When You Love a Child that Has Not been Created Yet

I read an article the other week on Still Standing Magazine about the grief of a mother who has lost their child years ago. The article talked about grieving mothers having good days and bad days, happy memories and unbearable gut wrenching memories, moments of hope and moments of intense fear-no matter how long along the mother's child died. It talked about the stereotype, that if the mother is having a good day others may believe she is over the loss of her child, or if she is having a bad day that she should be over it "by now." It talked about the emotional triggers that come from left field unexpectedly and uninvitingly. Everything this article spoke about, I not only agree with but have lived through myself.

When you lose a baby your world is never the same;it has a hole in it that can never be filled. But when you lose multiple babies, your world is shattered into a million pieces and you are left figuring out how the pieces are supposed to fit back together-yet they never will.

I look at what my husband and I have been through-the death of our stillborn daughter and burying out first child, a miscarriage at 7 weeks, a miscarriage at 11 weeks that resulted in a D&C, and a miscarriage at 5 weeks discovered at 8 weeks that resulted in 4 more weeks of my body trying to release the baby that ended in a second D&C. I consider the fact that I was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease that caused the lenses in my eyes to detach and resulted in 5 major eye surgeries in one year and forced me to change my diet since protein was silently killing my body. I recognize the measures we have taken to try to have a baby after we learned the culprit of our babies deaths was my very own DNA since two of my chromosomes are attached and have caused our babies to have an extra chromosome-an IVF with PGD cycle and now an egg donor IVF cycle. I live everyday with the reminder of amount of financial debt we are drowning in, living off credit cards and merely making it paycheck to paycheck still paying on procedures we had done last year. We have survived all of this, some days I don't know how, but most days I think rather well.

I have my moments though. Moments of gut wrenching memories. Moments of feeling hopeless. Moments of questioning every step we take. Moments of wanting to throw in the towel. Moments of intense fear that I can't shake. Last night I had a moment, and today I had another moment.

Last night I was watching The Foster's which has become one of my favorite television series of all time. I was sitting on the couch in my shorts and bra with my hair drenched in hair dye waiting on the dye to process so I could rinse it out. I knew based on the previews of last nights episode something was going to happen to Lena's baby, I just didn't know what. I knew it was going to be a hard episode for me to watch. I just didn't expect that I would be hyperventilating with huge crocodile tears streaming down my face. I didn't expect to feel the rawness of the pain that I felt 6 years ago when we were told Riley had died inside me and I would have to deliver her at only 24 weeks into my pregnancy. I didn't expect to feel such deep heartache when Lena's own mother walked into the hospital room and wrapped her arms around Lena or to remember what it felt like to have my mother, father, and sisters rush to the hospital after they learned that Riley had died and embrace me with their hugs once they got there. I didn't expect to feel like I was the one on the television show losing my baby. I didn't expect to be overwhelmed with fear that anything could happen that could kill my future baby too.

Maybe for the first time last night I realized I love a child that hasn't even been created yet and won't even be created by me.

Only couples who have been through fertility treatments would understand what that feels like. It's not like when other couples make the decision to start trying to conceive a baby-I've been there too...even after losing 2 babies I can't say that when we were trying for our third or even fourth baby that I loved them before they were ever created. I loved them from the moment that I knew they were there, and I will now love them for the rest of my life on Earth and in Heaven. But never before the positive pregnancy test did I have a love for my children. Maybe that's because I didn't have a timeline in my head of when they were going to be created or come into existence...when it happens, it happens. When we had our first IVF with pre-implantation genetic testing cycle...I can say that I definitely envisioned the cycle working for us and at times felt am immense hope that our forever rainbow baby was going to come as a result of our cycle. I saw myself delivering a healthy screaming baby and my sister in the delivery room with me just as I was with her when she delivered my niece. Once we had our egg retrieval it felt like those dreams started fading with every day that passed. I tried my hardest not to remain attached to our little embies because I didn't want to feel the sting when my face fell flat on the pavement from tripping over my dreams. But I still felt it when the one embie we transferred evaporated into my body and didn't continue to develop into our beautiful rainbow baby.

