And here we are...

It's sort of a little joke Mother Nature decided to play on me, I suppose.  My mother had me when she was 40 years old and my sister when she was 42 (Sissy's lucky she had her kids young!  Sheesh!)  When Mom was in the hospital birthing me, a nurse actually thought she was joking around when she responded "40" to the question "what is your age?"  I lived my whole life thinking I had the best genes a girl could be given: time and no (physical) pressures causing the clock to tick too loudly.  So I wasn't all that concerned when my most serious relationship ('til that point) ended when I was 30, even though I'd been living my whole life to become a mom.

Let's fast-forward a little: I met Hubby at 32, married at 35 and went off The Pill the same month.  "Oh this should be easy," I thought.  "I'm still 4 years younger than Mom was when she started trying."

But it wasn't easy...and it wasn't easy for a vast majority of my friends who'd been trying quite a bit longer than we had.  In a way - that 6 months of Trying-Before-You-Can-See-A-Fertility-Specialist couldn't come fast enough because Hubby and I are very analytical and results-oriented people and wanted to start diving into whether there might be issues or not.

Meanwhile I asked my mom if there were such things as ovulation predictor kits when she was trying to get pregnant and she didn't even know what I was talking about.  That means that back in 1976, this 39-year-old woman, who got married in August and was pregnant in January didn't even know when she was ovulating.  Totally not fair, Mom.  Totally not fair.

So the results came back: Hubby is perfectly fine and hearty and manly and robust and his sperm could collectively lift a car off a human should they come across such an accident.  All kidding aside, this was actually of course, great news.  Now I could get ALL the attention.  :)

First things first - Dr. A, my reproductive endocrinologist, found a uterine polyp.  Little goober... don't know how long it was hiding out in there, but she suggested that it could have been part of the problem.  Uterine polyps aren't dangerous, but they can certainly get in the way of a fertilized egg implanting into one's uterus!

However, the slightly bigger deal was that she also found my FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) levels to be slightly elevated.  These can fluctuate each month: one month I was 8.9 and another 12.2.  Neither is low (which one would prefer them to be) and the 12.2 is kinda getting into that "higher" range.  Dr. A is a very optimistic and positive thinking doctor who basically delivers all news with a smile, so I'm not always sure how serious a situation is.  Her email tone when delivering the 12.2 number was far from "run for your life!!!!" nor was it in all CAPS, and her attitude has been very "yah, you could keep trying naturally..."  But - Hubby and I have joked throughout our entire relationship that we work so well together because we both just like to "GET SH*T DONE", so continuing to try naturally was not what we had in mind.  Dr. A's recommendation for the fastest route to being pregnant, was to do IVF.  We went to her to get pregnant and she felt the best and fastest way for us to get pregnant was to do IVF.  Not only could we hopefully isolate the very healthiest of eggs to have a baby now, but once we did, we could freeze embryos for the future.  So no matter how high my FSH levels get down the road, we don't need to be as worried about how we'll obtain the family we want (a dog, the picket fence and those 2.5 kids - maybe only .5 of a kid will be easier to conceive?...)

We'd only really officially been trying for 8 months at this point and had tried nothing else.  It seemed a bit like leap-frog to suddenly be discussing IVF before we'd even celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary.  Should we talk about fertility drugs?  How about IUI (intrauterine insemination)?  But that's the whole reason I was going to Dr. A.  She likes to get sh*t done too:  she doesn't require all her patients to ride the exact same merry-go-round of treatments if those treatments don't seem to make sense for that particular case of infertility (go figure, right?)  I know at least 2 other friends being put through the FIFO pipeline of infertility treatments just because it's their medical facility's process.  So while I'm used to hearing of people having tried "EVERYTHING" before getting to IVF and it therefore felt speedy for us to arrive there so suddenly, it's really not the best way to get there.

Here's what made IVF an easy decision for us:

1. Since my employer has fantastic insurance, it was not cost-prohibitive for us (sadly, I know this is an issue for many people and that is truly heartbreaking)
2. The genetic testing that is done has a very high probability of ruling out Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders - this is huge.  HUGE.  This is 1 item that *would* give me a leg up on my mom who, because of her age, had to have amniocentesis tests around week 20 with her pregnancies.  We would do as much as we could to avoid facing a horribly difficult decision, halfway through a physically healthy pregnancy.
3. We can take a "snapshot" of my eggs with Hubby's sperm at the ages we are today: 36 & 37, respectively, and freeze embryos to feel more confident about future babies.
4. We can better control the whole twins situation since the confidence of each embryo (having done the genetic testing to rule out abnormality/aneuploidy) is much higher than in IVF without genetic testing.  Without knowing if an embryo is "normal", 2 embryos were frequently transferred to a mother in the hopes that 1, or both, would implant, since it was usually the aneuploid embryos who would not succeed in pregnancy.  With genetic testing, we'll know before transfer whether an embryo is normal and even just how robust it is - hence: feeling more confident about only transferring 1 single embryo!
5. Also due to the genetic testing, we will know the gender of any embryos and (assuming we have both embryos to choose from) can decide what gender/order to build our family.  A new definition for the term "Family Planning"!
6. We've found no compelling studies of harm either to the mother or to the babies who have gone through/come from IVF over the past 30+ years.

Um, it kind of all makes sense.

And now the odd reality which resulted from all of this information?:  If I could get pregnant right now with only Mother Nature's assistance (oh and I guess Hubby's too), vs. getting pregnant via IVF, I would opt for IVF.  It is mind-blowing where we are with science today.  The miracle of life has always been a true miracle, but lately it almost kinda has nothing on the miracle of IVF!

And so... here we are!
I have no idea how long or short this journey may be, but you're welcome to accompany me.  (Hey - I'm a poet in addition to being long-winded!)