Staying sane during IVF..part three

The Buddhist tradition is replete with thought experiments designed to kick us momentarily out of our dualistic monkey minds.

The kaon- the paradoxical anecdote - experientially shows the limits of rationality, helping pave the way to enlightenment. The most well known kaon- is to try to imagine one hand clapping.

I don't pretend to have an expertise in Buddhism. But it has seemed to me that the process of undergoing IVF is far more challenging than sitting on the meditation cushion. Perhaps it depends on your support network and faith. I'll speak for myself and explain.

As I've explained in a previous blog post, the chances of a 43 year old getting pregnant is less than 5%. (I'm now 44). This means that out off 100 women in that age group, less than 5 will succeed.

The question is- if you are in tjsy age group- what do you do with that information?

As one wise doctor said to me- you disregard it.

That's all well and good as a theory. But when you are actually going through the IVF, it's another story.

Dan Arielli recalled in his book behavioral psychology book Predictability Irrational how, as a burns victim, he started to notice that, against the conventional wisdom, lower level pain for a short period of time is preferable to s high level of pain over a short period of time.

https://www.thecut.com/2015/07/terrible-accident-led-to-dan-arielys-career.html

Well, IVF when it doesn't immediately work is high levels of pain over a very very long period of time.

More than that, it is also an emotionally exhausting experience. And that, I think, is due to the uncertainty.

I'll explain from the inside out what I mean...

As we all know, the mind and body is one. That is everyone knows that apart from our brain. The perpetual hubris of the brain is that it believes that awareness of consciousness in thought means that consciousness is thought; from which it follows that the brain truly believes in the erroneous thought that it is separate from the body. It isn't.

Well guess what, my brain has lots of hubris.

So on the entire IVF journey I found myself caught out by the effect of making my moods go up and down.

Now learning to detach from our thoughts is perhaps the story of enlightenment. But IVF makes it more so.

First, there are the medications that the doctors put you on. The meditations are hormones. They are effectively like taking the regular female menstrual cycle and amplifying it. In other words, imagine a woman, or woman you know, who has suffered from menstrual pain and mood swings. Now take that and multiply it by 20. Because that's what's going in when taking these hormones.

I for example know that i am not the only woman who, fairly consistently from the time I got my first period, find that for 4 days each month I'm in a terrible mood. And then, each time, am amazed to find that I got my period. During that time I was in a foul mood, I am convinced, each month, that the sky truly is falling. And then, each month, without fail, being genuinely surprised. Oh, that's why everything seemed like crap. And now it's okay. I was pre menstrual. And now I got my period.

So that's what happens big time on the meds. The hormonal medications they exaggerate every tiny change in mood. So whereas being premenstrual is a mood disorder that can strike just before your period, for four to five days z the hormonal medications can be over the entire month.

Second there is that I would call the IVF kaon, equivalent of one hand clapping. I am told by reliable sources that the best attitude is to treat the phenomenon of trying to hold several mutually exclusive attitudes as a run up to motherhood itself, when you are presented with conflicting advice on parenting.

Well, in the case of IVF, it's worse. Stay positive! You are told. After all, mind and body is the same. Don't get your hopes up! The thing is, all the way through the month your mood is going up and down due to the meds anyhow. So if you're like me and not the super disciplined sort, you'll pick your frame of mind according to your mood, to support it or correct it. This is like living in a rollercoaster, one minute convinced it won't work and in the next being wildly optimistic, bouncy and positive...

Third, the entire process is insane. There's do much information to become obsessed over. On my first cycle for example I'm pretty sure I got pregnant with the embryo and it implanted and then got lost. Why? Because my Fitbit heart best went up and up and until the day i felt I'd lost it and then the heart best went down. But you know, life would be simpler with less granularity. I intend to get pregnant next month. I can't go through the pregnancy in that same obsessive way.

I think that overall what makes IVF so hard are the very justifiable mood swings combined with uncertainty of the situation, even when things look good.

Which in my more philosophical moods I take I suppose as a rule for life.

Stay sane people.