More then meets the IVF

Ah, if it were only as easy as saying, "yes," we're moving forward with IVF. Which, by the way, we are. 

Bob and I have officially decided to move forward with our last option of becoming pregnant again; IVF. Our doctor has been wonderful at trying to help us get to this point by helping us choose the best IVF option for us personally based upon our fertility issues. Although we were approved for a program called Shared Success, we, along with our RE, think that a single cycle is still our best option. I'm grateful that God has placed us at a clinic with a doctor who cares enough about me as a patient to make this recommendation based on us personally and not just on a bottom line. I'm so very grateful. 

But our decisions don't stop there. With a fresh IVF cycle, there is the possibility of having more embryos than we can use in one cycle. In this case, we will choose to freeze those embryos. Fast forward a year or two after we've had a baby and we still have frozen embryos. Do we choose to go through a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) to have more children? What if we have decided that we were done with our family at that point (which could be for a number of unforeseen reasons)? What then would we do with our frozen embryos? 

As I see it, we have four options at that point. The first would be to donate the embryos for adoption to an infertile couple. The second would to freeze indefinitely. The third would be to donate to research. And the forth would be to thaw and discard. And this is where it gets tricky. 

We already know that embryo donation is not an option for us. I was rejected as an egg donor because of family medical history, therefore we would not be eligible to donate our embryos. Freezing indefinitely is also not a very good option. Embryos invariably will begin to deteriorate after they've been frozen for too long and will eventually die. I guess you're making a decision by doing nothing, but you're still paying for years of embryo storage. Both donating to research and discarding embryos brings up a host of issues for Bob and I regarding the sanctity of life because with the fact that Bob and I believe that life begins at conception, we are faced with having to make very tough decisions. No one can make these decision for us and we have to live with the decisions we make. 

See, I told you it wasn't going to be easy. As for now, I'm going to focus on staying healthy for our cycle that will begin next month.