so this is the story of the retrieval, but to begin this story i really have to backup about two years before i was born to the time when my parents made the decision to conceive a child together for the purpose of an intended domestic adoption. the baby would be adopted by their friends who were unable to conceive a child of their own.
yes, this is a big deal. yes, it was a big sacrifice and one my mother made a second time five years after i was born. you've probably heard a bit about my little brother on this blog, and while he is legally not my brother, biologically and emotionally he is absolutely.
i can go into all the motivations for such an act of generosity that my mother made twice in her life, but i won't. that's almost another story entirely and not one relevant to my own journey at this point. suffice it to say, i grew up always knowing about this type of gift that my mother gave and how much joy that has brought to my two "other" aunts and uncles.
fast forward to fall of 2008 when i was scouring craigslist for any job to get me out of the cubical hell i was depleting my spirit in daily, one email at a time. during those craigslist searches i kept on finding ads requesting egg donors or agencies requesting donors and while at first i dismissed them much like one dismisses all those poor marketing attempts in the form of a
free pink ipod, after a while the idea started to enter my brain in a way that made me take it seriously.
i got to thinking: what if
i couldn't have kids? what if i could only conceive through a donor? i would want someone like me to donate their long-limbed, intelligent and vivacious genes to my cause. and slowly i came to realize that there must be a 6 foot woman out there who would pick me. so i went to an informational, shuddered at all the needles one would have to self-administer, and then boldly completed my profile, submitted photos and entered myself into their database.
then nothing for a year and a half. which was fine. i put the idea out there and let it drop.
jump forward mid-january this year when i got a call from the donor agency asking me if i would still be interested. they had a couple so excited to start the process all their paperwork was sitting completed, ready to go into the mail as soon as my
yes was confirmed. and i gave it without pretty much a second thought. here we go.
a process they said would take three to six months we completed in two and a half partly due to the intended parents' motivation and partly due to a slew of lucky timings.
and what a ride it was.
we started off with the usual psych evals and personality tests that were actually a little tricky (on a scale of 1-4, strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, somewhat agree, strongly agree: your drinking problem gets in the way of relationships.
well, i don't have a drinking problem so does that mean i "disagree", or does
"disagree" mean that my problem doesn't get in the way? ack! they are going to think i'm an alcoholic!). blood tests. more blood tests. two rounds of DNA testing to make sure i'm not a recessive carrier of some more frequent genetic disorders including fragile X syndrome which would create a very sick little boy if the dad was carrying it as well. {i hadn't consciously realized it, but when the clinic mentioned how it would have a huge effect on a baby boy i felt taken aback and then suddenly saw how i had always pictured this family having a baby girl. a sweet dark haired little girl.}
then there was the pill, which was quite an ordeal. poor az. i knew it was going to be rough starting on the pill, but my god, i was a psycho. really. and as much as you tell yourself that you're getting all worked up about who's turn it is to do the dishes because of foreign chemicals in your body, it doesn't make you feel any less of a freak in the middle of the tantrum. my bra size also went up two sizes again which
almost made up for my waist size going up one and a half. oh, and those nice new angles i had recently discovered beneath my cheek bones. gone. and still gone which is puzzling since my waist (mostly/yay!) and boobs (sadly) have returned to their normal size.
after all that prep, the injections themselves began on march 9th. i started with a small needle that is laughable now, but seemed massive and horrible that first night. i literally sat on the bed with sweat running down my inner arms for 45 minutes before i made az do it. and he only agreed because the drama happening on my side of the bed was keeping him from going to sleep and it didn't look like it was ending anytime fast without help. which is true. those insulin needles look HUGE when you've never stabbed yourself with anything before. but the next night entailed only 15 minutes of sweating and i was able to do it myself and then the third night was less than five seeing as i was in semi-public at the time at the opening night of moisture festival and didn't have much time to delay. it was also getting easier even if there was still sweat involved for about the first week.
but that's all the physical end of it.
