Also, I’m a sucker for efficient systems so I have to hand it Kaiser for figuring out a way to cover a lot of ground with a bunch of people at once in a one-size-fits-all format.  Probably the most useful part of the program was put on by the guest speaker, Isabelle.

Isabelle was the 2 year old daughter of one of the particpants of the class.  It was kind of interesting having this little girl in there as it made it all seem more tangible.  It was the reminder that this is more than a blood test and a video, but that if this goes right you’re going to have a tiny person that you will be responsible for.  It probably helped that she was very, very cute.  I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’re all hoping for cute.

On the other hand, she was 2 and it seems that 2-year-olds have their own ideas about things.  The desire to be entertained seemed pretty important to her and tended to run in opposition to what the rest of us were trying to accomplish.  I think it was the second time that her Sesame Street doll started signing its happy Sesame Street song and her mother got a little mortified that I realized that this job is probably harder than they’re letting on in these classes.

Anyway, she was the highlight of the class/appointment until about an hour ago when Amy called me to let me know they had called her with the test results.  Everything was fine except that the protein level in her urine test was quite a lot higher than it should have been.  Although the lab tech that gave her the results was not helpful in terms of explaining this, after a bit of research it’s not hard to see the possible connection to some pretty serious conditions.

If this were the 20th week and the elevated protein levels were accompanied by elevated blood pressure, chest pain, headache, swelling, rapid weight gain, brisk reflexes and/or visual disturbances then you’d have pre-eclampsia.  This is what no one wants to find out and would mean that a best-case scenario is a very risky pregnancy (to both Amy and the twins) and months and months of bed rest.  Worst case scenario would be a pregnancy that might not remain viable.

Anyway, this is scary to find out and gives us both plenty to worry about, but the likelihood is that we’re going to be asked to do the urinalysis again before they even start going down this road.  It could easily be some kind of urinary tract infection, or kidney infection, too, and not necessarily anything to worry about - though of course we will.

Amy and I had conversation after conversation about, essentially, what we want out of this life.  Would we be able to enter that next phase of being human - to raise another to live and prosper and, ultimately, replace us on this earth…..or would that chapter of our lives  be denied to us?  As IVF number one failed, and then IVF two never even got off of the ground, we faced IVF number three having decided that this was going to be the last attempt.  We wanted to leave the stress of trying and hoping and failing (and driving us into financial ruin) behind us. 

So we decided to embark on this final attempt privately.  On one level, I had enjoyed documenting my thoughts and feelings on this crazy process, and I knew I would appreciate (much) later being able to read about what we went through.  At the same time, though, we were both weary.  I didn’t know what more I could really say about the actual process, certainly.  I couldn’t even tell you what I was really, really feeling.  Schizophrenic is probably the most accurate descriptor as I didn’t know if I had a right to feel my usual optimism.  I know Amy didn’t feel that way so even when I felt brief optimism, I didn’t feel like I should share it.  I was increasingly pessimistic or realistic or trying to be optimistic about the possibility of not having children….but none of them felt right for more than a day at a time.  Sometimes I would try to make jokes about how we’re going to be able to travel so much more since we wouldn’t be having kids, but I think God or Fate or whatever saw through my thinly veiled attempt at a reverse-jinx.  Anyway, you get the idea.  It was ugly and we were both barely holding on, trying to just hope for the best every step of the way while trying to prepare for the seemingly inevitable worst.

The first hint that things might be breaking our way was when we got the fertility report post-egg retrieval.  There had been more mature eggs this time, so something like 10 out of the 12 mature eggs were fertilized and they all were still alive on day 3 - our transfer day last time.   We were going to move into the select group that got to go to day 5 (blastocyst stage), and implanted blastocysts are way, way more likely to actually result in a baby.   This was so unlikely of an event, I had never even bothered to research it  (hence, my use of “way, way” in lieu of a percentage). 

On transfer day there were two “for sure” good shape blastocysts still in the running and a third that was a maybe (that turned into a “for sure” and is now a popsicle) eliminating any conversations or arguments over whether we would try to implant 3 in the hope of ending up with 1 or possibly 2.  It was a gigantic can of worms that we got to just skip.  This was also good break.

Things were still pretty tense in our day-to-day lives as we both still hoped, but had no real reason to believe, that we would luck out.   Amy documents the process of finding out pretty well on her blog.  For me, it seems like we have had to be told over and over again that it’s true for us to really believe it.   First it was the four consecutive days of  positive home pregnancy tests, in which we were shocked each day that a little line was not only appearing, but gettng darker each day.  Of course we were still worried about the blood test though.

