Houston. We Have Landed...

Previously on Self-Made Motherhood Blog...I was living through the trials and tribulations of living in close space with a very nit-picky, backhanded compliment serving French Gran, counting down the days until I could get to Bangkok and get this show on the road.

Since then, I departed France last Friday and arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday afternoon.  My arrival day plans got pushed back to Sunday, so I spent a lazy evening at home reacquainting myself with my much missed and very needy and whiny kittie, Precious Roy.  I had started the Serophene (brand name for Clomid) on late Saturday afternoon when I got home (I'd meant to start it first thing in the morning, but forgot to put the little pill packet in my carry-on bag, and I was at 35,000ft first thing in the morning.)  I'm not sure if it was the Serophene or the jet lag, or a mixture of the two, but I didn't fall asleep until 7am.  Of course, I was supposed to be out of the house for my, now, Sunday plans by 10:30am....so that didn't happen.  I did run around like a mad woman checking little errands off my list though, so Yay Me! on that one.  I even took myself to a movie, since I'd been so deprived of new releases for the last month.  I saw Step Up Revolution in 3D.  Oh my goodness you guys, it was so bad!  Not the dancing.  The dancing was amazing and innovative.  The soundtrack was tight.  The storyline's entire premise was pretty lame and the acting didn't really help with that at all (shocking, yes, I know).  But I digress...

Now, while all this is going on, you should know that my spermcicle from CCB Bachelor No. 1 shipped from California on 27th August.  It arrived in Thailand on 1st or 2nd August....and was subsequently held in Customs (FedEx had to get my Thai clinic to submit some paperwork).  Up to the day I left Hong Kong heading to Bangkok (today), the nitrogen tank holding what may very well be the key to my potential future child(ren), which was guaranteed to stay all nitrogen-y for 7 days, had been on the countdown clock for 11 days. ELEVEN! I was, in retrospect, shockingly calm about it.  I sent e-mails to the clinic coordinator.  She e-mailed me back.  Apparently, it was some super long holiday in Thailand, so try as she might, they could not deliver it any sooner.  Upon arriving at the very lovely and kitschy Phranakorn-Nornlen Family Guesthouse in Old Bangkok, I pulled out my laptop, got online and searched my e-mail for any sign of hope.  When I opened the latest message from the clinic, I found this:

Dear *S,

The sample has arrived. The sample’s still freezing. J

Have a nice trip to Bangkok. See you .

Best,

I jumped to my feet and did a little dance of joy!  My spermcicle had arrived safely, still frozen and nitrogen-y, and it is now waiting for me and some full-grown follicles to show up and handle business.  And now I wait.

My last evening in Hong Kong before coming here, I Skyped with a guy doing a documentary about single women choosing to conceive alone.  Miss T.  had put me in touch with him, and I thought, "Sure, why not?" The whole thing was a little weird for me since I am not accustomed to having my decisions and/or motives questioned.  He wasn't rude or anything like that.  He was just curious and asking questions that I would normally only answer for my nearest and dearest.  But he did ask me something towards the end that made me pause.  He knew that I was leaving the next day to come to Bangkok for IUI.  He asked how I would feel if this cycle was not successful.  So far, every cycle I've tried has been unsuccessful.  It's not a new feeling to me.  It's not a new emotion.  Will I be upset?  Of course.  Who wouldn't?  No one comes into this hoping to fail.  My emotions might run a little deeper this time because it may be more than another year before I can try again.  But trying to get pregnant via alternative insemination three times with no babies to show for it, the failure feeling isn't new to me.  I don't think it can hurt me in the same way that it has before.  I'm sure it will hurt if that's the way it turns out, but I don't think I'll be broken by it.   He asked if I was nervous or anxious. I thought for a moment.  No.  The airfare and lodgings are already booked.  The spermcicle is already shipped (and now, thank God, received).  The medication is being taken.  The clinic doctors know what they are supposed to do.  Everything that happens from here on out is out of my hands.  So I choose to believe that all will be well.  I choose to believe that at the end of this journey (and this is just a step in the journey, not the end), I will hold my baby in my arms.  I will look on my baby's face, count my babies fingers and toes (always gotta check for extras), and speak my baby's name.  I can do my best to bring events to pass, but the how and when and where this all happens is not up to me.  So I wait, and I imagine a future with me happy in it.

Stay tuned....

