Balancing Work and Infertility Treatment

November 23, 201513 Comments

I have been mostly open with my colleagues about the infertility treatment that we are facing. I told a small number about the three IUIs, but in preparation for IVF I decided I needed to tell a few more of my colleagues in my team. In fact, my team gave me a gift card for a nice restaurant as a I was about to take four days of sick leave for the Egg retrieval and embryo transfer for our first round of IVF. But it’s not something that everyone is comfortable initiating a conversation about it all with me. They don’t know where the line is, so I try to be open about it as much as possible and help them to feel comfortable asking me whatever questions they may have.

This ‘open’ approach has mostly worked in my favour; but that doesn’t mean it has been easy. It is coming up to almost a year of treatment and my boss has known about my appointments and treatment for the majority of that time. He has been accommodating, caring and supportive to my needs. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how supportive your peers and bosses are, there is the issue of the work that still needs to be done.

I feel unreliable, I feel flaky, I feel selfish and I hate not being flexible. I feel like the weak link in the team. I hate that it is almost impossible to plan long term projects and work travel – a key part of my job. I feel helpless, sometimes I feel useless. I try to compensate by being overly proactive in areas that don’t require long term planning; I try to over achieve on short term goals and tasks. But ultimately this impacts my career. I feel like I have taken a career break.

Juggling work with infertility treatment requires meticulous planning – and yet what are you told when it comes to IVF treatment? Always expect the unexpected. So planning for the unexpected becomes an overly stressful burden to your sanity.

For me, the first time we went through IVF it was a quiet time of year for us – August. Many of my colleagues were on their summer holidays, so all was good. This time around we are expecting to start stimulation in the New Year. Things start to get a whole lot busier at work at this time of year. I have already had to say no to travelling to Europe in January because it is likely my egg retrieval will be in that week. Not attending this meeting in Europe may impact my involvement in the project overall. Or simply just add another layer of stress even if I do pick it up afterwards from playing catch-up.

Then, there is the added problem of being physically at work; suffering from pain and tiredness as a result of the hormones and your body coping with the side effects of the drugs. I tried to hide the pain. I must have gone to the toilets about 25 times a day to hide. Sometimes I just spent 5 minutes sitting there taking a timeout. And it wasn’t just the physical pain, the emotional strain plays a part in all this too. Simply put, the infertility treatment has also affected my mental focus on doing a good job. For example, I was not satisfied with my output around the time of the IVF (I had a deliverable due just before the start of the IVF cycle – this was a terrible terrible idea!), although I know I am very self-critical and set high bars for myself – no one has actually complained about my work thus far. I just hope that is because what I delivered was satisfactory, and not because people were afraid to upset me!!!

I just hate this.

And I am lucky that I do not have to lie to my colleagues. I cannot imagine having that added pressure of guilt and keeping up with lies in addition to the stress of the treatment itself. Some people need to keep their treatment a secret either for job protection or it is within their nature to keep family life private.

So what have I learned? Second time around, I will schedule in a combination of annual leave and sick leave into my diary for the start of stimulation. Fortunately it’s a new year of leave, so I will be able to do this this time around. Who knows what would happen if we have to do IVF all over again after this round. But this time, I’m going to try to focus on the treatment rather than juggling it with work.

Maybe I’ll take up some knitting or do some oil painting to keep me occupied. I’m going to need to find something to keep my mind busy!!!

:-s

As for the long term impact on my career, well, I will just have to not worry too much about it just now. Maybe if we get to summer next year and still no pregnancy, how I feel about my career is going to really influence my decisions about what we do next.

The cost of a suspected ectopic pregnancy

November 21, 2015November 21, 201511 Comments

You can’t put a price or a value on having both your fallopian tubes intact. In fact I imagine that anyone who has lost one or two of their fallopian tubes wouldn’t be able to put a price on how much they are willing to pay to have them whole and functioning again. Without a doubt. And so when the doctor told me that there is a risk that I had an ectopic pregnancy and a fallopian tube could rupture at any point, you simply don’t think about the $$$ money.;

After I found out that my pregnancy was non-viable, the whole process of determining whether or not I had an ectopic pregnancy was absolutely soul destroying and mentally exhausting. I tried to research what the likelihood was of having an ectopic pregnancy was with IVF. I tracked my hCG levels to try and determine what my odds were. I even joined several online groups to talk to other women who had experienced what I was going through. (I have probably mentioned this before, I dislike online forums because you get exposed to some real stupid, dumb, insensitive and simply irritating people. And you just can’t get rid of them.) All of this led me to some tiny hope that I was going to be one of those women who was going to beat the odds and carry a pregnancy despite the slow doubling hCG levels.

