I mentioned in previous posts that I've been seeing a therapist that specializes in infertility, which has been super helpful. It's forced me to talk about my feelings about infertility, most of which I have been burying for the last 6 months or so.
One of the things I mentioned in my last appointment was that I realized the other day that I won't have those moments where I blame my child's bad behavior on my husband's DNA. I always imagined our children taking after me or my husband, but genetically our children won't. My therapist asked me if it made me sad, which is hard to answer. I think any person would be lying if they said it doesn't make them a little sad to give up the genetic ties to their children. Mostly though, it's just a weird thought, not sad, just strange.
The other thing that I realized the other day is that our donors are around the same age as my mother. The embryos have been frozen for 12 years. If we do get pregnant, our child/ren will have genetic siblings that are 13 and 18 years older.
I have found some silver linings to infertility. My favorite occurred to me when I was listening to a coworker talk about trying to explain to her young child where babies came from. I've got it easy. I'll just tell my child that I went to the doctor and he put a baby in my belly. Honesty is the best policy, right?
Friday, March 28, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
It's been awhile...
Ok, I suck at blogging. So here is a quick recap of the last 4 weeks:
After our 2nd opinion consult, I had my first appointment with my counselor that specializes in infertility. She's great. She really understands the emotions tied to infertility and pregnancy loss because she's been through it. She went through fertility treatments to conceive her son and conceived her daughter after her first IVF cycle. She was pregnant with twins from IVF, but her son was stillborn. It's been great for me to explore my feelings about infertility, especially now that we are taking a new path to parenthood. I've also realized how bad my anxiety has been the last few months and we have been working on ways to deal with it.
On the treatment front, we have moved ahead with the donor embryo program through FI.RM. The program is a closed donation program and does not require a home study. Because of this we have been able to move forward quickly. My consult went well and I already had all of the prerequisite medical tests completed. We were able to go through their profiles and got our first choice in donors. We are now the proud parents of 9 snowflakes!
In some ways picking a donor was difficult, but in other ways it was easy. Emotionally we were both drawn to the same couple, they had the physical characteristics we were looking for and their personalities/interests seemed similar to ours. The bonus was that they had 3 blasts and 6 day 2 embryos to donate. The reservations we had were that the genetic mother (GM) was 38 when the embryos were created and she was adopted so we don't have a family history for her. She also had a few health problems, but it's hard to tell if they are genetic with no family history. We went with our gut and chose them as our donors. The nurse coordinator thought that they were still a good choice despite the mother's age since their IF issues were MFI and they were successful with their first transfer.
Our last step before we can cycle is to do our psych evaluation. I received our forms yesterday, filled them our, and I am sending them back to the psychologist today. Once she gets them back we can schedule our evaluation. Once this is done, we should be ready to cycle. I should be starting meds in about 3 weeks and our transfer should be in about 5 weeks.
Throw in a business trip to the UK and it's been a busy 4 weeks.
After our 2nd opinion consult, I had my first appointment with my counselor that specializes in infertility. She's great. She really understands the emotions tied to infertility and pregnancy loss because she's been through it. She went through fertility treatments to conceive her son and conceived her daughter after her first IVF cycle. She was pregnant with twins from IVF, but her son was stillborn. It's been great for me to explore my feelings about infertility, especially now that we are taking a new path to parenthood. I've also realized how bad my anxiety has been the last few months and we have been working on ways to deal with it.
On the treatment front, we have moved ahead with the donor embryo program through FI.RM. The program is a closed donation program and does not require a home study. Because of this we have been able to move forward quickly. My consult went well and I already had all of the prerequisite medical tests completed. We were able to go through their profiles and got our first choice in donors. We are now the proud parents of 9 snowflakes!
In some ways picking a donor was difficult, but in other ways it was easy. Emotionally we were both drawn to the same couple, they had the physical characteristics we were looking for and their personalities/interests seemed similar to ours. The bonus was that they had 3 blasts and 6 day 2 embryos to donate. The reservations we had were that the genetic mother (GM) was 38 when the embryos were created and she was adopted so we don't have a family history for her. She also had a few health problems, but it's hard to tell if they are genetic with no family history. We went with our gut and chose them as our donors. The nurse coordinator thought that they were still a good choice despite the mother's age since their IF issues were MFI and they were successful with their first transfer.
Our last step before we can cycle is to do our psych evaluation. I received our forms yesterday, filled them our, and I am sending them back to the psychologist today. Once she gets them back we can schedule our evaluation. Once this is done, we should be ready to cycle. I should be starting meds in about 3 weeks and our transfer should be in about 5 weeks.
Throw in a business trip to the UK and it's been a busy 4 weeks.
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