Are you "done?"

[amy]

I know that might seem like a pretty conceited question because in my experience with faith and infertility (and I know not all of us have been through that) only God knows the outcome of my family size, but I also know we do have some control over reproductive issues.

Enough with the caveats. So are you?

Part of where this question is coming from is that since our boys are so close together we really didn't have any time between newborn stages. I sort of feel cheated (a terrible choice of words) on anticipating with excitement having a new baby in the house. Not that I didn't feel excited about having a second child, but there really wasn't enough time between them to eagerly anticipate the arrival of #2. I would have liked the pregnancy to have lasted a few more months, or maybe started a few months later.

I hope I don't sound ungrateful, because I'm certainly not!

So on a pretty daily basis I go through feeling like I'd like the chance to have another baby to being completely happy with having two almost out of diapers. I get excited about all of the things we are now able to do and will continue to be able to do as the boys get older. Yesterday Erik asked me, "What is your favorite animal?" and I realized that one day our conversations will sometimes be instigated by him. Weird. Cool.

Also, I am 39 and my DH is 46. It's not like we have all the time in the world to have babies.

I think I know Wendi's answer about being done, but I don't know about the rest of us. (In Texas we would say "All ya'll" which I think is pretty funny.)

So what about all y'all?

[Wendi]

Well you may know my answer ... yes ...

We are really struggling with this right now and I never know who to talk to about this. I feel so free to talk to here.

I have been having terrible headaches on the pill so we are going off. Not sure what else we will do. We are worried about our embryos. We want to give all 7 of them a chance.

I have to say that I sort of feel the opposite. I don't feel cheated about the newborn ... I feel like, WOAH NOT SURE I WANT TO DO THE NEWBORN AGAIN ...

others?

[jesspond]

Wendi, I'm glad you can talk about it here! You're going off the pill...is "yes" that you're DONE or that you're NOT DONE? Are you ttc or avoiding? I'd love to hear more about what you've got going on.

As for us...

Uh...

Who here reads my blog? I know Wendi does, but I can't remember if I just read Amy's or if she reads me or not, and the rest of the people here I'm not even sure if I know.

We're...."ttc" but by this I mean hey! timed intercourse! Which, uh, sure. Right. I mean it could happen. There's nothing wrong with us (well, there....is STUFF. I guess since the pg I'm having EXTREMELY short luteal phases (but am taking prog) that include spotting as early as 6dpo and I've ALWAYS O'd really late (think cd20-30)...so by "nothing" I mean we have nothing dx I guess and nothing seemingly major.). Since "ttc" again we have done a 3-frozen-embryo transfer that wiped the rest of our embryos out, so we have none left. We're on cycle 5 and have also done a cycle of clomid that resulted in 3 mature follicles, which is really a lot more like med/iui than clomid. But. Of course. Zip.

Shock.er. I think we are in the running for both "youngest infertiles" (well, we WERE) and also for "Biggest/Longest Fail. You know it's bad when you pshaw at the TV while watching A Baby Story because they call 4 med iui's and 2 IVF's "a long road." How awful! I feel ashamed that that's how I feel, but it IS how I feel sometimes.

My husband is neutral about the whole thing and I'd probably like another if I had my choice, two max. We're "ttc" right now with some probable testing to come (Saline Ultrasound) but everything is just. so. expensive. Our IF/Adoption journey last time cost about 100k (no joke) and we have loans still on that and have spent about 4k so far on these 5 cycles (FET, u/s, clomid, progesterone, etc). I feel like...I don' t know.

Right now we just plain don't have the money to throw around like we used to. It was easier TO throw the money we DID have too, when it was JUST OUR money. There's so much to consider now that there wasn't before. Time, money, etc. Risk. I don't know. The testing we need to get done before feeling like we can proceed is about $550 and then clomid cycles have been running about $600-800. And then of course, what is probably our only other choice (med IUI's are now a little too risky and a little over priced for the chance) is shared risk IVF cycles, which are about 20k. Which....right now we can't do it.

I actually have a lot of the same feelings as Amy. I feel like I was scared or busy my entire pregnancy with Ethan and all I could do is think he would die. I didn't buy him a crib till I was like 8m along (we had a cosleeper!!). We were knee deep in social worker visits and a new open adoption and....then their babyhood was all shared and everything. Plus, I feel like I think a lot of twin moms feel...like I'd just like to selfishly DO PREGNANCY again. While knowing what to expect...

Yet at the same time you can never know what to expect and though it sounds paranoid, I know too much now about what can go wrong. I know how easy it is to land on bedrest, or MUCH MUCH WORSE. You never have health guaranteed, or living through birth (you or baby). A lot of it seems a lot scarier when you have two kids you love and who love you.

Sometimes I think that this is perfect, but other times I can't stand the thought of being done at 26. Sometimes I think that I want to be ABLE to have another child more than I want another child. But then I also know that if I could just have some sex and get pg it'd already be done and it'd be wonderful. So.

Ok, I just hijaked this. And I sound insane. So I'm done (but publishing anyway, haha!).

[Wendi]

In our case it is the embryos that cause us concern. We have 7 embryos left. Minimum of 2 tries. Possibly 4. We are fully committed to the embryos. We WILL go back for them.

I am not a candidate for vaginal delivery. I have to have c-sections (pelvis is too small). That means that I can't just have as many pregnancies as I would like.

So ... we are concerned. We don't think the chances of us getting pregnant are high. But what if we do? I don't want to get pg. really before giving the embryos a try.

My fear: not being ABLE to go back for the embryos and having to discuss surrogacy or adopting out the embryos. Yikes!

But we aren't ready to go back for them right now -- it looks like we are headed overseas in July and we don't have that kind of money laying around right now.

So what do we do? I don't know.

As for what I want, I think I had reached the end of the road so my heart was soooo amazingly blessed with just 1. The fact that we got 2? I am blown away. If that is all we ever have, I will be a-ok with that. 100%. If I had 5 more, a-ok with that too.

Either way, we do feel called to adoption ... we'd like to adopt older children as our boys age.

[jesspond]

I felt much the same way as you Wendi. My husband would have probably taken our chances on ttc naturally before using the embryos we had, but I felt the need to do it the best we could and use them first, just in case. I'm not willing to say embryos = people with souls (after all, we had 2 fresh IVF's with 20+ embryos created and it seems...unlikely? that they were all souls. Also, tons of fertile people have sperm and egg meet without pg, in all liklihood. I'd BET if I were betting, on implantaion or after being the true start of life...) but I guess I just plain do not know, and using them pretty much made us the maximum amount of responsible, if you get what I mean. It just wasn't worth the $3500 to me to POSSIBLY not do it morally right.

You're a hero for adopting older kids. I wish I could say that I would, but after Travis' sister and all that went with that (she was adopted at 13)...I probably wouldn't. Never say never, though. I'd love to have unlimited resources to open domestic adopt more, but both money and time prevent it!