Pieces of Them....

When my wife and I first started our journey through ttc, we had planned on me carrying her embie for the first pregnancy (we never thought we'd have twins) and then I'd carry my own for a second pregnancy. We did it this way because #1 She is older, so we wanted to make sure we'd get them while they were good, #2 She had a fear of being pregnant (mostly of childbirth). We only ever talked 2 kids, again, we never planned on having twins.

Well, our first pregnancy we got twins and I got sick, so sick that I don't ever desire to be pregnant again. Also, I don't have any strong feelings for or against having bio children, so if the twins happen to be the only babies we have, I am completely Ok with that. I love them to pieces and they have never felt like anything other than OURS.

That being said, my wife has had a change of heart with regards to pregnancy. Strange, I know, considering she witnessed first hand everything that could go wrong in a pregnancy. I think it was the fact that despite everything that did go wrong, there was one very good right, and that was feeling our babies move inside me and carrying them with me everywhere I went. Unless you have been pregnant before, there really is no other feeling like it. Through all of my misery, those baby kicks kept me going, and once I delivered them, I immediately "missed" them and missed being pregnant (strangely). Anyhow, I think it is something that she has decided she wants to experience, and I am all for it if that is what she wants. Besides, I know she will have an easy pregnancy and delivery. :)

Since we have the coverage, we will be doing IVF again when the time comes, and hopefully the conception part will go as quickly as with the twins. This time, she will carry my embie, and this time we will only implant ONE.

For our first IVF, the RE was very conservative with the meds since we were both young and had no history of infertility. They retrieved 11 eggs, of which 10 fertilized and we used 2. Of the 8 left, 6 froze and are still 'chillin' out at the RE's office. We weren't really sure how many tries it would take for us to get pregnant, and even once I was pregnant, we wanted to make sure I would make it to delivery before figuring out what to do with the frozen goods. Of course we were pregnant on that very first try, and now that the boys have been born, we have been discussing what she would like to do with her frozen "babies". We've been paying the storage fee for almost a year now, and we have no intention of using them, so its about time we decide what to do with them.

Here is where it shows that she is a much better person than I am. She wants to donate them to a needy couple. If it were me, I just couldn't do it, and this is something I have been thinking about for when we do my retrieval. I think I am too much of a control freak to put "my babies" in someone elses hands. Selfish, I know. She keeps reminding me that if it were not for some wonderful guy out there, we would not have our baby boys, and I agree wholeheartedly. I just think its a little different. Since her eggs are already fertilized, these "babies" will be 100% related to our boys. Usually when you are just an egg donor, then whoever gets them fertilizes them with their own sperm and the relation is just 50% (I have no idea why that matters-but it does). I just keep thinking that if they were to get pregnant using these frozen "babies" someone out there could have a little guy or a big guy just.like.ours.

However, I would also hate for these "babies" to go to waste. I don't want to just have them "destroyed" which is the other option. So, what do we do? Keep them frozen forever? Donate them to research? Be like the famous Oc.to.mom. and use them all? lol that will never happen!

I think a part of me is just not ready to let them go. I am even thinking about skipping the part where we use my embies and just use hers again and do a FET. But again, I would only want to implant one and I think they are frozen in pairs. I don't know what we would do if we got twins again, but I realize that a FET probably has a lower implantation rate. Still, not a chance we are willing to take. We love our twins, but given the choice we would like to see what its like to have just ONE newborn, and I think pregnancy would be alot easier with just a singleton.

Geez, am I really talking about our "next" baby? Crazy, I know, given the last few days we just had!