Thanks for joining my pity party

Thanks so much to my loyal commenters for coming and saying nice things in response to my last post which was really just an out and out little pity party for myself. I'm not sure what I'd do without you. :-)

Beta confirmed negative yesterday, but I think I was mostly over it already. I spent the half hour after I returned from getting blood drawn quizzing a donor egg program person on the phone about all of the permutations of costs for various donor egg (known and unknown) cycles. It was actually really interesting. (And, yes, I know, I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe this next IVF round with my own eggs will work. But I can't help thinking and planning ahead.)

Not that cost is everything (although why pay more than you have to), but there's actually some intriguing possibilities. Some of them feel like we'd be 'gaming' the system, but then again, that's what the 'shared risk' programs are all about, right? - playing the odds. The clinic is playing the odds that they can get you pregnant and delivering a baby in less cycles. You're playing the odds that you will expend less money if you need multiple cycles than paying individually (not like you want that many cycles of course.)

But here's the interesting wrinkle that relates to using my sister as donor. My clinic has a 'shared risk' 'known donor' option. It's $31,000. It includes 6 fresh cycles (FETs don't count as a cycle). The interesting thing is that you can opt out at any time and receive $25,000 back.

We've been thinking that if we do take my sister up on her offer we really only wanted to put her through one stimulated cycle.

But, one 'known donor' cycle is $19,500 + donor meds and pre-screening costs. And any FET is not included (another $4,000).

If I have this right, it makes much more sense for us to pay $31,000 for the shared-risk, known donor cycle. Do one cycle with my sister. If the fresh cycle works, fantastic, we've just bought a baby for $31k. If it doesn't, we get a free FET (if there are enough embryos to have frozen.) If we don't deliver a baby out of that one fresh (and maybe frozen) cycle, we cancel out of the program and get $25,000 back. We've spent $6k (plus meds for me). That's far less than having spent $19,5000 for a single fresh cycle with my sister's eggs if that one cycle doesn't work.

It seems a little too good to be true. I think the thing that could still trip us up is eligibility. I didn't ask about that specifically. My sister is 36 and even though typical 'shared risk' eligibility is under 38, I wonder if there's some formula for donor age + recipient age. Although they say generally that there is no age limit for shared-risk for recipients using donor eggs.

Anyhow, all of this inquiry and thinking about donor eggs seemed to keep me from being too upset when I got the negative beta confirmation yesterday afternoon. It didn't keep Mr.Right from continuing to be sad though. We were talking at about 5 p.m. on the phone when he was still at work and I was driving home from a meeting and the conversation wasn't really going very well on his end. And he finally admitted that he was just sad about the negative beta. I'm so glad he said so. I feel like we're having a lot better success just telling each other how we feel. I'm still not sure either of us knows what 'to do' about it, but as our therapist I think has been trying to tell us, we need to each accept that there's not much either of us is going 'to do' about the other's feelings. They're feeling what they're feeling and we have to each find a way to just 'be' with that. I'm sad too. I guess I just wasn't going to dwell on it yesterday.