the core. He believes it never hurts to ask for something you really want, that not asking means you're not trying hard enough. I'm American too, but in this matter, at least, my Chineseness wins out. I'll be open and honest, tell everyone we know that we're seeking an egg donor. And if anyone offers, fabulous; we'll consider it seriously, be eternally grateful. But frankly, I'm not holding my breath that that's going to happen.

That leaves us with anonymous donors, strangers, people we don't know. We've been saying we're looking for Asian donors only, with Chinese ideal. When we first started talking about this, I wondered if it mattered at all; it wouldn't be my genes either way, so what difference would ethnicity really make? But the boy was adamant. And so, as we've begun this process of researching clinics, we've had to ask specifically about the availability of Asian donors. And each time I do, I brace myself for more discouraging news.

The first non-UK, non-US clinic has just gotten back to me, a clinic in Spain, informing me that they have no Asian egg donors. But we do have South American donors -- the nice lady adds in what I can only assume she meant as a ray of hope -- they have eye characteristics that are quite similar to Asians.

This last comment makes me snort out loud when I first read it, the idea that South American and Asian might somehow be close enough. This is soon following by annoyance, as I find myself steaming at the nerve of this internet stranger assuming that I have some stereotype of Asian eyes that I'm desperately keen to pass down. What the heck are Asian eyes anyway? Is she thinking slanty and small? Beady and lidless? Because those characteristics? They're not me.

And then I simmer down, because I know she means no offense; I re-read her email, I think about what she's said. And then, I just get sad. Because I realize the thing that really bothers me, the thing I'm not even sure I understood till now? It's not just the physical characteristics I'm looking for when I look for that elusive Asian donor.

No, I'm looking for something below the surface, something I'm not quite sure even makes sense. I'm looking for that tiny shred of shared something, that miniscule bit of common ethnic blood. Because irrational as I'm sure this is, I can't help but feel it deep in my bones: blood seems tangible. It feels like proof of who we are.

So it's not about the straight black hair or the yellow skin or the flattish nose or the fullish lips. And it's definitely not about the eyes, slanty or lidless or otherwise. It's about my need to create blood ties with my children, in whatever way that I possibly can.

how much?

2005-04-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

It's a strange question to ask, when what you're asking is how much it's going to cost you to conceive your child. It's supposed to be one of those perks of being human, the ability to reproduce. This should have been one of nature's freebies, making a baby with my favorite boy in the world; it's supposed to be an act made possible by love, not by money.

Yes, as many what ifs as there are running around through my head, it's especially hard not to dwell on the financial aspects of what it'll take for us to get me pregnant. When we first started talking about egg donation and IVF, just a few months ago though it feels like ages, we were so thankful that we were living in the UK, where medicine is socialized like it's supposed to be and even private care seems reasonably affordable. No insurance companies to wrestle with or crazy exorbitant fees to worry about, the way there is in our native U.S., where health is basically a business like any other, and infertility even more so.

After a thoroughly depressing meeting with a fertility specialist here in Edinburgh, however, it's become clear that as much as we're itching to get things started now, it's not going to happen in the UK. As the doctor bluntly informed us, there are no egg donors currently available anywhere in the city, even if we were to self-fund. With the recent law barring anonymous donations, and paid donations already illegal, waiting lists throughout the country are now years long. Even if, by some miracle, we were to bring in our own donor -- not necessarily to use ourselves but to add to the pool and bump us to the top of the list -- our chances of finding an Asian egg donor are virtually nil. I suggest you go to Spain, the doctor informed us finally; there's a great clinic in Valencia. Good success rates, no waiting lists, very efficient. And, he added matter-of-factly, their prices are much cheaper.

I came home from that appointment in a dark inky funk. I'm not going to Spain, I wail at the boy through hyperventilated sobs, we're not trying to snag some bargain on our future children! The boy hugs me, and smoothes my hair. It'll all work out, he assures me; we knew we might have to do this back home in the States anyway. Besides, there's nothing wrong with Spain; it's not like it's some third world country. And hey, he jokes, it might be nice to see some sunshine after all these dreary Scottish days.

As it turns out, though, we're not moving back to the States, even after this two-year stint in Edinburgh is up. Around the same time we had the fertility clinic appointment, the boy found out he got a job in Canada. A great job, the dream job, the one he stayed in school for twenty-plus years in order to get. There are all sorts of reasons to be psyched about Canada, and mostly, we're thrilled. But here's the catch: Canada's pretty much like the UK on the egg donation front. While IVF is covered, like all medical treatment in that country, donors can't be paid or donate in anonymity, and as a result, you sit on the waiting list for an eternity.