On To The Next: Thailand Here I come...Soonish-ish

So, previously on Self-Made Motherhood Blog, I was working on shaking off a bit of a funk and getting my ass in gear to make a baby over summer vacation.  I'd settled on Thailand because it's close to my current home in HK, relatively inexpensive-ish, and they are one of the few countries in Southeast Asia where a single woman can go to get knocked up via IUI with a spermcicle from an off-shore sperm bank that ships internationally.  Also, I spent nearly an entire month there about eight years ago and have been dying to go back.  The food, the people, the sun, the beaches, the bath-water warm crystal clear beach water, the stunning vistas, the elephant jungle treks, the markets, the super cheap Thai massages...all of it. Yes, please!  As long as no tsunamis are in the works, we're all good...

After a lot of research, a lot of inquiries, and a lot of delays, I finally settled on the Blastocyst Center at Perfect Woman Institute in Bangkok.  The coordinator, Sudamon, is always so prompt in responding to my questions and cc'ing the doctors into our conversations to get better answers from them, and also to keep them informed of my concerns, etc.  So, if the way they handle procedure is at all like the way that they handle client services, I think I feel pretty good about the decision.  Now, I was upset that I couldn't find a clinic that does the procedure (either with imported frozen sperm and/or for single women) further south...say, Phuket, for instance.  Bangkok doesn't really sparkle with beachy goodness.  But it does have an abundance of cultural and spiritual spots and wats to check out, and it's where most of the fertility clinics are located.  Bangkok it is then!

I decided to do my first ever medicated cycle.  I've never had a problem ovulating, but after two at-home ICI's and one unmedicated IUI cycle at a midwifery clinic, I felt like I should maybe kick it up a notch.  And let's be honest, probably more than 50% of the stress of my natural cycle IUI was just worrying about timing and where I needed to be on this or that specific day, and timing my insemination less around when my cycle said it was time and more around the clinic's scheduled hours for performing IUI (my midwifery practice only did IUI's in the morning, before noon).  At least with the medicated version, I'm already ovulating, more or less, on their time table.  No more worrying about that!  For the low, low price of $300 USD (deducted from the $1000 USD total for everything - IUI procedure, sperm thawing, labs and tests, monitoring, etc.), Blastocyst airmailed me 20 tablets of Serophene (different brand name for Clomid).  Starting from CD3 of my insemination cycle in August, I'm supposed to begin taking it four times a day (50mg per pill) for five days.  Projecting my cycle ahead, I should be arriving in Thailand around day 3 of Serophene (CD5).  Then I'd go in to monitor the progress around CD9 or 10 and get an HCG trigger shot to jump start the ovulation process when the doctors think that my developing eggs are just the perfect amount of ripe for plucking.  Although, someone on my Fertility Friend chat board just told me that a friend of hers just conceived quadruplets on only 50mg of Clomid daily...I may contact Blastocyst to see if I should maybe take a lower dosage or come in for monitoring earlier than CD10.  Hmmmmmm....Of course, my Fertility Friend BB connection was also quick to point out that her friend "responded great to the Clomid", while she herself didn't really respond well at all.  I guess from Blastocyst Center's perspective, the idea is that if you're coming all the way to Thailand for your IUI, then there really isn't time to start out on a low dose and then up the dosage next cycle if that doesn't work out.  For most of their international clients, I'd imagine, this is the only cycle they'll be doing, so it's best to just start out as you mean to go on.  You know, as I'm writing this, for just a flash of a millisecond, I thought to myself, "Twins might not be so bad...it might be kind of nice..."  I must be losing my damn mind!  Moving on...

Well, just a few more weeks (exactly 21 days, but who's counting?), and I will BE in Thailand getting ready to get knocked up!  I should probably get on the phone and order my sperm, huh?  Oh wait, I left that part out!  Okay, so as you probably already know, I was (still am, actually) very attached to my first choice donor at PRS in San Francisco.  However, PRS does not ship internationally.  So once I actually made up my mind to go for it in Thailand, panic did in fact ensue.  At first, I thought I might go through Xytex or Cryos International, but their offerings of donors of color were slim...and by slim I mean that Xytex had zero donors that were in any way, shape, or form of African ancestry; and Cryos had exactly one.  (Or maybe there were more, but not in the open identity category - it's very important to me that my child be able to contact the donor when he/she comes of age.)  Then, the every lovely Miss T. suggested I give California Cryobank (or CCB as they call themselves) another look.  We had both originally eschewed CCB's super flashy website and decried their gimmicky use of donor "look-a-likes" (with each donor, they list a few celebrities that the donor may resemble).  But when it came down to it, they had enough of a selection of donors of color and/or mixed race (with open identity status) for both of our tastes, and they DO ship internationally...CCB it is!  Funnily enough, we both zeroed in on the same donor AGAIN right off the bat.  She made up her mind almost immediately and stuck with it (she did her IVF with him in Barbados in late June.  Fingers crossed! - you can read about it on her blog).  After checking out his complete family medical history though, I decided to go with a different donor.  So, we won't have sibling babies together, but she'll always be Auntie Tee regardless.  I have a few genetic predispositions on my side and, if I can avoid it, I'd prefer not to double whammy my PFC's.  Unlike Bachelor No. 1 at PRS, this donor does not look much like me at all (although he does have some similar features to people on my mother's side of the family), but I felt like he was the best match for me.  Only time will tell...I'm going to call to place the order as soon as I have a free moment (within the business hours of our current time zone constraints - France is 9 hours ahead of Los Angeles)...a free moment where Frenchy Grandma can't listen in.  I seriously might end up doing it while I've got the work babies on a carousel ride and I'm standing on the sidelines waving and smiling...*sigh*

