Three....

My sweet little girl is three.

Where has the time gone?

Just yesterday I was looking at her face for the first time in total awe, and yet when she got up this morning she was so tall and cute with her bed head.

It is just all speeding by so fast, and if I forget to breathe it is because everything about her catches my breath.

Happy Birthday Lauryn, you are the best gift I have ever been given!!

Love Mommy.

Letting Go...

Keith and I came to our decision on Monday night. We talked on Friday for about an hour, and then I told him that we should each mull everything over and bring our concerns back to the table when it was a good time.

That time was Monday night.

We feel it is time to let the totcicles go, and to find a new home for them. I just don't feel that my body can do them justice, and they deserve better then that. I am ok with this decision, not because I Know I will get pregnant on my own, but I was beginning to feel as though we were beating a dead horse.... my uterus apparently wants nothing to do with lab created embryo's.

Keith broke it down for me by the numbers, and he makes a lot of sense really. We have transferred 13 really good embryo's, and of the 13 only one made it out. Those numbers aren't to great in the odds department.

Then we look at this last year, for whatever reason my body managed to pull out 2 pregnancies in less then 12 cycles. Now granted, it didn't result in a live baby either, but we feel like maybe, just maybe something is working its self out inside me. The reason I say this is because I have NEVER gotten pregnant on my own. We have been at this for 18 years in total, and I/My Body has never done anything it was expected to do.

So with this new ray of hope, and a little sadness about where to go with the totcicles, we will be moving on to Femera cycles with no assistance other then the meds.

It has been a mixed bag of emotions for me because I held on to the hope that those would be the ones, and now I am hoping and praying that for some other couple they are. I wish nothing more then to have one or more of those little fellas make a family so very happy.

So we will actively be looking for an "Open Adoption" situation with a couple that is willing and ready to hopefully have one of our embryo's be the one that makes them parents. I am not going to give them to an agency or "bank" because I want to have at least some say so in the process, if not pick the recipient's myself. That may seem like a tall order, but I am looking out for the best interest of my embies, and their possible futures.

I have had thoughts the last few days that I am sure a lot of birth mothers must feel, only in a different way. I want nothing more to find a couple, and have them get pregnant, bring a baby home and fulfill a dream.

That is my dream for those little guys, a family who will love and care for them no matter where they came from. I honestly feel that they have a better chance at life with someone else.

On another note, I will be starting Femera with my next AF. I am scared at what this holds to be honest with you, it has been YEARS since I have done the simple stuff like this.... pop a few pills, get an u/s, have sex, and pray like hell!!! Gah, I just hope I am ready for all of the up's and downs that go along with this ride.

Ultimatum...

Just to start off this post, I hate that word up there. I never have liked it or them, so being in this place has me bound up like a dog on the first day of hunting season!!

I had to go to the clinic yesterday for a repeat Beta and ended up with an U/S while I was there. Long story short they wanted to make sure all was right in the blood work department, and that nothing was lurking in the Uterus of Death that could cause further issues. I only bled for a day and a half and then spotted for 3 days after Sneaky left the building, so I guess there was concern. All was "right" in the ute and tubes, and the Fellow (future RE) that saw me actually had to ask how old I was because she said I had the ovaries of a 20 something year old. Ha!! I got the call from the nurse later that Beta was zero, my other levels were normal, and then a cryptic message that the IVF coordinator was going to be speaking with my doc and would call me with further instructions. Huh?? Didn't know what to think, but I had my suspicions.

I had my annual Pap today, and the doc asked me right out after hearing about the two losses how I felt about trying further. I explained about the totcicles, and that we would continue with our plans for a Frozen cycle, and if that was a bust then we were done.

When I got home there was an email from my RE, and I KNEW what it was going to say before I opened it, I saw it coming from a mile away. She asked me to seriously consider doing a few medicated cycles with Fem.era or Clo.mid. Yeah apparently now that I have proven that sex does manage to get me knocked up, they want to see if I can just get there with a little push from them, instead of a full on frozen cycle. Gah!!

