This is where our story goes down a different road.

   We had decided to start a family right away, but apparently WE don't get to decide that.  Two months after our wedding I went in to have a cyst removed from my right ovary.  Turns out I had a little bit of endometrosis too.   No big deal.  My OBGYN told me that I would be super fertile for the next 3 months because they clean everything out and  everything can flow smoothly.  Well, after 3 months and no pregnancy I called my OB and was told to "just keep trying".   How long are we supposed to "just keep trying"?  I'm in my thirties and we would like more than one child.  We decided to turn to a fertility specialist.  He started me off on Femara (which is just like Clomid).  I reacted well to the drug, but something just wasn't clicking and after 3 cylces of just Femara it was time to step it up a bit.  My dosage of Femara was doubled and we started using a "trigger" shot.  This shot was given to me by my wonderful husband in my stomach.  This shot is used to trigger ovulation.  Only 2 cycles of this method was done.  It was time to move on to IUI's or commonly known as "the turkey baster method", but after taking all the drugs and going to the clinic to find out if I was going to get the shot that night, they had realized that I had already ovulated.  All the money that we had spent on medication and doctor visits for that cycle just went down the drain.  We were so frustrated after that we had to take a little break.  We needed a plan.  Plus I was starting  to feel really depressed.  I don't know if it was the drugs that was making me feel this way or the sinking feeling that we weren't going to have our own biological child.

      We had only planned on doing 2 IUI's because the procedure itself is about $1500 and it's usually done if there's a problem on the guys side.  Ryan wasn't the problem, I was.  No sense in wasting money that could go towards a procedure that had a higher success rate.  I was put back on Femara, received a Gonal F shot every evening for about 7 days.  Gonal F is a follicle stimulant.  Follicles hold eggs.  In a normal cycle without any drugs one egg will release when ovulating.  When on these drugs there's a bigger bang for your buck.  That's why twins, triplets or more are so common.  I would go into the clinic.  I would go to the clinic at the beginning of the cycle for the blood test and the ultrasound to make sure there were so cysts on my ovaries.  Some of those nurses think that they're playing an Atari game with that wand.  It was painful.  I would have to go in a couple more times to see how well my follicles are doing and when we should use the "trigger" shot.  Every time we did this it would cost us about $150.  The blood tested are over $200.  This is all racking up quite a bill.  On our 2nd and last IUI we wait the entire 15 days before we would test.  It was on a Friday.  I stopped and bought a test on my way home from work.  We both knew that if there was a test in the house we wouldn't be able to make it the whole 15 days.  As soon as Ryan got home from work I took the test.  We just kind of sat around for a few minutes and I went in to check the results.  PREGNANT!!!!  Digital and clear as day!!!  The excitement was overwhelming.  We called our parents and told them the news.  One thing with fertility, you can't really  surprise your family.  Everyone knows your cycle.  I took another test later that night and it came out negative.  I thought that maybe my HSG levels weren't very high yet.  I would take another test in the morning and not test anymore until our blood test on Monday.  That test was positive.  We went with that!!  We were on cloud 9 all weekend.  Until our negative blood test on Monday.  It was a feeling that neither of us had ever felt before.  After that we decided to try one more IUI.  If we could get pregnant only pending $1500 instead of spending $10,500 we're sure going to give it another try.  Another negative.

    Time to break out the big guns.  IVF (in vitro fertilization).  This is what's known as fertilizing the egg outside of the body.  In a lab.  We had to take a class explaining the process and how the drugs could make me "crazy" and for all intensive purposes I would be back to normal after it's all done.  Unless I was pregnant.  We both had to have some extra testing done and I was put on a whole new cocktail of drugs.  I was put on birth control for a month and a half to put my cycle where the doctor needed it to be.  Then I was to receive 2 different shots in the stomach for 10 days.  I would have all kinds of doctors appointments to track everything.  Blood tests every other day to test my estrogen levels and then the intrauterine ultrasound.  Every time we would go to the clinic they would ask how I was feeling.  I was feeling fantastic!!  I was in a great optimistic mood the entire time.  They were a little concerned since I wasn't producing very many eggs, but everything was going to go as planned.  I received my "trigger" shot on Halloween of 2011.  This shot was different than the other ones.  This one was an intramuscular injection.  Ryan showed me the needle after he gave me the shot.  It was the biggest needle I had ever seen.   36 hours later we're headed to the surgery center for my egg retrieval.  Let me tell you...I am a nervous wreck!!!!  You see, I had made the mistake of Googling the procedure.  These people were going to take a hollow needle, shove it through my uterine wall, into my ovaries, drain my follicles and suck out the little eggs.  It wasn't as harsh as it sounds, but that's how I had it pictured in my head.  They took out 3 eggs!!  I was so worried that they wouldn't even make it to the embryo stage.  But, the eggs fertilized just fine and we transferred the embryos three days after the retrieval.  It was time for the dreaded "two week wait".  I may not have had many eggs but the doctors told me that my uterus was picture perfect.  This was going to work!!  During the wait, I'm Googling every possible symptom that I could be having, but everything could either be an early pregnancy symptom or side effects from the fertility drugs.  The only sure way to tell was the pregnancy test.  Just before we were getting ready to go get my blood pregnancy test done, I had gotten my monthly cycle.  We went in for the test anyway.  We're both crying as the nurse is taking my blood.  It was just a flat out horrible day.  What were we supposed to do now?  We had used a credit card, our savings and some help from family to get to this point.  How are we supposed to go further?  We wait a little while before we talk about our next step.  We had decided to try IVF one last time.  We made our appointment to see our fertility specialist and talk about why our IVF might not have worked.  We weren't expecting him to tell us that I have DOR (diminished ovarian reserve) and very low AMH levels.  In a nut shell the few eggs that I am producing are pretty much crap.  We had about a 10% chance of a successful IVF if we chose to try again.  Considering IVF on average has about a 65% success rate, there was no way we were going down that road.  There were other options.  Donor eggs!!!  I didn't care if our baby didn't have any of my genetic traits.  I was still going to have the chance to experience pregnancy and birth.  They have egg donors that they try to match you with that has similar traits.  Here's the kicker though.  This is going to cost about $24,000.  WHAT??!!!!