Hello everyone, I'm Humble Chen.
Today's story comes from obstetrician and gynecologist Liang Zhen evil. The other day, she approached me and said she wanted to tell me about something that was happening.
She describes the story in just one sentence: an obstetrician-gynecologist can't give birth to a child and tries everything to want a child of his own.
When the phone rang, her first words were: This doctor is me.
Over the next few hours, I was completely shocked by what had happened to her over the past ten months.
It's something I've never had the chance to experience in my life, and it's something that a lot of girls don't want to experience in this life.
For a while, people felt that the anxiety of not being able to have children was wrong, and even anxious because of this anxiety.
But in today's story, an obstetrician-gynecologist, a person with a medical background, will be anxious because he can't have a child.
It's a "war" for women, for mothers.
I don't know when it started, my body was no longer completely under my control.
I was always suddenly weak, chest tight, and out of breath, and my tears would fall suddenly when I didn't know it, and I couldn't stop it.
Under normal circumstances, as long as I slow down, the symptoms will be relieved. As short as a few minutes, as long as half an hour, it is not a big deal.
But today, it seems to be a little different from usual.
Potassium chloride, placed in a high-risk drug drawer in the nurse's resting room. I could walk in while the nurse was busy, pretend to take something else, and get it by the way. As soon as it is quickly pushed into the vein, it should be able to stop the cardiac arrest immediately.
Propofol, the most commonly used intravenous anesthetic in clinical anesthesia, is present in each anesthesia room and is generally placed in a basket of narcotic drugs.
I can sneak it in between surgeries. But if you want to use this medicine to die, you have to get a pump that automatically pushes the drug, otherwise you will fall asleep after pushing a little and you can't continue to take the medicine.
I smiled at the patient in front of me and recorded her illness in her medical record as usual, but these terrible thoughts were constantly repeated in my mind.
They gradually became a practical plan, urging me to put it into practice.
At this moment, I finally realized that things were starting to get serious.
I want to kill myself.
And this terrible thought arose only because of one small thing: my period had been postponed for 4 days.
This isn't the first time I've had an inaccurate period. Rather, over the past year or so, this has happened from time to time.
At the beginning, I was nervous and expectant of this "lateness": Is the dream come true? But the more times there are, only disappointment and frustration remain.
Just this morning at 6:40 a.m., I had just taken a pregnancy test stick, and the lone red bar on it cruelly announced to me that my wish had once again failed.
I still wasn't pregnant.
There are 11 floors in the gynecological ward of our hospital, and some people say that walking through these 11 floors is like walking through all the suffering that a woman can experience in her lifetime.
At the bottom is the Family Planning Department, which specializes in abortions for women who do not want to get pregnant but are pregnant.
Upstairs is the reproductive department, which is inhabited by women who want to get pregnant but cannot conceive children, and are tortured in order to "be a mother".
Further up is the general gynecology department, where the reproductive organs of women who have completed the task of reproduction are removed due to various diseases.
The top floor is the most terrible oncology department, day after day of chemotherapy destroyed the girls' hair and appearance...
I worked on the 13th floor, just finished seeing patients in my own department, still wearing a white coat, and hurried to the reproductive department on the 7th floor to see a doctor.
I can't stay there for too long, at most ten minutes, and I'll have to rush to the operating room again. The patient for the next surgery is already waiting in the preparation room.
This is a provincial top three teaching hospital ranked third in the country, I am an obstetrician and gynecologist, and I am also a mother who wants to have children.
More than two years ago, my husband and I started trying to conceive, but we never got pregnant.
At first, I just wanted to tune in to my period. As an obstetrician-gynecologist, I told myself that I couldn't be as anxious as someone without a medical background.
But in the third year, all the brainwashing and comforting of myself have failed.
I bought ovulation test strips, put an electronic thermometer under my pillow, and woke up every morning to take my temperature and accurately control the timing of each ovulation. Still no movement.
I began to turn to medicine: taking medicine to promote ovulation, injections to promote ovulation, in order to save time, I often in my own department for one second is still helping patients to see a doctor, the next second I run to the injection room, pull up the sleeve of the white coat and ask the nurse to help me with the injection of ovulation.
But even so, I still failed to get my wish.
I thought again of artificial insemination, an assisted fertility technique that delivers sperm to a girl's body in an inordinate manner to help with pregnancy.
My husband and I came to our hospital, he went next door to get sperm, and I was in the small operating room next door to prepare for insemination.
