Plan B and C and...

So today we are pregnant. At least a little bit pregnant. 4w4d, but who's counting? Only maybe pregnant, right? No beta has been drawn since Monday, so it could all be over by now. Maybe the IVIG killed the embryos. Hopefully not. Of course, I haven't felt anything cramps-wise in almost 12 hours, so you never know.  Ok, I do think I know sometimes. This never, ever works out for us. This is our seventh pregnancy in less than five years. Yowza. And last I checked, no live children. Still, it could work out, right? Maybe. But hard to tell. Hard to figure out anything, really.

That happiness I felt yesterday? Elusive, I tell you.

Ugh.

It is tough to believe in even the moment here sometimes. This all still doesn't feel very real most of the time. (I find myself weirdly experiencing the feeling of being over the moon and in simultaneous disbelief and denial.) And it feels very necessary to try to protect myself as much as possible. So that if everything falls apart (negative thought - when everything falls apart), we are ready to move forward toward having a child.

So we are moving ahead with our alternate plans - donor and gestational carrier - so we don't get left high and dry when this silly delusion I've been having that I'm pregnant reveals itself to be a fantasy.

So where are we at with our alternate plans?

There is a wonderful woman I've mentioned before who came to us and offered to be a carrier if we need it (unbelievable, really) - she has sent all of her medical records to the Denver clinic and they are reviewing them. She will be able to go for a one-day work up in May or June 2012...three months after she finishes breastfeeding her youngest daughter. We still have two euploid embryos and one no result embryo left, which we could potentially transfer to her. It's also possible I might do one final fresh IVF cycle to see if we could make anything more decent/higher quality for her to carry if I lose this pregnancy. So that's percolating.

We're also still in the process of screening potential agency egg donors...and this process continues to move at a glacial pace. We're pre-screening them ourselves rather than have another donor fail the stringent standards of the Denver clinic, because boy, that sucked.

Here's where things are at:

Donor #1 (E) - the twenty-three-year-old donor we loved with great AMH, 33 resting follicles, low E2 and FSH...but the inversion on chromosome 9 - we have asked a great clinic here in NYC if they would let us cycle with her and do CCS, eliminating of course all aneuploid embryos...They are thinking about it and talking to their geneticists and getting back to us.

Donor #2 (R) - a scary bright twenty-something physician - has a great AMH and is FINALLY expecting her period after going off the pill in December. So once that happens, we will get antral follicle count, FSH, E2 drawn. If that's all good...we'll go on to genetic testing. She's almost too good to be true on paper (dad's at NASA, sister's a Rhodes Scholar, etc...), so we're also seeking some confirmation of her narrative., just to make sure she really is who and what she says and not trumping some of this stuff up. To clarify on this, we'd be fine if half of the stuff wasn't true, but if she was being untruthful, THAT would be very concerning. We'd like to tell our child real things about their donor, not some made-up fantasy.

Donor #3 (K) - Has great AMH, good FSH and E2, good but not stellar AFC, is now undergoing genetic testing. This is a boatload of stuff because she is half-Jewish. Her personality and interests are also not so similar to mine (she's an aspiring actress. I'd rather hide in the closet than be the center of attention any day)...still trying to figure out if that matters.

Donor #4 - Seemed like a great match on paper for my personality and interests and she is super bright, and young, and is already a mom, so we know she is fertile. Her dad committed suicide, so that was a bit nervous-making, but there is no other psych history in the family, so we decided we could deal with it...Unfortunately, she has decided she is not interested in donating at this time, so she is out.

So those are the back-up plans, and the back-up plans to the back-up plans. Sigh. Probably seems really weird if you haven't had a ton of miscarriages, but, well, we are weird and we have had a ton of miscarriages. It's so strange and almost out-of-body all of this, both the being pregnant, and the being sure it can't last, and the trying to be ready to take big alternative steps if we need to to move forward.

I wish I could tell you this all brought me peace, but it doesn't. I am a bundle of nerves right now. I am so trying not to get sucked into believing in this pregnancy and getting my heart stomped on again. Trying to not think about it, or not feel too much about it really. I just don't want to get burned again. I feel like with each loss I've lost a little piece of myself. I hope it's not permanent. I hope I don't have to lose any more. I hope that having back-up plans helps make things a little less risky. I don't know that it does, but I'm hoping.

Mo

Photo: Management Briefs

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