Moving on?

So today was 12 dpo; took a test this morning and it was negative.  I will take one again in a couple of days because today is still too early for this particular test, but I have to tell you, I have zero hope that this cycle is going to work for me.  Like another blogger said, I’m just not feeling it.  Zero symptoms, zero everything.  After the first couple of days of feeling like, “wow, we nailed the timing this time, how could it possibly not work?” I began to feel, “with all that could go wrong, how could it possibly work?”  And then everyone else got their BFNs, two even with IVF.  Right now I am feeling like IUI is just never going to work for me, even if I did it every single month, with medications and monitoring, for the next two years.  I think it’s a monumental waste of time and money.

So I am considering moving on to more aggressive treatments.  The biggest obstacle for me is of course money.  But after doing a little research I discovered most of these clinics, including mine, offer financing.  Do I want to put myself in more debt?  No.  Do I want to spend the rest of my life childless?  No.  I have a lot of debt already but I do own a home and have excellent credit, so my hope is I would qualify for financing.  If not I do have a small amount of available credit (not credit cards, although they could help out in a pinch) I could scrape together to make it happen.  So, the money issue is not insurmountable, just extremely uncomfortable.

I suppose I could do an injectible IUI cycle first – this isn’t off the table.  The only problem is for the next three months I’m not available to be monitored – I’m out of town for several days before my fertile time in June, July, and August, and I don’t know what a great idea it is to be on airplanes doing injections, in stressful situations, and not around for days 8-13 of my cycle on all three months (possibly).  It just sounds nuts and like a huge waste of money if it doesn’t work.  I could do it in September.  But part of me wants to move off of IUI entirely.

I am thinking about mini-IVF, a process by which you are minimally stimulated to produce eggs, they are removed over a few months, and you wait and see how they are fertilized/develop, and then they are implanted later.  I love, love, LOVE this idea for several reasons.  One, you get to actually see if you have eggs, their quality, if they can even be fertilized and grow into embryos, and what quality the embryos end up being.  I mean, if I go through this process and I don’t get any viable embryos out of it, then I know to just forget about this whole thing, that it would never work.  I also love it because it works with my schedule – I can spend the entire fall doing egg retrievals when I shouldn’t be pregnant because of messing up the next summer delivering – and then implant them starting in Jan or Feb when the timing is better.  Otherwise I just have to sit out Oct – Dec and do nothing.  I also love that if it works out and you get fertilized embryos, you can keep ‘em on ice for siblings!  This to me is worth any cost.  The idea of not having to worry about trying to have a second child later is extremely appealing to me, and worth any cost, honestly.  To not sweat about I’m-42-and-I-really-want-a-sibling-for-my-kid would be just wonderful.  A fellow blogger wrote me about the whole process and said she didn’t have to go under for the egg retrievals – it was just a basic inpatient process using local and a valium.  This is also very appealing to me. 

Right now I feel like we’re just shooting in the dark.  I don’t know if I even want to bother with any more IUIs; why spend another $1500 for another failure, when I could put that towards mini-IVF?  Then at least I would KNOW.  I would know what’s going on in my body, I would know what my eggs are doing.  Right now I don’t even know for sure if an egg is even releasing or not.  I just picture all that sperm rooting around, unable to find the egg that isn’t there.  And then me sitting around for two weeks wondering if I’m pregnant.  Do I really want to keep doing this?

I think I’ll make an appointment with my new RE and talk about all this.  My guess is he may want to talk me into traditional IVF due to my age.  Well, it all gets down to costs, success rates, and timing.  It’s good to know I have options.  I don’t feel bad today, I feel hopeful.  I mean, I wish the whole easy-and-natural IUI thing had worked out for me but I am starting to feel like I’m wasting my time, and time is of the essence at my age.  And I really, really want to know what’s going on with my eggs and how viable they actually are.  So, it may just be time to ratchet this whole business up a notch and get ‘er done!