IVF 5: One More Try?

A baby is crying in church and it's mother picks it up. I feel a kind of relief that I don't have a baby any more. They are so demanding, so needy,and the mother gets so tired. I must have been mad, I think, to have wanted another baby.

My thoughts move on. I wonder if I should continue in this fertility journey. Its so arduous, so expensive, so downright frustrating and sad, that it would be a lot smarter to take the kid we have and run. I think about how nice it would be to pay household bills without having to furiously compute how this will affect payment of the next IVF cycle. I think about all the other things we could do with that money. I think about owning a car, travelling, doing all the things other people we know can do.

The reality is that I am starting to give up. I have done four IVF cycles now. The first was almost cancelled due to low response, the third was cancelled due to low response and the fourth wasn't completed. But the egg quality issue is the worst. Because the quality has always been so good, quantity hasn't been as big as issue as it could have been. Only another cycle will tell us if that result was a one-off or if we are looking at a permanent and continuous decline in quality.

But I have a bad feeling about it. I may look young, feel young, be young(ish) - but the eggs don't lie. I will be 38 years old in a couple of weeks.

I am hardening myself to the reality of those cold, hard numbers. A few weeks ago, I put away the Little Dude's old cot into the shed and bought him a new (actually, second hand) racing car bed. Although we had taken the rail down, we were keeping that cot in the bedroom in anticipation of anew baby to put in it. Putting it away meant something to me.

But I'm not quite hardened yet. While all my rational impulses tell me it is time to quit, I am not quite there. As the baby keeps crying, the tears that always seem closer to the surface in church well up. I would have liked, I think, to have known young Jessie Louise, the little girl I hoped for, to be named for the Big Dude's mother and mine. I would have liked to see her little face. It would have fed my heart to watch her skip around and laugh in the sun and play with her brother.

A few nights ago, I told the Little Dude that I wasn't sure we were going to be able to give him a brother or sister. We had tried and tried but weren't having any luck. He looked a little sad, seemed to accept it and then looked me directly in the eye and said, "But one more try, Mummy. One more try".

Okay, one more try. But I think that will be it.