Sitting on the Fence

Last night J and I sat down and did our dialogue.  It is something we learned to do while on the Worldwide Marriage Encounter.  We haven't had the chance to actually dialogue in weeks because he has been in school and studying so much.

We discussed:

•  not continuing treatment. 
• doing donor embryo
• getting matched outside of PNW or Madigan for donor embryo
• going ahead with a small set of donor eggs and taking our chances
• doing the guaranteed 2 embryos.

Honestly I'm tired.  I told him if his test came up with bad results we could choose the donor embryo program or decide to discontinue all treatments.

I'm not sure just how much more I can do.

If do one more treatment I'm going to say that is it.  If we are lucky to get several embryos then I'll do FETs until they are gone and we have our family.

I'm tired of not being able to afford jack because every spare dollar goes into the savings account.  I don't think it is selfish at all to want to start looking forward to using the savings account for something other than infertility treatments.  We have no retirement plan.  I'm going to be 44 next month.  Rather scary to even think about considering  I have no children.

I'm not going to say that I won't mourn the loss of hope if I do end up walking away from treatments.  I went through that with my first marriage.  It was hard.  I gave away all the baby stuff I had made and bought over the years in hopes of having a child.  Or I had thought I did.  Turns out I still had three baby shirts left that I had made by hand.  Those went into my chest of hope for this marriage.  I added in a single onesie I purchased, a free bib and a free bowl (given out by companies as promotions).

Truthfully, it is hard to see my life without a child.  I'm not sure why considering I've lived it this long without one.  I do know that this whole infertility adventure has almost wrecked my marriage.  No sooner did my spouse come home from Korea and I was having him do a SA.  Yes, the day after he got off the plane he got it done.

Between Korea and Iraq he was home for 6 months and we tried to conceive.  No luck.

After Iraq we still didn't have success.  No true pregnancies according to the doctors.

Much as I'd love to adopt I have to realize my health would be under the microscope.  What pregnant gal would willingly give up her child to someone like me?  I would, after all, be the primary caretaker of the child while J is away for training and deployments.  Not being negative Nellie here but I am being realistic.  Many of us know the hoops an adoptive family has to jump through just to be looked over by a pregnant gal.

Adoption has not only become a money making industry I swear it is like applying for a job or a loan where your application just sits on the desk and collects dust.  Let us not forget those videos the adoptive parents have to make too.

No adoption isn't for us unless a pregnant gal offers up her child to us without some agency being in the picture.

I worked with an older gal in her 50's back some ten years ago.  She couldn't have children and her truck driver husband and her wanted a baby in the worst way.  She told me they went through adoption agencies but because of his job and their advanced years they wouldn't be accepted.  So sad.  The gal was a nanny to my own cousins years ago.  She kept praying for a miracle like what happened to one of her friends.  Her friend was given a baby to adopt.  A teen couple came through her line regularly and one day brought in their infant and said to her, "take the baby, we can't raise it".  She called up her husband and her lawyer and started the paperwork immediately.  I doubt my co-worker ever got a miracle like that in the ten years since I last saw her.

So here I sit on the fence, I swear it is a picket one and it is sorely stuck up my bum, trying to figure out where do we go from here; while we wait on test results that have yet to be even drawn.