DH and I disagree about IVF

quote:

Neither of us feels particularly called to adoption right now

boogiemomz,

I am a single man and hardly an expert on these kinds of marital decisions, but I must report that my firm's IT expert and his wife adopted with quite good results. His stated reason for adopting was not his wife's inability to conceive, but rather their mutual desire to "fast forward through the diaper changing/babies crying at all hours phase." Hence they went to Russia and adopted a 7 year old girl and 5 year old boy, natural siblings by the way, who came "pre-toilet trained" etc. The kids are now teenagers and seem well adjusted. I would suggest not ruling it out and looking into it further.

Regarding DH's inability to make difficult decisions without suffering "paralysis by analysis", I must confess I am the same way whether it is a decision to have surgery, buy my mother a Christmas gift, or my most recent decision-making trauma, which is choosing a Key West Hotel for my upcoming November 17-24 Florida vacation (3 nights of which will be spent in Key West for my Dad's 75th birthday present, per his request). Of course those decisions are minor compared to what DH faces, but my trauma is probably no less. I suffer from being an overly analytical person and I feel like I can't decide until I analyze the issue left, right sideways, etc. It's just the way I am. I am also like that ordering cocktails during Happy Hour. Anyway he gets some compassion from me on this one.

Thanks for the input, but I have absolutely no desire to "fast forward through the diaper changing..." phase. Quite the opposite. I did not say I have ruled out adoption, but we are not thinking along that route at this time.

Seems like something is going on with DH. Would you two be up for counseling? Maybe a third party can get your husband to articulate his fears and maybe he can get help to see that those fears are debilitating.

I absolutely agree with you about going through the diaper-changing phase. Babies are even more fun than puppies and kittens, aren't they?

I really hope you two can work this out and that a new little miracle is in the (very) near future.

kathy

OK, just noticed that you had a baby girl in 2009 as noted in your signature, so I can understand why.

By the ways, I see you live in Durham, NC. I hope you are able to eat barbecue. I loved a restaurant I ate at down there called Bullock's. I went there with my cousin and had pulled pork and hush puppies. It was my first exposure to the "North Carolina" style barbecue that uses vinegar rather than a tomato based sauce. It was quite good.

Good luck with your decision and let us know how it goes. I hope it works out for you.

Its a tough decision. We spend a lot of time on this too and my husband was also against IVF and suggested adoption. We ended up adopting and not doing IVF. We have two beautiful adopted children when they were 3&5, now 11&13 - and we recently spontaneously conceived by fluke 11 years after marriage and I am now 26 weeks.

My husband was unhappy with the invasiveness of IVF, the 'medicalisation' of it all, the worry for my health given so many health issues, etc. I was happy to adopt though so it worked out.

Maybe counselling would be good. Infertility is so hard and stressful, try to find ways to connect to eachother rather than let this pull you apart if you can.

Good luck.

Thanks for the replies and support. Counseling would definitely be a good thing to do, and our infertility center actually staffs a clinical psychologist who specializes in this kind of thing. We've just struggled to get any sort of traction in counseling in the past because his job is extremely demanding and we aren't able to get in on a regular basis. He is starting a rotation coming up where he will be at the hospital 12-14 hours/day, then has a long distance rotation out of town for 2 months after the holidays. (This is not the only stressful thing we are dealing with right now!) If nothing else, perhaps I will go in by myself.

I think most of my frustration stems from the fact that he doesn't have a problem articulating his fears, he just believes them to be more true than anything the actual experts are saying to the contrary. Anyway, like I said he's meeting with our priest tonight so we'll see what develops there. I'm still hopeful he'll come around.

Oh, and DJBHusky, I love Bullocks. They serve eastern NC style, which is vinegar based, but western NC style BBQ has a tomato base. I'm eastern style all the way!

Thanks again everyone.

Boogie,
My hubby is a 'nervous nelly' sort of guy and shys away from anything that he is unsure of or makes him feel 'uncomfortable'. He reacts from his gut and his head shuts down when he does...when we got together I was still young enough to have kids and we discussed it all. My best friend was going through the same things as I was (same kind of couple too...Divorced older hubbys with 2 kids of their own and us who were 14+yrs younger and childless)...for them, obviously it was less important than for us....she went through 10 IVFs, none held on long enough...I tried naturally...got pregnant twice. Lost the 1st at 12weeks the second at 15...hubby refused for me to go any further, try another route or even continue getting preganant naturally. He was terrified for me, my pouch and my body. I could never reason with him on it...he saw the ravages of the miscarriages on me both physically and mentally. My pouch finally decided for me...it gave up and the following years of surgery ended my chances. My girlfriend? Her hubby paid for a final, 11th IVF and her daughter just turned 6!
Maybe if...is a terrible thing to say or think...you have to be at peace with this and so does he...
Sharon

I can understand where your husband is coming from; I would personally never do IVF. It's really difficult when you have such a huge decision, yet you both aren't on board. I agree with the others who said third party counseling may be your next step.

Sue

Thanks ladies. I called a therapist a few days ago, but it will be a while before DH and I can do any regular counseling together; I hope I can get him in for just one appointment. We do hope/plan to talk with our priest together at some point. His meeting with the priest went well, DH was surprised to find that he's not really anti-IVF at all, just had some strong feelings about how we approach the process. So, we'll see.

I had strong feelings about not wanting IVF because I was DONE with medical stuff. But we had a bad social worker in the adoption process who told us it was a 50-50 chance that we would get approved for a baby (we have since be reassured by many, many adoption professionals that that isnt true). After that we decided if that was the case we would take our chances with IVF, which was a 40% chance of success (IVF is 100% covered by insurance here so money isn't a part of the equation for us).

