Tag: Babies

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Babies

So let’s try this again…

The last blood test was “inconclusive.”

“Yeah, we still can’t tell whether you’re pregnant.”

??

“Come on for a third one. That will really show a trend.”

Sure. Whatever.

It’s interesting to see this approach. Emotionally, not great. But accuracy-wise, a good move, I think.

The number did go up last time. Just not enough.

So that’s good, I guess? The number would have to go up again, by double.

And we’ll probably have to have some sort of investigation of the space, because apparently ectopic is a potential outcome.

If it number goes down, I think years will be inevitable.

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Babies

Are we or aren’t we?

We’ve done a lot since the last post. The short of it is, we’re now working with university of Utah fertility and have had a much better experience.

We initiated a frozen embryo transfer (FET) and that was implanted two weeks ago.

According to what we understood, we were to go back yesterday for a blood test to determine pregnancy.

For whatever they measure, a definitely non-pregnant result is <5 units. A definitely pregnant result is >100 units.

Jordan tested 44 units.

The nurse called to discuss results with us. The discussion went something like:

“Your number is 44. We’d like to see 100+ by now.”

“So am I pregnant?”

“We’re not really sure and not willing to say. It’s usually clearer than this. We’ve scheduled a second blood draw for two days later, and we’ll be able to determine based on whether the measurement trends up or down.”

So that’s entirely inconclusive.

Probably better for Jordan’s head, honestly. She was pretty tightly wired yesterday before the test.

And after

That doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be similar. But it was nice to have the draw at 8 and have results by 0930.

So we’ll see how it goes.

I actually appreciate the use of trends to determine diagnosis. Most of my experience with medicine is “you have this right now. It’s a problem because that’s different from ‘average’.”

As opposed to having trend data taken over time and available in the long term.

So we’ll see how it goes. But Jordan’s feeling a lot like Schrödinger’s box right now.

You know the one that may or may not have a live cat in it.

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Babies

The beginning?

A year ago, we started pursuing this “maybe we should have a baby thing” as intensely as we ever have. (I want to be really clear, I don’t know that we slaved and prayed and cried the way some people do/claim to do.)

Anyway, we took it seriously. Because it wasn’t happening naturally, we started making appointments with doctors to see what could be done.

Last July, we met with a doctor who practices NaPro (natural procreation) methods, with the intent to try to address the root causes of why we weren’t having children. NaPro claims to be as effective as the most aggressive methods (IVF) for reproduction, without having all the excessive amounts of drugs added to your body.

Long story short, it actually doesn’t work at all if the guy is the main cause of the problem. (And these couples aren’t included in the success statistics. So NaPro is actually quite a bit less effective than it claims to be.)

So we move to a men’s fertility specialist who told us all the things we already knew from the test results and offered a potential solution: have surgery that might (~30% likelihood) solve the problem.

Because this is a journey a couple goes on, I figured it was worth going under the knife to see if we could save Jordan a bunch of drugs, injections, and hassle. So in October 2019, I got two new scars just above my pubic bone, where they removed 1.5x the normal number of varicoceles. (Yes, I had trouble running and jumping fro a while.)

Post surgery, they wanted us to wait 3 months to see if my counts improved. They didn’t so we were on to more and different fun.

To this point, we’d worked exclusively with the University of Utah medical system. It’s the first system I’ve dealt with that seems to have its act together, and I really didn’t want to go to a new set of doctors.

But Utah Fertility Center is literally 5 mins away, and Jordan didn’t want to go to SLC for all her appointments (possibly a good thing, but for different reasons). She got what she wanted. That story is elsewhere.

(It was a good thing we went through UFC, even if the customer service has been poor: UofU shut down all non-essential things, including fertility, and UFC didn’t.)

We implant today. We have some (unknown at the moment, but we’ll know in less than 90 mins) number of viable potential humans in test tubes (or petri dishes) that will get a chance to grow up into little gods.

So it’s been a year. The next step of the journey will be almost another year, but by March next year (assuming the worst statistics still ignore us) we’ll have a little human running around.

Well, lounging. It won’t start running around till October 2021 at the soonest.

It’s quite the progress for a year. And we need to start looking into what the next leg of the journey looks like, and how to balance new requirements with good things we already do.

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Babies

Being a dad

In my late teens/early twenties, I figured I get married some time between 21-24, and have children relatively quick thereafter.

Neither of those happened.

Married at 28, no kids at 32.

Jordan wrote about some of her feelings in Hard Heart, and although mine are quite different, I feel some things similarly.

I’m over-competent. I do most things better than most people. And I do some things at such a high level I don’t even know how to coach incompetent people how to do it better because some of what I do is intuitive.

Most non-parents probably feel they would be better parents than others they see.

