This Month's Huge Decision

Another month, another huge TTC decision to make.

I'd really appreciate any input that anyone wants to share. There won't be many more tries, so I'm tied up in knots with wanting to make the "right" choice now.

Sometimes answers come best when I gather the facts and then set them aside for a while. Between thinking about work, lunch, and other regular stuff, I find myself naturally more drawn to one option than another. My heart and head agree. Unfortunately, that's not happening this time.

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Yesterday I spent the morning helping a friend with her move to a new house, where we had a great talk about the need to ask for help sometimes. Then I spent the afternoon at a party with other women who were TTC or had recently given birth. They were all around my age. I was hoping that someone in a position similar to mine would be there, that we could help each other—you know, trade info and advice.

It turned out that no-one there had been through more than two IUIs. I didn't realize it at first, so when they asked where I was with my efforts, I rattled off a few facts: gearing up for cycle seven (as an SMC) after last month's failed IVF. They asked if I'd done all those cycles without a break. "Well, no," I said. "There was the miscarriage..."

Luckily, I didn't say much more. There would have been no point, and I didn't want to discourage the ones who were still trying. I don't want to be a bummer, a cautionary tale, the worst-case scenario. But I am. I'm their nightmare.

It sure is weird. I remember when I first read all those IVF terms—FET, ICSI, dp5dt—and thought, No. Way. It seemed as foreign and complex as astrophysics. I had zero interest in it. It would never have any bearing on my life ... until it did. Now I have to remember that what's become normal to me is still foreign to almost everyone else.

Even so, it was a fun afternoon. Everyone was friendly, of course. It does my heart good to talk with other women about lighter things and to be around kids. After all, it's important to look up from my TTC notes sometimes and remember just why I'm doing all this.

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Now, though, back to the notes and decisions.

The options are another medicated IVF with a different protocol or another natural-cycle (no stimulation) IVF. The former is what most people would consider the logical choice. The latter is what got me pregnant last winter on the first try. You can probably guess which options my head and heart prefer.

I was going to lay out all the pros and cons here. But you know what? It will make my brain explode, and it will put you right to sleep. Instead, here are some questions for those who are familiar with this stuff:

• Have you used an estrogen-priming protocol after an antagonist protocol? How did the results compare? Was the second one shorter? More effective? (My RE thinks the first one may have "over-suppressed" me, made the cycle extra long, and thereby damaged the egg quality.)
• I'd never heard the theory about long cycles degrading egg quality. Now I'm wondering: Is the quality degraded by the meds themselves and/or by the extra time it takes the eggs to mature? If meds are part of the problem, how much damage do they cause in a regular (not extra-long) cycle?? I'll ask the doctor next week, but meanwhile I'm very curious.

Which way do we go?