Being diagnosed with infertility makes you start thinking about the future. A lot. You begin to think about fertility treatments...How far are you willing to go? Will you take medication? Will you do IUI (Intrauterine insemination)? Will you do IVF (In Vitro Fertilization)? What about freezing your eggs or embryos?
You begin to question what will happen if those treatments don't work. Will you use a surrogate? Will you adopt? Will you decide to live your life without children?
Then there's the topic of donation. You start to get offers from friends and family to give you sperm/eggs or even carry a child for you. How far would you go? Would you take your friend or family up on their offer? Or would you rather use a stranger?
It can easily become overwhelming. After a few tearful several hour long conversations with your partner, you think you have it figured out. But as time goes on, you become open to more. After my first round of Clomid, Ryan and I decided that we would only do three doses of the medication because I experience many bad side effects while on it (mood swings, hot flashes, dizziness, abdominal pain, weight gain and blurred vision). After the third dose, we took a small break and then did three more. Then we took another small break and did three more rounds.
We were willing to live with the horrible side effects if it meant we might finally get pregnant. And that's what it comes down to, you have to decide how much you're willing to put yourself through to have a chance at getting pregnant. Ryan and I have decided to look at our options as they come. We could keep drawing a line in the sand, but we feel we will just keeping pushing it back. So for now, we're taking the steps as they come.
