Money

Well, it looks like we're going to try to move forward with this other surrogate in Vegas, but I'm really worried about the financial aspect of it all. We called tons of insurance companies and she talked with an insurance broker. The bottom line is there are no individual plans out there which even cover maternity (let alone when it's a surrogacy) without a 12 month waiting period except for the policies underwritten by Lloyd's of London specifically for surrogacy pregnancy coverage and they are very expensive.

The best one I could find requires a $8,200 premium and there is a $ 17,200 deductible. The deductible has to be paid up front along with the premium but, at the end of pregnancy, they do return any unused balance of the deductible after 6 months.

Our only other option is to just self pay all the medical costs but I honestly have no idea how expensive a pregnancy could get if there happened to be complications. We already know she'll probably need a C-section since she had one for her child.

So, the question is do we pay $ 8,200 to guarantee that our medical costs won't end up in excess of $ 17,200 (so essentially, our costs would have to end up being more than $25,400 for the insurance to have been worth it). If there is a miscarriage after she's transferred over to the OB, there is no refund of any of the premium so we'd risk losing substantial money there for nothing....not that we're not used to that, of course. I'm looking to my in laws for guidance with this since they make pretty level headed decisions when it comes to finances. So far, they seem to be of the opinion that we should just self pay. It's just that, knowing our luck, it is not too difficult to imagine some kind of major complications occurring which would result in like $ 150,000 - $ 200,000 in medical bills. And then we'd really be kicking ourselves for having been worried about saving $ 8,200!

I had a consult with my Dr. yesterday to discuss my protocol for this cycle. Last time I was on the same 300 iu follistim for 2 days then down to 225 iu follistim that I had been on for the 2 cycles prior. But last time, I didn't respond to that dose for some reason. I don't know if it was due to increased age (it was 7 or 8 months since my prior fresh cycle) or just a fluke.

When I got out to Vegas after 8 nights of stims, my E2 was only at 180 as opposed to around 2000 the other times. So then, I had to be increased to 300 iu and things moved along better. I still had less eggs and embryos than prior cycles and I ended up without any normal ones.

This time, I had hoped to start at 375 and drop to 300 but the Dr. told me in an e-mail that my only choices are either starting at 375 and dropping to 225 or starting at 450 and dropping to 300. This makes no sense to me and neither of those plans seems ideal but he says these are the only options. He said that, if the higher dose is more than I need, my body will just get rid of the excess and it won't hurt egg quality. Why not just put everyone on super high doses to begin with then? I told him I'd go ahead and do the higher dose but am feeling nervous about it. I just wish my body hadn't acted so unpredictably on the past cycle. We had the protocol and dose down perfectly prior to that.

Trying to pick myself up

Ok, well the last few days have been really rough.

As usual, Kobi has been a big comfort to me. He's been by my side even more than normal. Except this morning he took it a little too far when he almost jumped on the treadmill with me. Fortunately, I was able to hit the stop button and block him just in time.

DH was really surprised by how hard I was taking the news of the failed cycle because we had known from the start that the chances of it working were slim. As I tried to explain to him, it's not so much the failed cycle as it is getting bad news yet again. And it was right on top of the news about the Vegas surrogate I hoped to work with having the match with my DH. I can only take so much. I guess part of me is always holding out hope for the kind of miracles I see happen to others. Part of me remains convinced (in spite of only evidence to the contrary) that if you persist in getting something you want in life, you'll eventually succeed.

As I mentioned in my prior post, I do have another possibility for a surrogate in Vegas. Unfortunately, it's starting to look like it may not work out either because her medical insurance
has a very clear surrogacy exclusion. And, so far, the only insurance policy we have found that would cover the maternity for a surrogate costs upward of $ 25,000. And, it would end up being several thousand even if the transfer didn't work due to the application fee and administrative fee. Add this to the $ 20,000 which gets paid to the surrogate herself, the $ 6,500 to the agency, probably $ 5,000 to the attorney for contracts, $ 2,000 to the clinic for their "surrogate coordination fee"....
It's just crazy.

Anyway, DH and I are heading out to the beach. I definitely need to get out of the house even though it's hard to motivate myself to do anything right now.

BFN

It is another BFN.

Test Day

I've been so busy dealing with the Las Vegas surrogate situation and a new twist that the whole thing took (which I'll explain shortly) that I had temporarily forgotten that my local surrogate had her beta this morning. For those of you wondering how it's possible that I could forget such a thing, the reason is that I had already written the whole thing off as a failure.

