We had our appointment yesterday with Dr. B. There was also a new OB fellow who sat in – we go to a clinic which is a part of a large teaching hospital so we are used to students and fellows being in on the appointments. This gal was not one of my favorites because she sat there the whole time picking at her nail polish while I was making a tissue pile on the desk because I was crying (of course I was). That was annoying.
Anyway.
Dr. B said that the entire team (meaning all of the doctors/students/fellows in the practice and the embryologists) sat down to review our case. There is no real cut and dry reason as to why we aren’t getting pregnant. My eggs look good and really the only “thing” with me is that I only have one tube. Hubs sperm look good and he had had some additional testing done on his stuff after the first failed IVF and all those tests came back with great results. They do not know for sure why when my eggs and his sperm are combined for IVF that the embryos aren’t surviving. Good news is I did get pregnant so one of the embryos did attach but bad news is obviously the embryo started to die.
He then presented us with 4 options.
1) Cornell University in New York. They would take some of the cells from my uterus and use them to make a base medium for the embryos to grow in the petri dish. Not a new procedure but not something that our place does. The thought is that the embryos could do better in a medium made from my own cells that would closely mimic the natural environment. He said that he has referred patients there and some have gotten successfully pregnant and some have not. This costs upwards of $15,000 with no insurance coverage and most likely this price doesn’t include medication. I would be able to do some of the blood work and ultrasound monitoring at the clinic that we currently go to in CT but the majority of the monitoring and all of the procedures will need to be done at Cornell. They are at least 3 hours from us and with 6 hours of travel time alone this is not a feasible option with my job,
2) IVF with ½ Donor Sperm. The embryologist has a “gut feeling” (those are Dr. B’s words) that the issue is the hubs sperm. Even though all of his testing has come back with flying colors she thinks that this is what the issue is- that it’s something with his sperm not meshing correctly with my eggs. So we would do the same long down regulation medication protocol like the last IVF. He said they would try a different medium in the petri dish for the embryos but they would fertilize ½ of my eggs with hubsters sperm and ½ with donor. If there are good embryos with hubsters sperm then we would use them and freeze any left. If there aren’t any good embryos with hubsters sperm and the only good ones are with the donor then, obviously, we would transfer the ones with the donor sperm (and freeze any left). We would then know if the issue is in fact hubby’s sperm. The IVF would be $8,060 (the financial gal gave us this price due to our combined income). This doesn’t cover meds or the donor sperm. The donor sperm is about $600. My meds last time were almost $7K but I have a lot left so I’m not sure how much we would have to spend on medication. There is a program that we can apply for that if we meet the criteria we can get assistance with paying for the meds. But in any case, this is the option that Dr. B recommends.
3) IVF with Donor Eggs. The embryologists say that it is not my eggs and we didn’t really go into the details of this option because Dr. B isn’t really that convinced that it’s my eggs either. But if the donor sperm option doesn’t work then we would know that it is my eggs. However… donor eggs alone cost upwards of $10,000. That’s just the eggs. I’m not sure if this is an option that we will explore because of the price but we will cross that bridge if we get to it.
4) IUI with ½ Donor Sperm. Dr. B threw this one out there merely because of the cost. This is the most “cost effective” option. Donor Sperm is $600 and the IUI is $300. So without meds it would be $900. Without meds it is a crap shoot though because I would have to be monitored to see what side I’m ovulating on. Since I only have one tube if we did a non-medicated “natural” cycle and I ended up ovulating from the non-tube side then the procedure is a no go and we wait for next cycle. So it could potentially end up costing more than $900 if it’s over the course of more than one cycle because of the monitoring. But if we go this route and it ends up not working we won’t know why it didn’t work – was it the sperm or did we just not catch the egg? No way of telling.
Afterwards we met with the woman in the finance department. That’s where we got the numbers I mentioned above. Needless to say we left there with our heads spinning and a lot of paperwork.
We didn’t talk about it for a couple hours; we both took the time to process everything that we had heard and sat on the deck later that evening to talk. I’m having a hard time with the donor sperm option. I honestly didn’t think that I would but all of the dreams that I’ve had about our kids and any time I’ve thought about them I always envisioned little boys who look like the hubs. Of course I know how stupid that sounds. I take full ownership of how moronic that whole thought process is. I have no idea why I feel that way and I think in time I’ll get over it because hubs doesn’t have a problem with it and he’d be the one without his DNA in the mix. If we chose to use donor anything we need to have a consultation with the psychiatrist anyway, which I think makes total sense. That’s a huge step and I think meeting with a professional to hash it out is a good idea.
Another thing I have a problem with, and hubs agrees, is that this is a whole lot of money without a guarantee that it will work. I know that we have been very very fortunate to have had the insurance coverage that we have had and that a lot of people go through this process paying out of pocket and taking that risk that it won’t work on the first or even third try. But for us that’s a huge gamble and we’re not sure if we’re ready to take that yet.
So what we agreed on is that we should take a few months off and just try on our own. Dr. B said that there isn’t any reason why I can’t get pregnant on my own. In thinking about that now I don’t get it since he said that the issue most likely lies with my eggs and his sperm coming together but maybe that’s just when it’s done artificially? I’m not sure. In any case that’s where we are now. I went on eBay and got a Clearblue Easy Fertility Monitor and some sticks to go with it for a pretty good deal. I feel like we’re starting right back at square one but I’m almost excited about it. I had borrowed a CBE Monitor from a friend way before we started all this IF jazz but I only got to use it for one cycle. When she lent it to me she was pregnant with her third (she has 7 year old twin boys) and she ended up losing the baby at 14 weeks to trisonomy 13. It was heartbreaking and of course I was ok giving the monitor back because they wanted to try again. Once they were ready to try again she ended up getting pregnant rather quickly and now has a 7 month old little guy. I decided to just buy my own because it will be good to have if it works and if we end up trying for another one in the future.
So yeah. Lots and lots of info. I ended up getting my period today (which makes the huge waterfall of waterworks yesterday make more sense). I think I have to use the CBE Monitor starting on day 1 so I wouldn’t be able to use it this time anyway. Maybe we’ll just have sex starting on Day 4 and then every other day for 10 days. The monitor comes with some ovulation sticks that aren’t for the monitor so I might use them. I don’t always ovulate in the middle of my cycle and my cycles are not a “normal” length (this time it was 39 days).
So we’ll see how this all works… onto the next adventure in baby making!
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