I’ve always wanted a blog (writing is one of the few things that comes naturally to me), but I’ve never had a subject matter that I thought I could stick to for any extended period of time, until now. I am 26. I am single. I am passionate about children and one day becoming a mother. And I have Stage III, almost Stage IV endometriosis. I am, for all effective purposes, infertile. This diagnosis, and the damage caused by it, has happened swiftly and aggressively (timeline from first issue to the most recent bad news: 1 year), and I have found myself drawn into the internet ether searching for answers.
The irony here (because every good story is thick with irony) is that I donated my eggs twice to infertile couples. I have always wanted children, and have never had any reason to question their presence in my future; I was just waiting for the right man, the right home, the right job… I had time. I had always been perplexed by the multitude of couples yearning for children they could not have, and in contrast, the women who didn’t want them but just kept finding themselves pregnant. It’s always seemed to me to be one of life’s greatest injustices, so when the opportunity arose for me in college to satiate my growing student loan debt by helping two different couples finally have the families they had been struggling for, I jumped at the chance. I can’t lie and say that the money wasn’t a motivator; I was serving my way through college and I had bills, but this was one way I could ease those bills in just a few weeks of discomfort, and do something I truly believed was a good thing. I would have done it for a lot less, and I always felt good about my decision. Every Dr. I saw said I was meant to have babies when the time was right, that my reproductive organs were impeccable. I was the perfect woman to help those women my heart had ached for. I was never supposed to become one of those women.
A year ago I was in a relationship. My first “real” relationship. I was 25, so this probably makes me seem like a late bloomer, but in reality I have always just been focused on getting my life in the right place first. I took a lot of years to work on me, after what most would deem a fairly tumultuous childhood. I had issues (I still do!), I knew that… I wanted to fix me first. There were always men, and I was always blissfully dating someone, I just never let anything get too serious. I spent 7 years (and 160+ credits) working towards trying to find the “perfect” degree (finally settling on psychology, with the eventual goal of returning for my masters in order to work with abused and neglected children), I traveled the world, I lived in California on the beach, and I drove by myself to Alaska where I bought a home and was ready to settle down. When I fell in love I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t looking for it. He made me laugh, he was good to me, and he took me by surprise. Still, when I started missing periods neither of us was ready for what that might mean. Our relationship was new, he already had two kids and wasn’t sure he was ready for more yet, and I had always promised myself I would do the baby thing the “right” way (which in my mind meant husband first, then baby… I’ve seen it happen the other way, I know it can work, it’s just not what I wanted). The fear of the little one that may or may not be growing inside of me created a tension between us I wasn’t prepared for (although, if I had known then what I know now, I would have been elated if I had been pregnant) and being completely inexperienced in “real” relationships, I bolted as soon as I realized I wasn’t pregnant and had bigger issues to deal with. I had never dealt with anything hard with someone by my side, I only knew how to do it by myself. I had worked so hard at becoming “strong”, and was so afraid of losing that and actually relying on another human being, that I pushed him away.
My first Dr. did not take me seriously. He told me I had just moved, that I had drastically changed my life, and that so much change explained my 3 month long absent period. When it finally returned and the pain was so bad it brought me to my knees and left me sick and throwing up, he explained to me (quite condescendingly) that “some women just experience this, it’s normal.” When the pain became a daily problem, he treated me like it was all in my head. It took 4 months before he did an ultrasound. While I was on the table he asked me when my last ultrasound had been (it had been my last donation, a year prior), and what the results had shown (everything had been perfect). “Hmmmm...” he said, “I’d like to see those pictures. I’m not sure I believe that. Your ovaries look like hell.” Needless to say, when I had the records sent to him, everything had indeed been perfect just a year earlier (I hadn't been to a Dr. for anything beyond broken bones and those donations in years. I had always been healthy, if not completely clumsy!) Still… He talked to me like I didn’t matter. Told me that he didn’t know what was wrong, but he was hesitant to move forward with treating me; he threw the "cancer" word around like it meant nothing, but then just as flippantly would say that he thought things might just fix themselves. When I pushed (needing explanations, answers, and relief) he explained he could do exploratory surgery, but that he couldn’t make any guarantees he wouldn’t have to remove at least one if not both ovaries while in there; he would need me to agree to that prior to the procedure.
I switched Doctors. My new Dr. was amazing. She scheduled me for an exploratory laparoscopic surgery almost immediately. I was scared, but I trusted her. The results of that first surgery were that I had endometriosis. I was confused by that. My understanding of endometriosis had always been that it was hereditary (to the best of my knowledge at that point, I had no family link, although to be fair; I hadn’t had any real contact with my mother since before I even started my period… I have since found out that both she and my maternal grandmother had hysterectomy’s as a result of endo), and that women usually started suffering as soon as they started menstruating. I was 25, and up until that point had never had any problems. She couldn’t really explain my questions of origin, but said that all women’s experiences with endo were different. She had needed to take out one of my tubes during the surgery (it was too scarred down and damaged to be viable) and also my appendix (it was covered in endo and appeared to be leaking), but she was convinced with the proper treatment I would still be able to have children. She even believed that my one tube could possibly take over the function of the other in the future, and that I would likely still be able to conceive naturally (maybe with just a little help from fertility drugs) when the time came. I started on birth control for treatment and went on my way; wary, but hopeful.