She just called me this morning and said she had her blood drawn but couldn't take waiting around all day so she was going to buy a home test and take it. I figured she'd been taking them all along and just not telling me, but she said the last one she took was at 5dp6dt when I told her not to take anymore. She asked if I wanted her to tell me what the result is or if I wanted to wait for the call from the Dr. I told her if she was taking one anyway then, of course, she might as well tell me the result. So, now I sit here waiting.....of course, thinking maybe there is a small glimmer of hope since the last test she took might have been a day too early. I truly hate hope and wish I could just forever banish it from my emotions.

So, while I sit here waiting for her to call me, I'll explain what is going on with the Las Vegas surrogacy situation. Bear with me because this is confusing.

Back when I had started corresponding with the Las Vegas surrogate, there was also another surrogate out in Las Vegas I had started exchanging e-mails with. She was already potentially matched through an agency with a couple in England and just waiting on her DQ Alpha result.

The couple was working with the same clinic and Dr. I go to and they were using his daughter's surrogacy agency (which I had also made contact with prior to ending up finding someone on my own).

This other surrogate is good friends with the surrogate I had intended to use. So, anyway, she and I e-mailed one another over the month as we anxiously waited for test results to come in.

As it turned out, she found out she had a match with the intended father in England so couldn't work with them. Then, several days later, I found out her friend had the match with my DH (I know....again it makes you really wonder about the "10 percent" chance of a match).

Even though the obvious thought in both our minds was that maybe she and I could work together, both of us were hesitant to even go there because her friend (my former potential surrogate) was really upset that she had ended up matching with my DH. She had tried to get me to consider transferring to her despite the match. She knows it's a rather controversial issue and that a lot of Dr.'s don't buy into it.

The other surrogate and I decided just to get her DQ Alpha results for the sake of comparison with my DH's. We figured that, if she matched, the possibility of working together wouldn't be an option anyway. She was having some difficulty getting her results from the agency and kept having to remind the lady there to send them to her. Last night, when she asked for the 3rd time, the lady questioned why she was so anxious to have them and she said that she just wanted them for her medical records.

Now, when I had discovered my other surrogate matched, my Dr. had passed along what was going on with me to his daughter and she contacted me to say she was sorry I was still having trouble finding someone and that she could check to see if they had anyone already tested who didn't match that might be suitable. She already had DH's test results and our profile because we had been contemplating using her prior to my finding someone. The problem was agency fees for surrogacy are quite steep. We would have had to pay her $ 6,500 had she actually found me someone that I wanted to meet then another $ 6,500 if we moved ahead with things. This doesn't include attorney fees or any other surrogacy costs. It's strictly an agency fee.

And, as hard as it may be to believe, her pricing is actually on the lower end of what these agencies typically charge.

Well, last night the lady at the agency e-mailed me a profile of someone who didn't match who she thought would be perfect for us and, you guessed it. It was the lady I already know and have been communicating with for the past month. What a totally awkward situation.

The surrogate and I decided honesty was the best policy so I wrote to the agency and explained how it was that we happened to already know one another. I also told her the surrogate hadn't told her the truth about why she was looking for her test result because it was far from certain that we would work with one another and she hadn't wanted her to think she had been purposely trying to find a couple on her own. It was just a strange turn of events which resulted in this whole situation.

Fortunately, the lady at the agency was very understanding about the whole thing. She said she was just happy I might have found someone and her main concern had been that the surrogate was trying to match herself with someone else and that she would have shown her profile to me only to have me be disappointed that she wasn't available. So, in that regard, she said she was actually relieved that it was me the surrogate had been in communication with.

She said that if we wanted her to handle our case from this point to the birth (so less the matching part), it would be half the agency fee so $ 6,500. I need to give that more thought since all they'd be doing for us is managing the escrow account and referring us to attorneys and an insurance provider. My concern is what if the transfer doesn't even work? Then we've paid all that money for them to basically make one payment and give us a few referrals.

Now, all this having been said, I really don't know if this surrogate is right for us or not. She's only 23 which is a lot younger than the person I had hoped to find. She's been married for 5 years and has a 3 year old. Apparently, she doesn't want more children. She's also never done this before whereas I had ideally hoped to find someone who had. And her insurance doesn't cover surrogacy pregnancies so getting her insurance that would could add up to a substantial additional cost. I need to investigate that further. In addition, it is rather an uncomfortable situation due to her being friends with the other surrogate who is still harboring some hope that maybe I'll change my mind and use her despite the matching issue.

On the positive side of things, she does seem mature for her age and I know she's spent a lot of times on surrogacy message boards and is friends with women who are surrogates. So, she has done her research and seems fully aware of what this would involve.

Ok, still no call from my other surrogate which probably means she's too upset to call me. I'm sure that, if it had been anything less than a BFN, she would have been on the phone within a minute of taking the test.

