Final Stretch

In IVF, nothing ever, ever goes according to plan. For the FET prep, I opted not to take BCPs the month after the retrieval. It gave me the illusion that we might conceive naturally (and trying is fun) and more importantly, BCPs give me awful headaches and I’d rather skip extra hormones. The benefits of BCPs is that it pretty much ensures when you get your period thereby the date of your FET. My cycle is typically pretty regular so I assumed I’d be safe. Wrong! My period came a week late. Our best laid plans of doing the FET before Thanksgiving had to be changed. So it goes but the important point is that we still have our normal and will transfer within a couple weeks!!

This is our last big effort. If this fails, then we officially move onto adoption. Since our homestudy, I haven’t been able to take the next step on birthmother outreach. Mostly because its not cheap. Five thousands dollars on the low end to fifteen thousand for the high-end, promise-you-a –baby-in-six-months agency. I’ve talked to four lawyers and two agencies and learned a great deal about the process. That is a good thing if we need to go down this path.

At the get-go, we were told that we had to accept our child would likely have exposure to alcohol and drugs. The sad fact is that most birth mothers don’t follow the same health protocols that those of us trying to get pregnant. The homestudy application required us to list what drug and alcohol exposure we’d be willing to accept. I assumed a little bit of alcohol was fine given that my OB told me that when I was pregnant. And cigarettes, pot, heroin, crack, cocaine were absolute no-nos. And I was wrong. Apparently alcohol is the very worst thing for a fetus. Worse than cigarettes, pot and even heroin. Calls to multiple pediatricians backed up that claim. Wow! That was a surprise.

But I am getting ahead of myself. We are still in the IVF game. I am not ready to adopt a knocked-up potheads baby. My baby is still frozen in a Colorado lab. I have four Vivelle patches glued to my abdomen and will shoot myself up with 5 units of Lupron before I go to bed. Tomorrow, I will drink my fertility smoothie, do my 20 minutes of fertility yoga followed by the self Uteran massage and listen to the Yoga Nidra for Fertility. I am focused.