What it feels like for a girl...

With apologies to Madonna, today it sucks to be a girl. Oh wait, doesn't it usually? I started my period today (I'm trying to do away with all those annoying infertility BB acronyms so real people can understand what the fuck I'm trying to say). That in itself is not news. Today is day 21 of my cycle. THAT'S the newsy part. Um...that's about 7 days too early for those of you keeping track at home.

Seriously, I think I stopped throwing my hard-earned money in the burning furnace that was my doctor's office about 6 months too late. We agonized about bumping up our regimen to include injectibles, and ended up doing 3 cycles with Gonal-F and Clomid. The only reason we were able to do that was because of a little site called freegaragesale.com, where you can buy fertility drugs directly from women trying to recoup some of their own expenses. The first cycle was canceled due to poor response (fucking ovaries), and the other two we barely squeaked through with high enough E2 and enough follices to make it worthwhile. All for nada.

What I'm getting at is its obvious to me that sometime in the last year the fertility line on my life graph fell off the page and dropped into a black hole somewhere. Probably sometime in the 24 hours after I turned 40, I forever more lost the ability to even conjure up decent follicles and a regular 14 day luteal phase. Even with the best (discounted) meds money can buy and my husband's gleeful exuberance at getting to practise his syringe technique, it made no difference. This is the way its going to be. Now how am I supposed to plan vacations when my cycles don't play nice?

Oh, and I wanted to respond to a comment made on my What-If 101 post. Elisabeth said I refuse to believe that a woman is defined only in terms of her role as "mother". I'm right with you there, sister! I never said that, and if I did, I was obviously under the influence of something. I haven't defined myself as a failure because I'm not someone's mother, I haven't defined myself at all, although right now I am struggling with letting go of feeling like a failure, in general. I think that's to be expected when you try REALLY hard to accomplish anything for 3 years and are unsuccessful. I would never define anyone (especially myself) based on things they didn't do -- its the things you do that make a difference.