Thursday, 16 April 2009
Hope and despair
I can cope with despair. What I can't cope with is hope. And hope does keep forcing itself upon me. Just recently I learnt that an old and dear school friend is pregnant. She's 43 and she and her husband have been through every hell to have a child but it never happened. Three years ago they had to give up. And now she's pregnant. I cried buckets when I found out. I spoke to her on the phone and she explained to me what I had guessed - that the baby is from a donor egg (and donor sperm). She then told me what the success rate is if you use a donor egg and it is very high ...... And suddenly I was thrown into spasms of panic and fear. I talked to my husband and he thought we should try it. I spent two days in tears at the thought of doctor's appointments, drugs, hospitals. Then I decided I'm just not going to do it. Despair is really easier. Also it is all too Brave New World for me. I certainly don't criticise anyone who goes down that route. People do it because they're desperate and I know what it is to be desperate. But no. I'm just not going to go to hell and back again for some other woman's child. Or that's what I feel right now anyway.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
i sometimes wonder, if i had no children, would i go donor egg? i think i probably would, just because i would carry the baby and all, as opposed to adoption. the choices available are just so far-fetched these days, it's weird to even contemplate them.
i get what you're saying, though...because right now i'd MUCH rather be DONE in my mind. it's way more comforting to just be fucked.
Dear Alice, I don't think it's a display of fear - if you didn't have a child I think you'd give it a try without hesitation. What you mourn are the babies that you have lost. Maybe, in not choosing to be pregnant at any cost, it's showing you that, although those babies will always be with you in your grieving heart, you don't want to return to those anxious days of pregnancy and can, one day, look forward again.
On the other hand, once the idea has settled, you may want to give it a try. Either way it will be a choice, not a desperate clutching at straws.
It's not exactly the same thing, but when I first realized that my best chance of having a live baby was surrogacy, I said I would never,ever do that.
But, over time, I thought about it more and changed my mind and actually came to embrace the idea and to be incredibly grateful that I had that option.
This is NOT to say that you'll ever feel differently about DE. Just that sometimes feelings can change and that no decision has to be final if, at some point in the future, you decide to follow another route.
The nice thing about decisions is that you can always make another one. Now may not be right but later might be. No need to worry about later now. And hope, yea, that can really mess with your mind. Hopeless and despair are at least, constant.
Sighs.
xxoo
For me donor eggs are very appealing, because they would be someone else's genetics and not my own, that and the very high rate of success (something like 65% chance per IVF ). But we are on very different mile markers on the same road, so that is very understandable, and I have an inherited disorder that I can pass on and don't want to.
But I am not there either, or maybe I am past there, I am not sure anymore. But, am thinking of you.
I completely agree with you re: hope vs. despair. I can do despair because the outcome is known. The disappointment is already there and there's no threat of me being disappointed/hurt again. Hope? Screw hope. I feel it every time I get a positive pregnancy test that results in a(nother) miscarriage. I feel hope every single day I don't bleed. I've miscarried (nevermind the stillbirth) too many times for me to believe there could be any other outcome and yet, I still have hope every single time that double freakin' line shows up on the test, however short lived it is. I hate hope because it makes me feel like I can be the person I was before all of this happened...and we all know that's just an impossibility.
You describe how I feel so well, Alice. XO.
I can relate. I sometimes dangle the DE option around but then I put it away. I think all in all, I've gotten to an age where I am done being pregnant.
But I do so long to be pregnant, never-the-less. I probably will feel this loss of possibility till my last day. Whenever I hear about DE successes I think, maybe? But then.......sigh.
Adoption is our current road to travel and once we really launched into it, I've felt excited about it. The only thing is that Australia is exceedingly slow.
Ditto. I've thought a bit about donor gametes since we may be dealing with a genetic situation, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided if I'm going to take a risk, I'm going to risk everything. Play all my cards. Mainly because I think I'd feel even worse if I did do donor and wound up losing the baby due to some infectious shit in my body -- it would be insult to injury. The upside seems a fantasy; the downside is just too much to bear. Hope can cram it.
Thanks so much for all the comments. They are all thoughtful and helpful and they make me feel less alone and as though I am being understood (which I certainly don't feel in my normal life). I try to go to blogs and read the words of people who comment but I'm computer illeterate and often find I can't work out how to leave a comment .... But I do read and enjoy (if that's the right word). So thanks. Alice
Hope and despair---yup, I know that safety in choosing despair. I think it's because despair feels like a destination and so I know where I am. But, hope---that's a journey that can lead anywhere. Peace.
Post a Comment