It's been three times now, but who's counting...

A long time ago now, I started a journey toward motherhood. Ok, it's really only been since January that we found out that JF had no sperm, but now we're approaching nine months in, and three failed IUI's. Fourth one is just around the corner...

Clomid regime has been increased to 100mg x 5 days, followed by a three shots of Follistim, and then the trigger HCG. Third time around, even though I was heavily hormoned up, my follicles never got above 20mm, which means, we're not sure if I ever had a fully mature egg. My body started to ovulate on it's own, so we had to go with the IUI - and for the third time, it didn't work.

We have decided to do the fourth and final IUI for the donor we originally went with. Tomorrow is the third day of my cycle. It's the first IUI that I'll have had that is a back to back procedure - hard to believe we've been on this road for 9 months, and we're only on the 4th cycle of IUI, thanks to my hellacious travel schedule this year. We will have one vial of donor sperm left from the original donor. It will be time to find another for any further procedures.

We have decided that if the 4th cycle doesn't work that we will stop until January. In January, we will likely begin IVF. Health insurance doesn't cover IVF, so it will be an out of pocket expense, a costly one, so we need to wait until we can max out our FSA's, health spending accounts, and whatever else we can think of to buy us one or two rounds of IVF. We anticipate they are $16-20K a pop.

We will only do 2 rounds of IVF, and then we will pursue adoption.

That's what the plan is right now, anyway.

For now, I continue to delicately balance hope, faith, and a black pit of despair somewhere in a far place deep in my soul. My soul, which has become a very lonely place to be.