That's just about it for now, my lovelies.  I'm in exile with the work babies in France counting the days until I can get on a plane....scheming, plotting, and planning on getting knocked up in about one month's time.  Praying, meditating, taking my herbs, trying (and occasionally succeeding) not to let Frenchy Grandma stress me out too much, and looking around for a very reasonably priced, non-gender specific French baby gift to give to my baby (and maybe one for Miss T, too!).

Stay tuned...

Picking Up The Pieces

It's been a long time.  I shouldn't have left you...without a dope beat to step to.  And for this I apologize.  But the truth is I lost my rhythm there for a while.  Coming down after my disappointment at my third attempt/first IUI when everything that made the attempt even possible at all indicated (or so I believed) that my last chance would be the last chance I'd need...To say that I was depressed seems like an understatement, to say the least.  I mean, comparatively, maybe I wasn't at an all-time-low sort of depression like I was during the second half of college and the two years that followed.  No pushing people away.  No really bad and simultaneously grim/melancholy poetry was written (unless you count this blog).  No suicidal thoughts or being angry and/or sad to wake up in the morning.  What I did feel the same (or at least similar) was the inkling that I was letting both myself and my family down.  The feeling that there is/was something specific about me that was making things just not work out the way I felt they should, even though I couldn't quite put my finger on what that something may be/have been.

I didn't push people away, but I was/am stranded in Hong Kong, so I don't really have anyone here to push.  I knew three people living in Hong Kong before I moved here.  One I'd long considered to be one of my most trusted friends and confidants who's turned out to be a ghost.  She seemed excited for my move before I came, but hasn't materialized in any way, shape, or form since my actual arrival nearly eight months ago.  If it weren't for outside confirmation, I might have persuaded myself to believe that she was a figment of my own imagination.  In a way, I suppose she was...the other two friends here never hear from her either.  She's become a myth.  Another friend who lives a little bit of distance away and whose schedule is so at odds with my own that we only touch base sporadically and through e-mail.  And a third who is a bit of an anchor point for me here, though she'll soon be setting sail on another journey to another land.  I didn't push her away, but I didn't go out of my way to get in touch with her all the time either.  I was upset about my third failed attempt (which may be my last attempt until I make a break for it and quit Hong Kong altogether who knows how far into the future).  I didn't want to 1) be the mopey friend who brings the room down just by being in the room, and 2) over-burden the only real friend I have here with a lot of emotions she can't relate to and therefore may not be able or willing to hold my hand through.

I definitely wasn't having suicidal thoughts or anything even remotely close.  I wasn't angry or sad to wake up in the morning.  But I wasn't happy either.  I was indifferent.  Indifference has a way of being far more insidious.  There are support groups and forums and prevention hotlines and therapies and pharmaceuticals to help deal with depression.  No one really seems to notice the negative effects that indifference can have on a person's life.  But I guess indifference was my way of dealing with (or more to the point, not dealing with) the fact that my quest toward motherhood was at a stand-still.  Can't make babies solo in Hong Kong.  Can't/won't leave Hong Kong even though I continue to miss New York like a regretful ex.  Even if I did leave Hong Kong, I'd be heading back to the states jobless and homeless; so it's not like I'd be in a good position financially/situationally to jump right back into the baby-making game.  So I lingered on the periphery of existence.  I woke up every day and went to work (and I do love my job, thank God).  I continued seeing my acupuncturist/herbalist and taking my vitamins daily to keep things in order and physiologically ready for a baby to happen at any moment.  I continued updating my BBT chart.  I continued to go through the motions of living my life, all while isolating myself in the tiniest apartment I've ever lived in and eating my ice cream-covered feelings on a nightly basis.

