Advanced Maternal Age Mother Seeks a Big Fat Positive Pregnancy Test

Photo
Emoticons from CountdowntoPregnancy.com.Credit

I’m no fertility authority, despite what my husband might think.

Thankfully, there’s a website actually called Fertility Authority, which hosts the forum “Fertile Thoughts,” along with forums like BabyCenter and IVF Connections, in which every question has already been posited, discussed and answered in 25 conflicting ways.

These forums are windows into hidden worlds and niche communities like those that have formed around the web for special interests like video games or gardening. Each fertility forum has its own secret language and customs.

For one, there’s the abbreviations: “FET 2 6DP5DT and HPT is still BFN … dreading AF, DH says no more POAS” means: “I’ve had a second frozen embryo transfer (the embryo was retrieved in a previous cycle as opposed to a fresh embryo transfer) and I’m six days past the 5 day-old embryo transfer (when the embryo was inserted), and I still have a big fat negative on the home pregnancy test. I’m dreading Aunt Flo (getting her period – as in “flow”) and my dear husband says no more peeing on a stick.”

It’s confusing at first, finding out what everyone’s talking about from the stage of T.T.C. (Trying to Conceive), taking your B.B.T. (Basal Body Temperature) and using O.P.K. (Ovulation Predictor Kits) waiting for the big O (not that! Ovulation) so you can either B.D. (Baby Dance … yes, that’s having sex for conception purposes) or have an E.R. (Egg Retrieval) for the E.T. (embies or Embryos Transfer) and enter the 2WW (Two-Week Wait) to find out if you’re PG (pregnant).

It’s not a language I especially ever wanted to become fluent in, but sometimes – like in the middle of the night when I wake up in a panic wondering what went wrong and why – I cannot call the clinic. So I Google questions such as, “Do I ovulate too late in my 28-day cycle for a successful implantation?” and “How long after a miscarriage do I wait to try again?” Searches always take me to these fertility forums, where thousands of women chime in. (The general topic “I.V.F.” at FertileCommunity.com has 685,522 posts, while “Clomid Support” has 44,866.)

I came to these forums searching for answers to my questions, but then I started reading about other women’s journeys, which are told in their signatures, like the one illustrating this essay: years and years of suffering condensed into a few lines, depicted by animated GIFs of flying angels signifying miscarriages, emoticons banging their head against the wall in frustration, and magical baby dust in hopes of creating good luck.


IVF #1 2 follicles produced

IVF #2 2 follicles produced


low hcg five weeks

IVF #3
10 eggs, 5 fertilized, 4 made to blastocyst, 2 transferred, 2 frozen vitrified

FET IVF #4
2 frozen embryos transfered


I teared up at the happy ending: A cheerleader baby! (Solomon would probably want ours to be a bass-playing rock climber.) But I couldn’t stop reading the stories, so lost in them that I didn’t notice that it was morning already and Solomon was calling out, only half-jokingly, “W.M.C.!” (“Where’s My Coffee?”), one of our many in-house abbreviations.

It’s become an addiction, lately, reading these forums, the way others get lost on social media or shoe websites or whatever else they furtively read online when they’re supposed to be working. But how can I not R.E.P.O. (an abbreviation I just made up to mean Read Every Post Obsessively)?

I suppose I’ve been visiting I.V.F. forums not just for education, but for camaraderie: to be among women who are enduring I.V.F., often against huge odds and against everyone else’s advice. To be less alone. Other women, no matter how compassionate, do not always understand the way this sisterhood does.

This is the sorority I belong to now, whether I chose it or not, and I feel deeply for these women as they do for me.

Let’s hope we can all move over to the mommy boards soon.