Moving forward on 2 fronts

I feel like we're fighting a war (on infertility) on two fronts, although the one front (this pregnancy) doesn't really feel like a war so that's not a very good analogy. It feels, mostly, like a really boring, but pleasant walk (at least it does now, several months past the CVS procedure and the 'great toxo scare' of March). For that, I'm HUGELY grateful! :-) I managed to pass the glucose screening test with a score of 131 (135 is the number at which they'd make me do the 3 hour test) so, somehow, this is just starting to feel easy (please, karma, do not kick me in the ass now for just having said that.) I've gained 14 pounds and I'm tracking along the "what to expect" weight-tracker line for a total gain of 25 lbs. I'm out walking 3 miles a day, which is helping a lot I think. So, fingers-still-crossed, this is going pretty well.

The second front is with my sister as egg donor. It's looking less and less like we're doing this as a backup plan for child #1 and more to tackle (presumed) secondary infertility (ok, it's really a backup plan now for #2). That seems to be going ok. She'll start bc pills this Sunday. We had a follow-up consult with Dr.Dry yesterday afternoon (with my sister on the phone). He reviewed everything and still hopes we'll get 6-10 eggs from my sister (although she'll be turning 37 probably the week she starts stims). We discussed freezing embryos (our decision, over freezing eggs) and on what day (we'll freeze on day 1 after retrieval). We even discussed how we might eventually defrost and how many we might transfer (maybe just one at a time to avoid twins).

The only minor wrinkle is that later in the day I called my sister to thank her for interrupting her vacation with her family to take the call yesterday afternoon and she said she and my BIL wanted to sit down and talk with Mr.Right and me again. I don't *think* she's backing out, but apparently they've been discussing some of the implications of my pregnancy - with it looking like I might actually have this baby - and what that might mean for a future child created with her eggs. Of course, immediately alarms go off in my head that they're going to back out. But I think they're just being reasonable: the last time we all 4 sat down to talk about this we didn't know I was pregnant. And the only other time the 4 of us have even touched on that situation together was so early on in February when we met with the social worker that, of course, we were all still very much discounting that this pregnancy would make it. So, I think it's a good idea.

And, really, all along I've told my sister that she can back out of this at any time. Even up until right before the retrieval (although it would be nicer if we don't have to spend the money on the drugs and the global fee, but if we do, we do). And we'll figure out what to do about conceiving child #2 if/when we get there. Maybe lightening will strike us twice and we'll get pregnant on our own again (not holding out too much hope for that at age 42) and we've always said that if this didn't work with my sister we'd cheerfully (ok, that may be stretching it a bit) move on to anonymous donor eggs.

Anyhow, it looks like we won't get a chance to get together and talk face to face until July 10, but that will still be before we have to pay the global fee to my clinic and before we have to order drugs. So, we'll figure it all out then.

I really suspect this is more about how this 2nd donor egg child might feel when they find out they were conceived with an egg from their Aunt, but that their older sister was conceived 'the old-fashioned' way. Honestly, I've not thought too deeply about that myself and my guess is that my (little) sister may have a little bit more perspective on that than I might have. I think it might have already been hard to be the younger sibling and I imagine she's worrying a bit in advance about how this child might feel about all of this. So, I'm trying not to speculate too much about what they're thinking or what they want to talk about and just let it be what it's going to be. In the meantime, like I said, she's starting bc pills on Sunday at any rate.

Off to walk with the dog on a glorious, sunny, humidity-free day here! Feeling hugely blessed that we might actually have a baby at the end of September and blessed that we may still have this opportunity with my sister to help us with #2.