A New Path

If Husband had his way, we would keep doing IVF until we were financially destitute, I was poked with so many holes that I spring leaks, and until it worked - at least once.  As for me, I'm done.  At least for now. We can no longer do this financially, and we can no longer do this for my sanity.  Everytime I think of our many failed attempts, I can't help but tear up at the thought of feeling sorry for us and the thought of getting our hopes so high just to come crashing down to earth each and every time.

So here we are.   After almost 10 months since our last failed attempt, we visited with our RE this week. We wanted to talk about what happened, what went wrong last year, and where do we go from here. As usual when we are at the office, husband seems to clam up and become very quiet (which is much out of his usual character).  I'm stuck taking charge, asking the questions, and directing the meeting.

We rehashed that we have done 9 IUIs, 3 fresh cycles of IVF and, 1 FET over the last [gasp!] 6 years.  We had some modem of success with the last two attempts because we actually had 2 embryos to transfer each time.  However, the end result has been the same.  No pregnancies.  Nada.  The RE had no real answers for us except to indicate possible chromosomal abnormalities or birth defects that may have caused the embryos not to take.  But that is just a theory.  There was nothing that they could see at the time that would have made them think it couldn't work.  Boy, we've heard that before.

So, I steered the conversation to the future, to our [my] thoughts on donor sperm and what the RE thought about it.  He talked for awhile about other people in similar situations and those that miraculously get pregnant on their own after a donor baby.  I hate that, but I'm sure he could feel husband's animosity toward the thought of donor sperm, and he was trying to make him feel better about it.  Bottom line, the use of donor sperm is less invasive, less expensive, an may be more successful.  The RE thought it was a good route to take for us.  The babies still come out super cute.  He also mentioned that we could do IVF again in the future, if we so decided.  That seemed to make DH feel a little better.  But, still, the ride home was mostly quiet as we both were thinking about what this path would mean; for us, for our families, for others, for our future child.  How would we handle this?  How will others react?  How will this decision play out?