Diagnosis and the single factor

Once it became apparent that I wasn't getting pregnant easily, I began to wonder about the single factor. How much of the challenge I am facing is that I'm single. Even before I started trying, but once I was 30, I began to wonder if the fact that I hadn't ever gotten pregnant despite the more than I'd care to share # of times I'd had unprotected sex. (Yes, I count my lucky whatever that I am also disease free given my at times totally irresponsible behavior.) Certainly in my early twenties there were a few scares but no unplanned conceptions- funny how age and perspective shift can change your evaluation of something.

Here I am 15 some odd years later and every missed cycle or unsuccessful attempt has me wondering if I've always had some underlying issues or if the biggest challenge is that I'm single and trying to get pregnant using frozen donor sperm. When I first started, I was sure that I'd have no trouble and would be pregnant after only a few tries. I went full force forward into doing two IUI's - no drugs - per cycle the first two cycles. After neither of those cycles worked, I dialed back to one IUI per month till I used up the six vials of my original purchase. For those of you using known donors or married to a fertile partner - the cost of one vial of frozen donor sperm not including shipping averages between $400 and $600. If you want to use a donor who is willing to be known - i.e. a child you conceive with that sperm can contact the man at age 18 and the bank will continuously send you health/lifestyle information - it is usually $100 more than other vials. Granted in the grand scheme of having a raising a child, a few $100 more seems like nothing.

I began this post more than 6 months ago. I had just met with the RE I have been working with for the past eight months. She diagnosed me with Endometriosis and petitioned to move straight pasted hormone stimulated IUI to IVF. Her reasoning was both that I am working with frozen sperm and that the hormones can make the endo worse so IVF is a better option. My hormone levels are all still very good - though the more I learn the more I realize that FSH and LH and TSH etc are only vague indicators and the quality of the eggs is more the issue. So we proceeded blithely ahead with the first round of IVF - okay not blithely but I certainly knew less than I do now. The hormone shots and the testing was stressful but not terrible. The waiting and the expectation followed by the spotting and the definitive negative pregnancy test were devastating. I wasn't sure I could continue. I just felt so sad and cosmically punished.

In my post on Hannah, Sarah and Infertility in the Torah I muse on the fact that fertility seems to be something the divine bestows on the foremothers after long bouts of not being able to conceive. If fertility is a gift that the divine bestows then what of infertility? Is it about learning patience and the lesson of not having control? Is it about a need to develop a strong love for life independent of children? I have for the most part moved beyond seeing it as punishment. Certainly in the Torah divine punishment is much more actively dealt out. It is not so much the lack of things as the destruction or threat of destruction. Perhaps it is simply indifference. There are thousands who struggle with fertility issues today and no doubt there were back in the ancient world as well. Sarah and Hannah had their wombs opened but the text is fairly silent on the whys of either the opening or the closing. As an older woman I try to see those texts as hopeful prayers and examples that anything is possible.

Of course Sarah and Hannah were in loving relationships with their male partners. So how much is the singleness a factor for me. Recently, I've begun dating someone. He is far away and has a child from a previous marriage. The relationship is very new and I haven't any idea where it is going or what I want from it. Nonetheless, it had me thinking about what I do want - a family with a partner. It has me thinking about how much I want the whole package. He knows I am trying to get pregnant and is very supportive. Though neither of us is ready to try to conceive a child together - the thought has crossed my mind to want to try if my cycle and our visits coincided. All the work I've done over the past year with my leadership development program, the healers I've been seeing has seemed if nothing else to strengthen my system and make my regular cycles even more so. (So much so that my first attempt at doing a frozen embryo transfer with the one remaining embryo from my failed IVF was canceled because despite being in low dose estrogen which is meant to suppress ovulation - I ovulated anyway.) It makes me wonder if M and I were in a place to be trying regularly without assistance if I might be able to conceive that way now. His one son was conceived when he was already 38. Of course it is all conjecture because we're not in a position to pursue that and I am not waiting until we are. I am grateful that he is supportive of me trying the way I am with donor sperm. Still I can't help but wonder. So I guess for now the singleness factor of my fertility challenges will remain unknown - like much of my other issues. And as I approach this new Jewish year and look back on where I missed the mark and what I want to change, I know that I'm trying to let go of the need to know and to embrace the idea that my fertility challenges are anything other than a combination of factors none of which have anything to do with judgment or who I am. I am moving forward with the idea that anything is possible and that single or not this is my path to travel.

I began this post as a bit of a rant - about how being single might be the biggest single factor in my fertility challenges and about the cost of donor sperm. I don't have any more answers than I did. I have found my way to a place of more calm and self-love but the cost factor and the questions don't go away. I had said that in the grant scheme of raising a child and having a family the $500 or $600 or even $1000 for the purchase and shipping of donor sperm is really nothing. Even when I add to it the cost of medication and treatment - and I am blessed to live in the only state that requires health insurers to provide fertility benefits - it is still minor compared to putting a child through college or raising a child just to get there in the first place. It's nothing.

Though of course it isn't nothing; it's the price of hope and desire. If I knew there would be a child at the end of it, I would gladly spend as much as I could but of course that's the thing about hope and desire - there are no guarantees just the willingness to take the risk with the knowledge that hopefully whatever happens I will be okay.