A Plan?

Well, we kind of have a plan. For now we will be trying Clomid. It isn't overly expensive, and it might work, so really there is no good reason not to try the medication route. It does involve a little more than I originally thought it would, but if this ends up being it for us, it will be so very worth it.

You would think that it would feel good to have a game plan, but honestly my heart isn't in it. I still want a baby so much, but I am so tired of trying. It is just so discouraging every single month. Even when I work really hard at not being hopeful, I can't help but get my hopes up a little bit, and it always leads to disappointment. After over 18 months of disappointment after disappointment, I am really feeling done. I just don't want to try any more. I realize that this sounds like I'm depressed - I'm really not. I just don't feel like putting the emotional effort into trying this new Clomid plan. Because statistically speaking, it will probably fail, and I will just have to survive through more months of disappointment.

But on the positive side, I really believe that we will have a baby soon one way or another. We have talked a lot about what we are going to do if this doesn't work, and we have decided for sure that we will not do IVF. This means that there really isn't a lot left to try - since IUI is not going to be productive and IVF is off the table, this medication route is really the last option. Once we have tried this we are going to move on to considering adoption. And really, I am very, very excited about that idea!

Answers and Options

On Wednesday I had a phone call consultation with our doctor to go over our test results. I have been very busy, and Jonathan and I have been talking and trying to think through everything, so I haven't gotten around to updating until now. But we really did get a lot of our answers, and I think we're in possession of enough information to reasonably know what to expect and to begin to plan for the future.

At this point the test results show a combination of factors that give us a pretty low chance of conceiving on our own. (Maybe something around 5% or less each month. It's hard to know numbers like that exactly, but that's a rough estimate.) I will go ahead and outline what our options are.

Medication

One option is for me to take Clomid or another medication. This might bump our percentage up a bit. If we say for the sake of argument that we're at 5%, this would move us up to 7-8% chance of conceiving each month. It is not safe to take Clomid for more than six months at a time, though, and as I pointed out to the doctor, 7% each month for six months gets you to about a 42% chance of conceiving. Not great odds, but considering how affordable Clomid is, this could be worth trying. 

IUI

IUI is not going to be an option for us. Due to the test results, the doctor said that IUI would not increase our chances for pregnancy by any significant amount. It just wouldn't make sense financially. 

IVF

The doctor indicated that IVF would be the most direct way to address the situation, and by far has the best chance for success. IVF has a 60% success rate for couples in their early 20s. As much as we may be tempted to take this route as it is clearly the easiest emotionally, we are very, very cautious about the idea. I feel that my pro-life beliefs conflict somewhat with this option, and we are certainly not going to run into this right away. 

I do not believe in freezing embryos, and I do not believe in doctors choosing which embryos they think have the best chance of survival. I did talk about my concerns in our phone conversation, and our doctor was extremely open and respectful of my beliefs. We talked about some options for lower stimulation IVF and ways that we could do IVF so as to eliminate these concerns. While that's great, it would dramatically decrease the chances of success each month. Depending on how exactly we decided to go about things, our chances of pregnancy could be more like 40% or even just 20% each cycle. It is very hard to calculate these percentages, however, because not enough couples do IVF with these considerations in mind to have a significant pool of data. 

I would be happy to share more about IVF and the specifics of why I have these concerns and feelings in a future post, but for now I will just say that this is not something that either of us are thinking of jumping into right now. 

Adoption

With only these options, we have started talking and thinking a lot about adoption. But that's something that the two of us need to talk about and think about a lot more before I say any more.

So those are the options we see at this point. In a nut shell, these are our choices:

1. Do nothing. Keep on going as we have been and probably not get pregnant any time soon. But who knows? God can do anything. At this point I would consider getting pregnant naturally to be nothing short of a miracle.
2. Medication. I can start taking Clomid or another fertility drug and we can try that for six months. This would slightly increase our chances and we could pray for a miracle. I would still consider getting pregnant under this option to be a miraculous and wonderful work of God.
3. IVF. This might be an option for us, but we are still thinking, praying, and studying about whether or not this is something we feel ethically and morally comfortable with.
4. Adoption. This is something that we cannot do right away because of the cost factor, but it is a route that we could consider and start researching for the future. 

So that's it. The answers we've been waiting for. We would love your prayers and support as we consider our options and try to discover what God's will is for us at this point in our journey to start a family. 

Keep checking back. We will hopefully come up with some kind of game plan soon! 

Looking Forward

Over the past week or two I have been doing pretty well. Two weeks ago today my husband and I decided that it was time for us to share our journey with our friends and family. It just felt like the right thing to do. From the moment that I decided that we would let other people know about our struggles I felt an immediate sense of relief. I never felt like I was keeping a secret before, but I suppose it was weighing on me more than I realized.

A week ago we posted a note on Facebook, although we limited the privacy settings so that not everyone on our friends lists would see it. Just knowing that we are not alone and that people now have some idea about what is going on in our lives is very comforting, and it really lifted my spirits, even if I did not talk with many people about the note at all.

If you are friends or family (or anyone!) and are reading my blog, feel free to follow it, subscribe at the bottom of the page by entering your email address, or comment on posts. I would love to hear from you!

I believe I mentioned this before, but we do have a consultation at the Sher Institute in Saint Louis on October 24th. My hope is that they can start us on a good plan. We have already done some tests with our respective doctors in Wisconsin, but I do not feel that we have a diagnosis or a clear explanation of what the problem is. I am hoping to (1) get a clear sense of the problem through testing as they recommend, and (2) make a plan for treatment.

I do not know what they will recommend for treatment at all, but I do know about some of the more common fertility treatments. I know what problems we do not have, and this leads me to think that they will probably suggest either IUI or IVF. I would be very happy if there was something much simpler that we could try first, and I am definitely hoping that that is the case, but if you know me, you know that I like to think ahead and be prepared, so I am already thinking about these two different courses and trying to decide how I feel about them - just in case.

I am assuming they will start with a suggestion of IUI since it is cheaper and less invasive, but it will depend upon the precise nature of the problem, obviously. As a Christian and someone who is strongly pro-life, I have some ethical concerns with IVF that would certainly need to be satisfied before I would consider pursuing it. I am considering doing a post or two on the ethics of IUI and IVF and what a Christian view of these treatments could be. (I do want to say that even when my husband and I reach a decision about what treatments we would be willing to pursue, we will never pass judgement on another couple who makes a different decision. These questions are very tricky and very involved, and in many cases there are not clear-cut answers.) With that being said, we naturally want to feel very good about any course we decide to take in our own marriage.

So to sum up, I've been feeling better about all of this lately! We have an appointment coming up and I'm hoping it will help make our path a little more clear-cut and concrete. And look out for upcoming posts about IUI and IVF in Christian (and more specifically Lutheran) perspective.