For the first time, I lay on the gynecological examination bed that instructed many patients to pose every day, sterilized the vagina, and waited for the small tadpoles to be processed by my colleagues and then sent directly into my uterine cavity through a thin tube.
This lie, just lay down for more than half an hour. But everything was still in vain, and the conception failed.
Countless times from anticipation to disappointment, and then I couldn't even cry, and I could only tell myself: the best way to prevent disappointment is not to have hope.
In this process, the only thing that gave me comfort was my family, and my husband was always very considerate of me, and he told me that even if I didn't have children, it didn't matter.
My parents and in-laws never mentioned this in front of me, for fear of putting pressure on me.
It's just that every bit of caution they are, I actually see in my eyes. They accidentally said that their relatives and children were very cute, and they would suddenly stop to peek at my reaction, afraid of irritating me.
This special care sometimes makes me feel more guilty.
On the third day of the first lunar month of that year, my husband and I went back to my hometown to see relatives.
Everyone was sitting around the yard basking in the sun laughingly, when suddenly, an aunt who was very close to me when I was a child poked me in the stomach and said, "Why don't you have any goods in your stomach?" Can't you give birth? ”
I, who usually had sharp teeth, was suddenly stunned there.
I was laughing all over the place.
I still remember my aunt's upturned corners of her mouth and wrinkled lines that day.
At that moment, I felt as if something had been punctured in my heart.
I thought about it a lot after that day and I found that trying to conceive is a very strange road that can start from any location, but there is only one end to "having a baby".
But why do people have to have a child?
From adjusting my menstrual cycle, to taking oral medications to induce ovulation, to administering injections, to artificial insemination, I walked down this path as if I were lost.
An inexplicable force pushed me along, and the meaning of walking to the end seemed to be just to prove: I am no problem, I can.
I've seen many patients who, in order to get pregnant, end up in a state of madness.
Some of them quit their jobs and ran to various hospitals every day, and some quarreled with their husbands every day, and they were rejected by their husbands because they could not give birth to children.
There seems to be only one thing left in their lives: to give birth to a child. Everything else in the world has lost its meaning.
And "IVF" is often their last effort – both the last, with the greatest determination and cost.
I once met a junior high school classmate in the emergency department who had good grades and was very focused on appearance. But that day, when I visited her on the night shift, she was wearing a scruffy nightgown, her hair was disheveled, and she was very nervous.
I looked at her medical history and found that she had done many test tubes before, but all of them failed. This time it was not easy to succeed, there was some bleeding that night, so I rushed to the hospital to see.
I prescribed medicine to her and comforted her a few more times, but she kept asking if the child would be okay and if she would have a miscarriage.
After adding WeChat, I saw that all she shared in her circle of friends was the content of worshiping Buddha and chanting sutras.
I have always defined these anxieties of girls as "IVF syndrome" – after experiencing repeated IVF and failures, I began to become sensitive and neurotic, and I comforted myself by believing in Buddhism.
I don't want to be like them, but I'm more afraid that I'll be forced to be like that by reality.
I knew very well that if I went any further, there would be only the last sprint of "IVF".
However, at this intersection, I suddenly braked the car.
I think I have to stop and understand, why should I bring this little life into this world? Am I really ready?
Unexpectedly, the last person who gave me the answer was a former patient.
That day, I had just come out of the hospital when I heard someone calling out to me behind me, and I turned my head and saw Yingying.
Yingying is a patient with MRKH syndrome, also known as "stone girl". Heaven deserted when he created them, forgetting to pinch out the vagina and uterus.
As a regional diagnosis and treatment center for abnormal development of the female reproductive system, such patients are not uncommon, and the incidence among women is about one in four or five thousand.
In my WeChat group, there are about one or two hundred such patients, who often communicate in the group and help each other.
The first time she met Yingying, she came to ask the doctor's hand to create a vagina.
She had already talked about a boyfriend, who had accepted her inability to have children and was already preparing for the wedding. But Yingying still hopes that she can at least have a normal married life with her future husband.
The operation went very smoothly and Yingying was soon discharged from the hospital. Unexpectedly, after more than half a year, she could still recognize me without a white coat.
After the operation, Yingying recovered well. She said that she learned that girls like them actually have normal eggs, the disease is not inherited, and if they are surrogate, they can still have their own healthy babies. I happened to run into me, and I wanted to ask if that was the case.
I told her that as far as the current research is concerned, the uterine transplant technology is still in the experimental stage, and surrogacy is indeed the only way for stone women to have their own children at present.
