My Mini Breakdown

Yesterday I had a mini breakdown.

For the purpose of this and future posts, I shall now address DH as my Babe, or the Babe.

A week ago yesterday, I received two packages from the RE with information on payments, appointments and drugs.  I was all excited about all this information and was waiting to share and go over this with my Babe.  You see, my Babe has been working really long hours for the last few months.  He has been working on a project that has totally consumed him, working long hours daily, and also most weekends.  Even on the days that he is supposed to have off, he has gone in to work.  So he has been really stressed out about work.  He thinks about work a lot.  All.  The.  Time.

The past week, I had reminded him a couple of times we needed to go over the info from the RE clinic, but would wait for a better time to go over it.  So yesterday was one of the few days he decided he wasn't going in to work (on a Saturday, mind you) and we had lunch at home.  We had some time to kill before our plans for the night, so I brought out the 2 packages and asked him to look over it while I took and shower and we would go over it together.  When I done with my shower, the Babe still had not touched the 2 packages.  Why?

 "Did you take a look at those?" I asked.  That's when all hell broke loose! (It went something like this)...
Babe:  Nope.
Me: Why not??!
Babe:  I don't want to.
Me:  Why?  Don't you want to know what is going on?  I don't want to have to do this by myself.  I don't want to have to explain everything to you.  Can't you just go over it together?
Babe:  I don't want to think about it.  I have enough to think about for work!
Me:  I can't make decisions on my own!  We need to decide how to pay for this IVF, do we the shared risk program, or pay by the cycle.  Don't you care about this IVF cycle?
Babe:  I don't want to have to think about the details.
Me:  Don't you care about the appointments?  What testing we need to do?  How much everything is gonna cost?  I don't want you to be surprised by the cost of everything!  Do you know we are getting some free meds?
Me:  What should we do about this IVF?  Do you want to do the shared risk or pay by cycle?
Babe:  I don't know
Me:  I need you to support me on this.  I can't do this by myself!  I don't want to do this by myself like the last 4 IUI cycles and the last IVF cycle!

We fought some more.......

I broke down.  I cried.  We rarely fight like this!  I locked myself in the bathroom and turned on the vent so it would muffle the sounds of me bawling my eyes out.  I stopped crying.  I calmed down.  Lots of thoughts when through my head.  I started crying again.   I must have sobbed for a good hour or so.  In a way, I was hoping my Babe would come check on me, and console me.  He didn't.  He's stubborn that way!

So after I stopped sobbing, I calmly talked to my Babe again.  These were somethings we talked about.

• Babe feels this whole infertility industry is such a rip-off.  He feels like there is no accountability for failures.  My response?  There is no guarantee with IF treatments!!  So If I have cancer, and treatment does not work, does it mean it failed and there was no accountability?  Do we sue the doctors that tried to save me?  It is so unfair that we have to fork out so much money to have babies of our own.  But what else can we do?
• He feels that our Dr. Hopeful and the clinic is only out to squeeze as much $money$ out of us as possible.  When I asked Dr. Hopeful if there was an advocate or a primary nurse I would work with since I don't see her at all the appointments, she convinced me that the nurses are very competent and are her eyes and ears for all her patients.  That they were "like sisters" (her words).  Babe though she was being arrogant when she said that.  I tried to explain that REs don't see patients all the time.  It's usually the nurses that work directly with the patients and they consult directly with the REs.  
• So, what do we do?  We have to decide one way or another.  So I told Babe that we have some options.  1) We continue as planned with Dr. Hopeful.  2) We see another RE at the same clinic  3) We forget IVF and look into adoption.  4) We forget IVF and live with the very real probability that we will never have our own biological kids.  5) He should go find someone else who was younger and would be able to bear his kids.  I know, I know, this was a stupid option, but I just had to throw that in.  Thank goodness his response to #5 was "you actually think that's an option?" and looked at me like I was crazy.  I LOVE this stubborn man!  I said no, but I needed him to know that I do sometimes think about it.  Maybe if he had married someone younger and was not "broken" he'd have lots of kids by now.
• Babe feels he has compromised his belief, that we should not be "messing with nature" (or was it God, I can't really remember what he said exactly), that it was wrong to kill embryos, or whatever.  This came as a shock to me.  I knew that this was potentially an issue with his strict Catholic parents, but I didn't think he thought this way.  He is no longer a practicing Catholic.  I tried to ask him to give me an example.  He couldn't.  I said we are trying to create life, not destroy them.  Anything that does not make it would not have made it naturally anyways.  I think the problem is he does not truly understand the process of IVF.  Sure he knows at a high level what the process is, but he has never taken the time to read up or research about it in detail.  However, since we have already done IVF once, he's OK with doing it again.  I think he just wants to try whatever we can to have a baby right now.

There were other things discussed, but I won't spare all of the details here.  In general, I think my Babe is just not excited that we have to spend all this money to have a baby.  Who in their right mind would be?  This is the burden we have to bear I guess.

We will continue to pursue IVF with Dr. Hopeful.  We have decided we will not do the Shared Risk program and will just pay for each cycle as it come up.  Hopefully this cycle will be the one!  To spare my Babe from additional stress, I will not burden him with the details of this IVF cycle and let him in on appointments and details as needed.  To be fair, he IS working a lot and is highly stressed!  I on the other hand am not currently working.  My goal is to be as organized as possible, keep as much documentation as possible, and be as informed a patient as I can be.

My Babe will be traveling to California for training tomorrow (Monday), and will be back on Thursday.  Hopefully I will be able to do some cleaning while he is gone so he can come home to a nice clean house.  I'm the worst housekeeper!

Thanks for bearing with me while I whine away!

** I just re-read my post and I sound like a hormone crazed woman..... and I haven't even started my cycle yet!**