Just starting to come to terms

[minion]

My wife and I met later in life. Dated a long time, broke up, got back together and married.

Got pregnant on the night of our honeymoon, but it ended in the first of three miscarriages over the last four years.

Took almost a year to get into our HMO's fertility program, and that would have been a comedy of errors had it not been such a waste of time.

Finally got them to refer us to a well-known local clinic. Definitely an improvement, but much more out of pocket. Did rounds of tests, and even tried IUI once with no success.

I'm now 44 and she just turned 41. We finally decided to bite the bullet and find another clinic and do IVF. Scraped together everything we could and borrowed the rest. Clinic offices were 4 and 6 hours away. We had to pay for everything out of pocket from here on in.

When we transferred the medical records to the new clinic, they noticed a notation of a possible bicornuate uterous. Something we were never told about and the notation was over a year old from the HMO. The second place never mentioned it either. The new clinic wanted to investigate and instead found a septum. We were actually happy, as this was a possible explanation for our inability to conceive and carry to term.

We were expecting to have the septum taken out, and then a two month recovery period. Then we were going to start an IVF cycle. When they went in to remove the septum, it wasn't there - it was some sort of imaging anomoly. Good news/bad news. Doc said we could do IVF right away so we started. Paid for a two cycle package and were hoping for a couple of implantation attempts.

My wife responded very well to the treatment. 8 mature and several close follicles got us 12 eggs on retrieval. 9 of them fertilized. 7 made it to biopsy for PGD. 7 potential children in a lab somewhere - more than twice the number we'd known we had created on our own. We were ecstatic. Hoping for multiples, and wondering what we might do with the extras embies if we had any.

We were to get the PGD results the morning of implantation. We got to the clinic and they put is in a nice little room to tell us that all 7 embies were chromosomally damaged. We knew it was a possibility, but it still hit us pretty hard. The doc couldn't spend much time with us as he had a procedure. We had a six hour drive ahead. We waited a little while to see if the doc might come back, and finally just decided to leave.

Doc said we could try IVF again, but there's little hope for a better outcome. Even though my DW egg reserve is that of a 30-something, apparently they feel the quality is too low. Frankly, we probably can't afford the incidental expenses to do the second cycle, at least not this year, even though we paid for it.

That was last week.

It hit me a lot harder than my wife, and I'm not ashamed to admit I had several crying spells when I thought about never being a father. The idea that all that genetics that makes me like my father and mother and grandparents, and the same for my wife - all lost forever. DW is an only child, and I'm the oldest of three. You don't really think about this sorta stuff when you're young - I sure wish I had.

So many regrets - not proposing sooner, always using protection so we didn't have "illegitimate" kids before we got married, not trying harder to get treatment, not going straight to IVF four years ago, spending all that money - I still haven't added it all up. It's heartbreaking.

We haven't talked much about the subject since last week. I'm not sure what all there is to say. It seems like it's just too late for us.

We'll probably try to adopt and/or foster. We figured we'd be lucky to have one child of our own, and would bring more in after we had him/her under our belt. We would love to adopt and I know we'd be good parents and love a child or children, but there's still going to be that little pang of loss knowing that they aren't a part of you. You're the last of your kind in a way.

We're not the most religious people. But I prayed like I never prayed in my life that we could have a child.

We still need to grieve a bit. I think my DW had already faced this possibility months or years ago. I'm too much of an optimist. It was always just a question of how long it would take and how much effort for me. The reality is settling in and it sure hits hard.

I look back and realize the amount of sacrifices we made. We sold the "fun car" to get something more practical and older so we didn't have the payments. We stopped eating out and going to events where we'd be tempted to get off our fertility diet. All the supplements, the acupuncture. All those painful shots my DW went through. I'm glad we didn't know what we were in for when we started, as we probably wouldn't have gone through with it.

On the other hand, the pain would be worse had we never tried, and that's some comfort as I pay the bills we racked up.

I'm sure time will help, but I don't think the little hole in my heart will ever be filled completely.

[Jupiter2]

Hi Minion,

I'm so sorry for all you've been through and will go through in the future. Believe me, I know where you're coming from. Try to keep the lines of communication open with your wife. Make sure she knows how you feel and the issues you're trying to cope with. This is one of the hardest roads you'll ever travel. Having a place to go for support is important but to be honest, I haven't found much of that for people in our situation (mine is similar to yours) in that we are at the end of our road of trying to have our 'own' child. Please feel free to pm me if you wish to talk offline.

I wish you the best.

[waitingonice]

I am so sorry. There are no words to describe the pain and there is nothing to take it away. BTDT. I am glad that you are looking for support here and I am sure you will get it. I think you should try again, you have paid for some of it and I don't think it is looking to grim. Your wife is a good responder. I would not have done PGD, your wife is not that old and I am sure there are still lots of good ones in the batch. I also wonder what your doc said about the abnormalities. If you test every embryo you will find something in every embryo. You need to find out what your clinic was talking about, what exactly the abnormalities were. They cannot be that bad if all you had couldbe tested. And I love the idea about adoption, believe me, you will not love any differently when you hold 'your' child. I believe that the adoption process brings its own set of frustration and ups and downs but it might take some of the stress you are experiencing at the moment. You will make great parents. All the best for you and your wife.