Thanks Inshock for taking the time to come and tell us your positive story. Huge congratulations on your DD. Did you have any fertility treatment when you were actively TTC? I love that you now feel all powerful and that a sibling may be possible, though I am impressed you have time to read conception boards with a 4 month old baby to attend to!
Annie thanks for the positivity. I have been a bit of a VC stalker too and like you I was surprised she had managed to get as far as giving birth without there being anything about her in the Daily Mail sidebar of shame; after all David Mitchell is practically a national treasure even if she is less well known. Or maybe I overestimate the media's interest in Radio 4 panellists :-) I am doubly encouraged by her as I know that she likes a drink and was also a fairly heavy smoker (not that I am congratulating her for smoking but the point being that to see an older woman have a child when her lifestyle was not exactly exemplary is reassuring.) I wouldn't be surprised if they had had IVF though.
Daisy, fingers crossed for you. Presumably you're going to a doc in HK for the tests but it's the clinic in Cyprus that is telling you there may still be hope? I read a lot about HCG when I had my chemical in April and there is a really wide range of possibilities, it's the doubling that is important and you would still be at a very very early stage. That said, I fully understand why you are not that optimistic so am glad that you are already looking ahead to giving it another go. I must say that (despite having 2 friends for whom it worked first time) everything I read on message boards and forums suggests that women who have IVF seem to have to go through numerous cycles before it works. A poster on an IVF thread here did it 11 times and a colleague of my DH 9 times! I'm afraid I would not have the endurance for that. It's so bloody boring for a start.
HS you asked about donor eggs. I have thought about that, though am trying not to think too deeply about it until I know my own are useless. But my god awful follicle count has got me thinking a bit further down that road again. I haven't looked into it properly but I have a sneaking suspicion we are too old for adoption and in any event adoption is realistically more likely to be older children and we both know we would not be prepared to take on an older child.
So DE is probably the only way we could have a child if IVF fails. But would it would seem odd that it was genetically DH's but not mine?
I think I'd be fine with that - there's no doubt that a DE baby would grow up with a lot of me in him/her if I raised him/her, and I think (I'm afraid) I'd find it easier to love a child which was part DH, and which I had carried, than an adopted child. Also, frankly, my family have a history of dying young so there is actually a positive benefit to not passing on my genetic heritage. So all in all I think I'd try to convince DH and if he wanted to then I think we'd go for it.
However I have a feeling that DH would find it harder to come to terms with. If ultimately he felt that no children was better than a DE child then I think I'd respect that as I have never been someone who has wanted children at the expense of my relationship. I'd just have to trust that he'd not get broody later and run off with a younger, fertile woman.
My brother and sister in law have exactly this dilemma. She is 38 but has premature ovarian failure so is in a worse position than me; docs have told her that IVF is not even worth trying. My brother told me he doesn't want to use DE. He seems to think that SIL feels the same but I am not so sure that is where it ends, since previously they were on the same page about not wanting kids at all but she changed her mind. Ultimately he'll do what makes her happy. In a selfish way I'd like them to do it so that I can see what a baby with my family genes looks like.
How do you others on this thread feel about it?