In countries where surrogacy is legal, studies have also shown that the vast majority of girls with MRKH syndrome have normal offspring through surrogacy.
But I had to remind her that surrogacy is illegal in China, that surrogacy companies are uneven, and that it is easy to be scammed.
And going abroad for surrogacy, one is a large cost, one is the current epidemic, going abroad and returning to China is very inconvenient, not everyone has this condition.
Yingying said, I know this road is difficult, but I still want to go for a walk, I have already thought about it.
In WeChat, I finally asked Yingying the question that I had been struggling with for a long time——
"Why do you still want a child knowing that you have to suffer so much?"
"My husband and I both like children, and my relatives in my husband's family don't really know that I can't have children." You may not quite understand what a woman needs to face after marriage and not having children, even if the family members do not say it on the surface, but I feel like a sinner in my heart, maybe this society is far less tolerant of women than imagined. ”
She told me about her experience when she was 15 years old.
That year, she did not come to the hospital for menstruation, but was told the bad news that she would not be able to have children in this life, and she cried in the hospital when she was young.
The most beautiful flower season for other girls, but for her, it is a day of struggling in the nightmare of the middle of the night. She finally accepted reality in tears day after day.
She said that at that time, she understood that there was no use in struggling, no use in escaping, no use in entanglement, no use in self-pity, only to accept reality and find a way to escape in the thorny bushes.
"No matter how difficult this road is, pain is always more powerful than cowardice."
Yingying's situation is more difficult than mine, and her experience has made me think a lot.
I think I want to have a child because I want to be a mother and I want my husband to experience the joy of being a father.
I will bring this child into the world, but he does not belong to anyone, he belongs only to himself.
After thinking it through, I decided that I was going to make that "last effort", and I was going to do IVF.
Amazingly, when I made up my mind, those depression-like symptoms never came back.
I know, I'm ready.
I have to say that even if I talked about it before I started, I still underestimated the pain of doing test tubes.
The first step is to do the examination first.
Draw blood, drink sugar water, and draw blood again.
The needle went into my arm again and again, over and over again, for a total of twenty tubes.
In addition, a variety of checks are also done. It took more than a month of busyness before and after that all kinds of reports were prepared.
At that time, I happened to be in the hospital doing clinical trials of ovulation induction drugs, and if I joined, I could get ovulation induction injections for free, so I joined the group.
Everything is ready, just waiting for me to measure the hormone level again in the middle and late stages of menstruation, and then I can officially enter the cycle of doing test tubes.
After the last blood draw that morning, I went back to the operating room of my department and started my busy day.
In the afternoon, during a break between two surgeries, I received a message that the report had been out, and I clicked in—
This glance directly made my heart beat a few beats.
I shook my hand uncontrollably and handed my phone to my colleague with a trembling hand.
"Can you help me see if HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) is elevated?"
The colleague glanced at it and said, "Congratulations on your pregnancy!" ”
I looked at her, not caring that she was still in the operating room, and there were so many people present, and I cried when I held her, and I couldn't stop it.
I was so excited that I told my mother the good news at the first time, and also told my husband, and finally told the doctor in the fertility department, telling her that I could not participate in the clinical trial, "because I am pregnant myself!" ”
My husband heard the good news and drove for more than an hour to pick me up from work.
Usually driving a foot on the accelerator, a foot on the brake, that day the car into a uniform linear movement, every time you drive a place with uneven road, you lightly click the brake: "Can't turn pregnant women upside down." ”
"Just a few cells, what can you do?" I laughed.
But just two days later, the regular review of the blood HCG doubled, my progesterone, estradiol, these indicators of pregnancy are falling down.
As an obstetrician-gynecologist, I know all too well what this means – the embryo is not saved.
But I still didn't give up, grabbed the reproductive doctor and asked, can I still save it?
She said what I knew perfectly, no, it's better to have the biochemical pregnancy flow out on its own, not ectopic pregnancy.
But at that moment, there was only one thought in my mind: I wanted to keep this child.
I couldn't prescribe my own medication, and my colleagues wouldn't agree to do so, so I went to a private hospital.
I said to the doctor, "I understand, but you prescribe me medicine, and I will bear all the consequences." ”
For the first time in my life, I ate a lot of Chinese medicine.
I took the injections for fetal protection that I did not approve of in the conventional treatment plan, and even tried many over-the-instruction medications, even the home remedies that are usually scorned.
