I called.

I thought about it before lunch, and grabbed the phone before I could decide against it. And I’m glad I called. I feel better knowing exactly how much it will cost.

After 2 fresh and one frozen IVF cycles, we reached our maximum limit with insurance of $10K so the rest is on us. My RE is only going to charge me what my insurance would have paid for the transfer (after deducting his donated fees). It will be $1800. That is a lot considering we still owe them some money b/c our insurance didn’t cover the Big Freeze and storage of my totsicles. But in the grand scheme of IF treatments, I know it’s not much at all. My dog walking business is doing well so we should be able to pay for more than half of my FET with that money, and more if business picks up. And the rest we’ll just have to pay off a bit every month until it’s all paid off.

I’m starting to get excited to try again. It’s taken me almost three months to get to this point, but I’m finally here. And I’m glad to be here. I feel better, lighter. I’m sure some of you know what I mean. I also have a call into my RE to find out what our next step will be when we’re ready to start my FET cycle. Will it be natural, medicated, will I be on BCP for a month before, etc. He’s off this afternoon so I’ll have to wait until next week to hear from him, and that’s ok with me. I’m mid-cycle right now so I still have two weeks to decide if we want to move ahead when AF comes or not.

The only thing is that I’m turning 30 on April 27th and my second EDD was May 1st. So in all honesty I would really like to be in the midst of a treatment cycle during those days. If I can’t actually be PG well then I’d like to be in the middle of trying to get there. That may be silly but it makes perfect sense in my head. LOL.

So in the end this was a very good day. I feel very positive and hopeful.

What's wrong with me?

I can't bring myself to call my RE. I have to call to find out how much our next FET will cost. My RE said he will donate all of his services, but I will probably still have to pay the lab and assisted hatching fees. I'm thinking about it constantly but I always think, "I'll call in a bit". It used to be that I would be on the phone with them as soon as their office opened and now I'm just pushing it off. Why is that? Am I just not ready? I know I'm terrified to be PG again but I want it so desperately. How can I just skip over from getting a BFP to popping the little one out? I am sure I'm not alone in feeling that way, so how do you ladies deal with it?

And I know a lot of you ladies think/pray for me, but I would like to loan out my prayers for a bit. Someone needs them more than I do...Busted.

Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1

That’s what is wrong with me.

My RE called me at 9 pm last night with my RPL blood panel results. He went down the list of all the tests they did (all 17 of them) and he kept saying Test A – negative, Test B – negative, Test C – negative, etc. Until he got to the last one…Text PAI-1, positive. Only positive is a bad thing. BUT it’s a good thing because we now have something to try to fix! (Did you follow all of that? LOL). It’s a blood clotting disorder and there is something like I should have 4G-5G, but my gene repeats as 4G-4G (or whatever he said). I was trying so hard to follow him but my mind just kept going “YEAH!! THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WE CAN FIX!!!”

I felt a huge wave of warm relief flow over my body. Should I be lucky to have another BFP, we will start immediately with Lovenox injections…piece o’cake!!

And then it sets in…dear lord I have to go through this again. I’m praying that all three of our totsicles thaw and we have a successful FET, but what if they don’t? What if I have to do another fresh IVF cycle? That will take some time to prepare mentally and physically for yet another assault on my body. I have rather enjoyed the past two months were we didn’t have to make the trek to the RE’s office a few times a week and I didn’t have to keep a schedule of my injections/medications. It’s been somewhat peaceful. I’ve been sleeping better and feeling happy (for the most part). Ed was kind of upset to find out the waiting is over and we have to make a decision on whether or not to move forward, and if we do, when? Should we take more time off? Should we jump right back on the horse?

I started out wanting a 2006 baby and now we’re on to wishing for a 2009 blessing. The time has flown so what’s another few months to make this decision? But I don’t know how I will handle seeing AF the next few months. I know I say it all the time but IF has made me totally bipolar! One second I feel one thing, but them I like heck no, and decide something else. LOL.

The bottom line is that we now have an answer to what has caused my three miscarriages and I couldn’t be happier that it appears to be an easy fix. But the prayers continue.

Out of the blue.

My SIL offered to be a surrogate.

I don’t know how I feel about that so this post is going to sound like I’m nuts. LOL. Ed’s first reaction to his sister was to get angry. Mine was to cry. We haven’t gotten along with her in our entire 4.5 years of being married and yet she’s the only one to offer this to us. Part of me feels that I will resent her forever if she carries my baby. She’s always been very smug with us and this would be one HUGE issue where she could say “I could do something you couldn’t do”. Petty, I know. But still. Part of me isn’t ready to give up on my own body yet. I (still!) haven’t received my RPL results and I’m sure that would influence my decision. If my RE says there is nothing wrong with me, so no medical reason that would have caused my 3 losses, well I will be devastated that there is nothing to “fix” and maybe I’ll be ok with the surrogate thing then. But if there is something wrong that we can fix, then I’m almost positive that I’d want to give my body another shot at it with some additional assistance from my RE.

