Hope4Fertility
  • Home
  • Meet Denise
  • Blog
  • Blog Post Index
  • Articles & Resources on Adoption
  • Articles & Resources on Fertility Treatments
  • Contact Denise

Finding your parental path

A place where those facing infertility can come and find inspiration, gain knowledge and maybe even have a laugh.

find us on Facebook

Don’t Stop Believin’

12/31/2012

0 Comments

 

Don’t Stop Believin’

Picture
If you are wondering what to do this New Year’s Eve and are considering staying in, I have a movie rental suggestion for you. I was taken back to 1987, the year that I graduated from high school, yesterday when I watched the motion picture, Rock of Ages; it is based on the smash Broadway hit and directed by Adam Shankman. In short, it’s about a small-town girl, Sherrie (Julianne Hough), who makes her way to Los Angeles from Tulsa Oklahoma to pursue her dream of becoming a singer. She meets her adorable boyfriend, Drew (Diego Boneta), minutes after she arrives in L.A. The director has 2 short hours to make magic happen, people! They work together in a bar called the Bourbon Room which is where the majority of the scenes take place throughout the movie. 

Why am I writing about this topic on my family-building support blog? Simply put, the 4 hours I invested in the film (I watched it twice over the Holiday break) allowed me a truly enjoyable mental retreat. I thought you might also like to travel back in time and escape.

The
soundtrack includes 80’s anthems like: Sister Christian, Any Way You Want It, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, and of course Don’t Stop Believin’; the music alone made me genuinely nostalgic. The
spirit of the picture feels like a medley of Glee, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Spinal Tap. I laughed out loud at no less than 5 scenes.
Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the self-righteous villain, Patricia Whitaker. ‘Patty-Cakes’ is the prim and proper wife of the Mayor and she is on a mission to shut down The Bourbon Room. The scene that ranks at the very top for me is where Zeta-Jones and a group of church women break out in song while singing Hit Me with Your Best Shot in the pews of a church. In it, she is wearing a peach, pleated secretarial suit and the 80’s dance gestures she busts out are beyond hilarious. It’s just one of many gleeful scenes for me.

Admittedly, a big part of my joy came out of being so closely connected to the period in which this story took place. Sherrie, the main character, looked exactly the way I wished I had back in 1987. My spiral perm just never took the way hers did. The sides of her hair were perfectly fanned-out and symmetrical. Her teased bangs were the right amount of high with her sparkly scrunchie. I'm embarrassed to admit it but hair was the pinnacle of my existence back then and mine often fell completely flat or curled perfectly on one side but not the other. Moving on from Sherrie's hair to her attire…Tragically, my mother never bought me the
Bedazzler she obviously used to adorn her short, cut-off, jean skirt. Speaking of jeans, she donned a faded, cropped jean jacket that would have looked AMAZING with so many of my torn Guess jeans and long, off-the-shoulder sweatshirts that I liked to pair with my thick, hip-hugging belts. I could almost smell the soft, clean fragrance of her CoverGirl pressed powder and strawberry Bonne Bell lip balm. 

Alec Baldwin plays, Dennis, the bar owner. Dennis is on the brink of becoming irrelevant. He originally promoted the big-time rocker Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and is holding onto the past but in a naïve and endearing way. Some of Alec Baldwin’s scenes were the funniest for me. His facial expressions were beyond priceless.

Speaking of Tom Cruise—I have to say that I am typically not a huge fan of the roles he chooses. That said, Stacee Jaxx kind of did it for me in this movie. The naughty, dirty rocker drinks, gyrates and of course has countless sexcapades. The sex scenes are far from salacious; instead they offer up amusing and awkward moments that provoke laughter and ultimately produced side stitches for me. His bedraggled, nonsensical, rants are comically seductive. I saw Axl Rose in his character.  As it turns out, Shankman said of Cruise’s performance, "It's this brilliant mashup, it seems, of
Axl Rose, Keith Richards and Jim Morrison," 

Another perfect casting choice, in my opinion, was Mary J. Blige as
Justice Charlier. Justice is the manager of the Venus Gentleman’s Club. Blige costumes are fantastical! I love her voice and the music she belts out while her girls are contorting on their respective poles is rousing.