I knew in my heart that all I had done was useless, and even if it was an ectopic pregnancy, I would only harm myself. But I couldn't give up easily.
What if? What if there is a miracle?
In that instant, I suddenly understood the "a little silly" patients I had treated, and understood their obsession with knowing that they could not do it.
Many of them, because of years of infertility to seek medicine, a few of the jianghu lang's mouth of the panacea, they will also try at great expense.
They are always sensitive and anxious in life, and a little wind and grass can make them emotionally collapse.
At that time, I always said to my colleagues, such a woman is so sad, in order to have a child to ruin her life, is it worth it?
At that time, I always speculated that these girls must be living in families with low education and not open-mindedness.
In the imagination, their mother-in-law must also be harsh and harsh, and will force these young girls to this step.
But I didn't expect that one day, I would do the same thing as them.
Eventually, a week after I forcibly secured the fetus, it left with a menstrual bleeding.
This time, I didn't even have tears.
My husband was afraid that I was broken and took me out to relax. He said no one here knows you, so just cry. But I don't know why, I just can't cry.
I fell into a depressed mood again.
I told my husband that if we tried again, since we could get pregnant this time, at least it meant that we could both get pregnant.
Husband said well, I don't want to see you suffer, let's take it slow, there will always be children.
But every time I go to the same room, my mind echoes: Will I get pregnant? Will it fail again? What should I do if I continue to fail? A series of problems later developed to the point that no matter what happened, I could automatically think of the "pregnancy" thing.
My family lives far away from the unit, I will think, if I can't have children, there must be no position to change the house, I will have to go back and forth so far back and forth for the rest of my life; the sister-in-law is pregnant, the whole family is very happy, only I think they must be behind the scenes to talk about I can't give birth to a child is very humiliating; work is not smooth, I will also feel that I am such a useless person, do not do anything well.
The feeling that both the body and the brain are out of control comes again. The pain of mental hesitation, entanglement, and doubt is far greater than the pain of a needle piercing a blood vessel.
I gritted my teeth and went out.
I started the test tube process again. Didn't expect this "last effort" that I would do a second time.
I couldn't go to the free medication group for clinical trials anymore, and the reproductive doctor helped me adjust the individualization plan.
I started my days with ovulation induction needles every day.
Before, my induction injections were relatively mild, and usually only one or two eggs matured a month. But doing test tubes is different, ideally, you need to take a dozen eggs at a time, so the effectiveness of the injection will be much stronger.
Since then, my life has become: a few tubes of blood are drawn from my hands every three to five years, two stitches are inserted in my stomach, and two more stitches are inserted in my ass.
Injections are given to promote egg growth, while blood is drawn to monitor the development of follicles in order to remove them at the most appropriate time.
My vascular condition was originally very good, but I didn't expect to have a day without bleeding.
After the left hand is drawn, the right hand is drawn, and at the end of the draw, there is no place to put the needle, and can only be stacked on the old scar and smoked again.
Sharp needles pierced my skin, pierced into my body, and injected colorless medicines into my skin and muscles.
Within a few days, I was covered with dense needle holes all over my body, and finally I felt numb from the pain.
If someone's needle eye can be compared to a drug addict, it must be a "test tube mother" who wants a child.
Finally, after half a month of induction injections, I had the most critical egg retrieval surgery.
I was huddled with a dozen or so girls in the same batch of eggs on a bench outside the operating room.
Someone secretly looked in through the window of the operating room, someone sat quietly in a corner out of his mind, and more than two or three people got together to comfort each other, "It's okay, I heard people say that anesthesia doesn't hurt at all." You see them so soon, and we'll be fine. ”
But in fact, egg retrieval surgery is a terrible process.
The girl lay on the operating table, her legs open, exposing her vagina, and the doctor took a 35-centimeter-long egg retrieval needle and reached into the vagina.
The first to go is an ultrasound probe with a guide line on it, and the needle penetrates into the ovary in the direction of the guide line, aims at one follicle, pokes it in, absorbs the follicle fluid, and then the needle exits the follicle and enters the needle into another follicle.
In general, there are two punctures in the vagina, one on the left and one on the right, and the two ovaries have one mouth each. But there are holes in the ovaries, because to take an egg you have to put a hole in it.
Although I was a doctor, I had never been lying on the operating table myself, nor had I ever experienced the feeling of being operated on by someone else.
Watching the people in front of me walk in one by one, and then pull out one by one by the flat car, my heart beat faster and faster.
