It's official...

I got a long-awaited call from my RE herself yesterday. 7-10 business days is sure a long time to wait, especially on Day 9.

Drumroll please ..................... come April-May, we will be starting our first IVF treatment.

Much to our surprise, my husband's test results were not as good as the first ones back when we first got started with our RE. She found it would be most successful if we did IVF, as the quantity, quality and mobility of the sperm was lower from last time.

It was hard to hear. I felt awful for my husband, as he said he would have a hard time dealing with an inability to give me children naturally. We held each other, and I said to him, over and over, that it didn't matter if we had assistance getting pregnant. It didn't matter if we adopted children to grow our family. It didn't matter if it ended up being just him and I (and our fuzzy labradoodle baby). I loved him, he was no less a man for this, he was no less of a wonderful, beautiful spouse to me.

We're both nervous about treatment. About how it will affect our marriage, our day-to-day. There was so much to talk about. How to work our schedule around frequent visits to the doctor's office (he works nights, and sleeps during the day, so this might be tricky), who would keep an eye on me for the 24 hours after egg retrieval surgery, how much it would cost and what to do about the expenses (what would insurance cover? what were our options with treatment? how many times were we willing to do this before calling it quits?) And for sure the biggest question of all, how many eggs would we decide to have implanted?

My RE had told me that my husband and I should discuss reduction, should the procedure result in more children than planned. I knew what my thoughts were. I was relieved to hear my husband thought the same thing.

Reduction wasn't an option.

The idea of traveling to the nearest big city, to have a needle inserted into my pregnant belly, and randomly pierce the heart of one (or more) of our children with medication that would stop the beating, how could we do that? We realized and understood why some people had to, but to just pick which of our children would die was unfathomable to us.

So we had to REALLY think hard about how many eggs we wanted implanted.

It's a difficult, almost impossible gamble with fate and money. Paying so much for a procedure, and knowing that eggs implanted didn't always successfully grow, we wanted a least a few to increase our chances that we would have even one child. If we chose to pick the quantity of 3 or 4 eggs, maybe only one would make it. Twins would be completely fine. Triplets, even quadruplets, we would handle, if my small uterus (which still had an invading septum taking up some space) would allow it. But any of those eggs, maybe even all of them (rare, but who knows?) could split in two or even (VERY rare) into thirds. Then the well being of all involved would be at a serious risk. Then there would be no choice but to reduce, or experience the heartache of children within me struggling, and maybe losing, their chance to live.

I trusted and fully believed that my very skilled doctor was not going to allow this to happen. Through her expertise, she knew how to balance everything, from amount of sperm to fertility medication to eggs implanted, to prevent too many babies from developing.

I only say too many babies because I know that there would be a high risk that some of them would not make it. Lord, if my body could safely accommodate 10, I would still be the happiest (and largest) pregnant woman, and the most thrilled (even if sleep deprived) mother around (and round for that matter.) They would be my children, blessed little boys and girls created with God's grace and between myself and the man I loved, our greatest accomplishments. We would find a way.

So now, more waiting. When you undergo fertility treatment, there is a lot of this thing called waiting. For the menstrual cycle to start, to begin the one month of birth control to prime the body, to start injections, to harvest the eggs, to let them mature, to implant, and to take that test to see if there is another round of waiting in store, or if you'll simply be waiting those 9 months to have that baby placed into your arms for the first time, at long last.

Waiting was fine with us. Though no amount of it fully prepares you for the rigorous obstacles of fertility treatment, we needed time to absorb all that was going to happen. To focus on loving each other and enjoying each others company while it was still just the two of us. You never know what you're getting into with this. We did know that it was worthwhile. It was worth the wait.