So I'm discovering some of the limitations of socialized medicine. Yes, it might be free, but what good does it do me when all their regulations make access impossible?

Which is why we've started looking at clinics in the States, even though it still makes me bristle when I think about how commodified the whole process is in my home country. It's also why we're reading up on Spain, even though we don't know a thing about that country's medical care, and I hate the idea of being one of those "reproductive tourists" the media so likes to talk about. I'm asking for prices, and getting details about what's included and what's not; I'm reading about payment plans (no baby! get your money back! -- no joke, I read this on a clinic's website), trying to stop wrinkling my nose in distaste. I'm slowly teaching myself to stop thinking about should've beens and supposed tos, because for us, this is just the way it's going to be. Money's going to be a part of it, no doubt about that, but in the end, it's still about love. Love's what carries us through this constant stress, the frequent heartache; it's what makes this all worthwhile.

in case you forgot (DNA and dead ends)

2005-03-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

G's latest email has a picture of him and the wife and their little boy attached. Just in case you forgot what we looked like, he teases. He looks good, pretty much the same as when we met back in college, a few more laugh lines around the eyes maybe. But it's the kid I can't stop looking at: he looks just like G.

G's all blond hair and blue eyes and is white as white can be. His wife has kinky black hair and dark brown eyes and skin that's like rich caramel. Their son's cutey-pie curls and smidge of tan are both courtesy of Mom's gene pool, but the rest is pure Dad. Looking into his eyes, especially, feels like looking into G's.

That makes me smile, and then feel a little sad too.

The boy and I used to talk a lot about what our kids would look like. We'd imagine his big round eyes mixed with my nice full lips; we'd wish for my thick glossy hair and his long lush lashes. We'd laugh about my little eyes and flat moon face paired with his big nose and pointy cleft chin. That would be hideous! -- we'd shudder. But secretly we thought our kids would get the best of each of us. We imagined the perfect mix of me and him -- half Anglo-mutt, half Chinese -- and knew it would be beautiful.

It's a strange thing to think that my kids won't look like me. It was always a possibility anyway -- half Asian/half Caucasian children often don't seem to look obviously Asian at all -- but now that maybe's a definite. My hair, my eyes, my nose, these lips: all this ends with me. I'm a genetic dead end, and there's a certain amount of irony there, when you consider that the boy's a biologist whose main thing is evolutionary genetics.

Genes aren't everything, the boy tells me, when I mention DNA and dead ends. Trust me, he says, I'm a biologist -- we know that environment counts for so much. The things your parents gave you, the best things, they're not about your genes.

And so I try not to dwell too much upon what might have been, because deep down I know the boy's right. Eyes and hair and skin, that's just surface stuff. I'll have plenty of good things to pass along to our children -- even if those things won't be obvious just from looking at pictures.

crash course: proceed directly to go

2005-03-25T11:47:00.000-08:00

I'm getting a crash course in high-tech babymaking.

Before last December, acronyms and abbreviations like IVF and DE, down-reg and stim, RE and ART and ICSI were simply not part of my vocabulary. The boy and I had just barely started trying to get pregnant and we assumed, like most folks assume, that it would happen the way they told you way back when you first asked as a kid. We pictured lots of good old private us time (wink wink nudge nudge); I vowed I wouldn't be one of those people who tells everyone in the world they're trying to get pregnant. The boy teases that I like to maintain this illusion of perfection, make it look like I get everything just right with no effort at all, and in a way, I suppose he's right. But mostly, I thought that making a baby was going to be this great joyous miracle that I could hoard all for me and the boy.

This, as it turns out, is exactly the opposite of how it will actually be, if we should be so lucky as to have things work out at all. Instead, I'm discovering that this wonderful intimate bonding experience that I'd always imagined is going to be a big complicated semi-public thing. There'll be drugs and needles and hospitals. There'll be doctors and nurses, lawyers and another woman. There'll be money, lots of money, so much money that it makes me feel faint just thinking about how large those numbers I've been quoted really are. Strangers and science and great heaping piles of cash, with me and the boy and all our love just a tiny part of a very complicated equation.