The doctors cared a lot about my wellbeing and were concerned of an ectopic. I mostly followed their recommendations: We both dropped everything to come in to the clinic for blood tests, consults and ultrasounds. What they didn’t tell us was how much it is all going to cost. Like I said, when there is a risk of losing a body part or even worse, your life, the money doesn’t matter. And now I can finally say how much it all cost.

I am not complaining about the cost because we are lucky, we have amazing insurance and we can afford to pay the bills. What I would like to know is what about those people whose insurance wouldn’t cover the costs? It’s just another slap in the face if you have saved up or taken on debt to pay for IVF. Of course, most insurance companies cover the cost for maternity healthcare, but the treatment of an ectopic or any other type of pregnancy loss doesn’t come for free. Remember I told you about the woman who couldn’t afford to have an ‘abortion’ to end her life threatening pregnancy at her hospital because of a CRAPPY law? (You can read about it here).

When you save up and take on debt for IVF, no one tells you to save a little bit extra in case things go slightly wrong. I have discovered, however, that most hospitals and healthcare providers will negotiate the costs if you can’t afford this type of care. There are also some charities out there that can help. I also believe that friends and family will be there too to help out. We have helped out some friends in the past when they got caught out with unexpected medical bills. It’s not only a difficult emotionally, it can quite quickly become difficult financially.

So how much did it cost? Luckily for us, not much. The total cost was $3,107 of which our insurance covered most of it, and so cost us $140. I have updated my ‘Cost Lowdown’ page with the breakdown of where the biggest costs lie here. But this has made me think about putting aside more savings specifically for unexpected healthcare costs.

My appreciation for the UK National Health Service has simply sky rocketed.

Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world….

November 12, 2015November 13, 20155 Comments

Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world….

Ha! Got you thinking there with that provocative statement….well it certainly got me thinking when I read this opinion article from the Guardian. Catherine Deveny tells us that we should drop the slogan “Being a mother is the toughest job on the earth”.

Well Catherine, apparently you would be going against the opinion of 92% of mothers. According to a survey by ‘Parents Magazine’, 92% of mothers agree that being a mother is the toughest job on earth. The other 8% must be rocket scientists and coalminers (well at least according to @JillFilipovic.) And don’t forget the journalists at The Guardian.

Why does Catherine tell us we should quit the slogan? Because she believes it encourages mothers to stay socially and financially hobbled, it alienates fathers and discourages other significant relationships between children and adults. Hmmmm, I’d never thought of it like that before.

When you really think about it, she is right. In her article she explores what a mother actually is in this context, and argues that the slogan delegitimises the relationship fathers, friends, grandparents, and carers have with children. And what about those single dads out there?

“If being a mother were a job there’d be a selection process, pay, holidays, a superior to report to, performance assessments, Friday drinks, and you could resign from your job and get another one because you didn’t like the people you were working with. It’s not a vocation either – being a mother is a relationship.”

(That’s my favourite part of the argument!)

But is she getting a bit het up about it all? It’s just a saying, a phrase. Surely it doesn’t cause any harm? Who actually cares?

Well, when you evaluate it at deeper level it contributes to building up the idea that nothing a woman can achieve in life matters more than having babies.

My dear Friends, I am not saying that being a mother (in whatever guise) or even going through motherhood, isn’t tough, it is. I have seen it and it isn’t pretty. I’m looking forward to the challenge AND reward of being a mother someday. But I’m not going to kill myself over this infertility, I’m not going to dig myself into a hole of physical pain and emotional suffering. At some point in the future we may have to make a choice of being childless and I don’t want to feel like I have failed. Chris said this to me in the car yesterday after my HSG test. “It’s not giving up, it’s not failure – it’s a decision”. This slogan “Being a mother is the most important job in the world” will make me feel like I failed and will perpetuate a hole of sadness and depression in me, and I don’t want that. And I also don’t want that for anyone of my friends and family, child-free, now and in the future (or anyone else in the world for a matter of fact). My feelings are pretty much in alignment with Catherine…

“If you are using motherhood to assert that you care more about humanity than the next person, if you’re using it as a shorthand to imply that you are a more compassionate and hard-working person than the women and men standing around you, then feel free to get over yourself.”