I found the whole process far less intrusive and "medical" than I was expecting. I did get a little freaked by the consent forms which talked about possibility of nicking bowel, but I talked with my surgeon, my high risk OB (who I picked before even starting IVF) and the clinic and felt confident of how it was being handled.

I did have a near total obstruction during my first pregnancy (I had a failed j-pouch and have a perm ostomy) that lasted 5-6 weeks, I was inpatient for 3 weeks and liquid diet for several weeks. But we got through it with the high risk OB who we loved, and an innovative surgeon who helped us avoid surgery.

And, it all couldn't have been too awful becuase I opted to have a second child - my mom was absolutely against it. That pregnancy was perfect.

Whatever you decide, be sure you have a clinic you trust and a doctor picked early to help if there are any problems. Also, we found the hardest challenge was what to do with any unused embryos. It took us 18 months to finally decide and it was not an easy thing for either me or my husband. So be prepared for that - maybe make a plan before reaching that bridge.

FYI, in Italy, you are only allowed to create as many embryos as you will use per cycle. So if you plan to transfer two embryos, only 2 eggs would be put in to fertilize. This avoids the issue of unused embryos, but it also means if the eggs don't fertilize, you can't do that cycle, and it means no embryos to freeze and try again if the cycle doesn't work. Trade offs on both sides, but that might help with your husbands concerns.

Good luck and feel free to contact me if you want to chat.

Many hospitals have a limit as to how many embryos you can have put back in to attempt implantation at one time, so check with your hospital on that.

We struggled with it a lot. It's an emotionally tough decision and for us, where it's not covered at all by insurance, a huge financial burden. We had initially decided (at the beginning of the infertility road) that we would not do it, but after everything we went through (2 years of charting/temping, 4 rounds of IUI which was a complete waste), I asked if he would consider doing it ONCE and he didn't want to, he was done. We talked a lot about our "Plan B" of what our lives would be if we were NOT successful, since no way could we borrow enough money to do it more than once, and so we needed to be ready to be done and move on with our lives. We sketched out in broad strokes some trips we would take and instead of a house, save for an RV that we would buy on the cusp of retirement and travel around the country during retirement (we were both 38) etc. We were ok with this plan, but I convinced him I would not be able to move into my 40s and complete infertility no matter what method of conception without having at least tried it one time, so we went ahead.

It was a lot for my DH, who is not a medically friendly type and he had to learn how to administer some shots which I would have bet you $1000 he never could have done if you had asked me prior to us going through it, but it's amazing what you can get yourself to do if you psych yourself up for it (and 2 shots of whiskey beforehand each night didn't hurt, ha ha). He was a champ and we were incredibly fortunate as we only got a few eggs, even fewer fertilized, and since there was no "embryo limit" where we had it done, we put back all 3 embryos knowing this was our only chance, and being aware of what the chance was we were taking, however small, of multiples. We were also at only 40% success rate so I wasn't very hopeful.

My son is 3.5 now and he kicked those other 2 embryos out and said I AM STAYING. Regardless of the outcome I would have been very glad we did it because otherwise it always would have nagged at me. We were also not interested in adoption; if we could not have our own child, we would have just enjoyed the childless life and had fun traveling and spending our money on ourselves on winery tours and such instead of on thomas trains and pull-ups.

I can tell you, any hestation about the "clinical" or "medical" or "playing God" side of it is completely erased when you hold your baby. I hope you get a chance to do that and wish you best of luck. But also consider a Plan B as you just have no guarantees.

Hi good to hear you are doing so well...we have not chatted in a while. Had my take down in Feb and things are great. I don't have any answers for you...sometimes you have to take a leap of faith.

Hi boogiemomz. I am so sorry you have found yourself in this position. Its a very sad one, but definitely not hopeless.

Lets talk a little about IVF. In my few years experience with infertility treatments, I've encountered a lot of opinions. Gut reactions. Things people spurt out when they are scared. "Playing God" is one of the famous one. My thought on the matter is "playing God" (AKA,science) saved the lives of just about every person on this board. Science gives life where there would otherwise be none. If that is what we call "playing God," I'm in. We are so blessed to live in a time where IVF is possible and available. It has answered so many prayers.

Safety- Of course he is scared for you. He loves you. "Catastrophising" the procedure will not bring you peace. You are very unlikely to have complications from pregnancy.

The extra embryos- This can be a tricky dilemma.

Part 1- Low stim IVF
You can talk to your RE about a low stim cycle. This will cost you less as far less medication is necessary. This will also yield far fewer "extra" embryos-if any. This brings us to part 2.

Part 2- the extras
a.) If you do have extra embryos and you decide that you want to try for another baby, you have a shot at one without going through the huge fresh IVF cycle process.
b.) If your 1st IVF cycle fails, you will have another shot if you have a few extra embryos.
c.) the criteria to freeze an embryo is extremely high, and there are ofter not a lot, if any, of embryos to freeze. (This will depend a lot on your current age and fertility)
d.) You can consider, once you have finished your family (and you can decide this WAYYYY down the road) to donate your embryos to another family suffering from infertility to give them a chance at having a family. This is one of the most generous gifts on earth. Thats not a decision anyone can make today. Its just an option.

Good luck to you in this tough decision. An infertility diagnosis makes you re-evaluate all the things you thought you would never do. My husband and I always discussed one step ahead of where we are in our infertility journey, just so we can desensitize ourselves to the terminology. It also allows us to see what we are theoretically comfortable with before the theoretical is actual.

This diagnosis is a shock, and its hard to hear. Allow yourselves time to grieve and to gather your strength for the road ahead.

I believe its worth it. GOOD LUCK and big hugs to you