And then we got closer and closer to birthday season...For those of you that don't know, my birthday is my favorite day of the year.  It's a high holy day in my life and times.  I start advertising about my birthday (generally) around six months beforehand in the previous November.  Now, this year I had all manner of reasons to continue being depressed and/or indifferent around my birthday.  I'm in a place I don't really want to be, on the other side of the planet from all of the people with whom I would have liked to have been celebrating.  I knew only three people in HK, and only one of those was even responding to my e-mails and texts...and she was planning to be out of the country for about ten days during the height of birthday season.  Was I upset?  Yes, but...I don't know.  I guess no matter what the situation is, I'm always happy about  my birthday.  I may not be happy to be living where I'm living, but I'm happy to be living and celebrating another new year.  The other side of that coin is that I started my TTC journey with the full intention of being somebody's mother this time this year.  So, that was something that I had to let go of.  And look to the future.  Make a plan of attack.  Maybe not attack, but some kind of a plan for sure.

Well, the inkling of a plan materialized not too long after my last best hope of getting knocked up for Christmas didn't pan out. My lovely sista-friend/donor buddy/confidante & supporter of all things baby-making-related, Miss T., was looking into the possibility of moving on from IUI's to IVF.  Un-widen your eyes...I'm still on the IUI track.  But T's been at this a bit longer and more consistently than I have, and she's ready for the next step.  Put a baby in there already!! - know what I mean?  What does this have to do with yours truly then, you ask?  Well, T lives in California where pretty much no insurance company covers IVF, regardless of how long or to what extent you've been trying.  So T was thinking of maybe going to Thailand to do her IVF.  Apparently, IVF in Thailand is about 1/3 of the cost that paying it out of pocket in California would be.  She's since decided to go to Barbados (BarbadosIVF.com) for her IVF, since the travel will be less expensive and they seem to have whole package deals for "Fertility Vacations" all mapped out.  Barbados isn't as close to me, though, so I've been looking into Thailand to do the next round of IUI - possibly medicated this time.  Not sure yet.  We'll see.

The truth is, this has been on the menu since just before I tried my IUI at Christmas time.  I had even reached out to a few clinics/hospitals in Thailand to see what their programs and protocols were.  Now ask me if I ever ended up sending all of my medical records to any of these places for their physicians to review and get back to me with a suggested plan of action....Nope.  I can only chalk it up to my depression and indifference and more feet-dragging enui.  Part of the reason for that is I had hoped to try Thailand by April.  I knew that I would have at least one 4-day weekend off from work that month and if I could work with a Thai doctor remotely, I might be able to get it handled.  That just was not to be.  I got hit with a bloodwork/urinalysis bill from the midwifery practice that was nearly twice as much as it cost me to have both IUI's and acupuncture treatment done.  Seriously???  On top of that, my pay here in HK is directly deposited into my account here, but I also have arranged for my boss to transfer part of my salary to my US account in New York since that's the one that pays my student loans and credit card bills.  The catch: my salary in HK is paid monthly on the first of each month.  The US funds are deposited quarterly, and they're not automatically scheduled.  My boss has to put them through himself.  So I got my US pay for the first quarter of the year closer to the END of that quarter.  Quick, ask me how much of my quarterly deposit has been made for the second quarter so far...suffice to say, the payment is still not fully complete and the quarter is now nearly 1/3 over.  I will try now not to rant about how they didn't have to beg me to move to Hong Kong, and they don't have to beg me to show up every day to raise, educate, stimulate, inspire, and love their children on a daily basis, so why do I have feel like I'm begging each quarter to get paid on time?  *sigh* That's for another post altogether (possibly even for a whole different blog).

So anyway, when I realized early in the year that April would not be a possibility, I think that's when the indifference really took over.  But April is my birthday month, and March really opens the whole birthday season.  Even though I didn't anticipate enjoying my birthday at all over here, I really have been pleasantly surprised.  And now I turn again to the future and my plans for it.  Summer.  I will go to France solo with the children this year so that they can visit their grandparents.  I've always also gotten two weeks off either directly before or directly after the France trip.  The key now is to solidify those plans with the family I work with so that I can determine which two weeks I'll be able to spend in Thailand and (hopefully) plan to get knocked up in and around that time.

And that, dear reader, is The Plan thus far...wish me luck!