That just made me more confused

I went to the RE. When we had the mother of all BFNs in August, she told me that I could come in for a followup appointment to learn what happened with our cycle. I delayed and delayed and even canceled one appointment. I didn't want to go back but I did want to know what happened with our cycle.

I mean, for $30,000 down the drain, I think I should know what they think went wrong.

Here's what I heard:
-the sperm looked good
-my uterus looked good
-my lining was excellent
-the embryos looked great on date 3, pretty good on day 5 (when we did the transfer), and horrible on day 6 (which left none to freeze).
-they have not let the egg donor donate again.

She thought I would be pregnant when I walked out of the transfer since things looked pretty good. They were all disappointed on my behalf.

She acknowledged that it was probably hard for me to walk in the door and I said yes, it was. It was horrible to be there. I think over the past 2 years, I have been there about 70 times. That's a boatload of visits. So we commiserated for a while and then she went over my options:
- do nothing and live childfree
- adopt
- do egg donor again though if we did it again, she would only let us use a proven egg donor and she recommends that we consider using donor sperm on a portion (.25) of the eggs to see if there is a difference with the embryos. If there is, we will at least have something to work with. Not a bad idea.
- split a donor cycle with someone to save money. We'll have less to work with but it will be somewhat less expensive.
- get on their embryo donation list. They do have folks who donate their leftover embryos and they keep of list of those interested in receiving them. It would cost between $3 - 5,000 to do a transfer of donated embryos.
- do two more IUIs. I have already done six, which I thought was her limit, but the first two were on clomid. So she said it would be ok to do two more. My insurance does cover IUIs minus about $500. She said my last IUI was my best response - that was when I used the maximum dosage of gonal f. My chances aren't great but it could be worth a try if I could handle it emotionally.

Whew. I left confused.

I was not expecting options. I was just expecting information. I had told myself we were done with the IF business and on to adoption.

We won't do donor egg again - there is no way to justify the expense. DH wants to get on the embryo donation list. I don't have any problem with that. The doc said she has no way of knowing how long it would take to get a call since not everyone agrees to donate their extra embryos.

I am interested in trying IUI again because, well, what the heck. DH is worried about the impact of those max level drugs on me plus the chance of down syndrome,etc, if we use my eggs. Plus he doesn't want the likely disappointment.

I want to keep moving forward with the adoption plan no matter what. The IUI has a low chance and who knows if/when we would be called for a donor embryo.

Argh. Back to decision making again. I am sick of making decisions that go nowhere.

What scares me about adoption through the foster system:

As excited as we are to adopt, we are also terrified.

In the best interest of the child (which I agree with totally), when a parent is likely to have their parental rights terminated (due to previous children being taken away) our county places that child(ren) in a pre-adoptive home. Meaning, the child lives with parents who are interested in adopting the child and not just fostering. Then, when the rights are terminated, the child is legally adopted and stays with the family he or she has already been living with. It saves the child from having multiple placements during the 18 months or so that it takes to terminate the parental rights. It's good for the child and the adoptive parents get the child 18 months younger (at age 10 months, say, rather than 28 months)

This is different from a child who parents seem likely to get their act together - those children go to a standard foster home and the plan is for them to go back to their parents, assuming their parents do what they are supposed to do.

So, we are likely to take in a child(ren) who is not yet legally available for adoption. We'll care for that child(ren) for the up to 18 months it takes and then, wallah, we'll adopt and live happily ever after. Unless, the parents surprise everyone and get their act together. Then, the child(ren) goes back to them. And leaves us.

This is what terrifies us.

That we would love and care for child only to have him/her leave us. That happens in 10% of the cases. Seems like a small number but regular EggedOut readers will remember that we had a 20% chance of failure in our egg donor cycle and yep, we managed to fail.

We don't trust our luck. And we really don't want to be routing for the birth parents to fail.

This is our situation. Scary. But we will proceed. Because we are: brave? gluttons for punishment? deluded? hopeful?

PRIDE

We finished our Adoption (PRIDE) class! It was a great class. I learned a lot and met some great people who are also trying to adopt through the county system.

At this point, I can't even fathom going through IF treatments again. This feels so much more positive and likely to work.

We were assigned a social worker and I've been told that from here, it should take about 6 months before we get our final approval. We will take this time to regroup, save money, and prepare ourselves for the next phase of our lives.

We are excited. I am excited.

I feel like a newbie again. I've started reading adoption and foster parent blogs. I don't comment on any one's blog yet - still trying to learn the lingo and just excited to hear their stories (just like 2 years ago when I started IF treatments and blog reading). I go back and read their whole blog to see how they got to where they are now. It's like a whole new world.

I do have an appointment with the RE to discuss my failed Donor Egg cycle. I don't want to go but I feel I must find out if she felt that we had a crappy donor, crappy sperm, crappy uterus, or just crappy luck. At this point I don't feel that we will try DE again but you never know. Crappy luck could follow us to the adoption end of things and we may be lured back to IF.

I'm sorry I haven't been commenting lately. I've been reading blogs again - just haven't gotten back into commenting. I'll do better.

The Weird Thing is...

It is much easier to tell people we are trying to adopt than it was to tell them we were going through fertility treatments. You'd think these two paths (adoption and treatments) were not both focused on the same thing: building family. But they are.

When we tell people we are trying to adopt, they are happy for us and it is very positive. When you tell people you are going through fertility treatments, they don't know what to say or they say the wrong thing. If it is not an awkward conversation, it is a depressing one.

Somehow, adoption is a universally positive thing (at least so far). People get really excited to talk about it and the conversation usually ends with me feeling more excited.

We have one more PRIDE class (that's the 9 week required class if you want to adopt through the county foster care system). I learned a lot when I was going through fertility treatments; this is the same way. I am learning about what a child adopted at an older age needs to develop into a healthy adult. I am learning about the foster system and the court system. I have to say, I find it interesting.

What is also interesting is that here we are, anticipating becoming parents, and we have no idea what number or type of children will be coming into our home. We are open to adopting siblings (3 at the most) though we would also take a baby. So when we talk about our future family, all options are on the table. Makes it a little hard to plan but it is also like anticipating a gift (or 3). Kind of exciting.

This is my update.