It's my turn.
As soon as I entered the door, I saw the familiar anesthesiologist smiling at me.
On the sterile operating table next to the operating table, the surgical instruments have been neatly arranged: forceps, peepids, cervical forceps, oval forceps, etc., as well as the long egg retrieval needle.
She took my saline bottle and hung it on the anesthesia rack, and another nurse instructed me to lie down on the operating table.
My mind was blank, and I only knew that I listened to the command to subconsciously complete the action: sit on the bed, take off my shoes, lie down, take off my pants, and open my legs.
The one who helped me with the egg retrieval was a reproductive teacher, who saw that it was me and said, "Don't be afraid, soon." ”
Before I could say thank you, the intravenous drug worked, and I quickly fell asleep.
And when I woke up, I realized that I had taken 24 eggs and taken two years of ovulation at once.
I had no way back, and that was my last effort.
Normally, women only release one or two eggs a month, and for each egg, the ovaries secrete a little hormone.
The release of a dozen or twenty eggs at a time will secrete a large number of hormones and produce strong stimulation to the ovaries.
The more you get it, the higher the risk of postoperative hyperstimulation, ranging from bloating to ascites, pleural fluid, and even life-threatening.
I used the least prone overstimulation regimen, the dose of the stimulus was very small, but the number of eggs taken was enough, which was very lucky.
Some patients are older, can only get a few eggs at a time, if the fertilization fails, they can only repeatedly promote ovulation, egg retrieval process.
I'm also thankful that if I had been in the clinical lab before, I wouldn't have been able to adjust the dose, and maybe there was a risk of overstimulation of the ovaries.
Thinking like this, although the last child did not stay, he helped me avoid a danger in the dark.
After that, I prevented ovarian overstimulation while waiting for the results.
After the egg retrieval, my body was very uncomfortable, my stomach was swollen and painful, and I couldn't even walk straight. At that time, I secretly swore that if I didn't succeed, there would be no next time.
After the eggs and sperm are successfully fertilized, they are sent to the laboratory for culture, and the culture is called mulberry embryo for three days and the blastocyst for five days. Blastocysts are raised and transplanted back to the mother, and the probability of pregnancy is relatively high.
But the probability of raising blastocysts is very low, often send a bunch to raise, but can not raise one, many people themselves fertilized eggs are not many, can no longer risk choosing to raise sacs.
Doctors rate each fertilized egg, distinguishing between good and bad embryos.
I raised two blastocysts with a rating of 4aa, which is equivalent to the few of all the blastocysts that were admitted to Tsinghua Peking University, which is a very, very good result.
I shared this good news with Yingying for the first time, Yingying also just finished retrieving the eggs, but then her words shocked me.
With such an operation, Yingying actually chose not to be anesthetized.
Because the entire process of assisted reproduction is self-funded, if there is no anesthesia, you can save more than two thousand pieces.
"I thought I would have endured it, but I didn't expect it to hurt so much."
Yingying took a total of 15 eggs, that is, 15 holes in the ovary.
I just have a chill on my back at the thought of her being in a waking state, with such a long needle from her vagina all the way into her ovaries.
She didn't tell me if the agency she was looking for was legitimate.
I have heard too many bloody experiences of surrogate girls who want to have a baby, some surrogacy agencies in order to ensure the success rate of egg retrieval and fertilization, the dosage of ovulation promotion drugs is particularly large, and the follow-up treatment of ovarian overstimulation is not timely, and girls are often life-threatening.
In addition, the conditions of the reproductive laboratory, as well as the doctor's technique, have a crucial impact on the quality of the subsequent embryos. If it is not a really special situation like Yingying, there is a need for IVF fertility, you must go to a regular large hospital.
Especially young girls with financial difficulties, do not believe what the psoriasis advertisement says, "Donate a few eggs, give XX compensation, harmless and return money quickly."
This is definitely a dangerous thing.
I also have one last hurdle to put the baby in the stomach.
In order to welcome the arrival of the baby, I need to eat large doses of hormones to promote the growth of the endometrium. This is to prepare a "lodging environment" for the embryonic baby to be transferred.
Every time, I carried a large backpack to get medicine, and the amount of medicine in a week could fill the whole book.
There are five drugs taken orally, and one requires injection. Taking medicine gradually became as common as eating.
The inner membrane is growing happily, and in a few days you can plant a baby, but you didn't expect an accident to come quietly.
Because of the busy work and tight staff, although I was doing test tubes, I still had to work the night shift.