Coping with the holiday season when dealing with infertility

November 8, 20159 Comments

Resolve – The national infertility association – posted an article today on ‘tips for coping with the Holidays’.

I thought I’d take a look because the last article I ‘Pffftt-ed’ from Resolve I ended up regretting – coping with Halloween. I ‘Pfffft-ed’ it when I saw the headline ‘Coping with Halloween’ on my facebook feed because I honestly thought it was a ridiculous idea. Why would it be difficult to deal with Halloween? And then Halloween came along and by the end of the evening I completely understood.

I had actually never experienced the Halloween fun since moving to the US because I had been on work travels the past two years. This year I was excited to actually be in the country because Americans go all out when it comes to Halloween. I had to yet to experience American Trick-or-Treating.

I bought a couple of pumpkins and two of the biggest bags of fun pack sized sweeties (candy) I could find. I made Chris go and dig out all the halloween decorations from the shed. I wanted to get into the spirit of things. On the eve of halloween we dressed up as ghost muskateers and went to a friends party – adults only! It was so much fun.

On halloween night itself, we went to a friends house to chill out. We sat outside in their front garden around a fire pit, making ‘smores and giving out candy to the tiny terror trick-or-treaters. It was everything I imagined trick-or-treating to be in the US. The kids had fantastic costumes – some kids even turned up in a limo! After a bit of questioning we found out that the kids in the limo were from a neighbourhood that perhaps one wouldn’t go trick-or-treating (the adults followed in a different car). It was the sweetest thing, and they were by far the politest children too. Adorable. All this cuteness around – our friends have a newborn baby too who dressed up too! It was a bit too much for me and I felt a bit sad by the end of the night.

If we do fall pregnant with the next round of IVF we might have our own newborn to dress up in a cute costume. Chris said that next time we will just have to borrow a kid for the night and actually go trick-or-treating with them if we haven’t successfully produced our own by then!!

So now I actually understand what the Resolve article was all about. Halloween is not an easy holiday to cope with when dealing with infertility. I just had no clue.

Resolve’s article today contained some useful tips for coping with upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I won’t replicate them here, you can take a look for yourself here. They are worth a read.

But I will mention the one tip that really stuck out for me:

“Begin your own family traditions: a special ceremony or ritual that says that you and your partner are already a family, and that you can rejoice in your love for each other, with or without children”

I liked it because it is so true. In particular as we are thousands of miles away from our family it is even more important to create our own family traditions. Chris and I brainstormed ideas for what could be our tradition – we talked about food and drink (making our own things), activities like volunteering at a shelter, going for walks etc. And playing games….

One of our favourite hobbies together is playing games. We even have our own games night tuesday where we switch off the TV and play some games. We also have our own cribbage league. The day after we got married we started counting the cribbage wins in a little notebook. We carry a deck of cards, mini travel fold out cribbage board and the little score notebook where ever we go. It’s a bit of a talking point in cafes and restaurants as we get our crib board out and play away! Each year there is a decisive winner (Chris is currently winning!!!)…we will continue this tradition forever! We also hold games night dinner parties too. As you can tell, we like playing games!

But what has all this got to do with coping with the holidays? Well, we decided to create our own family game. It will be called “‘Insert Our Family Name Here’ Fluxx”. Fluxx is a card game where the rules are constantly changing – it is a lot of fun.

http://www.looneylabs.com/lists/fluxx-v4-card-list

There are many themed variations of this card game e.g. Pirate Fluxx, Monty Python Fluxx, Zombie Fluxx, Oz Fluxx etc…So we will create our own Fluxx like card with the theme of…us!! And this will be the game we play at Christmas. The great thing about Fluxx is that it is suitable for all ages, so it really will be a family game. I am so excited to get started on making this game – just in time for Christmas! A small thing to get us started on creating our own family tradition over the holidays 🙂

You just can’t make this stuff up – facebook again

August 31, 20157 Comments

They say a picture paints a thousand words…so here it is.

For those who cannot see this picture, it is a screen shot of my personal facebook post from this evening. I wrote:

“It has been a difficult week for the both of us, I am pregnant, but the doctors have now given us less than a 1% chance of my pregnancy continuing successfully. We wait to see how things go, but have readied ourselves for the worst. We are being open and honest because so many other struggle with this in silence. The IVF process has been a roller coaster of emotions for us and would like to say thank you for everyone supporting us through it all.”

