The prosperous year of the '13: Answers and News we can finally use!

'\HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!  I hope everyone had a wonderful and very safe new year.  We had a very good new year, even though Kevin had to work.  Poor thing was in bed by 9:00 on New Year's Eve.

Taking a moment to look back at 2012 and what it taught us, we have decided to look at 2013 as a positive adventure yet to come!  We started the year of the '13 off right, with a RE doctor's appointments! Earlier in the week I said my dr appointment was today, but it turns out it was yesterday. Luckily, I called Dr. D's office last week because I couldn't remember the time.  It's been a long week! shewwww!  I'm blaming it on anesthesia brain!  You know you lose brain cells when they put you under.  After 5 surgeries, it's a wonder I can tie my shoes. 

So yesterday, the day started out just fine, until Kevin woke up. Boy was he ill. Just because!  I was anxious about the appointment as usual.  I think I tried on 5 outfits before it was just time to go and I had no other choice but to wear what I had on at that particular moment.  We headed to the appointment and didn't talk the entire way.  I had no clue what to expect at this appointment.  On the way I read a part of my book on embryo adoption.  Embryo adoption (EA) is a fairly new form of adoption. It's only been around since the late 1990s, I think.  EA is the adoption of leftover embryos from another couple's IVF cycle.  Sounds kind of weird when you put it on paper like that, but it is actually really cool.  Pretend you do an IVF cycle, you stimlulate and Dr. D gets 20 follicles.  He puts your 20 eggs and your husbands sperm in a petri dish and lets them get acquainted.  Well amazingly, all 20 fertilize beautifully and mature into wonderful looking embryos.  Well there is no way you can transplant all 20 of those.  You could end up like those 40 kids and counting people. I'm just kidding, I know it is only 19.  Like that's better, Seriously?! So you tranfer 2 at a time until you have your desired number of youngins!  Say you have 10 embryos left.  What to do with the embryos? 1) You can freeze them and let them stay in storage forever on the off chance you might want to have another kid when you're 50. 50 is the new 40 these days.  2) You can destroy them.  That means you call your RE's lab or storage facility and tell them to throw your embryos (lives with potential) in the garbage with the left over pizza from lunch.  OR 3) You can donate them to a couple who can't make their own embryos for whatever reason. ME and KEVIN! We would enter into a contract together and we purchase the embryos.  Then 2 at a time, they are transferred into my uterus, hopefully they implant and we get pregnant, and the rest is just a health ed lesson.

It is considerably cheaper than traditional adoption and IVF.  Traditional adoption, international and domestic, can cost on average $25,000 - $30,000.  IVF costs an average of $15,000.  EA cost an average of $6,000-$15,000.  We could adopt the embryos now, and wait to transfer them when we are ready.  So we can move at a more relaxed and financially secure pace.

Dr. D's office has an embryo donation bank.  Because he knows the quality of the embryos they freeze, he says we would have about a 50% chance at getting pregnant.  Well that is better than our chances if we used our own embryos today.  Right now we sit at a 41% success rate with our own embryos.  There is also a foundation called "Snowflakes. " It's basically an adoption agency for embryos. They have embryos all over the country that are just sitting in little freezer tanks waiting to be adopted!

We did get some clarification too on how my AMH could decrease so quickly.  I didn't know that every month when a woman gets ready to ovulate, multiple eggs basically fight to become the dominate egg. Say you have 25 eggs fighting for that starring role in the oscar winning motion picture, Ovulate! Only one can be a star. During the fight it is basically survival of the fittest and the unfit eggs are dying out. Once the one egg ovulates, the other 24 die.  So a woman is losing eggs every day of her life.  If you are in my position and don't have a lot of eggs in the first place, losing any eggs is not good.  I wouldn't have 25 eggs dying, but it would still be enough to hurt my AMH.

We also learned that my endometriosis was in my ovary.  I tell you something folks, I am awesome at being screwed up!  The endometriosis was in a cyst that was inside my ovary!  That could be another reason for the low AMH. Dr. D said that there is some kind of connection with endometriosis and low AMH, but we aren't quite sure what that connection is.  Both are apparently hereditary, too. No good! So with no tubes and below average ovaries, I asked Dr. D if there was anyway we could take a look at my uterus before we spend all kinds of money and find out it is inhabitable.  He said he had already done that when I had the Saline Infused Sonohysterography (SIS).  I told him that I thought I remembered him remarking that my uterus was "beautiful." He said yes it looked great! Did you hear that folks?  Beautiful uterus!   haha only in infertility is that a real sentence!

So we got good news and answers that made things make better sense. I feel pretty good today and pretty excited about what's to come!  There are still plenty of things to learn and think about, but for right now we will hold onto this momentary joy!

So here's to 2013, the prosperous year of the 13! A year of less bad news for all of us, bigger hopes, smiles all around, more what if dreams, and maybe, just maybe, our baby reality!

Good night, sleep tight, and may your Faith in the Lord keep you safely in his light!