Not much new

I am happy to say that physically I have felt back to normal since Tuesday which has been a great relief, and it has helped me emotionally also. Emotionally I would say most of the time I feel like I've "bounced back," but there are moments when I still feel really sad and cry over the loss of our 6 tiny little babies. Unfortunately these moments seem to hit me more when I am some place other than home. It happened today at work while I was in my office. I don't even know what triggered it today, but I felt like just bursting into tears. Thankfully this time I was able to hold it together.

We haven't made any decisions; I haven't even called the clinic in IL yet. First we need to get more info and input from Dr. Awad (next Thursday morning). I did bounce of Paul the idea of a shared risk plan. We had contemplated doing a plan like that in PA, but you have to be under 35 to be eligible for that one so that's no longer a possibility. However the one in Chicago does extend it for older women but the price is higher. There's a little jump up for 35 & 36 year olds and a bigger jump up for 37 & 38 year olds (nothing for those 39 or older unless they use donor eggs). They have a variety of plans - those that include 3 fresh cycles, 4 fresh cycles, with and without medication costs, with and without ultrasound monitoring, and also 80% refund or 100% refund. The only one I would possibly consider is the 3 cycle without medication, without ultrasound monitoring, and with an 80% refund. The others are just too expensive. That one for my age is $18,000. If we do one fresh plus one FET in Chicago what we pay them that would be $11,700. And the other reason I am considering this is you do not have to do all 3 cycles. You can terminate the program at any time as long as you have used all frozen embyros and still get your 80% refund unless of course you are pregnant.

So if we paid the $18,000 and got pg the first time then we OVERpaid by $9,200 and will still need to pay $2,900 later for the FET which would mean we probably wouldn't do an adoption through Cathy (because of the $$) but just adopt through the foster care system if we didn't end up with at least two children through IVF. If we paid the $18,000 and didn't get pg on the fresh cycle but did get pg on the FET, then we will have OVERpaid by $6,300. However if we paid the $18,000 and didn't get pg, no matter when we stopped (even if we stopped after one fresh plus one FET), we will have spent $8,100 LESS than if we just paid for one fresh and one FET ourselves ($3,600 vs. $11,700). So that will be a tough call. If the IVF works the first time or with the FET we will have been better off just paying for it the regular way, but if it doesn't work, we'll be better off financially with the shared risk plan. And my "odds" at this clinic are a smidge less than 50% for a fresh transfer.

Well as I said, no decisions will be made until after we talk to the RE. I am going to ask him about the possibility of donor embryos that day. So far everything I have found on the internet the cheapest way with adoption/donated embryos would be to have our one frozen embryo shipped to TN and have a transfer there with our one embryo plus donated frozen ones. That would cost about $5,000 compared to $2,250 if we just transferred our one locally. So that's not very appealing. So probably the only way we'll consider donated or adopted embryos is if we can do it for no (or very little) extra $$ at our local clinic.