Then we got three consecutive positive blood tests where the number grew the appropriate amount each day.  We were on pins an needles as we waited for each of the test results as finding out that the number had dropped would have been terrible, but apparently it happens all the time.   We were pretty happy after the third test for a few days, but worry or the habit of worrying started to set in and we waited for the first ultrasound.  We didn’t even know if we could find out anything at the ultrasound as it was right on the borderline of seeing a heartbeat and without a heartbeat who knows what’s going to happen….

There really were heartbeats for not just one but both of them, though, and this was a really important step.  We were told that there was only about a 5% chance of miscarriage once you get the heartbeat, though still 20% chance of losing one of them due to “disappearing twin syndrome.”  We had another ultrasound at around 8 weeks and by then both twins were big enough that disappearing twin syndrome was no longer a concern.  UCSF sent us packing, pregnant and satisified…..and I think it was only then that we started to really believe it would all work out for us.  

It really is still early.  The second trimester doesn’t start until January 1st, 2009, and we both still worry a lot, but I think it’s a more normal worry than what we were experiencing before.    People have been asking me for what seems like weeks now, though, whether I was excited…and I have never really known what to say.   I was scared, and worried, and skeptical, and hopeful….but excited imbued the feeling with confidence that I did not feel.

But I have to say, that I am starting to get excited.

One way that we’ve tried to mitigate the problem is to carve out extra time on our own on some of these family vacations.  When we went to visit my mom in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, we also spent a couple of nights at THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay.  We both still speak longingly about the spa facilities there and pine for a Eucalyptus Steam on a tough day.  Our best vacation was probably Hawaii in 2005 where we spent the first two days in Honolulu at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki for two very full days before popping over to the Big Island for Thanksgiving and an island tour.  That resort was amazing - we saw tropical penguins, the USS Arizona memorial, the Dole Plantation, rode on a submarine, and had our first and only tableside caesar salad that was just out of this world.  The room was perched right over the beach and the view right outside our balcony could have been from a movie.  We still talk about that trip, too, though we only had a couple of days to pack in the action before we switched gears to family time (also good, just different).

So we’re pretty lucky that our families live in places that give us this kind of opportunity to kill two birds with one stone…and we’re due for another Hawaii trip this Thanksgiving so I started up the research machine to see what we could do.  Thanksgiving is usually a pretty optimal time to vacation because there are two “holidays” that week, so if you cough up 3 vacation days you end up with 9 straight days off (including the surrounding weekends).  Last time we went from the Saturday before Thanksgiving to the Saturday after….spent the first two nights in Honolulu then 5 nights in Hilo.  I started working off of that same template, but with the hope that we might swap it up to more like 3 + 4, so we don’t feel quite so rushed on the couples end. 

We had already kind of “done” Oahu so I started looking at Maui.  Kauai is supposed to be beautiful, too, but in doing some research some of what I was reading indicated that Maui was not only the “best” island in the Hawaiian Islands, but one of the very best in the world.  I read some at Travel and Leisure’s website and both Frommers and Fodors and concluded that the best place in Maui to stay was Wailea as it seemed to have the best hotels, the best beaches, the best shopping.  There’s probably other great parts, it’s just that I like to have a lot to do on vacation and  like to stay someplace nice if I can swing it.

The “three jewels” of Wailea are The Fairmont Kea Lani, The Four Seasons Maui, and The Grand Wailea.  They are all in a row sharing the same stretch of beach and each have disney-esque pools, amenities, waterslides, flowing rivers through the property, spas, etc.   It just sounds out of this world.  Of course all of this comes at a price….

Mind you, when we booked in Oahu our hotel was 500/night.  We didn’t end up having to pay that, but we were willing to do so if it meant staying someplace nice.  So it’s not like I’m not familiar with the extreme cost of doing business in Hawaii when I say that I found the price of hotels in Maui kind of shocking.  At the Hilton Hawaiian Village we wanted to have something facing the ocean (in Hawaii it seemed important) and we wanted to be in the concierge tower as it was supposed to be a little quieter and the service a little better (and it was….it’s a gigantic hotel and it never felt like it to us.  We were well taken care of).  At the big three you can get a garden view room (a nice way of saying the room is faced the opposite way that you really want) it’s 595/465/640 at the three hotels.  An ocean view room would be 725/600/860.  

