Feeling as though I had failed in so many ways as a wife and woman I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse. In 2005 my mom called to tell me that my dad was not doing too well and that we should come out to NJ to spend time with him. This had been an ongoing struggle of my family wanting me to leave California and move back to New Jersey. With mom’s call I knew dad wasn’t going to live much longer. We packed up our belongings, rented our house and moved to New Jersey within 3 months of that call. Dad seemed to improve health wise, but for every step forward he took two steps back. It was tough to watch. About six months after we arrived in New Jersey, my grandmother started showing signs of worsening Alzheimer’s. She wound up living in my parents’ home and needed full time care. With all the stress of worry for my dad and Grammy I still couldn’t shift my focus away from wanting a baby. I felt that I was a failure because I couldn’t have the children that everyone around me seemed to just pop out at 10 month intervals. It was around December of 2006 when a doctor friend of ours from California came out to visit and suggested that we get in touch with a doctor who specializes in fertility struggles. I wasn’t sure I was ready to outwardly admit defeat and it took me about a month to call him. Doctor Sher is a force to be reckoned with. Once I called and made an appointment for a phone consult things started to move fairly quickly. We went into the NY office and had all kinds of testing done. Once the results were in he called us and went over all of it. He told us that it was unlikely for us to get pregnant without some form of intervention. See, I feel it’s all in the way you say it. He never told us it was impossible, he didn’t tell me I was infertile, he didn’t say I was a barren as the Sahara. He simply said it was unlikely. By not trying to take away my hope he boosted my spirits 60 times what they were simply by letting me feel that it was possible for me to get pregnant and have a baby. He explained that my ovaries were pretty much abusing the eggs I did produce and that it would be difficult to find healthy eggs to retrieve. I really don’t believe that I need to understand the clinical explanation of all that was going on with me as long as I have a way of understanding it that makes sense to me I’m ready to move on. So that March we travelled out to Las Vegas where he had an office and his lab at the time. We spent about 10 days there. Stress was high, we didn’t know exactly what to expect. Would it hurt? How would my body react? I was scared. My ovaries produced something around 50 eggs. Of those eggs only 25 made it through primary testing. Of the 25 only about 10 made it to secondary testing and of that only 3 made it to the 3rd stage of testing. We were on the road heading back to New Jersey, driving through Arizona I think when we got the call that none of the embryos were viable for transfer. I was devastated. I had failed again. The doctor called me a couple of days later and suggested that I take some time to relax de-stress and try again in a few months. I agreed and took off on a girl’s trip to get my mind in a better place. I had arrived in New Jersey, had time to unpack, do laundry and repack. 2 days after arriving I was in the van and on my way to meet a friend in San Antonio. She was house-sitting for her folks. We spent a few days in San Antonio, and then drove off to New Orleans. I guess I was looking for spiritual guidance, someone to tell me that things would happen, a way to keep the hope alive. I got that from a palm reader in the pedestrian mall. His words weather accurate or not helped me to continue to move on and move forward. He said I had the ability to have 6 children (we’ll see what that pans out to be in the future). In the meantime I could begin to feel that life wasn’t over and I was worthy of living life and enjoying myself.
In August of 2007 I went back to Las Vegas for another attempt at retrieval. This time we were successful. We had 3 embryos that were deemed healthy. We went back for the transfer in November and returned home to await the news. Two weeks later I had blood tests run and found that we were pregnant, most likely with twins. My husband was so nervous he was sick to his stomach. I was so thrilled nothing could bring me down. I knew we were not in the clear yet so I tried to maintain some perspective.
By the time I was 7 weeks pregnant I was as proud as a peacock. At eight weeks I miscarried and thought the world was ending. My husband and I cried and held each other. The doctor gave us some comforting words and still more hope. My dad was still with us then and he too was devastated as were the rest of the family. We took some time to go through a mourning period, unfortunately it coincided with Christmas. After what seemed like forever, drowning in a dark lake, I felt that my head was finally above water. That first cool breath of fresh air and rational thoughts had me thinking practically. What do I do now? Where do I go next? Is my husband ok? Am I ok? In those first few moments of taking stock of my current situation, I discovered that I had not actually done anything to help either myself or anyone else up until then. I had to be proactive and that was going to take a plan of some sort. I spoke to the doctor after discussing this with my husband and we decided to try again after a few months (in total – including the mourning time) of rest. I needed to get myself physically and psychologically ready to face whatever might come next. This I learned was me not failing. Failing would have been giving up and never trying again.
A note about failure: I still struggle with failure almost daily. I question my worth in so many little ways. Like so many others out there these days, I too and looking for employment. I've been working on updating my resume and looking at job postings all over the web. All day today I've been wondering how my resume can look so boring when I am so sure that I can succeed at almost any job given the opportunity. I find myself continually returning to a book that really helps me to record over the negative voices in my head. The book is John Maxwell's Failing Forward. He taught me that just because I may fail at something once, twice or even 10 times, I'm not a failure until I give up hope and learn nothing from those failures. Failure really is a state of mind.
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