In one of the later scenes, Kevin Cronin, lead singer of REO Speedwagon, appears out of nowhere. He is merely singing in a group but I knew him the moment I saw him. How can you mistake Kevin Cronin for heaven’s sake? I actually rewound my DVR to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. As it turns out, there are also 
cameos from Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt and Sebastian.

In summary, the actors’ voices were authentic and surprisingly good. The only person who wasn’t flawless was Alec Baldwin but he certainly wasn’t horrible.

The one downside to this film is that a very attractive character appears on stage hugely pregnant in the very last scene (literally 3 minutes before it ends). While it fits the template given the majority of the 80’s rocker films like to end with the front man's girl with child (case and point, Cocktail--also starring Tom Cruise), I can definitely understand how that detail alone could be an enormous buzz-kill for  you.  

If this movie doesn’t appeal to you but you grew up lining your eyes in cobalt blue and killing the ozone with Aqua Net, consider listening to the soundtrack. I think Don’t Stop Believin’ may be a good mantra for you!

0 Comments

All I Want for Christmas is a Baby

12/22/2012

1 Comment

 

All I Want for Christmas is a Baby

Brandon's 1st ChristmasBrandon's first photo with Santa
Yes, I remember my Christmas pasts when I yearned for the same blessing. I thought that if I was to believe in Santa, those were the times he should have proven his magic to me/us. My only message to you is--just keep the faith. Brandon, our beloved son, arrived a few months before Christmas 2008; he was definitely worth the wait and restored my belief in Christmas miracles.

For those of you who have loved and lost, this time makes your bereavement so much more profound. Your arms are left empty and your heart aches with the whys and the
what ifs. 

I recently watched the documentary titled
‘Ethel’, a personal portrait of Ethel Kennedy’s life, directed by her daughter, Rory Kennedy. In it, Ethel recalls her late husband, Robert’s, response to the loss of his brother, John. I’m paraphrasing but in it she said that Bobby fell into a deep depression after Jack was murdered. He spent much less time with the family and would retreat to their bedroom soon after returning from his office. 

A year to the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Canada named a Yukon mountain peak after the fallen President. Bobby decided to climb Mt. Kennedy which was to be his first and only climb.
Dolly Connelly wrote about his climb in Sports Illustrated on April 5, 1965.  In an excerpt from her story, she shares a poignant moment from Robert Kennedy’s feat:

“He synchronized his breathing as he had been instructed, with a slow, steady "rest" step, in which the knee of the trailing leg is locked to take the weight off tired muscles, and moved up alone to a summit believed to be more than 14,000 feet high. He was the first man ever to stand atop the superb peak that 
Canada had named for his dead brother. He took off his goggles to look out upon a vast panorama of granite tyrannosaur teeth extending in all directions across the roof of the Yukon as far as the eye could see, and he stood very still for one private moment. Then, as James (Big Jim) Whittaker and Barry (The Bear) Prather, both veterans of the U.S. Everest expedition, watched and an aerial armada of photographers' planes circled overhead, Senator Robert F.  Kennedy planted a family memorial flag. He also placed in a cache in the snow a copy of President Kennedy's inauguration speech, which was tightly wound in a metal cylinder of the type used for mountaintop registers, and three PT-boat tie clasps. Thus ended the climb of an obscure peak which had started in secrecy in Washington and evolved into the biggest story in Yukon Territory since the cremation of Sam McGee.”

In the documentary, Ethel said that mountain climb was what seemed to allow her husband to let go of his depression and grief.

The actions you decide to take to lay down your grief may not be as grandiose or press-worthy but they are necessary nonetheless. Whatever propels you to move forward with your life is an important step in moving beyond your loss. Given time, you will be able to synchronize your breathing, rest your step so as to take the weight off of your tired muscles, climb your personal summit and plant your family flag. 

My Holiday wish for you is that will find many blessings (in the form of children) in the year to come.

1 Comment

When is the right time to use donor eggs

12/2/2012

2 Comments

 

When is the Right Time to Use Donor Eggs?

