My story: Of ICSI, IVF & 2ww

It was the month of May 2013 and it began. The daily visit to hospital, those blood tests, the scans and what not. Two things were  interesting for me. One - that I was trying to learn all the medical jargons around this. And two - the yummy breakfast at Murugan Idly. Come on. We had something at least to look forward to each day to  brighten our day up. The crucial day had dawned - the day they would collect my eggs. I hadnt asked God for too much. While my batchmates would give me numbers of the mighty 18s and 20s all I asked HIM for was six. My eyes were just opening from the anaesthetic effect as I felt a soft hand holding mine. "How many" I  asked. He slowly retracted his hand from mine. Less than six was the first thought. At least five God? Tears rolled down my eyes as his fingers made a V.
So they would grow our to-be babies in a petri dish and transfer them back to my uterus. The third day as our embryos werent progressing much. We walked into the operation theatre and our to be babies were placed under a microscope for us to see. We were not qualified to deem them perfect. For us, it was an assurance. We could create life. Hold on babies. Mama will take care of you for the next nine months. God willing. The doctor had given us a date to check if it had materialised to a pregnancy. Two weeks of books, TV, music and prayers. Three days before D day, I noticed a trickle of blood. We rushed to the hospital to let them confirm our fears. Negative. Tears. Gallons of them. And not to forget the questions to God. Unanswered as always. We decided we wouldnt give up. We would fight. We would try again in three months when my body was ready. And my mind.
Came October and we were back at the hospital. This time the magic number was four. Hope. Sunlight at the end of the tunnel. We went home happily with four embryos inside me. Every day I would talk to them. Of how dear they were to us. Of how much we would try to take care of them. Of how much they meant to us and all of us around. And the truth. Of how reckless parents we would be. As each day passed I found myself getting more and more attached to them. There was life inside me. Four of them. D day came. I wouldnt go to the hospital. We had them collect my blood. It would be prem and my mom. The longest three hours of my life. I still remember I was watching Mission Impossible 2. Did I miss the irony? My phone rang. It was my mom. Negative.
I disconnected the phone and broke down. Agony. This time I spoke to my should-have-been babies. Did you not believe in every word I said? Did you think I would not live up to my words? Did you feel my promises were false? Or did you decide I was not worthy of you. Whatever you felt mama will try to understand you some day. But today is difficult. Because I am full of pain. Not from the 54 injections that I took to keep you strong but because you chose to desert me. And leave us alone yet again.
We decided to take a years break and go for a donor egg. I didn't care what the others said how it wouldn't be our baby. It would be ours. It would be mine. It would grow in my womb. I would nurture it for nine months. To say we had let go would be an exaggeration. Cause to let go is to be valiant. And that we were not. We understood how infinitely insignificant we were in front of HIM and we decided to bow. To give up. To surrender. To succumb. Cause we no longer had strength in us to fight. 
I well up when I write this as the scar remains. Dear God, you give us the strength to fight and at the same time the power to give up. Like I pray to you every day, please let go of your fight with six special women in my life. With June. Param. Arch. Dee. Sowmya. Chloe. Who hide their pain from emotional pricks and sport a smile. Not just because they are special to me. Because any case you win. And mainly because they have fought enough.
Cheers,
Hopie

