My Oma

My Oma passed away this morning aged 92.
I'm sad but I am also happy that she is finally in heaven with my Opa.
Rest in peace Oma.

Generosity

My husband works with the most amazing group of people.

Last week he wasn't feeling so great after our IVF appointment, and a few people could see that he had stuff on his mind. When he told them about the chance to freeze his samples prior to IVF but that it would cost $600, they were sympathetic and really lovely to him. Nothing unusual there, they are a great bunch of people.

Then on Friday, his boss and another colleague came up to him and handed him a little red envelope, like what they give out for Chinese New Year. In it was over $700 in cash! His workmates had gotten together and decided they wanted to help to take the stress away and had come up with the money themselves!

I mean, who does that! Their amazing generosity, completely unexpected, has made something that was going to be a struggle, into something that could really increase our chances with our last IVF cycle. I have cried several times since at what an incredible gift this has been.

There is going to be lots of homemade cake in the future for staff morning teas!

No babies places in 6 months

I spoke with the adoption agency earlier this week to find out any news on the adoption front. As usual they couldn't tell me anything, but they did say that no babies had been placed since I last spoke with them in October. At that point they hadn't placed any babies for some time either, so it has been at least 6 months since a placement was made.

My hopes are low at this point

Permanent foster care predicament

We had a really emotional weekend. We were approached by somebody who belongs to our previous church about potentially fostering a 10 year old girl.

Her story isn't ours to tell, but she needed a home, and our names came up as potential foster parents, likely on a permanent basis.

 

It was completely out of left field. First we had to consider if we could practically do it. We have a spare room set up, we wouldn't need additional furniture, the local primary school is just down the road, we can arrange for me to work school hours etc. So the practicalities of it weren't a deal-breaker.

So then it came down to, is this actually something we want to do? And is it the right circumstances for us?

We prayed hard. We discussed lots of different angles. We listened to each other's thoughts. We argued. We hugged.

In the end, we came to the decision that it was not right for us. The deal breaker was that it would take away our adoption approval, and that is a hurdle that neither of us were able to get past.

 

It really stirred some things up for us around parenting. Murray has always looked forward to having an older child – helping them with their homework and after school sports, after all he is a high school teacher. Whereas I crave the baby and young child stages – teaching them their alphabet and taking them to the zoo to see an elephant for the first time. Murray was much more okay with the potential fostering situation than I was because it fit his needs, but it would have been a huge loss for me, to miss those stages of parenting.

 

I know some might see the decision as selfish, hell so do I. But I'm okay with the decision, which is all I have to be.

It has definitely opened our minds to the potential of doing long term/permanent foster care down the road if an adoption doesn't eventuate.

IVF again

 

We had our appointment with the specialist yesterday and have a plan for our last cycle.

We discussed a couple of options, but considering this is our final round (really, truly, last cycle, nothing more), this is what we are going for:

·         Increasing Puregon dose to 150iu per day. Last cycle's egg collection was on day 17 which I feel is too late so we are going to try for a faster rise hopefully and go to egg collection between day 12 and 14

·         We aren't going to do the Endo scratch again. Yes the success rates appear to be higher, but our Dr seems pretty certain it's the embryo quality and not my uterus that is the issue

·         I am going to try a couple of different supplements. I have already started taking COQ10 150mg a day, but am adding in Metformin 500mg 3 times a day, and also Myo inositol 2g twice a day. I've order the inositol from iherb.com which was only $28 so worth adding in to the stuff I already take (Folic Acid, B12 and Fish oil). My Dr thinks that Myo inositol can't hurt and possibly could do good so happy for me to try it.

·         Finally, Murray is going to give two samples and have them tested and frozen over March and April, so that if on the day his sample is poor, we can use one of the backup samples instead and use the one with the best possible stats. This costs $600 with no rebate for the freezing, but it is worth us doing, and because there are no other out of pocket costs besides the supplements, we can afford to try it.

 

So we are going to wait 3 months for the supplements to do their thing and for Murray to give his samples, and then cycle in May.

We both feel like this is giving it all that we have, and are ready to let it go after this. For a while I didn't even want to give this another try but in the end I couldn't turn down a free cycle after all the money that we have spent over the years on fertility treatment.