First, I need to say thank you so much for everyone’s thoughts yesterday. I learned something really important yesterday – it’s not so much about the embryo grading, but more about if the embryos are genetically normal.
This conversation reinforced that I/we need to have realistic expectations. As most of us know, having embryos and even being pregnant does not guarantee a successful pregnancy – there are just so many other factors at play many of which are completely out of our control.
For us, when we chose international, open, infant adoption we made very deliberate choices. In fact, while making these choices we also chose to be matched with a potential birth mom who was in her third trimester – we knew when we were matched that our potential child would be well past viability. Yes, anything can happen during a pregnancy (as I know all too well), but we knew with a third trimester match our chances of another loss were drastically lower. And a few years ago that was a critical decision making factor for us. In fact, it was one of the most important factors for us. At the time, I needed to walk away from the negative mental health side of experiencing another possible loss.
I realize that today things may be different. I may be more prepared to handle another loss – we have Baby MPB to snuggle and love and focus on if we were to experience a loss and if we choose to use a gestational carrier and remove my body from the equation entirely I may just be able to handle it better.
But I have to be realistic in realizing that I might also not be better equipped to handle another loss – it could sort of be like ripping off an old scab and exposing a wound. Loss is loss and it just sucks, I’m not sure that anything can possibly make that easier. Honestly, I just don’t know about this part of our decision making yet. I suspect we probably have some serious soul searching to do to see if we are actually in a place where we can go handle a possible loss.
I don’t want to live my life in fear of possibilities, but I also don’t want to knowingly walk back into what was a very hard time for me after working so hard to reclaim my life.
But I do know that if we proceed with embryo adoption, there are some steps we can consider (i.e. PGS) to help increase our chances of success.
And in my mind, this also means we have to set very clear expectations to help enable us to handle all the possible outcomes.
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On another note, why does growing ones family have to be so darn difficult? Why does just thinking about trying to bring another child into our family have to make my head hurt?
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One of the comments I received on my post about our possible embryo adoption has got me thinking. (This isn’t a surprise to me as I often think about comments).
Having frozen embryos myself, I have to ask, do you know the grade/quality of each embryo? You don’t need to tell me, but I encourage you to ask that if you don’t know yet. If you’re going to give this serious thought, which it sounds like you are, that information will be helpful in setting realistic expectations Having gone through 8 “perfect” 4AA-BA and 5AA-AB embryos to get two kids, expectation setting is very important for your mind. Also, if you progress, if the embryos have not been screened yet, you can still do that with frozen ones. That helps whittle them down to just the chromosomally normal ones and makes embryo selection easier. Here in Iowa, it costs about $5000 to do that for the entire batch of embryos. If we were going to transfer again, we’d for sure screen them first. Screening increases success rates and when you’re using a carrier, you only want to do it once. – Courtney (for full quote please refer to the comment the actual post).
Honestly, this comment has brought up an entire perspective that Mr. MPB and I hadn’t even thought about.
Mr. MPB and I come from the perspective of having already gone through an open adoption to bring our son into our lives. In an open adoption the baby is already conceived and well past the point of viability, so, we were required to fill out a creepy “child desired form” in which we select boxes pertaining to what we are willing to accept or not. For example, we had to make decisions related to race, multiples, family mental health history (i.e. bi-polar, depression, etc.), substance exposure, birth defects (i.e. cleft pallet, club foot, down syndrome) and parent history (i.e. if the child was a product of rape or the mother was engaged in prostitution or if either parent have a criminal history), etc. We even had to make a decision about when in the pregnancy we would accept a match – second or third trimester.
But not once did we think about grade/quality or any type of genetic screening, in the same way that one would think about embryo quality because with open adoption the child is well past that stage. (I’m confident I’ll write on that topic separately soon enough). So, this just isn’t something that crossed our minds to even question.
So, what both Mr. MPB and I have realized is that we are completely and utterly new to the world of embryos, IVF and FETs. We never did IVF, so we just don’t know the details. As I follow other bloggers I have a vague idea of embryo grading and FET process, but that’s it. I also only have vague ideas of costs related to an FET and no idea (except what google tells me) about the costs of a gestational carrier or even how to find a gestational carrier (if we chose that route). But if you want to know all about the process and costs of international adoption, I’m basically an expert in that stuff now.
What this really means is that this is much more then an emotional decision. We really do need to educate ourselves of the practicalities of embryo adoption and in reality we have a whole new world to learn about it in the coming weeks/months as we make this decision. As Courtney made me realize, we need to be realistic in our expectations of this opportunity.
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