First Post!

It's been hard for me to start this blog.

I have wanted to start this blog for, oh, to be honest, about 7 years... ever since I started trying to conceive.

I was obsessively reading a community of infertility blogs at the time. So Close, A Little Pregnant and many others, most of which have morphed in to parenting blogs as their dreams became real. I was a total lurker... but I felt tremendous support from these women.

Back then I was 41 and single. (Or single for most intents and purposes, I was still legally married to a man who things didn't work out with, and with whom I lived for one difficult year, in 1994).
But in 2003 I was living alone in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, my home town, and frankly thought I would be alone for the rest of my life. It was a very hard decision to start IUI's with donor sperm...alone. The idea of being a single mom was scary. It was a lonely process choosing a sperm donor, and a clinic. I ended up doing 11 fruitless IUI's, and eventually I started looking into adoption. I went pretty far with the process, which was complicated by my age, being single, and the fact that I only wanted to adopt a newborn. (this has to do with the fact that I am adopted, and have some anxiety about bonding).

Right around the point I was ready to move ahead with adopting, I met my beloved. It was a total shock to me to fall in love with someone I trusted completely, who was really present and accounted for, had a gorgeous heart and soul, a job, his sanity, the ability to communicate, who adored me, who I got along with well, and who wanted children. He was the first in, well, ever.

By that time I was 45. The whole adoption thing suddenly did not feel right to me, for reasons I could not explain. Partially I just needed time to be with my new relationship. So, That's what I did. We never used birth control, and he had high hopes that I would get pregnant. I never really thought I would, having done extensive, obsessive internet research on fertility... and I knew the statistic's for conceiving naturally at age 46, 47, 48. Microscopic and getting smaller.

After bearing him feeding me every fertility oriented herb, vitamin, food, etc., for 2 1/2 years, 6 months ago I agreed to visit a fertility clinic with him, largely, I admit, to have him hear firsthand that I was not going to get pregnant this way.

Funny thing happened tho.. while I had been terrified of hearing anything negative from the doctor, I actually felt some relief when he said I had such a small fraction of a percent of a chance of conceiving with my own eggs that it was pretty much zero. Just to hear the truth (as it were) spoken out loud, took a burden off of me. He recommended donor eggs. This was an idea that I had never really considered.
I spent two weeks thinking about it, feeling all sorts of upset about the idea, as well as intrigued, then, suddenly, it was the right choice, and I desperately wanted to do it! This may not seem like long enough to really think things through, but all of this has been cooking inside me for so many years, that I can trust myself when something feels right.

So here I am. By the time we had decided on a donor, it was the holidays, and then we had to elope to Hawaii.. so we started our first cycle after we got back, all legal. And tan.

I am now in the middle of my first ever IVF cycle. With donor eggs. I have been on Lupron for 11 days, and estradiol for 4. My donor started her stims yesterday. I have been feeling verrry spaced out! Porquoi? I'm sure its the drugs.. its not altogether unpleasant, except when I have to do anything other than lie around. Then I feel like I have a gray mohair-like sack over my head. Can't seeee too well... can't think much.. wanna sleeeeppp...

I feel very alone in this process, tho I do have my sweetie, I am missing female friends. Moving to the country from NYC recently, I have not yet connected with people here in the intimate way I like. At 48, my other friends either have made their peace with childlessness, or have adult or older children. I only have one beloved friend who is my age and just adopted a baby after a loooong journey of wanting children, wooo hooo for her!! She lives in Alaska, far far away.

So, hey! Internet friends gratefully welcome. Can't wait to meet you!