Such a Weird Place to Be

Before I got married I did everything I could to not get pregnant, not knowing that I was infertile.  For the last 3 years I have been doing everything I could possibly do to try to get pregnant...Lots of ovulation strips, and checking for fertility signs.  So many times of peeing on a stick, only to have one line glare back at me.  The first two years were filled with medications with terrible side effects, and trying naturally.  Nothing worked, and the doc wouldn't listen to me that I thought more tests should be run.  Finally I switch to a great RE last year, and then we start on the IVF path.  We tried 2 fresh IVFs, and then one FET.  Nothing worked.  So we faced the decision of adoption or continuing to try IVF, possibly experimenting with surrogates and donors...I say experiment, because we still don't know for sure if it is my immune system that is the issue, or my crappy eggs are the issue.  Probably both are the problem, but we still have no way of knowing for sure at this point.  So to continue down the IVF path, with no certainty that it will work even with donors and surrogates, we decided that adoption is our best bet.  We have decided that this does not end our infertility journey.  We do want a larger family, if we have our say in it.  So all that being said, we have agreed to not actively try to get pregnant, while we are going through the adoption process.  We are going to run more tests and try to figure out what is the biggest problem, and come up with a plan to hopefully add more children to our family.  And we plan on doing an IVF cycle in the fall, freezing all resulting embryos, so that we can transfer them to either me or a surrogate in the future.  We figure we should get my eggs while there are still eggs there.  If we find that my eggs are the problem, then we will eventually move on to donor eggs, but there is always time to get donor eggs.  There are some restrictions on age when adopting, and well...my eggs will expire at some point...and if they aren't great now, they definitely won't be great if we wait much longer.

So now we are back where we started.  I am monitoring when I ovulate, not to get pregnant, but to try not to.  It isn't that I think at this point that it is possible, and of course a pregnancy at this point would still be a blessing, but I want to adopt.  With the agency and country that we are going with, we cannot get pregnant.  So I am going to try my best to not get pregnant.  I laughed at that a bit when I typed it, because to think that at any point I have to try NOT to get pregnant...yeah right.  Crazy thought!  Anyway...I just thought it odd that after all this time of trying everything possible to get pregnant, we are back to trying not to.

It is hard to switch gears.  I am so used to watching for the signs, and hoping this is the month.  I am so used to watching what I am eating, and not drinking alcohol, or taking medications after ovulation or transfers.  I just realized that I have about a year of not having to worry about any of that.  It isn't that I am going to go overboard or anything, but it is so nice to have a bit of a break, and to just be normal.  Normal...for a whole year....and then I will be a mom, if all goes right.