The year in review

Dec 31, 2008: We arrived in Denver for IVF #5. CCRM was going to be the answer to our prayers! New Years Eve was spent taking my injection and getting settled into the hotel room which was going to be home for the next several days.

Jan 2009: The first half of the month was spent in CO. I went through my 5th ER – 31 eggs were retrieved! Yes, CCRM did seem to be the answer to our prayers! The rest of the month was spent in waiting for fert reports, growth reports, PGD reports (we did a freeze all cycle). We have 4 PGD normal embryos!

Feb 2009: I started prepping my lining for FET. My lining didn’t seem to be growing very well. Almost the entire month was a whirl of lupron, estrogen patches, delestrogen injections and ultrasounds.

March 2009: I was still on Lupron! It had been almost 7 weeks on Lupron and I was going insane. My lining was not growing, and nothing seemed to budge it. I tried acupuncture, “bone soup”, hot foods, delestrogen, estrogen patches, estrace suppositories and everything else I could think of. But no luck. I called off the cycle and decided to take a break.

April 2009: I was on a break, and we were in need of a salary coming into the house. I started looking for a job, found one and started working. My uncle (mom’s brother) in Nashua was very sick and I spent a week there with him and his family. It didn’t look good, and he didn’t look like he would make it much longer.

May 2009: When AF came, we decided to get back on to the FET bandwagon. I started Lupron and all of the same insanity again.

June 2009: My parents came from India – to be with my uncle and help him and his family out. Uncle was deteriorating. In the meantime, my lining was doing the same “no growth” pattern as before. I was now on heavy doses of delestrogen and patches and suppositories. My FET date kept getting pushed out because my lining wasn’t good enough. At the end of the month, my uncle passed away.

July 2009: Most of the month was still spent on Lupron and estrogen. By the time it came to FET at the end of the month, I had been on Lupron for about 8 weeks! Crazy? Yes, absolutely! My lining barely made it to the minimum required level, and we decided to proceed with transfer. We transferred two beautiful looking grade AA blastocysts.

August 2009: BFN. Not much to note for the rest of the month. How many people do you know who are childless even after 5 IVFs? Besides me, I can count maybe 2-3 others. Not a whole lot. It’s a sad, sparsely populated club to be in.

September 2009, October 2009, November 2009: Honestly, it’s all a blur. I can’t remember much of what happened in these three months. Somewhere along the line, we started talking seriously about domestic adoption. DH is the project leader for our adoption program. He did all the research and we finalized on the agency we want to go with. We also got a potential birth mom situation that made us so excited.

December 2009: Here we are, at the end of a year that I hoped would bring us the answers we needed. CCRM did not turn out to be the answer to our prayers. We are on the brink of 2010, and we are still looking for answers. We still have 2 frozen blastocysts but we are out of steam. I also am not sure my lining will cooperate any time soon. Most importantly, I am not ready to stick another needle into me – not for the foreseeable future. We have filled out our application forms for domestic adoption and have sent them in. We are waiting for our home study to get done. We are trying to be hopeful for 2010, but have been let down and disappointed too many times before to put much hope into our hearts. We are more realistic now, more cautious with the dreams in our minds. My motto is: Hope for the best, but expect the worst. Who knows, life may pan out somewhere in between.

It was good while it lasted

Nobody said the adoption process was going to be smooth sailing, but after 8 years on a stomach churning, vomit inducing roller coaster ride called infertility, I was secretly hoping we’d get a break and the universe would put us into the “preferential treatment” category. A girl can dream, can’t she?

It all started 2 months ago. When I wrote this post, we were close to finalizing which agency we would go with, and we were close to initiating the entire paperwork. We wrapped our minds around bringing home a baby of a different race, and started visualizing in our minds a baby in our arms, a baby that we would love unconditionally – our baby.

And then we got a call – from the same agency that we were finalizing to sign up with. Hold your breath – they told us they had been contacted by a social worker in Nevada, who had been contacted by an Indian family. There was a young girl in this family who was pregnant, and they were considering placing this baby up for adoption.

As you can imagine, our world did an instant flip flop! The agency said they remembered us from our conversation with them, and since it was rare for them to come across an Indian baby up for adoption, they thought of asking us if we would be interested.

IF we would be interested??? Of course we would be interested!!

Mind you, we weren’t even signed up with the agency yet, so they really had no obligation to bring us this potential match! So in our naïve minds, we started believing this was meant to be! This was the universe’s way of cutting us a break, and making something easy for us. We couldn’t stop smiling!

The agency gave us less than 2 days to prepare our “Dear Birthmother” letter and our profile booklet. We worked like insane people on a mission! Writing, selecting pictures, creating the profile, printing, binding, rushing to the agency etc.

And then the wait started. I literally had my phone attached to me like an additional appendage all the time. How cool was this! Unlike other couples who usually don’t get the chance to “customize” their profiles and letters to the birthmom’s situation, we had been so lucky to have some information about the birthmom. We knew she was Punjabi (ie, from around the part of India my family is from), so our pictures depicted our Indian roots more than we would have initially imagined. Our letter was written in English, and I also wrote out a copy in Indian! Our profile literally was screaming: “Pick Me! Pick Me!”

We were so sure this was going to work! I mean, how couldn’t it? There had to be karma involved in this, right?

One week went past. No phone call. Two weeks went past. No phone call. We followed up with the agency. They had not heard either, and they promised to follow up with the social worker. They came back saying the social worker had not heard anything either.

One month went past. No phone call. Now it’s almost 2 months. I’m not carrying my phone like it’s my lifeline anymore. The agency never heard anything back. They feel no news means it didn’t work out. And I’ve stopped hoping too. Yes, there is that tiny little sliver of chance that MAYBE, just maybe, it will still happen, and that the birth mom and her family (her dad was the one driving the entire conversation with the agency in the beginning) may still call us. But then there is the very real and probably more likely possibility that we will never hear from them.

We don’t know if they didn’t pick us, and picked someone else from another agency, or if someone within their family / friend circle offered to take care of the baby or if they decided not to put the baby up for adoption after all. Who knows what their reality and situation is at this point.

But it was good while it lasted. The shine and sparkle in our eyes was worth it! We allowed ourselves to hope so much about this working out that we actually had conversations revolving around me taking time off from work, and us having to figure out day-care etc.! Pre-mature yes, but it was a huge first for us.

We had never before come within touching and feeling distance of a baby like this! This birth mother is due on Jan 27! If this match had worked out, we really would have had to have all those conversations and decisions in place by now!

But I guess it’s not so simple in my life. The universe and karma and fate and whoever else is not cutting me any slack. The adoption ride may turn out to be as crazy a roller coaster as our IF treatment ride. Hop on and hang tight!