Tough Decisions

Just recently, over the past couple of days, we have forced ourselves to make a tough decision.  Its a decision that we have discussed several times and I have mentioned it a couple of times on here but we realize we are down to the point the decision had to be made. 

As I have said in the past, we have 4 vials left.  3 of them are good but 1 of them has very low numbers.  Based on this, we could technically have 4 tries of IUI left however, we have decided that we are not going to spend the money on the 4th vial that has low numbers.  Instead of using this 4th vial separately, we will just add it in with another vial and have more numbers total.  The most of this decision is based on the fact that if this round fails, we are being moved to injections.  We don't want to spend $2,000 - $3,000 on a vial that won't give us very good chances.  Even if not being moved to injections, I don't think we want to take our chances on the 1 poor vial.  This is a difficult decision to make because we could have 4 tries left but now that we have made this decision, we have 3 total tries left including the one we are getting ready to do on Monday.  This is hard because if we finish the 3 tries and we still aren't pregnant, I don't want to look back and say well we could have 1 try left if...  We have to know that we made this decision to best benefit us and stick with it and not look back with regrets.  In some sense, I am glad there is only 3 tries left because as I have said previously, if this is not how we are meant to be parents, I am ready for this journey to end and us grieve the fact of not having a child of our own and move on. 

Another decision that I don't know if we are going to have to make or not is whether to move to injections this round or not.  When we got switched to Clomid, I know the doctor said he was going to give us one or two rounds on Clomid and then move to injections.  Well, this month is month one back on Clomid so I don't really know what doctors plans are for next month if this one fails.  Will he leave the decision to us to move to injections now or will he make that decision.  This is something me and Trent really needs to start discussing also.  I have said I want to do more than one round of injections just to give us better chances and if that is the case, we will have to switch the next cycle if this one doesn't work but on the same hand, if we have to do 2 rounds of injections, we are looking at $4,000-$6,000 on just 2 cycles.  Geez, all this money we are spending is really adding up and getting really old.  I just wish we had money trees growing in our back yard to where we didn't have to worry about all of this.  If we do get moved to injection meds, we may have to skip a month of IUI because you have to take a class that is offered only on Tuesdays and if that doesn't fall just right with my cycle, we will have to skip a month.

I am totally clueless about this whole next process I am fixing to mention.  It is just something I have thought about and to be totally honest, me and Trent haven't even talked about it so that is how fresh this whole thing is on my mind.  I have just been thinking about it over about the last week.  Another HUGE factor in all of this is $$$$$ as is everything else we have faced with infertility.  Due to our strong desire to carry  a child ourselves just so we can experience everything there is about pregnancy, etc. I have considered Embryo adoption.  That is where couples have went through IVF and instead of "throwing away" the Embryo's that have formed, they put them out there for adoption so others can try to conceive with their embryo's.  This is just like adoption however, you carry the child yourself.  I actually really love the thought of this.  Trent's parents actually go to church with a couple that went through IVF 3 or 4 years ago and ended up with Triplet boys (unfortunately, one passed).  But the way she said it was her and her husband is Pro Life and they were not going to just "throw away" an embryo that had already been formed so they put them up for Embryo adoption.  She said that they have been used but she has no clue if the couples who adopted them actually conceived or not.  Too bad we didn't know about our issues sooner and couldn't have used their embryo's.  None the less, I do think this is something that I would like to look into if our next 3 cycles of IUI fails.  Again, this will be based alot around money so who knows if we could do it or not but I think it is definitely a great consideration as it would again be the same as adoption, we would just carry the child ourselves.  Another plus is if the couple who put the Embryo up for adoption, doesn't know if the couple conceives or not then as apposed to adoption, the parents will never know a thing about the child and we don't have to worry about the parent trying to take the child back before everything is finalized or anything like that.  Again, I have never even looked into Embryo Adoption so I know absolutely nothing about is but I do think it is a great way of adoption!

Last but no least, the reason money plays such a HUGE role in all we do is because we don't want to be left childless the rest of our lives.  If we spend too much more money on trying to get pregnant, are we going to be able to afford adoption?  That is the whole reason we didn't do IVF from the very get go because we thought it we done IVF, that would only give us 1 try and could we afford adoption in the end if we spent all that money on IVF.  Now that we have already spent on the lower - mid range of IVF, I see that we will do whatever it takes to try and not be childless the rest of our lives.  Again, I just wish we had money trees in our back yard.  Honest to God, I don't know how we are going to do it if pregnancy doesn't work for us.  I don't know how we are going to afford adoption.  Thank God we had the savings we did before we ever knew we were dealing with infertility but that is QUICKLY dwindling down and I don't know how we will do it if we have to adopt.  Searching out adoption terrifies me if we have to move to this step.  If it comes to adoption, I just wish one would fall into our laps.  I know that sounds maybe lazy to some but I don't know where to start, what to do, how heart wrenching it will be or anything that comes along with searching for a child.  If one just falls in our lap as it did before, we have what we want and it was just meant to be. 

Anyways, just wanted to update everyone on some decisions we are faced with.  We just pray that God will continue to watch over us, take care of us and lead us to the exact path we need to be on.  I just pray he makes something work soon as financially, I really don't know how much more we can take. 

Everyone please continue to keep us in your prayers as I will be giving myself my trigger shot tonight and going in for IUI on Monday.  I just pray that #7 is the one.  God be with us.

UPDATED:  I need to clarify myself on something by saying that I do understand that there are kids out there that need a good home and with Embryo adoption, it is not like regular adoption in that sense but in all other ways other than you carrying your adopted child, I think embryo adoption is like regular adoption because you are adopting a child that is not yours and caring for it.