Me day & Fertility

I've never looked forward to a Monday as much as I did this last Monday. I started by sleeping in until 9:30am! Then I went to the Teal Center for an hour massage and after I met my mom for lunch. After lunch, I got a mani/pedi at my favorite place, Ivy Nails. They are always so nice to me. And the owner gave me a gift certificate for a free pedicure! Wahoo! Cancer is good for something!! I'm kind of disappointed in myself to wait until I have cancer to force myself to take a day just for me and get pampered. Everyone needs that every now and then, cancer or no cancer.

Tuesday we left work early and met with a doctor at Shady Grove Fertility. I wasn't sure what to expect. The doctor was SO nice. Because of my special circumstances he fit us in at the end of their day. He went over all of our options and what chemo could potential do to my fertility later on. He explained about freezing eggs or embryos and how all that works. I made an appointment to go today for blood work and an ultrasound. When we got to the car I looked at George and said "maybe we just shouldn't do this" and he said "if its meant to be, it will be" and I said "exactly".

We want kids. Right now. But maybe there is a reason that this is happening this way. We asked the doctor about using a surrogate (well gestational carrier) and its expensive. If we had someone volunteer to do it (ahem) then of course we would jump at the chance right now. But its complicated. There are laws that people would have to qualify with and more importantly, asking a friend to carry our child for us for 9 months. That's a HUGE commitment. (But seriously...we have a volunteer sign up sheet ready!).

Right now we are leaning towards not freezing eggs or embryos unless surrogacy was involved. I feel like if its not in the cards right now, or even later, then there's a reason. Maybe in a couple years there will be a child that needs a home and we will be able to provide that home to them. I don't know. The hardest part is that it all has to be decided like in the next 2 weeks. I would have to start the retrieval process the week after my surgery. After we left last night I cancelled my appointment for today but was guilted into going in tomorrow. It can't hurt to have the blood tests and ultrasound to know what I look like now and then we can see again in 3-5 years when we are ready to have kids again.

Oh and the other part is, using my frozen eggs would be the last resort. We would still have to try to get pregnant on our own before we would use the eggs. So we would spend $6300 to freeze eggs PLUS however much it cost per year to store them and then we might not even use them. Plus, I kind of feel like I need to keep all the eggs I can for the future! You only have a certain amount and once they're gone, they're gone!

The funniest part to me was when the doctor was talking about freezing eggs vs embryos. He told us that if anything happened to our marriage we could potentially be a in a custody war over our embryos. Isn't that insane? But if we just freeze eggs then they're mine no matter what. Who would have ever thought about that?

I'm pretty surprised at our semi-decision. We can still change our mind...until right after my surgery. We have a short window to do this between surgery and chemo so we have to know for sure by September 18th. I don't want everyone to think we are being naive and thinking its going to be as easy to get pregnant after chemo like it was with Mackenzie. I know it either will be easy or it won't be. If its not then at that point we can look into adoption. I was panicking about this a couple weeks ago and now I feel totally at peace. I'm sure God is looking over me closely. I keep hearing "everything happens for a reason" in my head over and over.