The Next Step, For Now

I went into my doctor today to discuss possible surgery and left with a surgery date for April 21st, just two and a half weeks away. He sat back, told me my options, and said that it was my decision. It just seems like the best idea to go in there and "clean things up" some if we're going to be continuing with fertility treatments anytime soon.

Thankfully this is just an outpatient surgery, but it will take me out of work for a week. The toughest part will be deciding where to go from there. There are several different options that all have several different emotions wrapped up into them.

Option #1: Continue with the IUI (intrauterine insemination) fertility treatments. While still expensive, this is the least expensive route for us. It also happens to be the one option that is least likely to give us the results that we are looking for.

Option #2: Move on to IVF (in vitro fertilization) fertility treatments. We would go to St. Louis for this and it is insanely expensive. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the costs, but it would probably be at least $15,000 for each try. However, that doesn't include any of the ultrasounds, medications, or travel costs. That is simply the price for the procedure itself. But, we can be pretty much guaranteed to get pregnant through this process.

Option #3: Move on to Adoption. This can also be quite expensive, but there is a $10,000 tax credit available which could help with some of the costs. We have always been interested in adoption, long before we even got married and knew anything about our fertility problems. But there is also a lot of fear and unknown with this route.

There are many decisions to be made. We know that God will lead us in the right direction, but we still ultimately have to make the decision ourselves. Some days we feel lead to one option and another day we feel lead to something totally different. It's a lot to take in and process, but we will just have to handle it day by day and see where we are taken.