somewhere in this first few days of meds i walked into a room of twins at work (everyone here knows i photograph newborns in hospitals, right?). within two minutes the mom and i were talking about how her new twins were donated eggs and that while she has two older children, her third died in infancy with down syndrome and that she and her husband wanted a third enough to try and try until it came to the point egg donation was the only option left. she had tears in her eyes thanking me for what i was doing when i mentioned i had just started the process. and, most importantly, she said these two darlings didn't feel any less her own that the two that came from her eggs.
by the 2nd week when i went on the stimulation meds (to increase the production of eggs so they could retrieve enough to create several healthy embryos) and increased to 3 injections a night, i was a pro and the bruising on my belly lessened and each night i plunked the needles in my little red sharps container with a shy glow of pride. i was doing something good for someone else, really truly good and in order to do that i had to conquer that little fear i held till the very last one (that's a story on its own). facing down a fear and saying
ha, you can't stop me each night was good practice. perhaps i should have saved a few of my extras in order to remind myself what powering through a fear felt like...
the last few days of the cycle are determined by the growth of the follicles that house the eggs. a certain number need to reach a certain size before they will okay the retrieval. i was really impatient for the process to be finished. one, because my body felt like someone had stuck two oranges in place of my ovaries {which is fine until you want to button up your pants or bend over or my god, exercise--the latter of which i didn't do because you can really put those things into a knot} and, more importantly, i didn't want anything to delay my trip to new york city to see thom yorke that i had scheduled a little tightly behind the retrieval window. i booked the trip knowing i may very well have to cancel, but i was still going to hope and pray that it would all work out. i am a girl that likes to have my cake and eat it too as well as the icecream and chocolate sauce on the side, thank you very much. i also was really set on not missing a day of work if at all possible.
but, as the window for making my retrieval happen during my weekend passed, and the second time i was told to take more meds instead of that 1 1/2 inch needle that would signify the end, i found myself really upset. upset that i would have to take the day off. upset that i would have to pay az to stay home another day so he could drive me to and from the retrieval procedure and then stay with me. upset that i was getting closer and closer to my departure date to nyc and really just tired of feeling my body under siege. i was at work when i got the disappointing news that it wouldn't be on monday (my version of sunday) and i was rescheduled for the next day.
this was a blow. somehow things felt off. they weren't playing into my oh, so perfect vision that was also the least inconvenient to myself and i was almost in tears at work. until, that is, the voice of reason overpowered what i hope were just excess hormones in my system and calmly said
nathania, this isn't really about you. it's about this other family getting pregnant, so if your body needs an extra day to get all ready, that's fine. so much bigger things are happening than what works best for you and what's one day off of work, really?
something shifted. i became calm again and that was that.
sunday rolls around and i go into the clinic for what i think should be my last appointment. az and i planned on grabbing brunch after so i left him in the car and walked up to the clinic. as i was about half a block away, a woman rounds the corner and starts heading toward the main entryway of the building (the clinic is in a large office building in seattle). without really thinking, i heeded the voice in my head that said
catch up with her and trotted the distance between us so that we both came to the door at the same time. on weekends you have to dial in to be admitted through the front doors and so this little comedy of errors plays out between the two of us and the phone as i tell her what the number to the clinic is, she dials the phone, nothing happens, we realize you have to pick-up the phone, we both reach toward the phone, pausing as we each defer to the other and then finally she picks up the phone, but now has to redial. it was this little dance and we were both not quite timid, but gentle with the other. smiles. but all the while i was wondering why it was so complicated since i had had it all figured out after the first time i came in on a weekend.
justifying her unfamiliarity with the process, as we entered, i said "it's always weird coming in on the weekends since the front doors are locked" and she replied "yeah, i know, i was here yesterday too" and surprised, i said "yeah, me too!" as we entered into the elevator, without even thinking twice, i asked "are you a donor or a recipient?" and she replied "a recipient. and you?" "a donor. and i'm sorry if that was an intrusive question..." "not at all."
genuine smile on her part as there is a slightly pregnant pause as i realize i am addressing a recipient who is my height and build with brown hair and blues eyes. and as that is sinking in she asks :and what made you decide to become a donor?" my slightly distracted reply: "well, the simple answer is that i am tall and if i were in a similar situation i would want to receive a similar gift..."
