Hello IComLeaveWe folks!

I've been scanning blogs from the Stirrup Queens blogroll for at least a year so I'm glad I finally gave myself a kick in the pants and joined the blogroll and decided to participate in ICLW this month.So if you found your way here from the ICLW list, welcome! 

Here's the abridged version of why I'm an IF blogger:

My husband had testicular cancer in the mid '90's, no one told him about banking sperm until after radiation when the cancer returned. So by the time he banked sperm it was radiated. Not good. Fast forward to 2005, we're married, we start seeing the RE. Husband is confirmed sterile so we only have the radiated, banked sperm to use. First IUI with Clomid is a fail, we save our pennies for an IVF cycle. March/April 2006 we do our first IVF cycle with ICSI and AH and we also find out my FSH is crazy high for a 24 year old. Great. IVF is a fail so we take a break. August 2007 we do IUI with Follistim, another big fat fail and my FSH is 12.3. WTF. We take another really long break and travel, buy a house and do fun things. Now it's May 2010, RE says "where have you been??!!?" and "I think you have a good shot at IVF success if you want to try again." So we do. FSH is slightly lower, AMH is good and AFC is also good. By fall 2010 we have the funds for IVF again, start BCP in September, get call from RE and embryologist that maybe we should consider donor sperm, as they can't find evidence of a pregnancy from radiated sperm. Okay we can do that, not our first option but we knew it was a possibility. Pick a donor, start drugs, yadda, yadda. Much better response than first IVF cycle, 10 mature eggs retrieved, 9 fertilized, 3 great looking embryos are transferred. BFP, um kinda. Beta is 22, pregnancy doomed. Beta rises to 123 and then one week later I start bleeding, miscarriage confirmed. Wallow and cry a lot for about six weeks . RE suggests we could have success with IUI with donor or IVF again but also talks to us about embryo adoption. We decide on an IUI with injectables/trigger and donor sperm, which was done on 01/11/11 (lucky day?) and now we're coming in on the end of the 2WW. Our next plan, which is subject to constant change, is another IUI with injectables/donor before a third and final IVF cycle. After that we're discussing embryo adoption/domestic adoption. We want to parents one day - regardless of how that happens.

Beyond IF, I have an awesome group of friends I love to hang out with, I bake like a crazy person, I have a knitting obsession, I work as an Executive Assistant, I'm desperately trying to find a way for us to move to the Pacific Northwest and if that wasn't enough I'm going to school part-time to finish my degree in Non-Profit Development and Administration. My non-IF blog about every day life and baking/knitting is here.

So that's that.