Above my post is a facebook sponsored advert for stitch fix maternity clothes. Can you believe how mad I was to see this – only 5 minutes after posting it??? Especially after I have already changed my facebook settings to prevent all ads relating to parenting, family, pregnancy, babies etc. Clearly the facebook algorithm reads my post status with “I am pregnant” and over-rides my chosen settings. The fact that I am already a stitch fix customer adds insult to injury!!

I will write to facebook to tell them how upset this made – in spite of the fact that I had changed my settings to prevent this from happening. They really must do better at this.

On the positive side, we have had lots of love and kind messages in response. We thought it was time we gave an update because today when we went to our softball social league where someone congratulated us – then we had to tell them the bad news, and I think they just felt awkward over it. Facebook – the good, the bad and the ugly.

It can be all a little bit confusing

July 20, 20155 Comments

Infertility treatment IS pretty darn confusing. And I’ve spent 100s of hours researching it. It’s confusing because there is no one single way to treat infertility. If they had figured out a magic pill to get you pregnant we would all be taking it. Unfortunately, there isn’t that one pill. There are many causes of infertility and so treatment is specific to the couple being treated. The journey each one of us take to the great pudding club will be unique. And it can be confusing with all that medical jargon, drugs (brands and generic versions), procedures, timings…and to make things worse, it will probably be different each time we have another try to make a little one.

We have been asked many questions by friends and family about our infertility, and I am so glad they do ask – firstly, it shows that they care, and secondly, it helps spread awareness of infertility (did you know that 1 in 10 couples are infertile?). So to this end, I have put together a page on my site that introduces some of the important terms we talk about a lot, all in one place.

(My new page: What does it all mean?)

I have also updated the ‘about me’ page to include a timeline of what we have tried so far. We will be using these pages as a place to direct family and friends for a bit of background as we start our first IVF cycle and tell a few more people what we are going through.

My dear friends, I just wanted you to know how grateful I am that you are here with us and support us along the way. Thank you for understanding and thank you for providing us with words of strength and comfort X

The $$$ lowdown

May 10, 20152 Comments

I have created a new page on my site that sums up all the costs of our infertility journey so far. I will keep this up to date as much as possible…I have copied the text from it and pasted it below (or here is the link to the page)

We are very lucky that our medical insurance includes coverage for the treatment of infertility, including IUI and IVF.

We are being open and honest about these costs because it is important for people to understand the difference having insurance coverage can make. Only 15 states in the US make it mandatory for insurance providers to cover infertility treatment, and even some of those are extremely limited. There is much debate on whether infertility should be covered as an essential health benefit. There are many campaigns ongoing to change state law in this regard (www.resolve.org)

There is definitely a lot to be said about the psychology and stress to infertile couples over spending this vast amount of money if they do not have insurance coverage for infertility. Chris and I find this process stressful enough as it is without the added burden of the actual cost. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like without coverage. At each stage of our journey we have had to get approval from our insurance company and with having an ‘unexplained’ diagnosis we have always been nervous that they will not cover us. However, we have been fortunate so far. Fingers crossed they will cover our IVF too.

Item	Full cost	Insurance covered?	Final cost to us
Ovulation Kit (pack of 20) x3	$70.00	No	$70.00
Pregnancy Tests (various types) x4	$85.00	No	$85.00
Basal Thermometer x1	$13.00	No	$13.00
Pre-seed Lubricant x1	$24.00	No	$24.00
Chris blood tests	$572.00	Yes	$10.25
Dani blood tests	$560.00	Yes	$14.43
Reproductive Endocrinologist Consulting Fees (Doctor visits) x3	$340.00	Yes	$5.85
Ultrasounds x4	$900.00	Yes	$71.72
Anti-biotics for HSG	$15.97	Yes	$1.60
Sperm Analysis	$110.00	Yes	$1.53
HSG	$835.00	Yes	$29.18
Letrozole x3	$8.53	Yes	$0.86
Ovidrel x3	$371.16	Yes	$37.11
IUI x3	$765.00	Yes	$36.81
Sperm Wash x3	$320.00	Yes	$16.80
Progesterone suppositories x3	$147.00	No	$147.00
Running Total*	$5,136.66		$565.14

A note about our healthcare insurance. We pay a 10% co-pay for each bill of the ‘in-network’ cost, not necessarily 10% of the whole cost. Our current infertility clinic (or ‘provider’ as it is also called) is ‘in-network’ so we get extremely preferable rates; for example our new doctor visit it was $190.00, our insurance paid $0, so we paid $0. This is because our insurance company has negotiated these types of ‘bulk’ discounts in advance with our provider.

