Our Plans for Attempting FET #2

Just wanted to share a quick update about our future plans for growing our family...

We talked to our doctor last week to recap our transfer and talk about what went well, what didn't, and his recommendations for moving forward. He said that there are three things he looks at when a transfer doesn't work.

#1 How did the procedure go? Was it painful? Complicated? Hard to get the embryos where they needed to be?
#2 How were my hormone levels? Was my uterus "cooperating"?
#3 How did the embryos look? Did they thaw well?

He said that based on his notes and all the info we have #1 and #2 couldn't have been better. Everything went smoothly, my hormone levels and uterus were right where they needed to be - basically, there's nothing he or we could have done to make that better.

Regarding #3 though - he said the embryos were good, but they weren't great. It's hard to know how they'll look when they're still frozen, so it's really mostly a guessing game as to how they will thaw prior to the transfer.

He's optimistic that with our 5 remaining embryos we have a good shot - but of course, nothing is guaranteed.

He said that since my body responded well to the protocol, we probably won't change anything as far as dosage and types of meds when we try again. As far as when we'll attempt another transfer, he said that he usually recommends waiting about a month in order to let my body get back to "normal."

However, and this is quite interesting timing... our doctor just found out last week that he's going to have heart surgery this coming Tuesday! Apparently he went to the doctor for an unrelated issue, and found out he's got blockage and his doctor wanted to schedule surgery ASAP. Selfishly, this impacts our personal timeline.

My heart (ooh bad pun, not intended) dropped when he told us the news.  He said that his doctor said to plan on being out of work for a couple months because surgery and recovery are rather intensive. Our doctor did say that the other two Reproductive Endocrinologists in his office are happy to cover him and take care of his patients while he's out... but of course, he'd rather that we wait for him.

Donny and I talked and we agree that we really don't want to switch to anyone else at this point.  We love our doctor, he knows our story, he knows us, and we just feel more comfortable waiting for him.

So that's where we are, more waiting. He's expecting to be back in the office around July - but our summers get so busy, we'll probably have to wait until September before we start the whole process again.

Of course, I'm a little disappointed. I want to be pregnant like, NOW. But at the same time, it felt pretty obvious that God wanted us to wait.

I've had about a week now to process the plan, and I'm feeling good about it.  Since we started applying to adopt embryos last September, we've been kind of stuck in this unknown world of waiting...not sure how far in advance to make plans because we didn't know when things would start, how long they would take, how I would feel, etc. So being able to at least generally plan the next three months-ish has been kind of refreshing. I think I'll sign up to run a half marathon in July or August (my last race was 10 months ago!) and we'll keep saving money, having fun together, serving at church and just living out life as the DINKS (dual income no kids) couple that we've been for almost 5 years now.

I doubt I'll have much to post for the next few months - but thank you so much for reading and praying! We plan on picking up again when we have news to report :)