at this point we arrived at the check-in desk {and for the first time i found the walk from the lobby to the clinic far too short since most days i am running late and it's far to long for the little time i have to trek it} and as she is heading to the waiting area, so very kindly says "on behalf of all recipients i can't thank you enough for the gift you are giving." and we part.
after checking in, i sat there only three or four feet from her, separated by a plant and my sudden shyness. if she was the recipient linked to me, i would want to share a little bit more. tell her about my mother. tell her how i really came about deciding to help out a family and really, just give a sense of me, my colors, that perhaps one day might shine out of the young being that will be her child. but then if she was the recipient linked to me, i also wouldn't want to bug her, intrude on her privacy or appear too forward. so i just sat there for a long minute or two before they called me back. and sadly i didn't even pluck up the courage to turn to her and smile and say
all the best.
no regrets.
but the weirdest big came a few hours later after i had gotten the good news that tonight is the big night for the 1 1/2 needle precisely at 9:30pm sunday night and that tuesday would be the day for the retrieval. i called my mom to tell her the news (who, most of you know, lives in austria i.e. 8-9 hours ahead depeding on where we are with daylight savings). i had only mentioned the retrieval date when i excitedly said "and i think i may have met the recipient!" to which my mom replied "oh funny! i had a dream you two met just as i was waking up this morning." and without me mentioning a detail further than the fact that i thought i had met her, my mom eerily lays out pretty much exactly what happened "you two were walking along and she recognized you {
could this be the reason she was so flustered at the door despite having been there the day before?}. then you asked her if she was a recipient and she said yes. then that's when you realized she was your recipient. you didn't say anything to her about it but you both knew...i woke up this morning and thought 'wouldn't it be nice if nathania could have that experience with her family.'" {i even think there was one more similarity between the two but i forget and need to ask my mom again}. let me tell you, the hair was standing up on my arms when my mom told me this and i cross my heart hope to die that the only detail i had told her was the fact that i had thought we had met.
so, who knows. i spoke to my case manager through the donation agency and while she apologized for any discomfort {i mentioned being shy, etc} and said it was the clinic's responsibility for keeping us int the building at different times, she also didn't deny that it could or did happen. hmm...
az was slated to help me inject the final needle because it was so big and needed to go in such an awkward spot (right behind the top of the hip about 4 inches above the bum), but he completely chickened out and somehow, knowing how much was at stake and how delicate the timing (it releases the eggs in this small window 36 hours later and they want to catch them before they all go floating away into the fallopian tubes), i was able to do it without much problem at all.
tuesday comes and goes and is really only marked but a bit of nerves and the surreality of being put under. you wake up feeling as though no time has passed at all but your body is in a different state which means time must have passed but that little clock that ticks away in your sleep got turned off too so the time just stops being accounted for. it was weird. but the procedure is one where they use a guided needle to poke through my uterus to get to the ovaries and suck up the eggs through the tip of the needle. thank goodness for anesthesiologists. and on the topic of anesthesiologists, the thoughts i used to distract myself during the IV insertion were
hmm...this anesthesiologist is kind of young {and cute} and hmm...now he's holding my hand and arm and erg, now he's poking....ick...laahdeedahdeedah...that's not working...hmm...i wonder if he knows my uncle. everyone associated in the field in seattle seem to know about him...and after being taken into the operating room and noting that portishead was playing in the background, i was out. as i came to, i was vaguely aware of the anesthesiologist standing over me and what do i go and say?!?! luckily, i don't think i mentioned the fact that he was cute, but i DID say something about my uncle used to being the head of the UW anesthesiology department and through the haze i somewhat recall that HE was the one who said "tom hornbein..." followed by some other stuff i don't recall.
so, that part of it went rather smoothly and my body is still purging itself of extra hormones, unfortunately through excessive breakouts that i'm probably the only one even noticing {which doesn't make it any less annoying}. but the great news is that last i heard the couple was 3 weeks pregnant which was two weeks ago so yippee!
send happy thoughts their way and in another 35 weeks a baby will enter into this world that will be a little part of me.
{this is when we decided he'd make a good tugboat captian.}
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