My eggs might really be done

I know I haven't posted here forever, mostly because I've been busy raising my happy, healthy almost 3-year-old. When he was born I said "that's it" to any more pregnancies. Having a successful pregnancy after many losses was amazing, but also really hard in a lot of ways. We just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. We couldn't plan ahead for a baby, because history showed us over and over that it might not happen for us. So we didn't look any farther ahead than our next appointment. Are we pregnant...is the sac in the uterus...is there a heartbeat, and so on. Then miraculously the weeks turned into months and then into trimesters. Once we hit the point of viability we started to have a glimmer of hope. Even then, it wasn't until our son was a year old that I actually started to believe that nothing bad was going to happen. The rug had been pulled out from under us too many times before.

But then time passed, and we started to think that maybe, just maybe, we should try for a second. Crazy, right? We had the occasional well-timed oops on the birth control. Then we actually went back and did another IUI last fall. Nada. We got pregnant on our own in the spring, but it was over not long after it started. We tried for another IUI with a higher dose of meds last month, but it got cancelled since a follicle on my blocked tube side took off right out of the gate and none of the others had any chance of catching up. And now I'm in my mid-40s. Even though my follicle count and hormone levels aren't acting my age, my egg quality (their guess as to why I kept miscarrying) is. Some people probably wouldn't even risk another pregnancy at my age, but my gut says to try. Odds are it won't work, but I think DH and I both need the closure. And my insurance cut me off a while back, since my policy said they don't have to cover any procedures that have less than a 5% chance of live birth, so money-wise we can't keep doing this forever either.

So we're trying one last time (for real) this month. The IUI is tomorrow morning, and I'm excited and scared. I'm excited because by some miracle this might work. After all, my great grandma had her last baby at 47, and my RE tells me my hormone levels are the best he's ever seen in a woman my age. And I'm scared because it is really hard to say goodbye to the idea of having more biological children when you really want them. (We are talking about exploring other options for growing our family, but just want to get through this before we talk any more about those.)

On the other hand, it is fan-freaking-tastic that there is finally an end to all of this. I went through my closet today and threw a ton of stuff into recycling...business cards from a variety of people at the various RE/acupuncture clinics I went to, pro/con lists DH and I had made before any of our big fertility treatment decisions, advice from the waste-of-time acupuncturist I went to (No gluten for you! No Diet Coke for DH!), old calendars that monitored ever freaking stage of my cycle for months and months... I also found a copy of "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" that I should probably donate but secretly want to toss into a bonfire in the backyard along with all of my other why-you-aren't-having-a-baby books. Fertility treatment makes you spend a lot of time thinking inward (what's that? is it my period? is it an early pregnancy symptom?), and I'm so glad this stage of my life is finally coming to an end.