Where is the light?

When we moved we wanted to find a new RE in the area. We could drive back down to see my old RE, but thought it may get to be too much if we ever did treatment again to have to drive 2 hours to do so. The local RE clinic is a satellite for one of the top specialists in Chicago. He helped my cousin when she did IVF, and he was my next option even before we moved if we didn't like our last RE.

We had a phone consult with him. With my high FSH, I am an automatic "no" for most RE's. However, some are willing to work with us DOR's, while others do not. There have been many women who have conceived with high FSH, even higher than mine, so we know it's not an impossibility, it's just not very likely. We've been praying over our next steps to start our family and we were very hoping to be able to have one last try at IVF. This current RE totally discouraged us from doing so. We weren't exactly expecting him to welcome us with open arms, but I guess we were hoping he would be a more "high FSH friendly" RE. In actuality, he does take harder cases, and does treat women with high FSH that most other RE's would turn away. However, my FSH is just too high. This was one day after Mother's Day. Happy f'ing Mother's day to me.

I wish that someday, when I look back at starting a family, I could, like many others, look back with happy, exciting memories of being young and clueless of what parenthood really meant but excited to do it anyways. The ones where you surprise your husband with a cute and creative announcement. The one where you happily announce to your family that they will be grandparents. The one that is filled with anticipation as you pick out adorable colors and patterns for your baby room. But I will never have those memories. My memories of starting our family will be looking back at years of turmoil, and our marriage sometimes barely hanging in there, at us going through cycles of depression, at Mother's and Father's days full of tears and sorrow, of feeling like a complete failure, of deciding and making decisions about things we never thought we would have to face, of having absolutely no privacy, at years of emptiness, of having a big, black dark cloud of sadness hanging over you, ready to poor down anytime you see a mother with her child, or a dad playing ball with his son, at the deep, deep longing to be a parent that is never fulfilled, at feeling even worse when you know neither set of your parents will ever be grandparents until you have a child, at years and years of uncertainty, hoping that soon you will get some sort of answer, some sort of direction that will confirm that Yes, you will be a parent but always getting a NO instead. And on, and on, and on it goes.

I wish I could say "oh, now that we knew we aren't doing IVF, we are going to move on to such and such instead", but we aren't there yet. Mike and I do not feel the same about adoption. We are also considering donor egg, but I am not ready to make that leap yet. We are both prayerfully considering both options, but I know we could not do either wholeheartedly at this time.

There are no easy answers for this, no clear direction, no black and white. No matter what decision we make, there are a billion opinions on whether or not it's the right one. What I once thought I would NEVER do now sounds completely appealing. What I once thought I would do with certainty now leaves me completely unsure. That only thing that is certain throughout this whole process is MORE HEARTACHE.