Sunday, October 25, 2009

HSG tomorrow

So, tomorrow is a big day. I go in for an HSG to see if my tubes are blocked. This will be a pivotal bit of information for us (But really, what tests aren't when you are going through infertility).

For a lot of infertility patients, an HSG is the beginning of diagnostic testing. For us, it very may will be the end of our fertility treatments, because blocked tubes would mean moving on to IVF. As unpopular as this may seem for the infertile world: I do not believe in IVF. (insert gasp here). I mean, I can completely understand why so many people do it, but I just can't take the responsibility on myself with the "picking the appropriate blasts/embryos and choosing-not-to-use-others" aspect of the procedure. Maybe I will change my mind somewhere in this journey, but I guess I just don't know.

I realize that we could chose to only fertilize a limited number of eggs, and have all of them implanted. However, I also realize how much that would decrease our chances of getting pregnant, and INCREASE our chances of birth defects and multiples. I definitely think that infertility patients are not getting the whole story when it comes to the birth defects, increased rates of laryngeal hemangiomas, complications of twinnings, etc that exist for babies born from IVF itself. In actuality, there haven't been a whole lot of long term studies on kids born from IVF because it is a relatively new field (medically speaking). UCSF is currently doing one of the more comprehensive studies on it, but the data is not yet available.

So, tomorrow is a big day. I could be the end of our dreams of having biological children. For some reason, I feel somewhat at peace with this today, and have only cried once since waking up. It may be better for my planning-oriented mind to just have a solid answer. Does anyone else feel like this? Sometimes it's the waiting and not knowing itself that is the worst part to me.


1 comment:

  1. Totally get this on many levels. The waiting is the worst.

    And, if our fertility problems had gone this way, I do not think we would have done IVF. Slightly different reasons, but it's really all about what works for you.

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