I feel this pretty frequently. However, I am also aware I have zero experience, so “I would do ____ differently” doesn’t really cut it.

So I’ve wanted to be a dad for a long time.

Having it not happen hasn’t been that hard. Dating for a long time without getting married taught me that it’s ok for things to take a long time, and I shouldn’t be overly worried about things not happening in my timeline.

But that doesn’t mean when I see a newborn I am not overcome with “that’s cute. I want one.”

Or when I see a toddler, “I’d like to have one of those around, and try to see the world through their eyes” (even if I have no idea how to understand anything they attempt to say).

There are similar lines that I have for children, youth, and teens, too.

A teen in my house is likely to be a formidable thing. Two smart parents, one that relies heavily on logic and reasoning to get things done. Combine that with the un-reason of teenage hormones, and Jordan and I might meet our match.

But one day we might be able to have a deep conversation with a creature we made that has learned to think and wipe it’s own butt (this is why a dog will always be inferior to actual children).

So am I ready for the challenge of fatherhood? No, not at all. But am I willing to deal with it? Yes.

The late nights. The lack of sleep. The crazy world we apparently live in. Sure. Let’s go.

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Babies

Moneys

IVF isn’t cheap. For each cycle (period reset to one transfer of viable embryos), the following may be involved

  • $9,800 for the main stuff provided by the office, start to finish
  • $3,000-7,000 for drugs, depending on her body and needs
  • $1,000 for miscellaneous costs
  • $500-$2,500 optional testing, depending on couple’s susceptibility to genetic deformities

This is all before normal pregnancy costs. So you can understand why many couples choose to only do IVF once.

They offered us a few other options:

  • Pay ~$20k for two cycles to guarantee a you bring home a baby or you get 50% back
  • ~$35k for three cycles to guarantee a baby or 100% back

We really don’t have much interest in those two options. The incentives on the “insurance company” (for lack of better terms) don’t seem to line up with ours.

We want children. Plural. “Bring home a baby” seems to provide the option that they get paid two cycles worth of work for one cycle success. And their guarantee is based on medical criteria, which are unknown to us, but we know we’re approved.

So those criteria could be anything. Jordan is a healthy woman. She makes eggs consistently, and a “healthy egg-producing woman” could be the criteria for approval. Because a woman who can produce many eggs has a MUCH higher chance of having a baby than on who does not, thereby statistically solidifying the financial success of the insurance company.

So we’re going to go one cycle at a time. We’re going to rely on the fact the lab worker can accurately find a sperm in the sample and plant it in each of the eggs. And we’re going to assume Jordan can create 8+ in the cycle, which means we may have some behind.

If those assumptions aren’t true, we’ll have to re-think our approach.

However, if they are true and we have viable leftover eggs after the first transition, then we’ll freeze the eggs for $500/year and come back 12-20 months later for a second transfer ($2,900 + $500-1000 in drugs to prepare for transfer).

We think we’re playing the numbers.

If both transfers are successful, and we have multiple children, and there are still viable embryos left, then we’re in a bit of an unknown area, because we don’t want to leave any viable ones in the freezer.

So for now, about all we can do about that is let go of control, and let God guide the process.

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Babies

Hard Heart

We’ve gone to specialits.

We’ve been poked and prodded.

My husband had surgery.

We’ve fasted and prayed.

We’ve shed tears (mostly me).

And we’ve still not been able to have children.

I feel so alone in this. I have felt alone since we moved to PG. I don’t feel like I fit in because I don’t belong to the “mom club”. I really don’t know how to handle other people’s children because I don’t have any of my own.

At the start of the new year it seemed like every week at church someone was having a baby blessed. And for one reason or another we ended right up front in full view. I silently cried through the whole thing. Not because I wasn’t happy for them, but because of the loneliness and the absence of the blessing I’ve prayed for.

So I began to close my heart to the pain I was feeling. I wouldn’t listen when other babies were being blessed and instead went elsewhere in my mind. I just wanted to shut it all out. When I would see a kid acting out or hear one crying I’d tell myself how happy I was to not have to deal with that. I began to tell myself how lucky I was to not have kids because we could travel, spend our money the way we wanted, spend our time the way we wanted, etc.

And little by little my heart closed.

We decided to go back to a fertility doctor to start IVF (IUI won’t likely be successful in our situation) and it doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t feel like we could have a child of our own.

Logically, if we go through the steps and all goes well, we’ll bring home a baby.

But emotionally I am closed off and unable to feel the connection. I don’t want to feel the pain.

I need to allow myself to hope. To open up. To allow myself to be vulnerable to the pain of loss that may come. Pain is not bad, it’s uncomfortable to be sure, but it can also make the success so much sweeter.