I know I'm lucky, to live in an age where I might still be able to have a baby, ovarylessness and all. And I know there are couples who try for years to get pregnant the old-fashioned way, with no good reason for why it hasn't worked, and how heartbreaking that can be , trying to decide if and when it's time to move on to plan B. The boy and I, we can skip all that waiting and wondering; we can accept that it's IVF and donor eggs or nothing; we can proceed directly to go. And as hard as the going will be, at least I know: we're doing what we have to do, to get the family we want.

And so: it begins. Bring on the acronyms.

the family way

2005-03-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

They couldn't they couldn't they couldn't. And now I can't. I'm 30 years old and technically in menopause; these birth control pills I'm on now, the same ones I took before, I take because I no longer have any ovaries. Without ovaries, you get no estrogen, and without estrogen I face such fun possibilities as osteoporosis by the age of 40, vile mood swings and hot flashes now. What I don't take these birth control pills for is, ironically enough, birth control. Because without ovaries, of course, I have no eggs to meet any eager little sperm that might venture 'round those parts. An oops pregnancy, that thing I so often used to worry about, is no longer even a possibility.

I never loved other people's children. My college roommate went through a phase senior year where she couldn't look at a picture of a pudgy baby face without sighing a heartfelt I-want-one! But I've never been one of those women: children are small, and sometimes cute, and often interesting, but I don't walk by these strange little beings on the street and feel any particular tugging at the ol' heart.

What makes my small heart feel big as the universe is the idea of family. And while I spent most of my twenties stumbling along with no clear career goal in mind, I knew I wanted the boy to be there in my future, and for us to someday have kids. I am a good wife and the boy is a great husband and expanding our happy little family of two to three, then four, and maybe five, was never a question of if, but when, with the answer pushing ever later into the future as time as I got closer and closer to thirty, and thirty felt younger and younger.

It's funny how as soon as you discover that you can't have something, you suddenly find there's nothing in the world you want more.

ab ovo

2004-12-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

The last thing I remember is a small green room. Three strangers circumnavigate me as I lie flat-backed on a hard gurney. They wear blue scrubs and move in a blue blur, stopping occasionally to slap a sticky electrode on my skin, give me a tense smile if they catch my eye.

Here's some morphine for the pain, the anesthesiologist says in his crisp British accent. Enjoy it, he jokes, and there's a movement by my arm. But I don't like morphine, the way its heat surges to the tips of my fingers and toes, pulls my spine stick-straight, seizes my stomach, grips me so tight I'm afraid to move.

Now this will make you go to sleep, he says, and there's another motion to my right. Think good thoughts.

I picture the boy. Sneak in a mantra. (Please let me keep this ovary please let me keep this ovary please let me keep this one I need this one. Please.)

And then, for a long time, the world goes empty.

o o o

It was a secret, our delicious little secret. For a while now we'd been talking about trying to get pregnant. A few weeks before I'd gone to the doctor, got a rubella test, received the a-okay to start trying whenever. I'd been worried: three and a half years ago, just before we got married, I lost my left ovary in an emergency operation. There was a large cyst that had twisted, cutting off the blood supply to my little eggs, till they were all dead and the ovary was no good. You can still have children, the doctors assured me; one was all you really needed. But my right ovary had a cyst too, relatively small, lurking. We'll keep an eye on it, my doctors said, and for three years I dutifully went in for regular ultrasounds. It's doing fine, they kept saying. Wait until you're ready.

The boy finished grad school; I got a book deal. And in October, I turned thirty. We're ready, we decided.

Friday I went off the pill. Today is Monday.

o o o

Get some sleep, my husband says, squeezing my hand. And because I'm so tired I don't even remember where I am at that moment, I smile a little, nod drowsily, close my eyes.

o o o

Later I remember. I open my eyes to the dark hum of a hospital room at night. The boy still watches over me.

Sleep some more, he urges, smoothing my hair. But there's something in the way he says it that sounds like pleading. It snaps me back And I know the answer even before I whisper:

What happened?

I'm sure he tells me they couldn't save the ovary. But the last few words are swallowed by my husband's crying, as he climbs into bed next to me still holding my hand. We cling together like one body and we sob and we sob, the bed shaking. And when my IV comes loose and the blood soaks my sheets, the blanket, my faded pink hospital gown, we don't even notice at first: blood and tears, tears and blood, our whole world's gone watery, and it feels like drowning.