Poof! It's magic!!

Just like that, ladies and gentlemen, I can magically make all hope disappear at 9DPO. Every cycle. Like clockwork. Hit 9DPO and poof! Despair.

What on earth am I going to do if this cycle didn't work? I just don't know if I can do another IVF cycle. I don't know if I can do donor eggs. I don't know if I can do adoption. I don't know if I can live child-free. I am stuck.

My aunt handily pointed out that I am still ovulating and I'm not yet 40. Which would be fine if I had a husband and hence a ready supply of sperm (assuming it was good sperm of course). Sure, then I could just continue with the acupuncture, call it quits on the ART stuff and try naturally knowing that a miracle could happen in the next few years. But I don't. And I'm not likely to find anyone in the next few weeks. And I'm not ready to just leave everything up to fate, because I have a sneaking suspicion that fate is eyeing me as the crazy cat lady.

So, if I want to keep TTC'ing with my own eggs, either I find a known donor, or I continue with IVF's or I go back to pointless and expensive IUI's with frozen sperm. I suppose I'm stubborn enough to do another IVF, but it's getting kind of embarrassing at this point. 5th IVF? Yup, sounds great! Sign me up! Why not try the same thing again and see if the result will be different (wait, isn't that a definition of madness?). Will my RE even continue treating me at this point? Would it be better to go to an out-of-state place, as had been my original plan if this cycle failed (but I heart my RE and he knows me now, and I keep thinking he has the best chance of putting together the protocol which will finally work).

Then there's donor eggs. I'm conflicted on so many levels about donor eggs. I've been toying again with the idea of using my bro' as a sperm donor, so at least my dad would have one genetically related grandchild. But that could just be so weird. In so so many ways. My aunt, who really doesn't see the point of donor eggs as a single woman because it's not like I have a husband whose baby I want to have asks why I would want to put myself through pregnancy under those circumstances. Uh, because to those of us that haven't experienced pregnancy, it might be kinda cool? And we'd know about the nutrition status of the pregnancy, and that we're not smoking and drinking. And we could breastfeed. She says "why not just adopt?" Well of course, there's always the fact that there's no "just" about it. And I'm limited to domestic adoption, so not only will I be worried that the birth mother was smoking and drinking during pregnancy, she could also change her mind, leaving me devastated. Not to mention that I'd be freakin' broke and emotionally very fragile by the time I got to that point, so I just don't know if I'm strong enough for that whole process.

So you see, stuck.

Doom.

Gloom.

9DPO Despair.

What if, internet? What if it didn't work?