Is this the end?

Spoiler alert!

My blood test isn't until tomorrow, but I did a urine test today. I'm not pregnant. Again.

That makes three IUIs where we haven't gotten pregnant, and statistically, if it was going to work, it would have by now. 

I spoke with our fertility specialist last week, and he agrees that there's no good reason that we aren't pregnant yet. Given the excellent sperm counts and the additional follicles we've been getting for each cycle, we are now officially into the dreaded "unexplained" infertility.

That means that we're doing everything right, but there are so many variables we can't look at that could be the cause of us not being able to get pregnant. It could be that my husband's sperm aren't interested in my eggs. Or that our chromosomes aren't compatible and that fertilized eggs aren't healthy enough to implant.

The fact is, that we just can't know why it isn't working, and we're at a point that we can't find out unless we go forward with IVF, which, as I've discussed before, is "gasp for air" expensive. There's just no way we could afford it ourselves.

So he gave us three choices:

• We can do another round of IUI, but this time with injectable gonadotrophins that create "superovulation" (4-5 eggs).
• We can convert to IVF.
• We can stop treatments.

If we go through the superovulation IUI, that could increase our chances to as high as 25%, but it also increases our chances of multiples to 20%. We're both pretty cool with the idea of twins, but thoughts of higher rate multiples make us nervous.

IVF is very, very expensive.

Stopping treatments is basically giving up.

So for now, we've decided that we're going to take at least one cycle off. That means that if you're one of the few people who reads this blog, I might not add anything about personal experience for a while, but I do have some articles I've been meaning to write, so I'll probably push them out while I've got Ritalin in my system.

Then, we're going to do 2 rounds of superovulation IUI, probably at least one cycle apart each. 

And after that? Well, we hope we're pregnant, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.