Now What?

Hmm, haven't you heard me say that before?! I feel like I've been sitting in this very same spot a million times before over the past several years, yet I seem just as lost right now as I was the first time I sat here. I hate the limbo! I hate the not knowing of what we will do next or what direction we will embark on! I like to know where I'm headed as it always brings me comfort. I'm not feeling like we don't have a travel destination, but rather just that we don't have the GPS programmed yet. I'm obviously anxious to get the GPS programmed, so we can head off in the right direction.

I've talked with K about all that's happened with the miscarriage and emergency D&C. Not surprisingly K's husband was scared to death when he receieved a frantic phone call that his wife was going in for a D&C because she was hemorrhaging. As a result he feels quite strongly that K can't go through another cycle with us again. I don't blame him for having these feelings. He wants to protect his wife, the mother of his children, and the logical way to do that is to end the surrogacy journey. Additionally K's husband has some other reasons for not wanting K to continue, which I won't get into here, but all of his points are very valid. I understand that both K and her family need time to process all that's happened in the last two weeks before they make any final decisions, so we are going to give them some much needed time and space.

K and her family know that we will be moving on with our plans for IVF #2 and that we do not presume that they will be a part of our continued journey. It is important for my mental health and well-being to keep moving forward, so that's what we'll do. I will discuss surrogacy as a part of our future, but I will not discuss who will be a part of it. I need to give K and her family time to decide if they will continue on this journey with us or not. Of course we are hopeful that K will continue this journey with us, but we understand if she is unable to do so.

I told K that it's much easier for us to bounce back from the miscarriage because 1) we didn't go through the physical part of it, 2) we've been through 4 other miscarriages and are familiar with the wide range of emotions that accompany such a loss, and 3) it's not nearly as emotionally painful for us as was watching Myles die. Plus, years of being battered by infertility and recurrent miscarriage has made us quite resilient. Like I said before we stumble along this journey, but we keep getting to our feet and we forge ahead. We are "walking through flames" to get to our child. I have to say that this fall was a pretty bad one for me, in particular, because I expected surrogacy to solve all of our problems. I should've known better to think that it would be a smooth ride as nothing about this journey has been smooth. Despite this HUGE, devastating blow I still feel strongly that surrogacy will bring us a child, so working with a surrogate will be an integral part of our future journey.

I have my WTF appointment (i.e., post-IVF consult) with Dr. S scheduled for 3/31 to discuss our next step, so that meeting should help set us in motion. I hope that Dr. S is ready for me this time because I have a million questions for him! I'm guessing our protocol for IVF #2 will be similar to that of IVF #1 because I had a good response. I stimmed for 11 days with a combo of Bravelle & Menopur. My estrogen levels were low the whole time and never correlated properly with my follicle count, but my RE assured me that there are a select few women (go figure I'm one of them!) who have mature eggs as indicated by u/s despite what the E2 level indicates. He was correct. Here are my stats from IVF #1:

-21 mature follicles at trigger
-2 empty follicles at ER
-19 eggs retrieved
-16 mature eggs that fertilized with ICSI
-8 blastocysts (graded A; all frozen due to lining problems)

I'm guessing that he'll have me do the same protocol: slow and low seems to work for me! I was thinking that stimming during the school year might not be the best idea and thought about waiting until June, but maybe I'll start near the end of the school year if it works with Dr. S's schedule. I figure that the worst case scenario is that we won't have a surrogate to transfer our fresh embryos to, but realize that if that's the case we'll just freeze the embryos until we can find a surrogate. In my dream world my uterine lining would suddenly do something miraculous and grow thick so we could transfer to me, but we know that is highly improbable and very unlikely to happen.