Last we left off our two mom family had journeyed through Reciprocal IVF, Egg Retrieval, Frozen Embryo Transfer and Pregnancy. Here we are with a three year old and ready to begin the journey for baby number two. With the amount of Krystal’s eggs, sperm we have, and my age (31) we have the privilege of lots of options when choosing how we want to expand our family.
Some of the options we considered were: Invitro Fertilization (IVF), Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), or a Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET). In all honesty, we struggled with this choice. There were so many questions, some you can see in this post I did shortly after Amelia was born.
One option immediately eliminated was IVF – basically the same as last time without the reciprocal part; using my eggs instead. Although the success rates are extremely high, this treatment is not covered by our insurance and financially we are not in a position to front $20,000+ for this process. This left IUI and FET: simply put my egg or Krystal’s egg.
There were lots of conversations, internal reflections and even a therapy session with a therapist that specializes in fertility treatments. Truthfully, we both wanted to use our egg. But it was not that simple. Scientifically the success rate of IUI is about 19% whereas the success rate of a FET is about a 41% success rate.
From my perspective, I wanted to see myself in our child. So often personality traits and physical resemblances of Amelia get attributed to Krystal, however the attributes I get are often the ones with negative connotations – bossy, stubborn, sassy. As selfish as it may be, I wanted to have some positive attributes credited to me. I am sure there are many moments and factors that lead us to the decision that we made. Some was my research on nature versus nurture and the role epigenetics plays in gene building/decision (super interesting, but very dense).
The real decision for me/us was seeing Amelia on stage. For those of you that don’t know, I am a tech theater teacher. After our yearly production of Follies, Amelia and I were gathering microphones and she wanted to go on stage and sing (Encanto of course). She proceeded to sing and dance, pausing to ask the audience to “clap for her” in a live microphone I might add. Although I am more of a behind the scenes type of gal, seeing her love for performance and her fearlessness, I saw myself.
That was me. Nature, nurture, epigenetics aside she had me in her.
That was all I needed to know that regardless of DNA our child will have me in them. With this realization we decided to proceed with a Frozen Embryo Transfer. Which is Krystal’s egg with a donor sperm that was retrieved and frozen from August 2018 till now. Isn’t science cool?!
So what comes next? The whole point of the medicine and monitoring that takes place for FET is to thicken the uterine lining to provide the stickiest of homes for the embryo to implant on the uterine wall. So now we proceed with the FET keeping our legs and fingers crossed hoping for a sticky embryo.