So….obviously this gave me pause.  How do I feel about taking a vacation someplace that is that expensive?  On the one hand, people do.  When I read forums about it, people are writing about their week or two weeks they stay at Resort X.  Maybe if you want to vacation in someplace like Maui, that’s just the price you have to pay….or maybe I’m just picking too nice of hotels.  Maybe there are hotels in Maui that are acceptably nice that wouldn’t be quite so expensive.  I looked and there is a Marriott that’s a little older but in that general area that came it about 425 for Ocean View, so there’s that. 

I was still mulling this over when I realized I should price airfare.  I know at least one of the Hawaii airlines (Aloha?) that went out of business so that’s not going to help the prices and I need to know how much “extra” the cost is if I add in the leg between Maui and Hilo.  I punched in my Saturday to Saturday dates (not counting the extra hop) and airfare came out to 1300 roundtrip.   Each. 

I did a spit take with my coke zero and came to the conclusion that we’re not going to Hawaii.  There’s just no way!  I mean, if family wants to be visited they’re just going to have to move someplace cheaper….

Then I calmed down and started digging into the numbers a little.  It turned out that those two Saturdays were by far the most expensive days to fly in that two week block of time (650 each person/leg)  If we wanted to fly on, say, Tuesday to Tuesday, it’s less than half of the cost (300 each person/leg).  Perhaps the thing to do would be to fly into Hilo on Tuesday and see family the first four days, then go and stay at a resort for Saturday/Sunday/Monday and then fly home.  It’s not as good of a maximization of vacation time, but way cheaper.  Still expensive, but not “Maui expensive” to coin a phrase.  Oh, and it’s an extra 100 each to fly between the islands.

Still, though, with the extra puddle jump and my inability to grasp at what level I should be exploring Maui, I had the revelation that the Big Island has the whole Kona side that we didn’t even explore on the last trip.  If I could find a resort on that side of the island that we could enjoy, it would save 200 bucks and some travel time right off of the bat….and would bail me out of the Maui conundrum.

A little research later and I found out that the Kohala Coast near Kona is a very nice place to stay.  The beaches aren’t quite as nice as Maui, but still nice.  The best and 2nd best hotels were familiar names (The Four Seasons and Fairmont Orchid) with familiar prices (775/400 for garden view; 1155/679 ocean view).  However, in this case there was a third option that had some appeal to it.  There is a Hilton Waikoloa Village  that, gosh, seems a lot like the Hilton Hawaiian Village we stayed at in 2005….that we loved.

It’s gigantic (62 acres), which is nice for me because there’s always at least one day we really just want to stay on property and it gives us the advantage of having plenty to do near our our temporary home.  You can swim with dolphins on property or snorkel in their own lagoon.  There’s tons of restaurants and shopping and a world class sports club and spa (Kohala Sports Club) on propperty where you can work out and take a steam even if you’re not going to do the whole massage thing (which I also love, but they can get expensive).  So there’s a lot going on and best of all, the pricing is way more reasonable - 323 for ocean view on the executive/concierge floor.  For the price at the other hotels I looked at we could get literally get a suite here or else save hundreds of dollars over all of the other choices I was able to find.

I would still like to go to Maui, of course, and I’m sure we will, eventually.  Just need to talk it over with Amy to see where we go from here.

Does my road lead to a family with children?  Dare I still hope for this?  I am optimistic by nature, but it was easier assuming success at the beginning of the journey than where we are now, about half way to the end.  Is it safer not to hope, for fear of having it crushed or is that counter-productive?

I feel I should prepare for the possibility/probability of a life without children.  How do I do that, though?  If this were something less important, it would be easy to embrace the upside of the “life without children” possibility.  I would “spin” the positive aspects in my head and to Amy:  “We would be able to afford to travel as much as we would like.  We could afford nicer cars…”  I might come to believe that this version of our life would be equally good - just different than originally planned.  That however it worked out, we would be equally comfortable with the outcome. 

I just can’t spin it, though.  I am well aware that I really want this thing - this thing that may well not happen.  I can’t talk myself into believing that I don’t care.  I care and the dread of the possibility of failure hangs on me like wet clothes, chilling me to the bone.

The process starts anew this week.  We write the big check today and FSH starts on Friday.