Four months later I started having pain again. I knew, because of the kind of pain (something I can’t even describe, but had never experienced before the endo), that it had returned. By touching my stomach, I could also feel the distortion on my right side from the endometrioma that had previously been removed. The ultrasound results clarified my fears, and even though my Dr. couldn’t explain to me how the cysts and adhesions had returned so quickly, we scheduled my second lap for just 5 months after my first.
This time I had faith in my Doctor. I went into surgery hopeful, and with a sense of humor. I had the most adorable anesthesiologist, and when I woke up as my catheter was being removed and saw him standing over me, my first words in my drugged out haze were “Oh no! Hot Dr. just saw my vagina!” I went home happy and drugged and had no real reservations about what the results would be.
That all ended quickly when I got the call from my Dr. the next day. The endo had spread rapidly and aggressively. She said that I had, in just a few short months, the amount of endo growth and damage that she would expect to see in a patient who wasn’t doing anything for treatment over 2-3 years. She was no longer hopeful about my future fertility. My left ovary was completely scarred into my pelvic wall, my right had been severely damaged by cysts, and my remaining tube was so scarred and damaged that even if I could get pregnant on my own (an occurrence she now gave 10% odds), the risks for ectopic pregnancy would be astronomical. It had also spread to my bladder, my bowel, and all the surrounding tissues. She wasn't able to remove all the endo, there was just too much. She said that during the surgery she had to keep reminding herself that she had just been in there and cleaned everything up 5 months prior. She was shocked, and my insides were broken. She wanted me to start on Depo-Lupron immediately (a drug which I had been on for both of my donations, so I at least knew what to expect from the side effects), and referred me to two different fertility clinics so that I could weigh all my options before I no longer had any.
I was crushed. I had always wanted babies. I had always known I would be a mom. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me. The first person I called (in complete hysteria) was the only man I had ever loved. I had been working towards rekindling things with him for the last year, with mixed results. I needed to be comforted by him. I needed to hear his voice. He couldn't really give me what I needed though. After a very short conversation (during which I was crying so hard I'm sure I was unintelligible), he quickly got off the phone (in his defense, he had never heard or seen me be truly broken down [this was not a common reaction from me], I'm sure I scared the hell out of him), and I haven't heard from him since. It turns out he didn’t love me anymore, at least not enough to be there for me through something so difficult. The good news was; I had just been dealt the biggest blow of my life, so this didn’t hurt me nearly as badly as it should have (or probably would have under different circumstances). He did what he had to do, and can I really blame him for doing exactly what I would have done (and more or less what I did do) a year or two prior? More importantly, was he really the man I thought he was if he couldn't even be my friend through something he knew was breaking me? So there it was: I would be doing this alone. I was strong. I was independent. I could handle it. Everything would be OK. Anyway, his loss… I’m really good in bed (sorry dad!)
I immediately turned to the internet for answers (my plan, was to formulate a plan; because once I had a plan I knew I would feel hope again), and while I found blog after blog with “miracle” babies that were incredibly uplifting, I didn’t find a single person dealing with this on their own. There is a whole different set of challenges to facing infertility as a single woman. All the infertility clinics are geared towards working with couples (just look at their websites, every other sentence refers to your “husband” or “partner”; my paperwork even had 5 pages for my "spouses" information, which I ceremoniously crossed through with a black marker), and when you are part of a “couple” and you are faced with this, the immediate and obvious response is that you will start doing whatever you need to do in order to get pregnant as soon as possible. When you’re single, it’s not so obvious. I have wanted children my entire life, but I also grew up wishing every day for a “whole” family. Is it really right for me to bring a baby into this world knowing it won’t have a father from day 1? I know women do it all the time, and that circumstances beyond people’s control happen and they end up being amazing single parents, but could I really do it by choice? I knew financially and emotionally I could handle the burden on my own, but could I be so selfish as to do that to my child? I've relied on my father 100% almost my entire life, I know that children need their dads AND their moms. Then again, there is part of me that feels like if I lose this opportunity, if I never get the chance to be pregnant and to nurture that life with mine; I will never feel fulfilled, I will never be complete, and I will always feel like I lost something amazing that I was meant to have. I am afraid that I will always feel empty.
People try to comfort you by telling you that you can adopt when the right man comes in your life. Adoption has always been an option for me. I love kids so much, and I've always known that I could love and care for a child who wasn’t mine as much as I could one who was. I've always planned on being a foster parent and adopting later in life, I've always wanted my life filled with kids whether they were "mine" or not. But: I wanted/want that experience at least once. I want to grow large, I want to breastfeed, I want to feel that baby kicking inside of me. I have always planned on natural childbirth, and have been doing research on birthing centers for years. I have watched "The Business of Being Born" more times than I can count. I was supposed to have this. I look at my friends now, in varying stages of pregnancy or already with families of their own, and I want it so bad. I just never felt rushed, until now.
So what do I decide? What is the right answer? And, as a single woman, what are the rules for dating if I'm considering becoming a mom on my own? When is it “OK” to tell a man you want to be a mom, and it needs to happen soon? Should I be saving for IVF, or is it safe to buy that new flat screen I've been coveting? I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I don’t know how to find them, but I know myself, and I know if I write it down as I go the answers will start to seem clearer. They have to. I can't think of any other way.
