Preparations..

Thank you all, everybody who responded to my last post, especially the final comment on surrogacy.

I've been a terrible blogger, so much so that I have not even been reading all the blogs on my list. As far as life goes, I feel like I'm on a treadmill I can't get off, I'm running, but am making little progress.

To catch you up on the TTC journey, a bullet list may be best

• If we can, we will go with CGH microarray for all generated embryos. Our only viable candidate for testing looks like it may be Bluegnome, based out of England, that offers this test for aneuploidy testing.  Bluegnome has developed the technology and is trying to distribute and train labs all over the world to use it. Here, there is the question to be pondered : I can try to ship frozen biopsy cells to England, or to somebody who now offers this test in India, an embryologist in Delhi.  Obviously, it would be far easier and cheaper to send the cells to Delhi, as opposed to shipping to England. But, I'd feel more secure if somebody who had done this test a gzillion times before does it. But then, this technology has been designed in such a way that using it, and obtaining interpretable results is easy. The scientist in Delhi has gone and trained at the Bluegnome facility in England.  Bluegnome's Indian partner offered me both options, but strongly pushed the Delhi choice. I have not decided what to do yet- right now, as long as I can test the embryos, I will rest relatively easy.
• I met with my doctor and got the details of the IVF protocol which will be used in my case- 3 days of suppression, using Lupron (a GnRH agonist), CD1-CD3,  followed by starting menagon (which is a mix of FSH and LH), on  CD3-9 (I think it ends on day 9). This was a very pleasantly short protocol, and I hope it works for me.
• I met with the lawyer to take the first first step of the surrogacy process. I want to recruit 2 surrogates, with a single embryo transfer per surrogate. Since I will be freezing the embryos down, this should be logistically simpler. I'm totally ok with ending up with 2 kids, as long as they did not undergo the risks that come with a twin pregnancy. I'm getting 2, because I fully anticipate that atleast 1, or both of them will fail, and I just want to move this process fast.
• I started metformin.I'm entirely unsure if I need it, but right now I'm going to go with the empirical method. I'm been on it for around 4 days now,  at a 1000 mg for the past 2 days. Apart from a slight headaches (god help me if I skip or even delay any meals) and the mildest of heartburn, no side effects at this dose. Interestingly, I've been having issues with acne (mostly on the body, rarely on the face), but both seem to be subsiding after I started it. I'm  contemplating going up to 1500, but the headaches are off putting.
• I've also finally started a high dose (5 mg) of folic acid. Since my homocysteine,which needs to be cleared either by folate or vitamin B12 had been low(and still was), I had never considered that therein lay a possible issue, but it may well have been, since I have one copy the C677T mutation. Note: The reason my homocysteine was not high may be attributable to my extremely high vitamin B1-2 levels. Everybody is worried about high folic acid supplementation masking a B-12 deficiency, I wonder if I had the reverse issue.
•  I have to get the swimmers shipped. While I still want to try with the donor I've used in the last tries, I'm wondering whether I should ship another donor, as backup if need be. But its so very hard for me to actually decide on another donor, lets hope I can find somebody else I feel comfortable with.  Also, lets face it, at this point, its all a game of russian roulette. My donor has been excellent at getting me pregnant, and seems to be very, very good with hordes of other women, none of whom have had issues with pregnancy loss. A new donor would be a completely unknown entity.

So much is being done, such drastic measures are being taken and yet, when I think of my chances for actually succeeding in all this, I have to be honest, I've lost all faith that anything will work. I think that is because I still can't understand why things have failed, over and over. How can they have failed? Will this trend ever reverse?

Is it my biology? Is the issue in my eggs, manifesting in a high rate of aneuploidy?I've got a big, speculation-filled post brewing in my head about the many roads that can lead to an increased rate of aneuploidy, which appears to be a prevalent cause of pregnancy loss. Good, if complicated paper on the subject, I'm still trying to fully understand it. Post coming up if I succeed.

It also comes down to faith. Does the universe not want me to succeed right now, not because it wants to punish me, but because it has an alternate plan for me? I honestly don't know anything anymore. 

I want to do IVF the next cycle- since I'm CD2, that is approximately 30 days away.  Exciting, yet terrifying times!