Leaking out around the edges

This weekend was both wonderful and hard. Wonderful to have so many family members and good friends around; wonderful to have our house full of people from Friday morning through Sunday noon; wonderful to have 7 screaming, crazy kids running around utilizing all of the basement rec room and outdoor space on Saturday evening, playing soccer, building make-believe houses under our deck with the stones and gravel there and crawling at warp speed across the empty living room wood floor (my 9 month old nephew).

At the same time, it was so hard to think about this house not being filled with our own children. I'm more convinced than ever that we will have at last one child in here one day: come hell or high water, we will. But the emptiness after they all left was just so heartbreaking.

I don't regret a moment of having all of those people and especially the kids here this weekend, though. I also don't regret suppressing the sadness and the tears while everyone was here, but it just sort of seeped out around the edges of those days when we were finally alone. (I guess I was leaking around the edges physically too since I started a little tiny spotting on Sat that's gone on very lightly through yesterday - thanks so much to cgd for warning me of this possibility after I even forgot to where a panty liner on Friday.) It felt like I just sprang a leak (tears) as I crawled into bed on Friday and Saturday nights exhausted from all the company and again Sunday noon after my MIL, SIL and nephews finally left to go back to my MIL's.

Mr.Right and I laid in bed and cried a good cry on Sunday together. Just pure sadness and frustration at how incredibly unlucky we were to draw the 1 bad straw in 50 (or 66 depending on the age-related stats you read), especially after having spent so many months (since October 2008) trying to get pregnant.

After we cried a good bit on Sunday, we had a long discussion about what to do next. Actually, we'd been having pieces of the discussion since Wed. night after the NT scan. We're going back to the fertility treatment grind. We are determined to have a baby. We want to try with my eggs a few more times. I just can't give up on them yet. Then, we will move to donor eggs - possibly considering my sister's offer, but possibly going with an unknown donor.

Weirdly, I feel almost more confident now than in the previous year that we can someday make this happen. My body seems rather desperate to carry a baby - carrying a grossly abnormal one this last time for almost 13 weeks (and who knows how much longer it would have carried on?) and one blighted ovum for 6 weeks (and, again, who knows how much longer) last September.

And I feel like, damn it, WE ARE OWED one of those other 49 chances to have a normal baby (at my age). I know there's no guarantee that the next pregnancy will dodge the 1 in 50 bullet again, but it it seems statistically stupid to not go after the good side of those odds now (of course, I'm sure this is how gamblers at Vegas think - but next time, I won't GET that bad card! It's my turn to get a good one!) That is, of course, if we can manage to get an egg to fertilize and implant again - it took us a long time to get that to happen this time.

Which is really the thing we're most frustrated about - the continued waiting and how long this is all going to continue to take. I sat down and figured it out and even if we get incredibly lucky and get pregnant on our first cycle back (which may start anywhere between August 15 and September 15 according to my OB) and it sticks, we will almost certainly not have a baby arrive before my 41st birthday. And if my ovulation/egg producing history is any indication? There's almost no chance we'll get pregnant the first cycle out.

Which makes me lean back towards just going straight to donor eggs. I know that isn't guaranteed to work either, but some 19 or 20 year old's eggs are going to have way better chances than my elderly ova. And, hey, I know we're not supposed to wish for twins, but the odds seem better that that might happen with donor eggs (since I can barely eek out one egg per cycle or at least one good egg per cycle, it's a virtual impossibility with my own eggs). And, we wouldn't have to worry nearly as much about our chromosome abnormality chances. That's all not as true if we use my sister's eggs (she's 36) but the balancing factor there would be the opportunity of having at least some genetic link to my family.

Sorry for the long, rambling post. Surprisingly, I've been motivated to check a lot of things off my list this morning: email the counselor I'd been seeing to come back and talk about this loss; getting things in order for the closing Wednesday on sale of our townhouse; contacting various contractors to come do work at new house and - this afternoon, calling our nurse and the front desk of our fertility clinic to schedule an appointment with Dr.Dry for sometime in August to talk about gearing up for that first cycle back. Of course, I haven't been motivated to do any *paying* work this morning - maybe this afternoon.

In other good news: absence of pregnancy and pregnancy hormones seem to have instantly given me 30 seconds per mile back on my running pace! Ran more than 3 miles this morning for the first time in 12 weeks and it felt good!