B&M : my story: Coping up with infertility

So my story begins here... it was six years ago that we got married. Well almost. A beautiful wedding, a romantic honeymoon and we immediately got into the grind. We had decided to have kids only after sometime for a lot of reasons. Our first mistake was we did not announce it on NDTV or in the newspaper so people could know. Life would have been a lot easier then. I still dont understand what difference it makes for people if we have kids or not. A thousand questions and how I wished I could have answered them. Two months into my marriage  (trust me I was still a virgin then) and came the first question. "Ive learnt the mantra from kunti and waiting for the sun god to bless me since biologically it is impossible right now". We started practising birth control and then again. "I heard that condoms were 99% effective and unfortunately we dont fall in the 1%". How i wished i could have given them those answers. Years passed and we decided it was time. And it wasnt working.
Every month as my period came it was hell. Not to mention the urine pregnancy test that faithfully returned a single line like forever. I used to wonder if at all the second line in those sticks ever glow dark. We were getting stressed as each month passed. Every time I tore a month off our calendar, the darkest question kept repeating in my mind. My biological clock was counting down. We decided to get us checked. And then came the question again. This time it was from a creature at work. "No we dont plan to. We're going to have a DINK life. Double Income No Kids. Oh im sorry to disappoint you, were you planning to baby sit and bring my kid up?". How I wish I could just slap those people right across their cheek. Then came the tests. A million pricks. A zillion scans. IUI. Three of them. What was painful was not the prick or scan but the two week wait. I started seeing more pregnancy symptoms than ever. Thanks to google that gave me an online test and pronounced me pregnant every time. Yet it didn't work. My period would faithfully come. It was August 2012 and we decided to go for the next round of investigations. In December we had the death verdict pronounced upon us. It was me. I didnt have enough reserve eggs and my hormones were heading me towards a menopause. My eggs were reducing with each period. Then came the thousand questions to God. I broke down in front of the doctor. He was kind enough to console me and bring me back to normal. And then he gave us our options. We needed time. We were born in a land where AIDS is a lesser taboo than infertility. We would fight it together. Win or lose.
It is strange that painful times brings people closer together than ever. We decided we would take a break for three months and just forget about everything. Three months we would just live our lives around each other. Beautiful times. How much I realised I had been missing to notice what I have. How much I had missed to see how blessed I was. The much lost oblivion was back in our lives. The question kept popping up but I didnt care.
And again the time came for us to make a decision. We could not accept adoption as we were not sure how our families would take it. Like others say, I dont think adoption is a noble act that we do. It is in fact the kid who is being noble giving up the environment it is used to. Just so to light up our lives. We could not convince ourselves that everyone would treat the kid well. We did not want to cause trauma to a kid. And add to our karma. So IVF it would be. We would try with my own eggs. Or rather what was left of it.
Today it is easy for me to look back thanks to God. But the scar is unhealed. The questions remain unanswered but the human in me mostly forgets this. But not completely. Perhaps one day everything would unfold. Or not.
Cheers,
Hopie

B&M: The lives of arthur and lison: the third part

""They were just perfect. They could fit in my palm. Their skin was just beginning to form and so were all the major organs. However there was one organ clearly working and I could see it vibrate on their skin. One organ that kept beating and telling me "mama we're fighting all that we can... be brave..." they immediately took the babies to the NICU. Next morning first thing I wanted was to see them. "Take me there Pierre".. I could not bear to look at Pierre. He was petrified. Although men are considered the stronger gender, these are the times that test it. We walked to the NICU, my adrenaline pumping. A thousand questions but who will answer them? And truthfully? We walked into the room where our kids were. The sight made me forget everything else. My two little fighters on a crib. Tubes all over and perhaps heavier than them. Fluids being fed from three directions. I had promised myself I wouldn't cry. I looked at their face and I could feel they were at peace. The machines were pumping life into my babies. I was too scared to voice my question. Would they survive? Pierre and I sang for them a famous prayer and walked out. The doctor had told us he needs 72 hours before he cans ay anything. "Can we sit here for a while...?" And we sat on the corridor. Wiping each others tears. A woman came out in sometime and we knew she had a similar fate. We took all the technical details from her. Most importantly her babies had survived the ten week ordeal. Now I was stronger and I could focus myself to believe that my babies would fight it. Because there was flesh and blood standing right in front of me to constantly remind me that this was possible.
Five days passed and our babies were fighting. We would go there sing for them (Pierre once brought his guitar) to talk to them to constantly cheer them to keep going. The mother in me often used to think - are we being selfish? Are we not putting them through enormous pain? Why should they go through this? It was the 25th, the sixth day of life. Our doctor kept telling us he had never seen such a small baby fight this long. We left and came back in the evening. Lison had contracted an infection too severe. It had spread to her brain. She was finding it difficult to breathe and the machine was doing all that it could to keep oxygenating her blood. We prayed by her side wishing for strength and left. And then near midnight we got the call from the hospital.
Lison was critical. We rushed to see them. The peace that I first saw in her face was no longer there. She was in pain. The doctor told us we have no choice but to wait to let her pass. I immediately said NO. "I dont want to wait for her to pass. If she wants to go let her go. If that is what she is happy about. I want all the machines removed off her. Fighter she was she would die a valiant death. And she will pass in our arms." With tears in his eyes the doctor obliged. He would remove the supports himself not trust anyone else with it. So he would let her breathe last in our arms. And he did. As they unplugged the ventilator, Lison breathed last in our arms. Goodbye our fighter.
We moved to Arthur to tell him all was well and how we love him and to be strong. We went out to sit in the corridor and let go of all emotions and cried in each others arms. Arthur was our only hope. In ten minutes the doctor called us in again. His eyes welled up. We walked in to find that Arthurs ecg had gone flat and they were resuscitating him. He did not want to live in a world his tiny sister didnt. The miracle just unfolded in my thoughts.  Through my pregnancy it was Arthur always who kept Lison on top never letting her out how much ever fluid she lost. They would either co exist or go hand in hand. My mind came back to the NICU as oxygen was being stuffed into him and his lungs being manually operated by the doctor himself. It wasnt going to work it was clear to me. The nurse took away the oxygen. Arthur had joined the world of his little sister. Tears flooding his eyes, the doctor wouldnt stop pumping Arthur's lungs. He did not do it for medical reasons, or for us or for the people around. He did it for himself. Cause he couldnt let little Arthur go.
In a matter of fifteen minutes our world just crashed in front of us. And no reason or words could repair it.""
She finished her story, and it was me who was crying. She was smiling looking at the waves. Perhaps the waves always pass a message that we fail to comprehend. As she put her hands around my shoulder, we took a selfie and walked back. Today I dont have a nice way to end this. Cause this is what it is. But I hope, soon enough things will fall in place for them like it did for us. Oh yes I am a believer of miracles. They always happen - we only miss to notice them. Until then, God give them the strength.
Cheers,
Hopie

