The weeks following our appointment at UNC were spent mulling over the options the doctor had given us for growing our family under our medical circumstances. We never imagined that we'd be facing a decision like this and it felt anything but natural.
If you've never experienced infertility yourself, you may not know what options are given to those who do go through it. I thought this would be a good opportunity to help everyone understand why this is such a difficult decision and the thoughts we had about each option when trying to decide which path to take. I will tell you about the first two of three options we were given because IVF has played more of a role in our journey than these two and I will elaborate on that when the time comes.
As soon as we heard these words come out of our doctor's mouth, we both knew it was a no-go. If physically giving birth to a child is in the cards for us, we want (and believe) that it should be both of our DNA or neither of ours. IUI can be done using the male partner's sperm if his count is normal but since Aaron's is so low, our doctor told us it wouldn't even be worth trying. With this process, I would take medicine to make my eggs grow, followed by a "trigger shot" to make them release. At just the right time, we would go in to our doctors office and she would use a catheter to place the sperm inside of my uterus so that it would be right where it needed to be when my eggs begin to travel down my fallopian tubes. A lot of couples try this treatment because it's much cheaper and closer to the natural conception process than IVF. This process costs about $2,000 when it's all said and done.
Let's talk about the "sperm donor" part. This was the craziest thing to me. The booklet that the doctor gave us for this treatment literally looked like a high school yearbook full of baby pictures. Beside each of the baby pictures there was a list of information about what that baby grew up to look like. This included: ethnicity, eye color, hair color, height, education/occupation, blood type, and whether or not they were still available at the sperm bank.
So if Aaron and I had decided that we wanted to pursue this option, we would look at the booklet and find the baby picture and information that seemed to best match us and then they would send in a request for that man's sperm sample. It would be shipped to our doctor and then we would do the procedure using that sample.
I am 110% confident when I say if this was the only chance we had at having a (partly) biological child, we would walk away without any hesitation. I married Aaron for him to become the father of my children, not some guy we find in a book.
Let's talk about the "sperm donor" part. This was the craziest thing to me. The booklet that the doctor gave us for this treatment literally looked like a high school yearbook full of baby pictures. Beside each of the baby pictures there was a list of information about what that baby grew up to look like. This included: ethnicity, eye color, hair color, height, education/occupation, blood type, and whether or not they were still available at the sperm bank.
So if Aaron and I had decided that we wanted to pursue this option, we would look at the booklet and find the baby picture and information that seemed to best match us and then they would send in a request for that man's sperm sample. It would be shipped to our doctor and then we would do the procedure using that sample.
I am 110% confident when I say if this was the only chance we had at having a (partly) biological child, we would walk away without any hesitation. I married Aaron for him to become the father of my children, not some guy we find in a book.
When the doctor first mentioned this option to us, we weren't completely sure if we wanted to put it into our "definitely not" pile or keep it in the back of our minds to reconsider later. I think Aaron was more against it than me but we go back and forth with it a lot.
If we chose to do an embryo adoption, we would be given options much like the sperm donor but this time for what we believe are LIVING babies. When couples go in for IVF (which, like I said, I will explain later), there's a pretty good chance you end up with extra embryos. An embryo is what is created when sperm fertilizes an egg which is the act of conception. When this happens, you're given several options about what to do with your embryos and one of those is putting them up for adoption just like you would a child (kinda). The embryos are frozen until a couple, usually struggling with infertility in the form of issues with the female's eggs, decides that they are a good match. When we found our match we would then pay lots of money to have them shipped to our doctor. The doctor would then implant the embryo into my uterus and I would carry and deliver the baby just as if it were my own.
We like this option because we feel like it is much like the form of adoption that most people know about, the child just hasn't been born yet. We would be saving a life from being frozen in a test tube somewhere forever and we'd still get to experience the pregnancy and delivery part of having a baby. It would allow us to give a baby life though it wouldn't be ours biologically.
As I mentioned before, we do go back and forth about this option but I think we've both agreed that it is something we'd like to consider after exhausting all options for having a biological child. This also comes with a pretty hefty price tag, costing about $12,000-$15,000.
As you can tell, neither of these choices are an ideal way to grow our family and we didn't know that these options were even out there until we were practically cornered with them. When something that should come so easy suddenly becomes nearly impossible, you really have to evaluate your beliefs and values.
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