We went on vacation.  We talked to family.  We talked to each other.  We saw a couple of movies.  We talked some more.  I think we had to talk until we could figure out how we were supposed to even “feel” about where we are in our lives with all of this going on.  To try to determine to what lengths we were willing to go to in order to expand our family by one (or more). 

It was good and healthy and difficult to talk about sometimes - exploring the limits and how we would or could handle the worst case scenario - that we crap out (using my gambling metaphor again).  I think we came through this failure stronger, though…we both refuse to let this define us.  We are not going to spend the rest of our days trying to find the missing piece for happiness - we’re already happy. 

I think we would make great parents, and Amy in particular would be a great mother, but if it’s not in the cards then we’ll be ok.  We’ve got a great relationship and we would just end up having a lot more money to take vacations, etc. as the years go by.  That’s not what we want, of course, and I think it would be sad to have to face that reality, but face it we would.  From reading a few of Amy’s IVF blogs that she forwards to me, not all relationships survive this kind of trauma, but neither of us are concerned about us, and that’s a pretty good place to be and a good thing to realize as we are facing our last best chance at my future nobel prize winning, football star son.

Interestingly, he took a slightly different tack today, instead making the case for going straight back into another fresh cycle.  Here’s the thinking:  if you might want to have a  second child (assuming you didn’t get a multiple), doing the frozen transfer now would use up any embryos you have.  If the frozen transfer is successful, then Amy will be pregnant for 9 months, then wouldn’t be up for IVF with a newborn…it’s probably a 2-3 years before we’re even having the conversation. 

In 2-3 years, though, Amy will be pushing 39 and while there is already a bit of an issue with ovarian reserve, it stands to get significantly more serious in these next few years making it increasingly unlikely that there would be another trip down this road.  So choosing to do the frozen transfer now (and assuming success) instead of another fresh cycle is choosing the strong likelihood of only one child. 

We are not greedy - I think all along we would have been ecstatic to know we could have even a single child.  Assuming the first child, though, I imagine we would want a second if there was a way and I didn’t expect to have to face the decision today of exactly how big of a family we really want.  We’re supposed to get back to him soon.

By the end of the first week of The Wait, and Amy started testing regularly with the home kits, it was hard for me to figure out what to do with that information.  I had reason to doubt it for most of the early ones, but as negative after negative mounted, most of my hope had been extinguished - say around day 11 or so.  There was still a glimmer of hope and part of me thought that we would, or at least could, hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth and all the worrying would have been for nothing…but that’s not the way it worked out.

So, I can’t say I wasn’t prepared for the confirming blood test that we are negative - certainly I saw the headlights coming our way - but I wasn’t prepared to feel like I felt yesterday.  I felt a genuine sense of loss - and not about the money either, in spite of wife’s gallows humor. 

When they gave us the picture of the embryos it made everything so much more real to me.  I have a friend who went through IVF and ended up with twins.  On the first page of the twins baby book is her picture of them when they were embryos still.  I kind of figured it was just one of the upsides of going through the process that we get our “first picture” at a much earlier age, so to speak.  Anyway, let me tell you that it makes it so much worse now.  What happened to them?  Why didn’t they stay where the doctor put them?  I just don’t understand what went wrong.

I’m already better than I was yesterday as I reeled trying to understand emotions foreign to me.  I sense that I’m already turning the corner a bit, as is my way.  We have an appointment already scheduled for next Friday, May 30th with Dr. Rosen - I imagine to plan the attack for the next run.  I’m not quite, quite ready to go there yet, though.  Not quite ready to let go of the place we were just a week or so ago.  I was so ready for it to have finally worked out for us.  So ready to name our child(ren), and make sure they were going to get a good education, and have a home that was prepared for them, that I’m not quite ready to set it all aside again and turn this all back into a chemistry experiment again.  I will.  Soon.  But not today.

I read “Water for Elephants” first and had been looking forward to it for longer than any other book in my reading list.  When I started school, I realized I had to set aside reading for pleasure since I had so much other reading already.  When my wife talked me into dropping my environmental science class (I didn’t really need it anyway), a lot of time opened up for me and this was the first book I chose.  Amazon had it at 4.4 stars and  it came up as a “recommended” book when I bought “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, a book I really, really liked from last year.

