Posh Peach Winner and Other Updates

First I want to say congrats to commenter #67, Sarah Smith, for winning the personalized market basket from the Posh Peach. I myself am waiting for my new basket to arrive and can't wait! Unfortunately a few people were automatically disqualified for not completing the mandatory entry so for future reference please read all the rules before entering the giveaways! I hope to have another one soon but I will definitely have a giveaway after my trip to Ireland.

So on to other updates. I wish I could give you the results of my second beta test but unfortunately the paperwork never made it to Womack so nobody knows what the results are. Oh well. Nurse D told me I could pee on a stick or take another blood test. I chose the pee stick (which of course was negative) so I stopped the meds. I guess this means I can now go horseback riding and get completely shitfaced on Guinness when I'm in Ireland.

I guess this also means I need to start unfollowing some blogs as well. I know quite a few people got recent BFP's and I'm very happy for you but this is also getting more and more difficult for me to read. I've come up with a sort of "system" for these pregnancy blogs. I usually continue to read and follow them until they enter the second trimester and then I stop. So if in a few weeks you find that you have one less follower I hope you understand and don't hate me for life. Perhaps one day I will join your ranks as a pregnancy blog.

As for me, the past few days have been quite hard. I don't cry all day long but there are moments when I break down, usually when I get up in the morning (I have no idea why). I think this particular BFN hit me hard because I had sort of an epiphany that these last 5 embryos are our last chance at biological children. And while I never thought that having biological children was important to me because we were always open to the idea of adoption (but we put it off because of the ridiculous cost) I guess I was wrong and it really is important. Or maybe it's the thought of never being pregnant that hurts so much.

I indulged in a little retail therapy after my BFN on Wednesday and bought a new camera and tripod. It's an upgrade to my old camera which was kick ass to begin with. It had an incredible 80x zoom (the new one has 140). If you'd like to see what 80x can do, check this out (click on the images to see better):

See the parasailer? No?

BAM!! There he is

Now I'll be able to take shots of stuff from miles away (maybe not miles but really really really really really far away).

I think I'm going to try my next FET again in June. It may or may not be our last. If these FET's don't work out then we will not pursue embryo adoption (I know some people asked me about it in the past). My reasoning is that we make decent embryos. Yes, I've only got 4 and 5-cell embryos left but they're not shitty embryos. Heck, we had 7 left on day 3 during our last IVF which isn't bad at all. So if I can't get pregnant off my own embryos then I'll have no confidence that I can get pregnant off someone else's. And considering my history of miscarriage this option seems just a little too risky.

And unfortunately we might not choose domestic infant adoption either. You see, adoption costs about $25-$30K (let's just highball it and go with the $30K). The military offers a $2,000 reimbursement and currently the IRS offers a $13,170 adoption tax credit, which makes a $30K adoption a very affordable $15K. Obviously you have to come up with the $30K first and then wait to get the money back but you get my drift.

But that adoption tax credit might not be around next year. It was set to expire in 2010 but the government passed a bill to extend the credit for one year and increased the credit by about $1,000. Who knows if that is going to happen again. And I'm sorry but if the credit goes away then I just can't see myself spending $28,000 to adopt a child. After this FET's we will have hit the $25,000 mark in family building attempts...I can't imagine doubling that amount. It just doesn't seem fiscally responsible.

But here's the odd part: for Brandon and I, coming up with $30,000 takes just a little over a year. It's not like we'd be slaving away for 10 years before reaching our goal. For us it's easily attainable because we don't live beyond our means and we're able to save money regularly. So I think to myself, because it's so easy to save up that money, why not just do the adoption? After all, what's one year in the grand scheme of things? A child is the one thing that I've consistently wanted all my life. But then I try to pull my emotions out of it and say that spending $60,000 to have one child is just financially stupid (in my opinion). But on the other hand, as long as we're not going into debt and we save properly, it's not really financially stupid, right? It's not like we're spending money we don't have. So as long as we can afford it, we should do it, no matter the cost. My decision making skills confuse me sometimes.

At this point, foster care is not an option. I think it would be too difficult for me. It's hard enough losing embryos but to see a child walk out of my house who had been living with me would probably break me. So no foster care. Trying IVF again would be tempting because of the low price tag (compared to adoption) but I seemed to have lost all confidence in getting pregnant from IVF.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, as I usually do. We still have one FET left and I should probably just focus on that (while still saving money for Plan B of course). So I guess I'll just work on losing some weight before June, maybe try acupuncture with this round, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.