where donuts are made

one of the things that helps to illuminate those dark places in my head is travel. since little sun died, there hasn’t been enough of it in my life. i could (and should) write more about the eight different countries i’ve lived in or the many others i’ve had the immense fortune to  visit. but there is a plane to catch in about 12 hours and a 12 hour car ride ahead of us the day after tomorrow, so for now i will share some images of our very brief (but nevertheless uplifting) sojourn in the land of Helios and Athena.

l’instinct de vivre

so why did i come back after all this time? why did i return to this strange little cyberworld that i’d completely abandoned nearly two years ago? i suppose you could say that a book brought me back. to be more precise, L’instinct de vivre a book by Laetitia Lycke, another woman who belongs to the club that no one wants to join. if you can read French, i can’t recommend this book highly enough.

but the story of my return to the babyloss blogosphere (and of how i even came to read the book in the first place) is a bit more complicated than that. it actually started with Skype.

here

i’m still here…somewhere.

i’m trying to find my words, or perhaps to liberate them, but it’s not an easy thing. silence has been my stony refuge these last two years, and i’m not sure how to chisel through these walls that i’ve constructed out of desperation and self-protection. but i will try…i must try.

a lot has happened, since i stopped posting on this blog. there have been new jobs.  there have been too many trips to other countries….for embryo transfers and tests and surgical procedures. there have been more than a few negative pregnancy tests followed by excruciating (but required) blood draws to confirm what was already painfully clear.

hola barcelona

so all that extra estrogen has apparently been doing it’s job.  my lining was about 7.7mm today and sporting the distinct beginnings of a triple stripe.  my gynecologist looked nearly as pleased as i felt when she shook my hand and wished me luck in Barcelona.

i left her office feeling light and happy and completely distracted.  i barely noticed the 45 minutes that passed as i walked towards home.  despite the sunshine and the throngs of Parisians out enjoying the weather, only the lushly leafy trees and an urban garden full of forget-me-nots got more than a passing glance.  when i got home and shared my news, Froggy’s eyes filled with tears and she held onto me for a long time.

the clinic in Barcelona quickly responded to the email that contained today’s results.  the medical assistant who responded is really sweet, and her response included smileys, the word “amazing” and the phrase “tons of hugs” in her closing….all that in addition to the news that my transfer will take place on Monday afternoon.  that’s right…in four short days.  i wish i had some appropriate emojis to insert here.  alas, the “holy fucking shit” smileys don’t seem to exist on wordpress.

tomorrow is the donor’s egg retrieval.  i hope it goes well and that her eggs and the sperm from little sun’s donor are happily doing their dna dance in less than 24 hours.  Froggy and i are flying out Saturday night, and we’ll have a nice relaxing Sunday to spend in our favorite city in the world.

when i was walking home today, something else besides the trees and flowers caught my eye.  all along the sidewalk someone had spray painted these stencils:

and that’s exactly what we’ll be saying in less than 48 hours.

waiting for good flow

the last birth control pill (ah, the irony) has been taken, and now we’re just waiting… waiting for me to bleed so that i can begin slapping on the estrogen patches.  waiting to hear about our donor’s response to the meds.  waiting to see if all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

it turns out that the international fertility clusterfuck has been resolved by the two clinics, and now we’re just waiting to see how much it will cost for us to have sperm from little sun’s donor shipped to Spain.  even though i’ve said that i’ll be okay if we can’t use the same donor again, i find myself really hoping that we can.

i’ve been missing little sun even more than usual lately…if that’s even possible.  sometimes Froggy and i talk about him and smile or laugh.  other times i find myself sobbing, overwhelmed by flashbacks from the hospital, from his birth and from his death and from nearly every second of every minute of the 36 hours that lay between them.  my arms and my hours are too empty.  all i can do is keep waking and keep walking.

things are beginning to bloom here.  the dried brown witch-fingers of the winter trees are almost gone now, suddenly replaced by soft greens and pinks and yellows.  it’s hard not to hope with all these signs of life surrounding me.  i just have to remember to keep eyes open and my head tilted up.

uns ous de bona

just nine days after our trip to Barcelona, an email came:

“we have good news! we have found a good donor for you…”

despite their laid-back appearance, our friends in the Catalan clinic work fast. the email also contained instructions on when to stop taking the birth control pills i’ve been on for nearly a month and when to begin putting on the estradiol patches that should make my endometrium into a nice fluffy nest.