That night, I had been answering the phone in the department, running upstairs and downstairs, and staying up all night. Wait until the next day to check, and found that my inner membrane has actually thinned!
This means that I may have taken all my medicine for more than ten days in vain.
I was very nervous, rushed to the reproductive department to find a doctor to re-prescribe the drug, fortunately this cycle is still saved, but the dose of medication has been increased.
After taking the medicine for another three days in such a panic, I finally waited for the embryo transfer, two days later than expected.
Before going to the embryo transfer, Miss Nurse sent each of us a hot Chinese herbal pack for us to put on our lower abdomen.
I don't know what this is for, but the little girl in the bed next door said, "Our baby is taken out of the fridge, and we have to help him heat up the room first so that he can live in and be comfortable." ”
I knew she was definitely unscientific, but she still felt warm.
With my previous experience in egg retrieval surgery, this time, as soon as I entered the operating room, I climbed into bed by myself, skillfully introduced myself to the doctor, and expressed my gratitude.
The transplant surgery was quite fast and there was hardly any sensation. Immediately afterward, those of us expectant mothers who had completed the operation were pulled back to the ward one by one in a flat cart.
In a large room, there were 6 of our transplanted female compatriots lying in total.
For the first time, I was lying with so many patients, and although everyone was not under anesthesia and could move freely, none of them dared to move, and they all lay so quietly and upright.
"This is my third embryo transfer, and if it doesn't work out, I'll have to re-retrieve my eggs." A girl suddenly broke the silence.
"Or you are young, you can transplant three times once an egg, you look at me, you take the egg twice, and this one can be used." A sister in her forties took over the conversation.
Another girl asked, "What if I want to go to the bathroom?" Can I move? Will it pull the baby out? ”
I knew she was saying something that couldn't happen, but when I got up, I would still unconsciously keep my hands light and slow, and I thought it was funny.
I thought I would succeed this time, but I didn't dare to say it—for fear that it wouldn't work.
On the third morning after the operation, at about 7:20, the sun was shining obliquely into the room from the window, and I suddenly felt a tingling pain in my lower abdomen.
Even though everyone laughed at me later that I wanted to go to the bathroom, I still insisted that it was embryo implantation pain.
Every day after surgery is extremely long. On the 7th day, I really couldn't hold back, didn't let the blood draw, I took the pregnancy test paper myself and tested it -
Seeing that the place where the second bar should be generated was snow-white, I had to put aside the pregnancy test paper in frustration, comforting myself that the time had not come.
Who knew that my eyes had just left the pregnancy test paper, and the afterglow felt a trace of pink in the snow white.
I picked up the pregnancy test paper again, carefully examined it, and grabbed my husband to study it together.
The two of us looked over and over again with myopic glasses on, and finally agreed that it seemed to be a little bit pink.
Having experienced the last loss, we all tacitly didn't show excitement or tell anyone.
For the next few days, I always had nightmares, and the dreams were endless blood.
Every night and half Awoke, I couldn't help but sneak to the toilet to test a pregnancy test paper, and only when I saw that the pink color was still there, and the contrast with the previous color had deepened, I could fall asleep again.
I knew it was my subconscious that was afraid, afraid that like the last time, nothing was left with the blood. The name of obstetrician and gynecologist can't help me overcome my anxiety either.
I chose to tell Yingying the good news of my pregnancy. Her two embryos were also put into the womb of a woman she had never met in the next few days, and most likely never would.
We were in the same mood, the only difference was that I could still take a pregnancy test strip myself and get a little comfort, but she couldn't, she didn't even know where her baby was now.
Yingying said that she felt that her child was like being "kidnapped" by others, neither could see nor ask, when she wanted to baby, she could only contact a customer service, and the person opposite told her to "wait with peace of mind." ”
She also told me something that scared me a lot, when she signed the contract, the surrogacy agency promised to help her find a surrogate mother with a smooth birth, and she also paid according to this standard.
But after the embryo transfer was successful, the agency told her that they were looking for a surrogate mother who had been born by caesarean section, and put two embryos in, and now both embryos are alive.
People who have been born by caesarean section, if the second child is a twin, the situation is much more dangerous, because the stomach will be much larger than when pregnant with a child, it is easy to cause uterine rupture, it will be fatal.
On the one hand, I am afraid that institutions will risk the safety of surrogate mothers in order to mature babies. On the one hand, they are worried about the risk of pregnant mothers and cut the children out early - then the chances of Yingying's children being born prematurely will be greatly improved, and it may be much more difficult to raise.
