another reset

Before T and I were even engaged and well before the vasectomy reversal, a person asked me about our intention to have children.  Very cheerfully, I said, “He’s getting a vas reversal.  If it doesn’t work, we’ll adopt.”  It was an easy answer in my head.  To me, it was a very simple dichotomous outcome.  Sperm = biological babies.  No sperm = adopted babies.  No in between.

The vas reversal worked.  We had swimmers.  I was not prepared for the “but…” that needed to append itself to that statement.  I was not prepared for the gray decisions, the heartache, and the now 20 failed cycles.  I am tired.  We are tired.  Every cycle, decisions need to be made.  Do we keep moving forward with this assisted reproduction?  Do we move on to adoption?  Do we stop driving ourselves bat shit crazy and just move to an island somewhere and open a sno-cone stand? 

T is definitely not ready for adoption.  I am also not ready, but certainly to a lesser extent.  Adoption starts involving people beyond yourselves, and I'm not sure we are in a good enough place for that yet.  I just don’t know how many of these cycles I have left in me.  But so far, it always seems that I have at least one more. 

I’m a numbers person, so I just sit on my phone and calculate probabilities with my calculator.  If we have an 80% success rate with IVF and two 4AA blastocysts, then we have a 99% chance of it working in three tries.  If we have a 10% chance with IUI, then we have a 35% chance of working in four tries.  If we do two IVFs and four IUIs, then we have a 97% chance of it working.  I try every combination of possibilities to give me comfort.  I love math. 

If it come down to just the numbers, the decisions are easy.  But of course, it can’t be that simple.   We are people, not numbers.  We don’t necessarily match the general population.  And I’m still worried that the unknown issues with me in my head give us a dangerously low chance of success no matter how many times we try.

Anyway, the question arises of when are going to stop with IVF/IUI and move on to something else.  And the answer is, we simply don’t know.  We’re down now, but not out.  We’re trying IUI again this cycle, but adding Clomid to the mix.  The Clomid should make me ovulate more than one egg (hopefully no more than two), thereby giving T’s swimmers more targets to hit.  I am a little leery of this, as I’d prefer multiple eggs to be in a controlled environment with IVF.  But, we’ll have ultrasounds to monitor and we can always pull the plug if it looks to be too much.

When I started this blog, I specifically said it was not an infertility blog.  I figured we’d nip that part in the bud pretty early and I could move on to bigger and better things.  So I’m sorry that this blog is beginning to sound like a broken record.  But, for better or worse, this is our life.  It exists in two-week increments, waiting for a procedure/ovulation and then waiting for the results.  Rinse and repeat.  At some point, we’ll say enough, but not quite yet.  I’ll still provide our fears with adoption another day and why we’re not ready.  But suffice it to say, just like when we started these decisions, it is a decision we make every time, every cycle.

“The minute you think of giving up, think of the reason why you held on so long.”

Here we go again on our own...

...as in without the lovely crazy drugs in my system.  We got our nice smiley face today, which puts us in the doctor's office tomorrow morning.  And luckily, T gets to be there this time.  We're pretty pumped it worked out to be tomorrow versus Monday morning.  Just a lot more relaxing to come home afterwards rather than trying to rush into work.

Thanks for all the heartfelt encouragement we have received, both recently and in the past.  I know you just think it is a simple text/email/card or whatnot, but I honestly go back and read them when I'm feeling blue.  And it makes my day each time.  I know I sound like a broken record sometimes, but holy bananas I am a lucky gal.

Speaking of bananas, it is a crazy small world - a coworker told me one of her FB friends posted something about doctor's visits and infertility.  My coworker was nice and messaged the friend to get some more details on my behalf...after showing the messages to me, we figure out her friend is one of my neighbors.  So we can meet up at neighborhood street parties and discuss construction noise, who doesn't mow their yard enough, and embryo transfers.  Go figure.  It does show that you never know what is going on behind closed doors.  They weren't necessarily secret about their struggles (similar to T and me), but obviously not something you talk about when you're just waving hello in the morning.

I've been asked by some well-meaning folks (who don't know our issues) when T and I are planning to have kids, now that we've been married over a year and are in our 30s.  "Planning".  Such an odd word to us now.  I'm totally stealing this response from a blog I read:  "They're on backorder.  I totally ordered them, like, forever ago.  I think they keep losing our order."  The nice thing is...things on backorder normally arrive eventually... :)