Coming Back Up for Air

Okay, that negative was hard, as they always are.

We took it on the chin, though. We hugged, we cried, we talked...

We took a realistic look at this together; what did we learn?

Well, we learned that we didn't love Rotunda. Honestly, they were overwhelmed there. It felt as if they were unable to give us their full attention. After six rounds of IVF, we know the ropes. We know what the ultrasounds and numbers mean. We know what a good cycle and what a bad cycle looks like. We did not have a good cycle.

We also learned that the system works. Surrogacy in India works. Our doctors could have sent us that email with a positive pregnancy result; they could have collected our money and "miscarried" that pregnancy later. That didn't happen. The system is real and it does work.

So we are going to take our experience with the programs in India and seriously consider trying it one more time. We are looking into two different programs. One is Jaslok Hospital and the other is SurrogacyIndia. They both offer great labs and fabulous embryologists. Honestly, we are leaning towards SurrogacyIndia.

We learned that we should use our knowledge in India, just as we would here in the US. I took a very passive roll in this cycle and I will be more vocal in the next round. You see, with our very first round of IVF, we did not see great fertilization results and our embryos were not of a great quality. Every subsequent cycle was tweaked and improved our fertilization and embryo quality. Our last two rounds were with Cornell, one of the best clinics in the country. We feel that Rotunda did not look at those past cycles and try to mirror some of those improvements. Instead, they gave us a very standard dosage and therefore produced results like that of our very first round of IVF. We were disappointed and angry at ourselves for not saying something when we first saw the dosages they were prescribing.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. I believe that you take what life hands you, learn from it, and try to do better. I think we learned that this could work, and could be done better. So, we may decide to do this again or we may decide to take another path. Right now we are considering getting back up on this horse.