Anyway, so I was looking forward to it.  It was told from perspective of a 90 plus year old man.  That was kind of new….and I like new.  It was told in a flashback from the time he worked on a circus in the depression.  Well, I don’t think I’ve read about life in a circus before either…though I enjoyed Carnivale on HBO.  Anyway, also new!  Aside from the two time frames that flip back and forth, the book has a further “envelope” of foreshadowing that leads the book off.  A tragedy or disaster that happens that you know is going to be coming for the rest of the book, creating tension as you think you see it coming.  Anyway, couple the cleverness of the time shifts and the foreshadowing with learning about the very interesting life in a small time circus and that would have been enough for me.  The relationships were just ok - perhaps a little simple, but there are a couple of very clever turns at the end of the book that made it all quite satisfying.  It lived up to the hype.

Next I turned to the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami.  I read another of his books last year called “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” and I was looking forward to seeing what else he had done.  He’s apparently HUGE in Japan and I’m becoming a pretty big fan as well.  “The Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” is really two stories.  The stories flip back and forth each chapter (odd and even).  You would think it would make them hard to follow, but they are very different stories, so it wasn’t.  Ultimately, it’s a bit of cleverness that makes you realize that these two stories and worlds are connected and that was cool.  You figure this out about 3/4 of the way through the book…and then the last 1/4 of the book is, upon reflection, kind of a mess.  Stylistically, though, Murakami creates such an interesting world and populates it with such unique characters that it’s hard to mind too much that you just don’t see the point of a lot of it - the ride is so much fun.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was largely the same - there were some very interesting and compelling plot-lines….for a while…and then they almost become de-emphasized as they become increasingly arcane and subservient to the characters and the world and the tone of it all….and all of those are brilliant, but the plot?  If I tried to explain it, (either of the two Murakami books I read) it would make it seem like less of a work than I thought it to be. 

Finally, I read a short book entitled “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.  Amazon readers have it at 4.5 stars which is quite good.  I can’t remember what led me to this book, but I’m awfully glad I read it.  A little bit like “The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight” as it’s told from the perspective of someone that seems just a little affected.  He may not always understand some of the things that are happening, but we as readers do.  He’s a freshman just starting high school and he’s a pretty isolated guy, though since it’s from his perspective, it’s hard to be sure of why.  The story as it unfolds is told in the form of letters that he writes recounting his freshman year in high school.  The things he learns about himself and we learn about him made this a facinating read.  You grow to care very deeply for Charley and you feel his pain and his small joys even while you realize that you cannot entirely identify with him.  By the end of the story you understand.  Everything.  Charley still feels very real to me and I’m a little sad that I don’t get to read how his sophomore year went. I’m definitely going to see if Chbosky was able to do anything else interesting.

I’m trying to decide what’s next for me.  I have ”A Spot of Bother” on my bedstand but have heard good things about “A Thousand Splendid Suns.”  We’ll see.
 

We still don’t know anything, of course.  Amy has done a couple of store-bought pregnancy tests because the waiting was just too hard.  Those were negative.   Every day, Amy comments on or I ask about the myriad of physical aches and pains she has.  We both wonder if they might be indicators of pregnancy, but neither of us knows the answer.  We just don’t know anything.

We are emotionally steeling ourselves for bad news so if it comes on Tuesday it doesn’t overwhelm us.   Yet we continue to hope, looking for some morsel of information that would tell us that this is breaking the right way for us.

However, anyone who knows me knows that I have spent my life agonizing about minutia, living in my head working out every possible pathway from where I am now to where I would like to be.  There’s just something about being caught unprepared for any eventuality that makes me sick with worry.  I’m not bragging…I know this is a tragic flaw in my makeup.  I envy those carefree souls that don’t worry quite like I do.

Anyway, I say all of that to say that this whole “2 week wait” thing is very old hat for me.  I am a seasoned veteran at worrying about things like this and have already turned the corner and achieved peace with where we are in the process.  I have rationalized how this is actually easier than watching my wife suffer through the drugs of the previous few weeks and much less complicated.  We’re down to just one shot a day that I have responsibility for giving and Amy just has to take a pill or two.  See how at peace I am?  I’m not even positive what pill she’s taking or how often. 

It was so very hectic and difficult as the egg retrieval day approached and then the transfer day was such an emotional culmination to everything that, again, this feels almost like a calm time.  The storm has passed and Amy is doing great.  Our fifth wedding anniversary is tomorrow and I feel like we have a pretty good shot that this will work out.  At the very least, I get to spend all of the time up until the pregnancy test believing that we “might” already be pregnant and I like that feeling too much to start worrying about what I can not control.