Operation Sperm-$7,000 Mission Accomplished

The missing paperwork was a blessing in disguise and potentially saved us $5,000 as I ended up buying 12 vials, not 20.

AND, I found out the vials are $565, not $595--not a huge difference but I'll take the $360 in savings.

I talked to a few other women, did some more research and decided that since I am going to be having ultrasounds AND doing a trigger shot to time my ovulation, I am OK with only doing one vial/one insemination per month.

I have full confidence that Dr. VID knows exactly what he's doing. He told me if I want two, he'll do two, but he's fine doing only one.

I've had this feeling since walking into the VEFC a couple of months ago that I would be getting pregnant in May. So, I decided to go with that and only ship enough to see me through May.

When it came time to fax in all of the papers and make the transaction--I found myself stalling. Frantically I started searching on other sperm donor sites looking at other profiles to assure myself that we were making the right decision. I like Seth, I really do! But maybe there's someone even better....

Has anyone else been down to the wire and found themselves doing this??

Finally I called K, took a deep breath and just faxed them in. There. DONE.

Oh The Mind Spinneth

I've been looking at the sticky note with my Clomid Challenge Test scores all morning long.
There is it, a pink square of paper that says "Here they are. Which way do we go now?"

Just as I reached for the phone, my mobile rang and what do you know but it's the good doctor himself calling me to talk about the scores.

My scores are good, they are in the normal range. I'm OK.
Except for that pesky score in December..... The number that set the panic button off and made me realize all of my carefully laid plans had suddenly been uprooted and I was now a bona fide member of the TTC (trying to conceive) rollercoaster.

He agrees, it's a mystery. That large of a jump just doesn't make sense. Since the first blood test was done at my OB/GYN and they outsource to Quest, it's possible it was a lab error. The others were done right at the VEFC (Very Expensive Fertility Center).

Or it could've been the stress that December morning. I was trying to catch a train to Boston and running late, I had to wait almost an hour at the clinic. I'd hadn't had anything to eat/drink that morning, my body was hyper-caffeinated from a giant cappuccino....it could've been a lot of things.
Maybe my body felt old that month and my eggs were saying "don't pick me, I'm no good". I don't know.

Here's a re-cap of the scores.

• January 2007 Score 8
  
• December 2007 Score 21 WTF???
  
• January 2008 Score 6
• CCCT January 2008 Score 12.4

What will get me the quickest, healthiest baby with the least amount of money? That's what it really comes down to.
I'm a logical kind of girl and VID (Very Important Doctor) is a logical kind of guy. We work well together.
It seems logical to me that the answer is....IVF with donor eggs. Specifically, K's eggs which are eight years younger than my own.
While he's not pushing me in any one direction, he agrees with my logic.

Two weeks ago I thought I couldn't use my eggs.
Score says "Egg Finish" "Ovarian Reserve in Short Supply!"
But now...it's a whole new baby egg game.

I now have to figure out if it's a baby I want or if it's my genetic baby I want.
To most women this is probably a no-brainer, but for me....it's not that easy.

The Consultation with the RE, Dr. VID

Trying to Impress Mr. VID (Very Important Doctor).

Everyone told me that I would have no problem getting pregnant. "Oh you look so young and you are so healthy, I'll bet you get pregnant on the first try." I was a bit more skeptical. My eggs don't care if I look my age and I don't think they care that much if I drink wheatgrass at age 38. It's not not they are hanging out saying, "Dude that was so healthy and good for us, we're taking on the chromosonal characteristics of a 20-year-old."

That would be nice, but um, no.

Today was the big day, meeting Dr. VID. He was shorter than I thought. Direct, but in a nice way. I had basically given myself a crash course in Fertility 101 in the three days prior to meeting him since my bad FSH test scores came back last Friday.

Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is a hormone synthesised and secreted by gonatropes in the anterior pituitary gland. FSH and LH act synergistically in reproduction.

• In women, in the ovary, FSH stimulates the growth of immature Graafian follicles to maturation. As the follicle grows, it releases inhibin, which shuts off the FSH production.

High FSH levels

High levels of Follicle-Stimulating Hormone are indicative of situations where the normal restricting feedback from the gonad is absent, leading to an unrestricted pituitary FSH production. Whereas this is normal in women leading up to and during postmenopause, it is abnormal during the reproductive years.

If the FSH level is high during the reproductive years, this may be a sign of:

1. Premature menopause also known as Premature Ovarian Failure

My weekend was spent surfing the internet looking for ANYthing that would give me some encouragement that an FSH of 21 at age 38 wasn't bad news. I didn't find any hope. What I found were three fat letters. I.V.F. (In Vitro Fertilization)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilization

And not just IVF, because a score of 21 is saying "decreased ovarian reserve"....but IVF with donor eggs.

Nothing like bypassing everything and just going for the most invasive thing possible, eh?

Of course, that's not the only option. A 38-year-old with an FSH can most certainly get pregnant on her own and give birth to a healthy child. It happens. If I were with a male partner, I could just 'keep on trying'. But because every time I have to 'keep on trying' it will require doctor's visits, drugs and the purchasing and shipping of donor sperm, those tries end up pretty costly. And it could take a really long time. I don't have a lot of time. I've already been waiting years, I would've like to have started this process a couple of years ago when a little voice went off in my head that said "My eggs are depleting as I stand here".

But, that's not the way things worked. There were a lot of other things going on, like the fact that I was backpacking around South and Central America and didn't really have a job...that prevented me from having a child at that point. We weren't ready. Our lives weren't ready. K was in grad school.

So we waited...for both of us to get our lives on the baby track.

Finally, we both felt it was the right time, we could do this, we were ready.

Only to find out...maybe it's too late.

Maybe it's done before it ever even started.

Maybe I wasn't meant to have children?

I mean, really, what does it mean?

All I do is listen to the soundtrack from the movie Amelie and dance in my living room.

Sometimes K comes out from the office and we dance together or I'll pick up the cat (but he doesn't seem to enjoy it nearly as much as I do).

I can't get enough of this soundtrack, especially the track "A Quai". It makes me swoon. If you haven't seen the movie, you really should.

It's happy and melancholy at the same time.

Mostly, it makes me smile a silly lopsided smile and keep dancing.