But Yingying had no choice, because her child was already in someone else's womb, and she couldn't do anything about it.
I also heard that another little girl in the stone girl group has asked a surrogate abroad, but the agency needs her to go abroad to retrieve her eggs. Because of the epidemic, she has not been able to go abroad, and has been raising the surrogate mother remotely for more than 1 year.
I didn't know how to comfort Yingying.
Luckily, this time my HCG was doubly good, and what awaited me was a long road to protect the tire.
There are 8 new alarm clocks on my phone, reminding me to take medicine by point, needle by point, and medicine by point.
Mothers who are naturally pregnant, the ovaries can secrete the hormones needed for the baby's growth, but IVF mothers cannot. The ovaries that have undergone surgery have no way to provide sufficient support to the baby and can only be supplemented by foreign drugs.
Every time, I would bring back a pair of backpacks full of medicine, and even a few boxes could not be stuffed, but could only be carried in bags, and the fetal protection pills cost more than a thousand dollars a week.
Every morning, I would take three pills for a total of eight tablets; at night I would take two more pills for a total of five tablets; and before going to bed, I would take two pills to the vagina. Not only that, but two more stitches are needed every morning and evening.
Because I was taking anticoagulant drugs on my belly, if the nurse's technique was not good, I would have a large bruise on my body.
During that time, whether the needle hurt or not was out of my mind, and I was only worried about bruises - because then there would be no place for the needle to be injected the next day.
The most painful thing was that on weekends, I had to give myself injections.
Although I am a doctor, I can skillfully cut the patient's skin with a knife on the operating table and cut the lesion with a joke, but I actually have a slight faint needle and never dare to see others give me injections and draw blood. Every time I look at the tip of the needle about to penetrate the skin, I feel weak all over my body, and I have to close my eyes quickly.
But my medication couldn't be broken, and it took more than an hour to drive from home to the hospital, so I couldn't run through it every day.
I thought, this needle, some patients can get their own, I as a doctor, I will be able to do it.
Whenever the alarm clock that urges me to get an injection rings on the weekend, I feel a tingling in my scalp.
I would rub my belly out, find a place where I could still get a needle, rub it on my skin with a cool alcohol swab, and keep nagging, brainwashing myself, "No pain, no pain!" It doesn't hurt at all! ”
Then the left hand pinches the meat on the belly to be needled, and the right hand holds the needle tube with the backhand, and the needle tip is facing his own disinfected belly——
"3, 2, 1, Za!"
This process must not be hesitated, the slower the needle is inserted, the more painful it is. In the first few times, I did not dare to plunge into it at once, but I had to pierce it several times before the tip of the needle would completely sink into the skin, and I suffered a lot of sins. It is also often difficult to control the strength, either it is very painful to take too much medicine at once, or because I am afraid that I will not be able to push the medicine for a long time.
This medicine and air are pre-stored syringe, pushing the drug feels a bit like screwing the bottle cap, at the beginning you have to break through a little harder, and then you can easily enter the medicine. It's all my experience of pricking one stitch at a time.
Every time I get an injection, my husband will accompany me on the side. Hand me a cotton swab and scratch my belly to reduce pain when I get the needle in, while shouting with me, "No pain, no pain, no pain." Then he exaggerated, "Wife is the best!" ”
He has always been my biggest reliance. His gentleness, understanding, and companionship are my courage.
For such a long time, I ran in and out of the reproductive department, and I was hospitalized twice, although it was convenient to see a doctor in the hospital where I worked, but in fact, I had to face a lot of eyes and "gossip".
Occasionally, a well-connected colleague reminds me to change into civilian clothes and not wear a white coat the next time I go to the reproductive department.
But I still insisted on doing it in my own hospital.
Not because of how brave I am, but because I have to draw blood for three days and two ends for examination, not in my own hospital, and it is impossible to take so much leave.
After the baby was in the stomach, I still went to work every day and occasionally went on stage for minor surgeries.
There used to be a female doctor in our department, the day of delivery was a full-day clinic, she had begun to contract regularly in the morning, every ten minutes, but she insisted until noon, after seeing all the patients before telling colleagues, I am going to have a baby in the afternoon.
Then he went straight to the maternity ward by himself.
It's not that we're any other than a doctor, it's just that we want to be a mother outside of being a doctor. These are two ordinary identities, they are not in conflict, nor should they be considered conflicts.