They match

If anyone has been reading for awhile, you might think this is a repeat of my April 24 post titled "They Match".  Not exactly.  Basically, I seem to have this problem where, not only do I keep getting bad news in this infertility struggle, but I seem to get the same bad news over and over and over again.  Ever see the movie "Groundhog Day?"  Well, I identify with it way too much.

 

Anyway, yesterday I found out that the Surrogate out in Las Vegas that I had been hoping to use also has the DQ Alpha/HLA matches with my DH.  This is after a month of getting to know her and both getting excited about the prospect of her doing a transfer for us in July.  The day before yesterday, she told me she was feeling really nervous about the test results (which we've been waiting a month for) and I told her I was sure there would be no match and that there was no way I could have that degree of bad luck.  She said she admired my positive attitude after everything I've been through.  Well, Ms. Positive Attitude has now fled from the premises and I can only hope she's not dumb enough to return.

I wrote to my Dr. and expressed my extreme frustration with the fact that I've now tested 2 surrogates (at $ 700 per test which is, of course, small change to my Dr. but not to me) and that both of them have not only matched with my DH but they have had mostly the exact same numbers that match with him.  That means they match with one another too.  

And the surrogate in Las Vegas checked with a close friend who is also a surrogate and had this testing done at one point and guess what?  She also matches with my DH!  So, basically, it seems like I may be the only female in the world who doesn't match with him (and you all know what great success we've had having children).  Yet, my Dr. insists that the incidence of this matching is only 10% and I just happen to be coming across the 10%.   Got to love those low percentage numbers for bad things when it comes to infertility.  I'm clearly drawn to them like a fly to light.

He told me I just need to be more persistent  Hello???  I'm headed into my 8th fresh IVF cycle, have done 2 transfers to a surrogate and 8 to myself.  Does it seem like I'm lacking in @#&@!# persistence?  

Oh yeah, to top off the lovely week I'm having, I get to look forward to the BFN call I'll get tomorrow from the local clinic.  Plus, my Dr. didn't increase my dose enough for my next cycle so now I have to debate that with him.

The only bright spot of my week was that I actually had a few readers and comments yesterday (thank you).  

   

  

 

      

Feeling Down

My surrogate took another hpt this morning and it was negative.  It's now 6dp6dt.  Again, it's not like I had any expectation of it working.  I guess I should just consider myself fortunate that it flat out didn't work instead of being a miscarriage again.

The DQ Alpha results were supposed to be back today on my potential surrogate out in Vegas but, apparently, they aren't in.  The nurse said she should have them for me tomorrow.

When my DH noticed I was stressed out today, he asked "This isn't something we need to worry about, right?  Wouldn't it be extremely rare for 2 surrogates to come back with a match?"  I just told him he knows what our luck is like when it comes to all of this.  At this point, I feel like anything is possible.....except for success of course.

5dp6dt and BFN

My surrogate called me yesterday morning to tell me she took a HPT and it was negative. I told her it was still too early, blah, blah, blah.....
I asked her not to even test again until Wed. or Thurs.

Meanwhile, I know it's really not too early. The test she took claims to pick up something like 83% of pregnancies at 11 DPO. I can't say the BFN comes as a surprise to me, but it does make me really concerned because that means, out of all the embryos we had from that cycle we did (when I was 2 years younger) none of the embryos were normal. I guess I could make the case that maybe one of the 3 that were transferred to me on the fresh cycle were normal but, if I have an implantation/carrier problem, then we failed anyway. I don't think I believe that though. If there had been a normal one in there, it seems like I at least would have had a chemical pregnancy. The other 5 blasts were transferred to my surrogate between these 2 transfers. Last cycle she got pregnant but miscarried as the embryo turned out to be abnormal. This time, it looks like she won't get pregnant at all.

What was it about my first 2 cycles in Vegas that allowed me to have normal embryos? It seems those were the only 2 attempts I have actually had a few normal ones. Of course, I have no way of knowing if they were all really normal. Some might have fallen into the 20% that test normal but are actually abnormal. I do know, without doubt, that the one I got pregnant with yet miscarried was truly normal since the testing from the D&C reconfirmed it. Yet, maybe that was the only normal embryo we've ever really had......in which case the odds of getting another would be extremely slim.

While I didn't expect anything more than a negative result for this transfer, the whole thing is just making me feel very pessimistic about another cycle accomplishing anything. I can't see this ever working for us and am starting to feel like all I'm really doing is buying time because DH and I can't seem to agree on what we'd do if this doesn't work.

What have I done?