since then i’ve exchanged several more emails with them in an effort to work out whether or not we can use little sun’s donor instead of a new one from a sperm bank in Barcelona.  it’s not the most straightforward process, as little sun’s donor is from Denmark, and we know nothing at all about him….not even the name of the sperm bank or his donor number.  our doctors in Belgium are the only ones who have that information, and because of the very strict anonymity laws of that country, they can’t pass it on to us.  so this American in France wrote to Belgium to ask if they could check Denmark for the donor’s availability.  the Belgians wrote back and said that, yes, he’s still available, but that they needed Spain to contact them. it’s a bit of an international fertility clusterfuck (maybe that should be the title of this blog), but it looks like our new clinic is going out of their way to try to make it happen.  now we just have to see if we can afford the extra costs of shipping the sperm from Denmark to the clinic in Catalunya.

when i told my mother that we were trying to use the same donor, her response was, “but what if he was the reason that little sun got sick?” and of course that reawakened the little nagging doubt that’s been in the back of my brain since he died.  what if he got sick because his genetic make up made him vulnerable?  there are so many questions surrounding why he got sick and how he got sick, and i don’t think we’ll ever have any real answers.  what i know now is that nothing in this life is guaranteed…nothing except death.  even with perfect genes, even with all the pretty ducks in a perfect pretty row, it can all fall apart in an instant.  so instead of worrying and stressing about the donor, i’ve decided to see what works out.  if we can afford to use little sun’s donor and our clinic can arrange the shipment, we’ll do it that way. if not then maybe we’ll have a pure Barcelona baby.  as much as i’d love for our future children to have that connection to our first born, our sweet, dearly missed little sun, DNA is not what matters most.

although, we won’t know for sure until we get a bit further into the process….until our donor’s ovaries are plumped up with lots of fat follicles and my lining is looking welcoming, it appears that we’ll be going back to Barcelona in less than a month for our fresh embryo transfer.

somewhere in Catalunya right now there is a young woman preparing to put herself through hormonal hell so that Froggy and i have another chance at having our family.  i find myself thinking about this anonymous woman whose ovaries might hold our future in them, and my thoughts about her glow golden and warm. i send her love and sunshine, and i whisper over and over again, “thank you. merci. gracias. gràcies,” hoping that whatever her language, she’ll somehow feel the gratitude of an anonymous woman a country away.

…a country away and hoping for a lot of luck and a few good eggs.

Visca Barcelona!

we left in the dark, our plane ascending until the city became nothing more than a collection of tiny amber lights.  everyone around me, including Froggy, dozed as we slid across the sky, but even though i’d slept fewer than four hours the night before, i was too excited to close my eyes.

elpenor and little spindle

i’ve been thinking a lot about friends lately, mostly because i’ve lost so many since little sun died.  i’ve experienced an immeasurable amount of disappointment and hurt because of people whom i once considered my chosen family, and maybe one day i’ll write about that.  today, though, i want to tell you about two people who have truly been there for me…two people who epitomize that beautiful word “friend”.

away

i haven’t felt much like communicating lately.  i stay in my head most of the time, because that’s where i feel safest…least likely to be intruded upon by more bad news, new disappointments or the epidemic of strollers filled with six-month-old babies that’s recently broken out.  my well-padded list of friends has gotten rather gaunt these last few months, and there aren’t too many people left with whom i have the energy to share even a few of my words.

mon sacré cœur

in case you haven’t heard yet, we got some good news yesterday.  the French marriage and adoption bill, which was recently passed by both the National Assembly and the Senate, has cleared its final hurdle and was signed into law tomorrow by President Hollande.  the first marriage between same sex couples will take place in Montpellier some time in the next two to three weeks.  last night Froggy turned to me with a smile and asked, “so, do you still want to get married?”

it’s somehow fitting that my post today is about Sacré-Cœur, the place where Froggy first proposed to me.  it’s one of my favorite places in Paris, and if, like me you are a fan of Jeunet’s Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (aka Amélie in English-speaking countries), you will recognize the area in front of the basilica from one of the movie’s scenes.

i’m not in that part of town very often, but i’d met a friend for drinks in Montmartre, and when i realized how close i was to Sacré-Cœur, i knew that i had to climb those gajillion steps to the place with the best view in Paris.