Post by rainbowbridge14 on Apr 24, 2017 16:46:02 GMT -5
With it being National Infertility Awareness week I thought it might be nice to have a thread on this board. I noticed in the intro thread there were a number of us from the IF community here and it would be great to talk about our IF feels.
I do want to participate, but I don't know what to say (or, rather, how I want to say what I want to say). So, I'm probably going to be late to the social media party, as usual.
Post by rainbowbridge14 on Apr 24, 2017 16:59:53 GMT -5
It took 2.5 years, 4 TI cyles with no ovulation or late ovulation, 5 IUIs (6 attempted), and IVF with ICSI for us to have our daughter. I have PCOS and H has mild/moderate MFI.
I had a lot of feels during our IF journey related to being a Native woman. My family had a big distrust of science (my great aunt was sterilized at age 19 so I get why) and I had issues with being open about our choice to pursue treatment with them for a long time. I also had a huge sense of failure, not just in regards to my body but as a member of my community. I felt like I was failing my tribe by being unable to conceive which I know is ridculous but there is a lot of pressure in my community because of the way we are seen as dissapearing.
I have other feels now that we have finished IVF and have extra embryos. We hope to have more children but because of my PCOS we have more embryos than we will likely use. I wish I could contemplate donating them but the idea of my child being raised outside my tribe and traditions is not something I can get over and I feel guilty about that. Donating to science is also a somewhat strained issue (as mentioned above). The idea of destroying them also feels wrong so the whole thing gives me stress. Luckily the choice is many years out as we hope to start treatment again to TFAS this fall.
rainbowbridge14, Please correct me if I misstep here, but would it be more favorable to donate your embryos to someone else from your tribe, should they come to that point in their journey? Would that be less taboo or is the whole thing just as frowned upon either way?
IF sucks. And as a WOC it's so taboo that no one talks about it. And I hate that. I'm so busy trying to dismantle white privilege that I rarely have time to address my other issues in our communities like mental health and IF.
This! I feel like I have no space to think about IF in my community when there are far more pressing issues. But I can't not think about it either these days.
rainbowbridge14, Please correct me if I misstep here, but would it be more favorable to donate your embryos to someone else from your tribe, should they come to that point in their journey? Would that be less taboo or is the whole thing just as frowned upon either way?
It is possible but it gets very complicated. My tribe is extremely small. Even finding foster parents within the tribe to comply with Indian Child Welfare Act is super hard. Additionally, H is from a different tribe so he has his own feelings about her growing up with those traditions. We have talked about maybe donating to family if a situation ever arose where someone has had IF but that presents a whole other bag of issues.
We did lazy man's birth control with no result before we got married. I was pregnant on my wedding day, but didn't know. We lost that baby 2 months later. The fetus had a brain defect. After finding out that I had a low ovarian reserve, we didn two IUIs. We conceived my daughter on our first IVF round. I have 4 frozen embryos. The whole thing feels so conflicted. I have ended a pregnancy before. I have a photo of the sleeping little girl upstairs, when she was a cluster of cells. I am not having 4 more kids, I feel guilty about donating any unused embryos to research. I prayed hard to feel at ease with all of this. There were certain Christian friends I didn't even tell about all of this until I was big and pregnant. I'm rambling.... I'm grateful for the technology and grateful that Obamacare made it affordable. Now I'm starting the journey to baby #2. Thawing out my offspring..... whew!
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