The hubby and I are slowly ticking off actions items on this long and arduous path to breed a single child. I hear from MANY people (including some from my team of doctors) to go directly down the IVF path. I had lunch with a friend of mine today who told me very bluntly that she felt I was wasting time and that IVF was the route to go. I winced, I hemmed and hawed. She looked me in the eye and pretty much called me a fool. Gotta love friends who are completely honest and looking out for your best interests. I actually hear that from a lot of people. What are you waiting for? IVF guarantees success.
Is it just me, but I have to believe that in this very scientific and evolved world that there are alternatives to writing a check for a minimum of $15,000 and injecting myself with hormones. The con against IVF, I have heard, is an increased risk of cancer, although people who have done IVF seem to dismiss this as arbitrary.
I don’t consider myself at all an expert on these matters. Hell, I could’ve killed an unborn child with doses of botox. But I am very curious about successful alternatives to IVF and hoping to get some answers from my own network. I know that adoption is an option (which I am more than happy to undertake), but would like some advice or personal anecdotes from people who have gotten pregnant not through IVF and not the natural way (i.e., pregnancy through IUIs or other means not yet considered).
I have this strong instinct that we are going to get pregnant and it will not be through IVF. Any advice is much appreciated!
Only you and dean can decide how much and how far you want to go with the fertility treatments. Even with adoption it can be a long and arduous process. If you decide not to do ivf, that is fine. But what you don’t want to do is postpone the decision to proceed with ivf (if that’s what you ultimately want to do) until its too late. The problem is that no one can predict what “too late” is. The unpredictability of the situation is frustrating and difficult.
While I can’t give you any personal anecdotes (though as a doc I have heard some amazing stories), I am hopeful that you will find strength in the messages that your friends are sharing with you.
My wife and I tried EVERYTHING. Then, we gave up. I think that is important, the giving up. Maybe, it’s a cosmic thing. The answer for us was a “Radiators” concert and a six pack of Dixie beer. The baby is named Ben and is thirty-three this year.
We were told not to try to get pregnant, after three years of early miscarriages. LOTS of them. Lots of tears and binge drinking on my part. I was supposed to undergo more testing, and being pregnant was supposed to be an absolute no-no. 40 weeks and 4 years later, our oops is driving us cray cray with questions about “why does it snow?” and reprimanding us with “the light is red. that means stop. why did you turn right?”