Hi Rio2016,
I am really sorry for everything you have been through. I know how hard it it's to find strength to keep on going after each loss. I have never tried a cycle with my OE, because I suffer from POF, my AMH was 0.02 when I found I had POF. Even after the diagnoses, I managed to get pregnant twice, one naturally and another using clomid, mcc both before 8 weeks.
It took me some time to get my head around the idea of DE conception and my husband wasn't really keen either, but now that I am 7 months pregnant I wish we had made the decision much earlier so we could consider having 2 kids. However, my husband keeps reminding me about everything we have been through, so a lot to process and it was great that we took our time and were 100% about the DE process when we started.
After our second loss we discussed our options; adoption or ED conception and we were not ready for either. We kind of left thing as they were and I just guessed that with time we will accept life without children. But I always had this what-if question at the back of my mind. Then, I noticed that my husband was feeling down most of time, he would say it was work-related but I could feel it was something else. He is not much of sharing feelings type of guy, so I had to wait for the right moment to ask him what was really going on. When we talked I sensed that he was finding hard to accept life without children, but he would never say these exact words because he didn't want to hurt me. I could also sense that he was more open to ED conception, but again, he would never say out loud as he didn't want to pressure me to do anything that didn't feel right to me.
This is when I had to ask myself some serious questions and reminded myself that the clock was ticking, so I had to make a decision before it was too late, even for ED.
How badly did I want to experience pregnancy? How badly did I want to experience the miracle of growing a life inside of me? Every time I asked myself these questions my heart will say pretty badly and I would remind myself that nothing came easy to me in my life, still I never gave up, so why would I give up now without even giving one try? Having a genetic related child was more important than not having any child at all? Why not try for me because this is what I always wanted and for the love of my life?
Even though deep inside I knew that I was desperately to try, the fear of failure was still very loud in my mind and heart. I kept asking myself, what if doesn't work? How would I cope with another miscarriage? How this would affect my marriage? To deal with it I started meditating and running much more that I usually do, now I know that subconsciously I was already getting ready for the treatment. Then one day we went out for dinner and decided let's do it, otherwise we might regret for the rest of our lives. Just like that, the decision was made.
Whist researching about the ideal place to go ahead with the treatment, as we did not have a big budget for it. I kept preparing my mind, my body, and my soul for this journey. My husband was always very supportive and kept saying, let's not put too much pressure on ourselves. We are going to give our best shot and let's see what happens.
We decide that Spain was our best choice; highly recommended from a friend, costs, and easy to find a match because of my background. Just bear in mind that in Spain ED is anonymous, this was not an issue for us, so something to consider if this is important to you. From the moment we decided on the clinic to the actual transfer took 6 months. Only because I had a suspicious of a polyp on my lining so I had to go through a procedure to make sure it was all clear.
In Feb we had the confirmation of a donor matching and by mid march we had our transfer. BFP first attempt!
I believe that the very firt step is being 100% sure that this is the path for you, perhaps asking yourself crucial questions and listen to your heart. Of course, making sure that your husband is on the same page as you.
Once you are sure about your decision, choosing the place comes down to; cost, anonymous or not, if is abroad or in the UK how easy would be to find a match. In our case we didn't want endless info about the donor, just medical history and the check list of all the tests performed prior treatment. This was crucial for us and it became very expensive in the UK, as some of the tests on the donour were not part of the package so the final pricing was way above our budget.
I am not sure if this was of any help, but if you have any question I am here.
Big
