Trying not to be hopeful

We're nearing up on new attempt number 1 real quickly.  I gotta say I'm trying not to get my hopes up early on this time.  There really isn't much to say other than that, just kind of in a holding pattern waiting for mother nature to kick things into gear.

A bit of hope

No posts in a while, and I must admit we were getting a bit down about the situation.  We've been given a bit of hope, though.  Sheri's work is switching insurance providers at the start of the new year, giving us the chance to try IUI again, and we've switched reproductive endocrinologists.  In the past month or so, I've been MRI'ed, wanded, poked, pricked...put through the standard fertility testing gamut.  So far, the test results have come back far better than I ever could have hoped for.  The uterus is still heart-shaped, but not bad enough to need any surgery.  My bloodwork all came back at normal levels, and we're still waiting for the results of the big one - my ovarian reserve.  Dr. Murray is going to try me on a newer follicle stimulating drug, the name escapes me, but it's basically Clomid except stronger.  She seems to be pretty optimistic.  Now, we get the fun of sperm donor shopping.  We're set to try again with January's cycle, providing my ovarian reserve isn't on E.

Question for readers, please answer in comment?

I found out last night while researching IVF trials that there is a site, kind of like Kickstarter, that allows you to crowdsource funding for IVF.  I'm a bit torn as to whether we should persue it or not, part of me says that it's mooching.  The other part of me says it's not mooching, it's asking for help for something we simply cannot come up with the money for and still make our bills etc.  What are y'all's thoughts on it?

Same old, same old

It never fails, when we're gearing up for another insemination attempt, or I'm ovulating, (or both, as currently is the case) I get bone deep depressed.  It's not going to happen naturally for us, but instead of accepting that and moving on, we choose to continue to drag ourselves through the hell of trying, getting hopeful and then getting our hearts broken a bit more.  It's like the people who play the lottery week after week after week, hoping for that one chance in multiple millions that they'll get a payout.  It's sad, really, and a lot like beating your head against a wall.

So, what are our options?  Foster care?  Well, ok, that's a chance, but it's also a lot of heartbreak   The kids aren't even available for adoption unless every single chance for their parents to take them back is exhausted.  How many kids will we get placed with us, only to have them taken back?  How long will we be able to handle that?

IVF?  No, that's not going to work either.  We can't get approved via insurance for it because we're not using our husband's sperm.  There are free clinical trials we could apply for, but they would require multiple trips out of state, and that's just not possible.  We have a mortgage, a car note, bills, etc, so applying for medical financing is out of the question.

Surrogacy?  Well, it's a great idea in theory, but surrogates who aren't paid are few and far in between.  We can't afford to pay for it, or we'd just do IVF.  We have friends we could ask, I guess, but that is a HUGE request.  Not like it's just asking to borrow a book.  We would have to ask someone to get pregnant using a piece of themselves, carry that piece for us, then give it away.

Adoption?  See above, RE money.

I just get more and more disheartened and jaded as time goes by.

Another failed attempt

That pretty much says it all.

The Attempt That Wasn't Really An Attempt

So, we went on vacation last week.  Ovulation was to happen over the beginning of vacation, leaving us without a nearby donor, so we decided to inseminate the day before we left.  Lately, the attempts are really just going through the motions, because it feels like we're wasting time if we don't.  We've started the process of getting approved for foster care, with the intent to foster-to-adopt.  This attempt was really casual, neither of us were really 100% sure of when ovulation was, as we never used OPK's this time.  Kind of takes away the stress of the two week wait , as we both just kind of shoved the information to the back of our minds.  Que sera sera.

Vacation was fun, a much needed break, and now we're back and preparing for my surgery.

Musings

I think the full reality of the situation has finally sunk in.  Between Sheri's one working ovary, fibroids and endo, and my diminished ovarian reserve and lowered whateverthehellitwas levels, we are probably not going to manage to conceive.  Not to mention, one donor crapped out on us without so much as a word, three guys who had agreed to donate for us ducking out and our current donor being rather hard to peg down donations with due to being out of town when we ovulate (granted last month we ovulated a day early and managed to catch that cycle, but had that not happen we wouldn't have made it.  It seems like the odds are too stacked against us.  At what point does one give up on hope of having a child?

We have considered trying to find a friend to surrogate for us.  Unfortunately it's a huge thing to ask.  We can't afford to do traditional surrogacy with a "professional" surrogate.  If we could afford that, we would just do IVF on one of us, but I'll come back to that.  We would have to find one of our friends willing to carry for us using her own egg and a donor's sperm, but how do you ask someone to do that?  Ask them to not only carry a child for you, hijack their lives for a full gestation period, deal with all that comes with it...but to ask them to lend us her genetic makeup as well, a part of her own body?  We grudgingly managed to ask, but don't really expect it to bear fruit, so to speak.

On to our only real chance for carrying ourselves, IVF.  I posted back..oh, a while ago.  I don't remember the date, really.  The past two years has kind of blurred together in a mess of sadness and disappointment in that regard.  Anyway, we were told by the reproductive endocrinologist that it was probably our only chance.  We had everything all schedule to start, and then we found out that our insurance wouldn't cover the procedure for us because they would only cover it if the sperm used was from one of our husbands.  Which, obviously, we don't have.  With the procedure costing upwards of 15 grand plus 2-4 grand more for medication and 400 for the anesthesia, (all this is PER ATTEMPT) there's no way we can pay it out of pocket.  A loan would be a possibility, except that we have a mortgage and recently had to take on a car note and there's no way in hell we'd get approved for a loan.

It's a huge, hard thing to accept that your own body isn't capable of doing the one thing humans are put here to do.  Even harder to know that, in my case, had I not been responsible when I was younger, I would have likely been able to get pregnant, but instead I was safe and careful and responsible.  And now, we pay for that good deed.