B&M: The lives of Arthur and Lison - conception and birth

""We met each other at college. In France. It was a perfect love story with a perfect ending. Soon after we exchanged our feelings for each other, we decided to leave our parents and live together. Five golden years. The moon was up, the stars bright and whatever came seemed to be alright. And then we decided to have kids. For me, what we were sharing was already complete and I did not want a marriage to exchange vows.  But for Pierre - traditional that he was - he wanted marriage. I was fine as long as it ended with Pierre and me together. We had a simple marriage, a romantic honeymoon and we started the next important step of our lives.
Soon we knew it wasnt working and we needed medical intervention. At the same time, Pierre got the order to move to India. So we would move and kept the faith that the Indian soil would bless us. It was our first IVF. I took the endless pricks and the infinite tablets. Four embryos were placed in my uterus and I was asked to wait two weeks with more pricks each day. The D day arrived and I had given my blood sample to test for pregnancy. Three hours it would take to pronounce the verdict upon us. One of the longest three hours of our lives. "Mrs. Chloe" was the call and we paced ahead from our seats into the doctors cabin. Hand in hand. We took our seats looking for a clue in the doctors face. Nothing. She flipped my file and smiled at me. "Congratulations! You're pregnant! And with twins!". Tears rolled down from both our eyes as I spontaneously got up to hug our doctor. No words could express our thanks at the moment. Pierre and I closed our eyes in short prayer and we thanked God. And the indian soil - blessed us it had. Indeed.
Our pregnancy moved on when we had the first trouble. It was nine weeks and the baby on top was losing fluid and our doctor said I was progressing towards an abortion. I was at the hospital for a week while the doctors waited for the babies to come out. Miraculously the baby gained fluid by end of the week and we were sent home. Time passed and this repeated twice once in wk 15 and once in wk 21. The baby on top is a girl I kept telling Pierre. Cause she fought time and again. Week 24 and I started leaking fluid again. This time it was bad news - there was infection all around and the doctors said the babies were better out than in. They pushed a further week and induced labour on 19th February at 15:30. At 15:51 Arthur was out. In two minutes our fighter followed. She was a girl. Our little miraculous Lison. ""
One of the lessons i learnt during my hardship was the importance of prayer. And to what we need to restrict our prayers to. God created life - or the atom or the boson or the first sperm / egg or whatever we could call it. And I decided that I would ask God only for HIS creation. To create or to preserve. Nothing more. And nothing less.
Cheers,
Hopie