This is all my calendar today. Not much on the go. The most exciting thing was hoping for my period to come so I could find out if the cyst is gone. There is no sign of it coming (usually I get the lovely advance notice of a week of spotting before hand). Well that is, except yesterday's hefty dose of bitchiness directed at hubby. He might have deserved that though, I don't know.
It was cold outside today so I spent the day grocery shopping and then making a couple of soups. I'm thinking (hoping?) that this might be the last urge that I get to make some in a while. Bring on the BBQ weather and food!
Hubby and I are still on different pages fertility-wise. I didn't have the desire to write about it until now. I was just letting it simmer for a while. The short of it is that D wants to finish up with this round of IVF. I feel that he is nearing the end of his IF rope and I'm trying to respect that. He thinks it is my body that is preventing us from getting pregnant more than an embryo quality issue (ouch). I think it's embryo quality issue, and so does the doctor.
If D can only go through this a few more times, I want to skip the OE IVF and move to DE. He's going to be 37 soon and he's seeing the big 4-0 approaching. I think for the first time he's feeling his biological clock ticking.
I know if I have a baby I won't regret how it came to us. We've fought long and hard enough. And I'm starting to wonder for what?
If OE IVF doesn't work this time around, D wants to move to traditional adoption. I don't. I can't explain why exactly, I just know I'm not fully there. I want to try DE with donor sperm.
D doesn't really understand my desire to experience pregnancy. He thinks adoption is just about the same thing. This frustrates me. I feel like after all that has been taken from us, I just want this one thing. I want our baby to be welcomed into our family with the 9 months in utero that most other mothers get. I want to control the prenatal environment. I want to experience childbirth.
D says he needs the closure of doing this OE IVF. He says we are too close to the finish line to quit now. Not to mention that we have $5,000 of non-returnable Follistim just rotting away in our fridge. He says that the money spent going after it ($25,000 for fun) will be on him (we have joint accounts, we're just talking about the guilt of spending it I suppose). I would rather spend the rest on DE and some furniture (for a nursery!).
Something has else has happened. The hardest part of this part of the journey lately doesn't seem to be pregnancy announcements and seeing swollen bellies anymore. It's almost like I've become largely desensitized. The hardest part now is that D and I don't agree on which way to proceed.
There doesn't seem to be a right path anymore. Up until now we made the best choice together after considering the options. While there have been many bumps in the road, one choice always seemed to stand out. Not the case anymore folks.
I can totally understand how the hardest part is you and hubby not agreeing on how to proceed. My hubby wants to do IUI with donor sperm and I want to pursue traditional adoption. Although we are going to go the IUI with donor sperm route, it is purely because we can't afford adoption. It makes me feel really sad that we can't adopt. It is so hard when you aren't on the same page as your significant other for something as monumental as how you build your family. I wish you all the best going forward :)
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blog too Gypsy Mama. I'm sorry your last treatment didn't work. That really stinks.
DeleteUgh, I feel like I'm just a little ways behind you, but on the same path. We just did a micro dissection and there was no sperm, my eggs are questionable (we have 3 on ice, but this last time there was only 2 follicle and 1 immature egg so my RE thinks it's indicative of declining production/quality). My husband wants to do a varicele surgery and wait 6 months to see if there's any improvement. I feel like we need to balance my declining egg quality with his desire to grow some sperm. It's such a difficult, difficult thing. I want to give him his best shot, but if there's really no chance, do I want to give up any possibility of using my eggs? I looked up donors (he's not white, so there's like 30 to choose from) and it just made me so sad. Since I feel like we're headed in that direction, I'm curious about the idea of donor eggs + donor sperm (rather than donor embryo--I am white, and I'm not sure there are a lot of mixed donor embryos). Do they do that? And I agree with you on the wanting to be pregnant rather than go through adoption. That's what I absolutely want. My husband and I are more or less on the same page, but I feel like we're diverging and it's so, so hard. On top of all the other hard things that we're having to face. It's just not fair.
ReplyDeleteThere are mixed race donor embryos available through Nightlight Christian Adoption Agency. Although I'm not sure if they would be what you are looking for? BTW, you don't have to be Christian to adopt from them I believe.
DeleteRE: Adopting embryos (note: some agencies and clinics refer to it as donation) is a mixed bag in my opinion. As are all fertility treatment is I suppose. I think it's amazing in that it gives a chance at life for embryos that might otherwise be destroyed. The part that is more difficult, that they don't discuss (at least they didn't with us) is that the chances of success with donor embryos is lower than some other options, such as donor egg and sperm.
This is because the embryos come from couples who have fertility issues themselves. If I were to go down the road of embryo adoption again (which I'm not), I would pay more attention to what the fertility problems were of the donating couple. Were they made with old eggs? Did the couple have recurrent miscarriages? Was it a sperm and egg problem? Those are some of the things that I would like to know. I know that sometimes the people at the agency don't like to answer these questions or may not have the information available to them. I also liked the idea that you can negotiate openness and that if there were biological siblings out there that you could also arrange contact with them.
Sorry that you are going through this too Martha. I'll be following along your journey too.
Oh, thanks for the information on the embryo adoption, that's interesting about the donor embryos not having the same chance of success, but it makes sense when you think about it. I'm always just trying to think about the step after the next step (it drives my husband crazy who likes to focus only on the next step, which drives me crazy). We have our follow up appointments with the urologist next week and our follow up with the RE a couple weeks after that. They're retesting my FSH to see how much worse things are. Sigh. It's a tough road. But I do appreciate you sharing the information you've gathered. It helps knowing that you're not alone. But man, it's hard to change course from imaging a little you + a little him to donor eggs and/or donor sperm. Not that I think there's any difference in terms of love for non-bio children, but it's hard to watch your original vision of your future change and morph in such slow motion.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your support and I'll be checking back to see how you're doing and likely coming to you for advice as we move slowly forward.