Myth Busting

It's National Infertility Awareness Week and RESOLVE has this 'bust an infertility myth' thing going on and I thought I'd share some busted myths. 

Myth: Something you did caused your infertility (you are too fit, too fat, ate the wrong food, had a STD, etc.) 

Uh, no. I don't smoke, I've never used illegal drugs, I might have an alcoholic beverage once a month and I've never had sexually transmitted disease. My eggs are just crappy and the doctor has no explanation for why. My husband's infertility was caused by cancer, again not something he could control. 

Myth: People think IVF always works. Everyone who uses it is successful and has a baby. 

Wrong again. I've been through IVF twice. I have no babies. I'd also like to point out I underwent IVF #1 at age 24/25 and IVF #2 at age 29. Most women under age 35 have a 41% of a successful outcome with a single IVF cycle. Unfortunately, I was in the 59% of women under age 35% who did not have success. 

Myth: If you can't get pregnant, you can "just adopt." It's easy, quick, and inexpensive. 

Seriously? Who thinks this is true? Adoption is a difficult and emotional process for both the adoptive couple and the birth parents. The length of time for domestic adoptions from start to finish can be 12-24 months. Adoption is not inexpensive at all, domestic infant adoption can cost anywhere from $25,000-$30,000.

There are more submissions from more eloquent bloggers than I on RESOLVE's website.

An unintersting update

Nothing interesting happening right now. We've put another IUI off indefinitely, it's just too expensive without much chance of success. It makes more sense to save for something more expensive but with a higher success rate. I also broke it off with Dr. Needles Saturday. I really enjoy acupuncture (in spite of the dirt tea) and I 100% believe it's helped me and I would recommend  it to anyone However, we aren't cycling right now and in order to save money to cycle again at some point I had to break it off. We just can't save for more treatment while continuing to pay $135 per week for treatment and tea (especially such crappy tea). He did wish me luck and I told him I would probably come back to some point, I'm just not sure when.

I've read two of the three adoption books we bought and Doug (slow reader that he is) is  halfway through one of them. I've liked all of them so far, most everything I've read makes sense to me, there haven't been any big surprises. I enjoyed the stories about ordinary people who adopted. I feel like we aren't the 'perfect couple' that people might choose to parent their baby and so it gives me hope that somebody might choose us one day, even without the white picket fence.

I went to church yesterday, Doug was out of town so he didn't come with obviously. It's the same church we went to briefly several years ago but didn't join.They seem to be a pretty progressive group but with a  fairly traditional service, which I like. I did see one of my professors from last semester there (awkward) but he didn't see me. Towards the end of the service one of the pastors read anonymous prayers members had written on scraps of paper. One of the prayers was "I pray for a baby for our house." My heart sunk a little for someone else then, someone else who is going through this shitty, shitty situation too. 

We're still muddling through, thinking a lot and trying to make decisions. Sometimes it feels like this whole thing is like pushing an anvil uphill. Every.single.thing. is complicated and requires phone calls and consults and a lot of money. I wonder if we'll ever be able to take a deep breath and relax? There has to be an end to the madness eventually.