When will he have a brother or sister?
When hell freezes over? Is that a little strong? I guess it’s a fair enough question. Anyone crazy enough to have one baby at 51 might just be crazy enough to have another at age 52 or 53. In fact, the Center for Women’s Reproductive Carea will accept a patient up to age 55 as long as she has a uterus and passes all the pretesting. I think I’ve come up with a pretty good response to this question, though. I pretend I’m very excited and happy and say, “Oh my god! You are offering to be our surrogate! How generous. How soon would you like to be implanted with our embryo?” That usually stops all further questioning. (Feel free to use the same response if you’re an as-yet childless woman or couple and someone asks, “When are you going to have a baby?” Works like a charm.)
We considered whether or not we would take another shot at parenthood from the very beginning, before we had even conceived our son. If the first time didn’t work, and if we had the opportunity, would we try again? We decided, yes, we would undergo the transfer procedure twice, if it was a possibility to do so. We were helped to arrive at this decision because a second round is practically included in the cost of IVF at our clinic, as long as there is a viable embryo available from the first round.
I won’t go into our specifics, whether we had more than the two embryos we transferred the first time. We were spared from having to make any decisions at all since we were successful on the first shot. But at my 6-week check up after the baby was born, Dr. Cleary, my OB/GYN, did ask if I was considering having another. She told me that medically, she didn’t see any reason to discourage me.
So, I did think about it, albeit ever so briefly. We had had during my pregnancy a 3 or 4 week period when we thought we were having twins, so it wasn’t completely out of the blue to think about having two. But we decided against it pretty quickly. I couldn’t imagine leaving F motherless if a second pregnancy went badly and the worst happened. We consider ourselves to be so lucky to have pulled this off once, and we aren’t going to jinx it by getting greedy.
Then again, I’m only 52…I do have 3 years left to make up my mind, maybe…
Next time: Daddy chimes in again
Thanks for following and reading! I’d love to hear your story of IVF. Please leave your comments below.
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I love that response. Of course you have to be careful… Saying that to me might get me to offer up my services as baby’s first apartment. I find your blog cute and inspiring. I recently signed up to be an egg donor and just can’t wait to help other people start their journeys into parenthood.
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Please keep me posted on your progress! I’ll never be able to meet or thank our donor, so let me tell you what an amazingly generous thing you are doing. I can never adequately express my admiration or appreciation, so let me just say thank you for your generosity.
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Thank you. I’ll be be posting my experience as I go on my blog. Assuming I get picked. I figure it might take a little longer for me because I’m mixed race. But I am leaving any of my recipients the option to meet or speak with me beforehand. Even though they’ll never know my name,or see me afterwards. I figured it’d be nice for them to know me a little. I thought about doing a more open donation… But it wasn’t something my husband was comfortable with.
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I love reading your blog!!
People look at my boys and have the audacity to ask me…..so, are you going for the girl next? I’m like……..really? They’re 4 months old. I’m not even processing that right now, and it’s not like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do either…..Take Care!
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