I paid the deposit for the July IVF cycle yesterday because I was sick of being on the fence. I took my first bcp last night. Now the realization is hitting me that I am actually doing this again.
Some of my friends think I'm crazy at this point.

This will be our 6th time traveling out to Vegas since Jan. '07.

The first try there (and my 5th fresh cycle) was in Jan. '07 and, since we were doing staggered IVF with the CGH testing, we had to freeze the embryos. I went back for the ET in March '07 which was as soon as I possibly could. That was the cycle I was pregnant up to 8.5 weeks. I had the D&C in early May '07.

I then did another fresh cycle in July '07. Again, that was as soon as I could realistically cycle again. We froze the embryos while waiting for test results. I went back in Oct. '07 (the earliest Dr. S. was in Vegas again and the earliest I could have done it based on when I got the results) for the ET of one of my two tested embryos. That cycle was a chemical pregnancy.

At that point, I truly thought I was done with fresh cycles. We had a FET using a surrogate for the first time in Nov. '07 with some embryos frozen at my old local clinic from a 2006 cycle. We transferred 3 blasts to her and she became pregnant with a singleton. Things looked good at first, but her 9 week u/s showed the h/b and growth had stopped. Her D&C was in late December '07. The embryo was abnormal.

I knew I couldn't let everything ride on the one tested embryo we had left in Vegas. I couldn't get in to do another fresh cycle until March '08 though. That was my most recent cycle where we had 5 blasts but none tested normal.

So, now here we are in May '08 and it's amazing to me how much effort I've put into this since we first decided to cycle out of state yet we still have nothing to show for it. Reflecting on this makes me wonder why am I doing another cycle. What do I expect to be different?

If something actually works for us, of course I'll say it was all worth it. If none of this works, it would be a very bitter pill to swallow that I've spent so many years of my life going from cycle to cycle to the exclusion of everything else and probably at least $ 150,000 (which is not a small amount to us). It would be so hard to take that it was all for nothing; that we still don't have the child we longed for. I am deathly afraid of having to face that realization so I guess maybe this "last" cycle is just buying myself some time.

Transfer

None of the Day 2 embryos made the thaw. This did not come as a huge surprise. Of the 6 that we had, three were 2 cells and three were 3 cells. At best, I thought maybe one might pull though but no luck.

So, the Dr. thawed our 2 Day 6 blasts and transferred those. He spoke with us before the transfer to let us know what we were transferring, but I didn't see him afterwards and my surrogate said he didn't say anything after having done the transfer about how it went.

I know he had a conference to go to which is why we had to do the transfer so early in the morning. He also hadn't said anything about the quality of the blasts and, normally, I would have asked but I just didn't feel like bothering. I figured that, if they were great looking, he would have said so. The fact that he said nothing indicates to me that they probably didn't look too hot. My surrogate's husband was standing there with us when we were talking to the Dr. and I knew he would tell her if the Dr. said the blasts didn't look so good. And, I'd rather she at least have hope this will work so that's she's careful about what she's doing over the wait.

Even if the transfer itself went smoothly, our chances with 2 Day 6 blasts are pathetically low.

Again, I'm not feeling upset or anything because I have no anticipation of this working anyway. We did it mainly because we have to use our remaining embryos. Even a 1% chance is better than nothing. At least we have now used up all of our embryos at the local clinic.

On the way home, DH and I stopped at the outlet center and he bought me some cute stuff. If a pregnancy doesn't result from this trip at least I have a couple new handbags and some new clothes to show for our drive over there (my lame attempt to look at the bright side).

Fresh cycle in July

Well, DH and I have discussed things and it looks like I'll be doing fresh cycle 8 in July.  This WILL be my last no matter what happens.  Fortunately, my mom thinks she can fly down here to take care of Kobi and Sasha again while we're away.  This will be the 4th time she's done this for us and I'm so grateful to her.  I could never bring myself to board them somewhere and I've had pet-sitters come in twice a day but just end up worrying about Kobi the entire time we're away.   Speaking of Kobi, I ended up canceling his vet appt. as he hasn't thrown up once since I made it.   I still need to bring him in for routine bloodwork but figured I would hold off a little longer on that.

My surrogate has her transfer tomorrow morning.  It's funny how, in the past, I would have been calling the clinic asking how many embryos had made it to today.  The thought didn't even cross my mind until now and the clinic is closed.  I actually don't even feel like I want to know right at the moment.  The odds of this working are are probably only a few percent at best even if we do end up with a decent number to transfer.

AF finally showed up for me today after a 52 day cycle so I'll be starting bcp's (ugh...hate those things) in preparation for July.  I'm just praying this cycle goes better than the last time around.