The good and the bad...

So Brian and I went in today for our day 12 ultrasound, and received some mixed news.

The good:

--The appointment was with OUR doctor, not the beasty woman doctor who I had last time...she was horrid!
--He wasn't concerned about the possible endometriosis the other doctor thought she saw. He said it was likely a cyst on my left ovary, but because that ovary was clearly producing eggs, he didn't see any reason to worry or think about anything more invasive, like surgery, yet.
--The Clomid is working great, even on the lowest dose...maybe even too great. I had 4 good eggs this time plus 1 so-so, and my uterine lining was thicker than last time (apparently it was a bit too thin last time, but the other doctor failed to tell me). Because there were 4 good quality eggs, he said our risk of having 3 or more babies is about 3%, which is low, but if we were worried, next time I could take a 1/2 dose. Yeah right, aside from medical complications, I'd be on cloud 9 if I had 3 babies!
--Because everything seems to be in order, we don't need to do any more day 12 ultrasounds unless we decide to do IVF/ICSI. Yay! That's a $200 savings each time!

The bad:
--Brian's sperm quality is not improving...in fact, it looks even worse. He put our odds of pregnancy at about 7% per cycle, compared with 20% for a normal couple either conceiving naturally or through IUI. While Brian tried to remind me that that it's just down 13% from normal couples, I still think: "if you told a cancer patient they had a 7% chance of living,would he or she be excited? Um, no!"
--If I don't get pregnant within the next 2 cycles, our doctor wants us to pick between either a mix of Brian's sperm with donor sperm, or IVF with ICSI. What an agonizing decision! On one hand, using donor sperm makes it likely that the baby wouldn't be Brian's, which is really hard for him, and the odds would be 20% at best. But it's also much cheaper than IVF. On the other hand, with IVF/ISCI, the odds are 60% and we'd use Brian's sperm, but it's $12,000. And our insurance covers zilch.
--If we have to go with 1 of those 2 options, we have to decide relatively quickly, since both of them take about 6 weeks from decision to procedure. Oh, and either way we have to pay for lots more tests and crap like that.
--If I don't get pregnant within the next 2 cycles, our doctor says he might then be concerned about egg quality...which means we'd have to do laparascopic surgery to see if taking care of the endometriosis improves their quality. But at least for now, especially since my right ovary looks good, he thinks my egg quality is probably fine.

So, anyway, I know this is probably much more information than anyone wanted. But in a way it's therapeutic for me to organize my thoughts like this. I think that for the first time today, when I saw how difficult this news was for Brian, I realized that I've been kind of selfish throughout this whole infertility thing. For the most part, I've only thought about how this makes ME feel, how much I want a baby, how hard this is for ME, how sick I am of waiting, etc. While we're both facing the possibility that we might never have children, Brian's facing an increasing likelihood that if we do have children, he won't be biologically involved. We've talked a lot about how many adoptive couples we know have said that they worried about this too, and in the end it really doesn't matter because the baby is yours and you love him/her so much, regardless of biology. But I still think there's something innately difficult about facing the fact that your body isn't capable of doing what it was meant to do. I've made a big deal about any potentially negative results or information I've gotten about my own body, when in reality things with me are mostly okay. With Brian, it seems that he just gets one piece of bad news after the other. I really need to work on being less selfish and more sensitive to his feelings. And as for whether to use donor sperm, of course we'll pray about it and I'll offer advice, but ultimately I want the decision to be his. I want and need him to feel good about whatever choice we make (and obviously me too).

Anyway, hopefully something will work out for us before we have to face all these difficult decisions. Either way, we're off tomorrow morning to Jackson Hole with my fam to get away. Happy early weekend to everyone!

P.S. I decided to go to the shower, but if I find myself feeling overwhelmed, I'm leaving early. :)