Good news and bad news

So our doctor called today with good news and bad news. Bad news first: We probably cannot have our own biological child. He thinks that because we've been having trouble conceiving for 6 years and now have had 3 early miscarriages, we most likely have poor embryo quality. We do still have a frozen embryo from our IVF cycle that he says is good quality but he's concerned that out of 20 embryos, we've only had one to freeze. That was always concerning to us as well. The good news is we do still have options about pregnancy. He mentioned egg donation but we don't want the baby to be only genetically related to one of us. So the next option is embryo donation.

Embryo donation is when couples who have undergone IVF and have frozen embryos that they don't intend to use for a future pregnancy. (I know most of you already know this but I'm linking this to my facebook where most fertiles aren't familiar with our stinkin' disease.) Instead of donating them to research :( or just letting them die altogether :(:( couples who have completed their families donate their extra embryos to needy couples such as ourselves. Technically it is adoption but without all the craziness associated with adoption. Once the couple signs a paper donating them to you, they are no longer their children but your's! You get to become pregnant with them and when you have the baby, it's your's. They relinquish their rights to the embryos even before the transfer of them into your uterus.

Although it's definitely not want you dream about, we feel it's the next best thing to having your own biological child. I get to be pregnant like all the normal women of the world so I get to be in charge of the prenatal care of our adopted child. We get to bond with our adopted child unlike traditional adoption. But the most important part about this for me is the biological parents cannot take the baby from us or change their mind after he/she is born. I have a ton of respect for couples who undergo traditional adoption. It's such a wonderful gift to a needy child and the parents who get to adopt him/her. But it scares me to death. I'm scared about the prenatal care of the biological mother of course but mostly I'm scared about them changing their minds. And if I'm being totally honest I have an intense need to be pregnant. I know that may sound selfish but it's how I feel. I was only pregnant a week this time and it was one of the best weeks of my entire life. I'm not ready to let that go.

Our doctor said that they have around 80% chance of success with this because the embryos are usually high quality since they are from people who have already experienced successful pregnancies and of course they are blastocysts since they made it to freeze. Although we're deeply saddened at the fact that we will never know our biological child here on earth, this does give us tons of hope in the midst of our grief. Of course for today we're not only grieving the child we just lost but the second child we lost (Happy 4th birthday today Caleb Bradley) and now the loss of any future Brad/Lyndsey babies. It's truly a sad, happy day.