I met with a group of people last week who were considering using donor eggs to start or grow their families. My impression was that they were all in various stages of the decision-making process. One of the questions that came out of the discussion was, “When is the right time to use donor eggs?” 

If you read my post
Egg Donor Cycle—Originally Deemed a Failure Results in Twins there was no doubt that in order for my husband and I try to have children who would share his DNA, donor eggs were a necessary component. My husband and I had gone through 1 IVF cycle; 3 embryos resulted from the retrieval but all had massive chromosomal abnormalities. Given that our first pregnancy resulted in a Triploidy child, there was little doubt that my egg quality was extremely poor. While the reality seemed harsh and unfair to me at the time, I see now that we were fortunate to have a definitive answer so that we could move forward in our endeavor to have children. What struck me last week was that so many of the wonderful people sitting in front of me were in a very grey zone.

Donor egg IVF is generally used in women with significantly
diminished egg quantity and quality.
This includes women with:
  • Premature ovarian failure (early menopause)
  • Poor response to ovarian stimulation
  • High day 3 follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) levels
  • Very low antral follicle counts on ultrasound
  • Advanced female age, 40 and older
The first step in assessing whether donor eggs are necessary in building your family is to meet with a Reproductive Endocrinologist. These doctors are specially trained to diagnose and treat those who are having difficulty becoming pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term.
 
If your R.E. recommends using donor eggs, you (and perhaps a partner) will make the final determination whether it is right for you and your family. As with IVF and other fertility treatments, there are no guarantees, unfortunately. Donor eggs do increase the likelihood of pregnancy with women who are diagnosed with poor egg quality, however. 

SART, The Society for Reproductive Technology, offers an informative 
database of success rates for ART (assisted reproductive technology) cycles. I ran the report for 2010 and compared donor cycles to patients using their own fresh embryos. The donor egg showed a 55% success rate for live births (it did not break out the ages of the mother/carrier). The reason age is not relevant is because the majority of donor eggs are retrieved from women who are young (typically in their 20’s and very early 30’s). Conversely, the fresh non-donor embryos resulted in 12.6% of live births for women between the ages of 41-42. For women over 42, the success rates for live births from fresh non-donor embryos were reported to be 4.2%.

Going back to the original question, the live birth statistics offer a stark reality that is difficult to refute. Beyond that, I think the bigger question may be, "How much longer can you wait to be a parent?" If you have already experienced miscarriage(s) another question might be, "How many more are you willing to potentially endure?" I have a friend who has lost 5 pregnancies. Every time she shared that she had miscarried, I would privately wish that she would seek help from an R.E. It broke my heart to see her in such pain and I felt that she deserved to know the potential reasons for her heartbreak. 

The decision to move forward with donor eggs is extremely personal and requires a great deal of consideration. If you opt to use donor eggs to try to become pregnant, accepting the fact that you will not be genetically linked to your future child/children is the first of many hurdles you will face. In future posts I will touch on the following:
  • Choosing a donor bank
  • Choosing an egg donor 
  • Contemplating the issues surrounding disclosure (to your child, family and friends)
  • Handling the legal matters that pertain to having a child through egg donation and selecting an attorney
I realize that I have oversimplified this very complex issue. It is not my intention to try to persuade you to move forward with a donor egg cycle. While I have been blessed with 2 children thanks to an anonymous egg donor, the decision was extremely difficult for me. I definitely wanted children but was afraid to go through another pregnancy. I am merely sharing some data and resources that may be useful to you and/or your partner.

Whatever path you choose to build your family, I hope you find great success and happiness in the end.
2 Comments

    Author

    Denise Steele is a proud mom of 3 boys thanks to private domestic adoption and a successful anonymous egg donor cycle.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012

    Categories

    All
    Adoptababy
    Adoption Grants
    Anonymous Egg Donor
    Domestic Adoption
    Endometriosis
    Estrogen
    Fertilehope
    Fertile Hope
    Fertility
    Fertility Grants
    Fertility Hope
    Hope
    Infertility
    Infertility Grants
    International Adoption
    Iui
    Ivf
    Miscarriage
    Ovulation Disorder
    Pregnancy
    Surrogacy
    Thyroid Disorder
    Wantababy

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.