What's next

After the results get out, everyone wants to talk, everyone.  The problem with this is, THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT.  You aren’t pregnant, so technically, this is just like last month, except that this month, we paid a lot of money for me to get my period.  The funny thing is when we were about to go through IVF, everyone had a success story to tell me.  Now that IVF failed, these same people had IVF fail stories to share.  In my opinion, your word is officially crap, and I no longer want a pep talk from these people. I think the nicest words that anyone actually said to us during all of this was… “Man/Damn/Oh my God, THAT SUCKS!”  because for once it was honest.  This situation does suck.  I know people mean well, but while we are going through the worst time in our life, hearing pep talks about other people’s good fortune doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me pissed off that it isn’t happening to me. 

So after you complete your IVF cycle, there is a post IVF appointment for you to discuss what occurred, or in our case, what didn’t occur with the doctor.  She basically said we could do IVF again, next time, they would double my medicine (all I hear is double the cost), and it appears that besides me not responding to the medication, that things were going great up until the incubator.  She told us that they could use a different incubator that has a different % of oxygen and we could hope for better results.  What exactly does “better results” mean?  I don’t think I got into it, but the point of IVF is to create a blastocyst at the end of the cycle.  We didn’t get any of them, NONE.  So, does that mean we now get 12 embryos that die in a dish, because technically that would be better?  I could think of a million other scenarios where the outcome is still technically better than the last cycle, but we still end up in the exact same spot. We told her we were interested in embryo adoption, and she gave us a packet of an agency they work with.  She also asked us if we wanted to talk to the woman in the office that helps with the financial planning of all of this.  Again, we are already at the office, we might as well hear what she has to say. 

She was great; she tried to find a way to help us out.  She told us that she would talk to the IVF director and see what they could do.  She would get back to us.  I think we were excited about doing another round of IVF.  She did eventually call us back.  The director offered us a deal, we would pay half for another round of IVF, plus the full cost of drugs, and in the event that a child is born, they would ask for the remaining half of the IVF cycle.  Well, we were almost sold on this.  I think we went back and forth on this for a while.  We tried to figure out ways to get the meds covered, more phone calls, more waiting, and more thinking of every possible thing we could do to get these meds covered.  Tom and I talked; if we could get the meds covered we would take it as a sign that we would do another round of IVF.  If they weren’t covered, we would move forward on embryo adoption.  I know, such an important decision left up to fate, but honestly at this point, what else can you do?

With embryo adoption, you are adopting an embryo that is already at a blastocyst stage.  This is something that we failed to achieve.  We are bypassing all of the messy costly uncertainty of IVF, and getting the ultimate end product that you would hope to achieve, a blastocyst.    For those of you who ask, and I know you are wondering, "Why don’t you just adopt?"  To that I reply… WHY DON’T YOU JUST ADOPT?!?  Unfortunately, adoption is very expensive.  It is very time consuming.  Also, if you haven’t noticed, we have very bad luck.  I wouldn’t be able to survive someone coming into my house and taking a child I raised simply because they changed their mind.  I don’t want our story played out on Lifetime television.  Later down the road, that may be something we attempt, but for right now please excuse us for not wanting to go through adoption as our first choice.  Infertility is a journey.  Each person is different.  What works for one, might not work for another. 

Do you ever feel like you are just constantly swimming upstream?  Constantly fighting the currents?  Struggling, not just with one issue, but in every single arena in your life,  EVERY.GOD.DAMNED.THING is difficult.  Almost like life is telling you, “Bitch, you are headed the wrong friggin way!”  Then you change course, and everything just works out.  I think we just got to the point where we wanted to shout to the universe… “WE HEAR YOU!”  It’s hard to let go.  In this case, we are saying… we are giving up on having a biological child, which was a very difficult decision.  Does that mean in the future we won’t change our mind?  No.  For right now, we believe embryo adoption is the right thing for us… and so, for right now, we have to go see a lady about some embryos!   (Words I never thought I would say)