I told my colleagues I knew, let them say what they wanted, the hospital was so big, sneaky but like I had something unseemly.
"People who care about me naturally don't say anything about me, and what do people who want to see jokes say, and what do they have to do with me?"
I no longer cared about the glances of others, and I learned to "blacken myself" before others opened their mouths.
I want to wear a white coat, I want to do it, and I want to do it, and these can no longer make me tangled.
Only my husband knew the deepest fear in my heart. Every night, the nightmare still haunted me, and my husband slept with me all night long.
Finally, the fertility doctor informed me that I could go to the ultrasound to see the fetal heart. That will be my first "meeting" with my baby.
On that day, I had already walked to the elevator entrance, but the ghost made God open the perpetual calendar on the mobile phone, and the yellow calendar was impressively written with four big words: Everything is not appropriate.
Hesitated again and again, I still discussed with the reproductive doctor, can I do b ultrasound tomorrow, the yellow calendar said that tomorrow should ask for heirs...
I thought she must have been helpless, but she agreed to me anyway.
"Boom, boom," I said the next day when I heard the beat of a tight heartbeat coming from the ultrasound machine, and at that moment I felt that everything was worth it.
Countless needle eyes, piles of medicines, long needles that pierced into the ovaries, those nights of tossing and waking up, all turned into a warm current, staining my eye sockets red.
My child is in my belly right now, staying with me 24 hours a day. It was an unspeakable experience.
Even if I lost my hair, because the subcutaneous induration caused by the injection was connected into pieces, my stomach was swollen, my figure was seriously out of shape, and my whole body was covered with itchy small rashes, and even the cold was several times more serious than usual, I still felt worth it.
I don't want to say to the baby in the belly, you see how much suffering your mother has suffered for you, these sufferings are my own choice, and his existence itself is a reward for me.
Nor do I want him to come into this world with my pain and dreams. He has his own life.
On the day of the pen, I was 16 weeks pregnant, 4 weeks had passed since I stopped all the fetal protection pills, the early screening of ultrasound and non-invasive DNA had passed, and I could finally calm down and look back on this journey.
Sitting by the window of the office, looking out the window at the waveless lake under the setting sun, the sun shining in and falling on me and my colleagues, she was discussing something with me, and I didn't hear clearly, because... I abruptly interrupted her—
"He just seemed to have moved!" I felt him move! ”
I touched my stomach and smiled like a fool.
Dr. Leung wrote a poem to his child who did not come into the world:
"To You Who Have Never Met"
If the dew on the tip of the willow leaf in the morning is you
If the soft and delicate warm breeze at dusk is you
If the twinkling starlight sprinkled on every bud is you
Then my heartbeat is you
Breathing is you
Every unprovoked heartbeat of a midnight dream is also you
You are the elf passing through April
The floral fragrance lingers into a crown
Willows are interwoven into white dresses
Tap on tiptoe
It blossomed all the way
Drink from clear springs and feed on honey buds
The sky is your garden
Dance in the clouds
Inadvertently, a pool of spring dew was shaken off
Mountains, rivers, lakes and seas reflect your eyebrows
Pulse spring water can not be as good as you look back and smile
The light waves lapping at the shore are like you are very annoyed
What cannot be erased is this ripple
Echoing in the mind, deeper and farther away
But it was the rest of the year for the rest of my life
She said that when she wrote this, it was already May, and then little by little time it came to December, and at this moment of writing the story, she already had another little life in her belly.
I love these ongoing stories and cherish the "reality connection" that I have built with the author.
When Dr. Liang said that the protagonist of this story was actually herself, my question suddenly became cautious. On the contrary, Dr. Liang is always gentle and calm, and the bitterness she eats has become sweet after everything she says.
Over the phone, I seemed to see her wearing a white coat, walking through the long corridor, running from her operating table to another department, rolling up her sleeves to get injections and draw blood, but with a smile on her face.
For the surrogacy industry, she has a lot of worries, she said that she must speak out, in order to let more people not blind, away from the dangers of surrogacy.
I haven't seen her in two years, listening to her share her experiences and then helping her record it, as if I was also involved in a short part of her life in some way. It's an honor.
The words she said to the baby in her belly particularly touched me, "I don't want him to come to this world with my pain and dreams." He has his own life. ”
Dr. Leung, you will definitely become a good mother.
(Some of the characters in the text are pseudonyms)
EDIT: Slag helmet avocado
Illustration: Baby fish Xu Liu'er