Choosing an ‘out of network’ provider can increase overall costs. There is one other fertility clinic in our area we could have chosen, but is out of network. It was something we considered, but we went on recommendation and did not think too much about this at the beginning.

Currently my insurance premium is ~$500 a month, plus my employer contributes ~$1100 a month, this covers both Chris and I for all medical expenses including dental and optical.

*As of 10th May 2015

Bitter Sweet Days

April 19, 20152 Comments

When logging on to catch up on my daily dose of the blogging world, I get a little bit excited. I am excited because I love to see that announcement I myself long to write. Seeing those beautiful two pink lines. I am inspired by women who have stayed strong through their battles against infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss, they are unaware what their blogs have helped to overcome in the last few months.

But excitement is rarely straight forward in the infertility community. Parties, ‘champagne’, phone calls, hugs, kisses, messages from loved ones are not always immediately possible. I get nervous when I log on almost as much as I get excited. I get nervous for those who the bitter sweet of the two pink lines can be several weeks down the line, who may experience the greatest sadness of their lives. The happiness, cruelly taken away. The punch in the stomach. The pain and headaches from sadness and sometimes even a depressive hole. I am nervous for them.

There is nothing more I can say about these feelings other than how I find some days to be simply bitter sweet. I know the old saying ‘When life throws you lemons, make lemonade’, but sometimes life is just not like that. Those lemons suck. Really suck.

Wishing happiness….

Infertility Awareness: Sharing our Journey

April 4, 2015April 4, 20158 Comments

It’s national infertility awareness week soon, 19-25 April 2015. The theme is “You’re not alone”. There is a blogging challenge under this theme which I have been thinking about writing. I asked Chris if he thought it would be a good idea for us to write a joint blog post under this theme and post it onto our personal facebook pages. After all, it is the making people aware of infertility week – how better to make people aware than to share our journey so far? But Chris quickly pointed out that this would be too much to share. We would get more questions like, “Any news?”, we would be asked about our troubles at times when we just don’t feel like talking about it, we would also get the unintentional insensitive thoughts, ideas and suggestions (a great post about this “Pardon me whilst I burst into flame” I re-blogged here).

This all makes me so sad. Sad because I feel like we should make people more aware of the statistics (how common it is), the hidden suffering, the variety, complexity of infertility problems and the many options/choices of treatment.

Our journey is getting a bit rocky

The infertility journey is a rocky wild path, that will throw all types of extreme weather at us, it’s physically exhausting and mentally draining. We know the peak is high, we may come across false summits. Some of us may fall down, some of us may find shortcuts (we always hope to find shortcuts!) and sometimes the path simply becomes longer and windier than we ever imagined. We can ask directions from the experts along the way, they help us to see the path as a gentle winding pleasant route, but they can rarely help when nature creates that avalanche and cuts you off. If we have our friends with us, they can help us round and scale the new challenges that pop up…they don’t need to be there all the time, they can relay it up the mountain with us, but surely we are better off not going it alone?

In some ways this journey reminds me of the play we saw last year, K2. This is a story of two climbers who scale K2 but come across difficulties in their climb, death is near as they fight for survival together. The two contemplate the meaning of life, family, friends, God and our existential existence. Ultimately, if there had been at least one other person with them, they all may have survived. Is our infertility journey like this? If there were more than the two of us, if we fall, will it be easier to get up and keep going? Movies often portray climbers that find themselves like the K2 scenario as egotistical and selfish. But climbers are misunderstood, climbing is more than adrenaline or ego, big climbs are often an exercise of self examination, a chance to get away from the daily grind. I am not saying that in this case infertility sufferers are like climbers. But what I do wonder, is that we similarly are misunderstood. We are misunderstood because no one knows we are out here on our journeys. Should we make more people aware? How can we do this?

We are out here on this journey because the top is going to be beautiful, it will be worth it in the end, worth the financial burden, the mental exhaustion, the physical pain. I’ve heard it is amazing up there. I just don’t want to be alone. But I’m not sure we are ready to invite everyone to join us on our journey just yet.