Updating and Clarifying

Hey you guuuuuuuuuuuuuyss! (what was that from??)

I think most of you got what I was trying to articulate in my previous post, but just in case...the finer points:
1) I did not say that all multiple pregnancies are super high risk, but there is no doubt in the medical literature that they are riskier than singleton pregnancies. From the March of Dimes: "More than half of twins and nearly all triplets are born prematurely, associated with an increased risk of death and disability."
2) While CC.R.M. will obviously say that multiples are not their goal, and their literature will say as much, they do push beyond the recommended guidelines...and they're not unique in this. I'd say many (most?) REs do. And they can, because who's going to call them out on it? The patients who are desperate to succeed? The insurance companies that don't cover this stuff for the most part anyway? It's largely unregulated.
3) I totally understand transferring more than the recommended number of embryos--which is why I mentioned I did it myself. For so many reasons--emotional, financial, physical--we try to limit the number of times we go through IVF. IVF sucks. If you haven't been through it--even once--you really have no idea. No way around that.
4) No one knew those twins were conceived by IVF, so my other coworker's "it's not fair" comment was not reacting to anything A.R.T. related, but other things, which I just cannot mention here.
5) I simply think that if IVF were covered, it would be much easier to elect to transfer a single embryo at a time when that is appropriate. The current recommendations are as follows:
One embryo woman under 35 with good prognosis, max embryos two. With less favorable prognosis--max three. So see? Right there I went against guidelines two times.
6) I also don't think IVF should just be covered for everyone carte blanche...there would have to be guidlines there as well.

But none of this matters to me anymore.

I'm out of the A.R.T. game. I like to say I'm in recovery. But I still sat in my office and cried on Wednesday when the lunchroom talk yet again went to the fact that we have eight pregnant women in our smallish office...and that it's "most definitely in the water". Which then elicited all kinds of responses from women who couldn't--apparently--imagine anything worse than another pregnancy. Someone found a pregnancy test in the bathroom and everyone was trying to guess to whom it belonged. At one point they were going around the room.

I panicked.

What would I say when they got to me?

Be the spoiled sport and say "I'm infertile. As much as I'd love it to be mine it's not and it never will be?"

Just smile and shake my head?

Burst into tears?

Luckily it died out before it got to me. My one blessed coworker who has held my hand through the worst of the past few years leaned over next to me and asked if I was ok. I nodded. And then went back to my office and sobbed.

I sat at my desk and felt so completely out of control. I have no control in the adoption. All I can do is just sit here and hope for the best. I cried for a woman on the other side of the world who is pregnant now, with a child I hope to raise, which feels wrong on so many levels, and I cried because she may be hungry, or may be sick, or stressed, and no one is rubbing her belly and asking her about names and no one is asking to see her ultrasound photos and I have no part in any of it. I can't help her. I can't control anything. All I can do is be left out of the goddamned lunchroom talk yet again. Most everyone knows about my adoption but I'm never "counted" in the expecting woman count. There's the eight pregnant women and there's me, LastChance, on the outs again. I guess I always will be huh?