Keith and I have tossed this idea around before and ultimately decided against it because I had no luck with them before we did IVF, so it was kind of a mute point. But now things have changed, and my body is somewhat with the program, so OI (ovulation induction) is back on the table as an option. It however presents me with a whole new freaking dilemma, the Totcicles.

This is where the Ultimatum comes in.... after discussing our options tonight, Keith told me that it has to be one or the other not both.

So, this is where I get bound up.

I cannot stand being told I have to chose, given the chance I will try everything to meet in the middle in some way, but this is just not an option this time. I had to be honest with myself though, and realize that financially we can not afford to do a few medicated cycles and then a frozen if they don't work, or vise versa. I hate the thought of not using my totcicles, but I also feel this exciting little urge to try to get there mostly the old fashioned way.

Right now we are paying over a hundred bucks a month for storage of the totcicles, which honestly had a big part in the decision to just go on and use them. They are there, and aside from donating them to another couple, or using them ourselves, they will stay frozen. I will not destroy them.

We have actually had donation on the table with 3 different couples, who ended up unable to use them. I don't want to use our clinics donor program because it is anonymous, and that is just not how we want it to go. We really want an open kind of "adoption" so to speak.

So, here I sit trying to decide if I put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, and use the totcicles, or do six or so medicated OI cycles and hope for the best. Now do you see why I HATE ultimatums????

Grief Interupted...

I have always know that I was not a lucky person. Good things don't happen to me, I have to Make them happen for me.

When I got pregnant with my daughter it was an accumulation of almost 15 years of my life spent trying for just that one chance to parent a biological child. 15 years of crying myself to sleep and begging God and/or the powers that be to just give me a chance to know the feeling of a child moving in tune to my heart, sharing my body, and then sharing the rest of my life. I didn't get lucky when I got pregnant, I worked my ass off to get pregnant. I have never for one minute taken any job more seriously then the one that I undertook when I started trying to fulfil my dream of motherhood. I did it all, IUI's IVF's, FET's. It wasn't easy, it was heartbreaking. It was a very lonely road to walk because most if not all of my IRL friends were as fertile as the spring. But, I worked hard, and I got what I wanted.

So, imagine my surprise when twice this year, I mearly had sex with my husband at just the right time, and conceived two little miracles. No one can imagine the pain that has settled in my soul at losing those two little lives, unless they have been there. Do I consider myself lucky that I got pregnant on my own? Hell no. Look how that turned out for me. I have two deep gashes in my heart and soul that will never heal. I will forever wonder what those two lives could have become, what potential they carried in their cells. I will never feel the movement under my heart. I will never hear their first cries, smell their hair, or hold their tiny little hands in mine. I will never get to watch them do any firsts, or watch Lauryn play with her missing siblings. I have lost a lifetime of memories with two people I didn't even know, and it will never stop hurting for as long as I live.

I guess where I am going with this is to respond to a comment on my last post. I count my blessings everyday of my life, and I never expected to hear someone tell me on my blog to do just that, because some people aren't even lucky enough to have one baby... I know that. I know all about listening to women sob who can't have, or don't have a child, and feeling my heart breaking for them. I sat on the fence for almost half of my life, I NEVER take my daughter for granted. I only have that little girl because I fought my ass off for her, and to say or suggest that I don't know what I have is just, well, asinine. I realize that you may not have meant it like I am taking it, but really, I am gutted right now from the disaster that has been my life for the last year, not to mention the last week, and then you want to utter a phrase that truly discounts my current grief, I don't appreciate it.

I won't play the pain game here because I know that you can't get past where you are in your IF journey, and I totally understand that. But I can tell you that from where I stand secondary infertility has been harder on me then the whole of my journey to my daughter. I KNOW what I am missing now, and I feel like a junky sometimes in my need to get that back. It is a desire that honestly beats out my initial one to have a child period. Ask anyone trying for a second or even third after a fierce battle with infertility, and I bet you will hear the same answer more then once.

So PLEASE do not think that I do not cherish every minute with my daughter with ever fiber of my being, I do. I also however hold every conception that I have close to my heart, and love each one with my whole soul. Just allow me to grieve this loss as you would allow any normal person the same consideration, I am no different because I am Infertile.