Canceled cycle

We ended up deciding to hold on the fresh cycle until Oct.   I hope the decision isn't a mistake.  I'll be 1 month away from turning 39 at that point.  The thing is, if we were already having to wait until August, it's only an additional 2 months.  Granted, it's 7 months since the last time I cycled (and who knows if that went poorly because I was 7 months older than the time prior to that), but there's nothing I can do about it.  

We're going to try to proceed with the transfer of the embryos we already have frozen to our surrogate in August.  I just didn't feel like I could handle that and a fresh cycle in the same month under the circumstances.   The next cycle my Dr. offers after that isn't until Oct.

Things are still sad and stressful.  I'm hoping that, by Oct., at least we'll be in a position where we could handle bad news.  I can't imagine doing both in August and finding out the transfer to the surrogate didn't work and we didn't have any normal embryos.  We're already in such a depressed state right now due to missing DH's Dad that I can't take the risk of setting us up for that kind of situation.

Father's Day

We got back from Long Island Friday night. We didn't want to leave my mother in law, but could tell she needed some time to herself. We've been calling her 3 to 4 times a day to check on her and plan to go back again Friday-Tues.

I know today is going to be especially rough for DH. Father's Day has always been kind of hard on him just like Mother's Day always is for me due to not having children. But, now he will also suffer because he no longer has his Dad either. I remember asking my MIL the week before last what we could get DH's Dad for Father's Day and she had said that he had been carrying around a soft briefcase sort of thing that DH had given to him years ago (I think it was just something that DH had and didn't use) to the point that it was getting holes in it. It was definitely nothing great but he liked it only because it was from DH. So, we had planned to get him a really nice one to replace it. I feel so upset that, if this had to happen, it couldn't have at least been after Father's Day so he could have gotten all the gifts and cards from the family and would have left knowing how much we all love him.

We canceled the July IVF cycle. We just don't have that in us right now. My intent when canceling had been to postpone until August and I think that's what DH wants to do. But part of me just feels like putting it on hold even longer until the next cycle Dr. S. has after that which is in Oct. If I could be reassured that waiting that long wouldn't make a difference, I would definitely wait.

I'm not sure what we'll do about the surrogacy. The lady who will be my GS is just wonderful and told me not to worry; that she'd wait for us as long as we needed her to. Financially, it's going to be rough as my FIL had been sending us money for the surrogacy. Now, after taking over management of the finances temporarily to help out, I can see he was being extremely generous by helping us. I'm sure he had been expecting money in for deals he was working on that would have taken care of everything, but now that money is not coming in and we certainly do not want to take anything from my MIL as she'll need what she gets for selling the house and from life insurance to take care of herself. But, my MIL insists that it was so important to my father in law that we do this and he would not have wanted us to cancel everything. She made me promise not to. So I guess we'll have to find some way to do it. I just can't see doing a fresh IVF cycle in August and trying to get my surrogate's transfer of the embryos we already have set up for August as well. It just seems like too much....emotionally and financially.

I really don't know what to do. I feel like I just have to make the decision and not trouble DH with this as he has more than enough to deal with right now.

Death of a much loved father in law

My father in law died very suddenly on Friday afternoon.   It came as a complete shock to everyone.  He was 73 but seemingly very healthy and active.  He was a great man who treated me like his own daughter.  Whenever I saw him, his eyes would light up and he'd give me a big hug and tell me how beautiful I was.   The whole family is devastated.   My husband doesn't know how he'll pull through this.  He always used to call his Dad for advice and guidance on things.  His Mom and Dad had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary not too long ago.  They had known each other since they were 14.  They were the kind of couple that was so obviously as much in love 50 years later as they were upon getting married.  I am very worried for my mother in law.   

My husband's mom and dad had both been helping us financially with the surrogacy and have always been there for us to talk to throughout hard times.  I am sad that, if we ever have a child, he will not get to see him/her.  I know my father in law would have loved that more than anything.  I went in his office to try to help sort through papers yesterday and he actually had a file of articles about infertility.  He wanted to understand and help.  I couldn't help but start crying.  He had really wanted to have the whole family together, but never pressured us because he and my MIL understood it would be painful for us to be around Jordan's brother's children.  The sad thing is now we are all here together and we have met some of the children for the first time (and they are so cute) and we have bridged the gap that had grown between his brothers and their wives and us.  Yet, I hate that it took this for it to happen.  I feel like I was selfish and should have done it sooner for the sake of my in laws who were getting older.

I will never again assume there is always time to make a situation right.

My husband is so devastated.  There is so much more to say but the funeral is today and I should go get ready.  It's going to be an extremely difficult day for everyone.

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.