The Uncertainty of it All

It’s funny how life works.  When you get to the point in your life when you’re ready to have a family you go down that road with high hopes and dreams, and even a few “what on earth am I doing?!” fears.  After about 8 – 9 months you decide to get serious and start taking your basal body temperature, using ovulation tests and checking CM.  When 11 months comes and go you panic because statistics say that 98% of couples will conceive within one year.  The 12 month mark flies by and you find yourself in a waiting room somewhere wondering what you’re going to do next.

And if you’re like us, the tests come back showing practically nothing wrong with either of you and your official diagnosis comes down as “unexplained infertility” and an expected 1 – 2% chance of conceiving in any given cycle instead of the 20 – 25% that normal people have.  The Really Great Thing about unexplained infertility (/sarcasm) is that there isn’t really a known treatment — they just poke and prod and try things, hoping that something will work.  We chose IUI, and it bumps us up to a 15% chance.  Don’t read that wrong; it doesn’t give us a 15% chance on a platter; it gives us an unknown chance up to 15%.  As John likes to say, we’re spending X thousands of dollars for a spin on a roulette wheel; and he’s completely right.

One of the hardest parts of this whole thing is not knowing how it will turn out.  If someone could show up at my front door and guarantee me that we would have a child in May of 2013, I could be patient and live with that.  But we’re going down this road never knowing for a second if anything we’re doing will work.  It’s a complete gamble.  Wait.  Actually, we’d probably have a better chance at gambling because at least we could choose a game that we’d have an advantage at.

Another hard part is knowing that with enough IUIs, we would probably succeed eventually but even as much as we’ve been blessed we would probably run out of money before we’d be successful.  When you’re in the unexplained infertility category, it’s all about what insurance you have and how much you can spend; because for the right price, anyone (even a 52-year old who has gone through menopause) can have a baby.

I’ve been doing Follistim injections for four days; number five will be tonight and then I go in for more monitoring tomorrow.  For all I know, they’ll tell me to trigger tomorrow night and schedule the IUI for Friday.  And as quick as that it may be over for us since we’re seriously (90% sure?) considering stopping after this one.  It would be insane and irresponsible for us to keep throwing our hard-earned cash at a broken roulette wheel, right?

We went to Disney World for our 5th anniversary in 2007.  That was a pretty special trip.  In 2008, we went back because it would probably be our last chance to go alone as a couple.  This year we went because we needed a stress break, and who knows — it might have really been our last chance to go as a couple.  Somehow I just know that next month when this IUI fails we’ll start planning our next trip, this time maybe as our last chance to go alone as a couple before bringing home an adopted child.

When we started this, I was so happy that John was “finally” (in my mind) ready.  I was excited and had so much hope.  I planned birthday parties and Christmases in my head.  I picked out nursery furniture.  I thought about what schools my kids would go to.  I started rearranging my house to be more kid-safe and to make my life a little more organized for the whirlwind that is parentdom.

I thought lots of things. But I never, ever, thought I’d be here.

Well, the nightly injection is calling…

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