When we decided our next step along this crazy emotional journey was going to be an egg donor IVF cycle, I was very apprehensive. Could I really love a child that I didn't create? Could I bond with a child that I'm carrying even though I know that this child isn't biologically mine? Will I be resentful towards a child that came to exist because my own children died? How would I handle it if this child grew up and got angry at me and told me I wasn't his or her "real" mother? Is it going to be awkward raising a child that has an aunt as its biological mother? There are times when I thought I couldn't do it, that I couldn't create room in my heart for any child that I didn't create. I prayed on it though, and I began reading a blog by another Baby Quest Foundation grant recipient who has been in these shoes I'm wearing. She's had a failed IVF cycle using her own eggs, then they tried an egg donor IVF cycle using her sisters eggs. When that cycle also failed to work for them, they decided to adopt a frozen embryo that neither her or her husband created with their own genetics. Reading Maya's blog helped me to accept that we very well may be having a baby that was not created from my genetic material but grown inside my womb. It helped to realize that I could love a baby that is created from my husband's and sister's combined DNA. It helped me to be at peace with our decision to try an egg donor cycle.

Watching last night's episode of The Foster's brought my love to life for this baby that has not been created yet. I started fearing all the possible things that could go wrong once I'm carrying that baby. I'm not oblivious to the fact that babies die even when they have all 46 normal chromosomes. They die because organs fail to develop properly. They die because of blood clots. They die because of infections. They die because of cord accidents. They die from pre-term labor. They even die for no reason at all. There are hundreds or reasons babies die before they are ever born, and it scares the shit out of me to be completely honest. I LOVE this baby that will be created in November and I want to give birth to this baby in July. I want to rock this baby to sleep and sing this baby lullaby's. I want to change dirty diapers and wake up a million times a night to breast feed. I want take naps on the couch on Sundays as a family with my husband, our cat, and our baby. I want to take walks on summer afternoons while I'm on maternity leave. I want to have a home filled with baby items and I want to decorate a nursery. I want to take family pictures. I want my husband to be Santa Claus every Christmas until our child figures out the secret. I want my life to revolve around my family and less around my job. I want to teach my baby how to roll over, sit up, crawl, walk, and talk. I want our Saturday nights to consist of Disney Movies. I want this baby just as much as I wanted all the ones that were created before him or her.

After all the fear that came upon me last night, today almost took away the complete possibility of this child even being created...and I lost it. The nurse at the fertility clinic informed me the psychologist me, my husband, and my sister met with last week could not "recommend" my sister to be an egg donor. What?!? You mean to tell me a psychologist gets to decide the fate of our future? According to the nurse the psychologist thought my sister was "pleasant and appropriate." But that stupid 600 question test that my sister had to take before she got to talk to the psychologist apparently thought my sister was not being 100% honest with her answers since they asked the same questions a million different ways and she answered the questions differently each time. Ok...so what? This is my sister we are talking about...I think I know her better than some test that was confusing and annoying to her. Don't we have the right to waive the results? Apparently we don't, but the fertility doctor does. For 2.5 hours I sat at work fearing that the doctor might not waive the results...that our journey to have a child would be over or that we would have to figure out what our next step would be even though we aren't ready to look at any other options right now. I locked myself in the bathroom and let out some disgusting sounding crys and had to gasp for my breath a couple times. I felt myself getting angry again-"why God is this always happening...why are our plans always falling apart...why can't we have a child...why do we have to do through this pain?" Then the phone rang as I'm sitting on the toilet locked inside the stall texting my friend asking for prayers. It was the nurse. She called to say Dr. Hofmann waived the psychological test results and will allow us to keep my sister as a donor because he knows how daunting the test is and how tricky the test can be. The nurse said, "ultimately Dr. Hofmann wants you and your husband kissing baby cheeks." I lost it again. That's all I want too.

So hear we are. Still moving forward with this egg donor cycle-thank you Lord. My husband's semen analysis came back drastically improved from taking his vitamins. We wouldn't even need to do ICSI let alone IMSI if we didn't want to spend the extra $1500. But, we are going to spend the extra money because I want to do everything we can to make sure we get as many fertilized eggs as possible and to prevent freak of nature things from happening like two sperms fertilizing the same egg (yes, it's happened before). We leave for New York on Saturday and meeting with Dr. Braverman on Tuesday morning to go over our immunological testing results. I am praying these results are going to give us continued peace and that nothing too severe was discovered from the testing that could prevent me from ever carrying a baby to term.

Please pray for safe travels as we brave the NY traffic and pray for our continued peace along this journey to parenthood.