I know this isn’t a decision we need to make right away but it’s still all I can think about. I never had this enter my mind so I didn’t even have an answer or reaction prepared. I think that is what got Ed so angry. Nobody asked her for that. We never even said that was an option for us to pursue. We said that I’m still waiting for results and she just offered it up. Ed thinks she was out of line. Granted it was a very nice gesture but we all know how well-meaning people can come off totally insensitive when they say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Does that even make sense?? It caught me totally off guard.

I don’t know if I could let someone carry my child. Plus, she is of AMA and overweight so it’s not even an ideal situation. Would I hold her responsible if she had a miscarriage of MY babies? I know I blame myself for my 3 losses so there is nothing stopping me from blaming someone else. Just thinking about it makes my stomach turn so obviously I’m in no position to think about it with an open mind and clear head. Maybe I should just shelf the idea at least until I get my RPL results back. SIL did say that she’s only offering that once and she’ll never bring it up again. Which is good that she won’t hound us asking if we made our decision about it. Maybe Ed will change his mind once we get our results and he’s not so angry as his sister. Maybe I’ll change my mind. But maybe we won’t. I think it would be easier if it was my family member or even if it was a stranger.

I know I'm just rambling but I had to get those thoughts out of my head.

How did I get here?

It's Hell in the Hallway

My dear blog-friend Katie has a great post from the other day. It's something I feel so intensely and yet she put it into words better than I could. Please read her post if you have time and then come back here and read on with this post...

Did you read it?

Good.

I hate this hallway. It's cold and dark and it feels like the walls are closing in. I feel that all of the doors are behind me and I can't turn back. All of those doors have been slammed in my face, or slammed on my foot and it still hurts. I saw inside three of those doors and they were the most magical worlds inside. Something so beautiful that after you see it, you yern for it. You can't imagine never seeing a world like that again. And if you don't, how can you be happy with the world that you eventually find? All I can think about it what I've seen and nothing else will be good enough.

I want to see this door someday...

To all of you ladies with Word Verification

I HATE it. Please please please take it off! I think you’re doing it just to annoy me. LOL.

The words are always so curvy with a funky font and I inevitably end up typing the wrong letters. And then I have to do it all over again. And god forbid I have caps lock on so I think I’m typing the right letters (over and over ) but I keep getting an error like three times until I finalize realize about the dumb caps lock.

Stupid Word Verification.

Rant over.

Emotional evening

It always seems that no matter what the topic of conversation is in our house, we always go back to IF/RPL. Ed and I were having a perfectly fine dinner tonight. We were talking about my dog walking business, his new job that he loves, some improvements we'd like to make on our house, etc. It was all very positive, happy stuff. And then we hit a sharp curve in the road and all of a sudden we were both in tears taking about baby stuff.

Each of us mentioned how we're starting to face reality in the fact that we may not have children, and how we're dealing with it emotionally. It's very hard for both of us and we each said that we're scared of being 80 years old and alone in a nursing home, with no children or grandchildren to visit us. It's a very real and scary fear, but I never thought he had that feeling. Something is so comforting when you know you're not alone. We then talked about how we cope with these fears and kind of talk ourselves through the bad times. He said that when he decided to ask me to marry him, that was all that mattered in life to him. Of course we both wanted a few children, but he knew then that if he had me forever, he'd be happy forever. Children would just be an "extra blessing". But they weren't neccesary for his happiness. I found myself thinking that I couldn't argue with that. In fact, I agree with it. As long as he's my husband (forever, I hope) then I'll be happy. We have a great marriage and a wonderful friendship. We respect & adore each other and have a lot of fun together.

In all honesty, if it was just the two of us (and our dog of course :D) from now on, well, I'd have to be pretty hard-pressed to not be happy with that. Granted I would be THRILLED beyond words to have children, but I'm very thankful for my life with Ed and we are very lucky and blessed with our home and lifestyle. How could I want more out of life?

But I do. And how do I say to him that I want more? Does that make me a terrible wife? I want a family. And that while he is good enough to make me happy, happier than I ever imagined, that I still want to have a family in order to feel complete? Does that mean my marriage isn't fulfilling? No. Not at all. It just means that I've wanted to be a Mommy as long as I've wanted to be married (my whole life) and I'm not yet ready to give up on that dream.

But I know that if children aren't part of my future, I will be ok. I will be better than ok. I'll be married to a man who thinks the world of me and wants nothing more. I will want for nothing and have enough love to keep me warm at night and to keep my heart happy.

I just feel my heart being tugged in two directions and I don't know which way to run towards. (Geesh, this sounds a lot like my bi-polar post yesterday, LOL.) If I could see into the future and know what would happen I could gear my life in that direction. But I don't know what will happen so I have to continue a little while longer on this uncerain path. I have to live my life day to day and do what will make me happy right now. In this moment. With no amount of planning can I will something to happen. So I will be thankful for I have in my life right now and be especially thankful I have a wonderful and handsome husband who wants to grow old with me.

And I should be getting my RPL test results back sometime this week so I'm sure I will need extra strength to handle the results. Please send some good "strength" vibes my way if you can spare some.