Thoughts and Pros & Cons of Adoption

Last Friday, the RE gave Jay a prescription for Prednisone. Today he was finally able to get this prescription filled and will start taking them tonight. I've heard varying stories as to the success of prednisone. Some say that it helped and they got pregnant after taking it. Some say it helped temporarily by reducing the swelling and some sperm were able to get through. Then some say that it didn't help at all because they had already scarred over. Because of this all being a huge gamble one way or another, Jay and I have differing opinions on what we feel we should do. He would like to wait to see if the meds work and I want to go ahead with IVF. Again, affording IVF is a concern and right now I'm not sure we can afford it with out financing.

Adoption is also one of our options that we've been discussing. There for a short while, it was on the top of our list. I did research on all of our options and the more appealing one became, the deeper my research would become on that subject.

Pros for Adoption

• Give someone a better life by opening up our family to them
• If we adopt through foster care, it's cheaper and less risky of losing our paid fees.
• No stressful and expensive medical procedures
• Choice of race, age, sex of child we're adopting

Cons for Adoption

• No pregnancy, no birth experienced together
• Potential unknown health or behavioral issues
• Very expensive if seeking infant adoption or overseas adoption
• Strenuous process - home studies, lots of paperwork and interviews
• Risk of child not bonding with us

Jay was completely on board for moving directly to adoption. I was more skeptical. The cost is very comparable to a round of IVF w/ICSI and the process could take months if not years to complete depending on our requirements for our potential child. State adoptions are typically cheaper while adoption agencies charge upwards of $20,000 per placement. With state adoptions, the children are typically older and a lot of them have siblings trying to be placed with them. With agency adoptions, there are more options of age, sex and race. I don't feel as though race is a huge priority of ours. I feel as though if adoption is the route we take, when we meet that child that is OUR child, it won't matter what their race is.

I'd say this is probably still an option in the running but I keep moving it up and down on our list. 

As of right now, I am fearful of the age gap between our next child and our current children. If we were to get pregnant now, there will be almost a 5 year gap between Eli and the baby and a 7 year gap between Jayson and the baby. If we adopt, we could be looking at a process that takes months to complete, but we could adopt a child close to our children's age. To set myself at easy about having a baby, I decided that I'd try for two babies so they'd be close in age together, but if we go with IVF that will be harder to do since it's so expensive. If we adopt we could try to adopt a set of siblings close to our boys' age. If we decide to do the reversal, it'll put us on hold for a little while before being able to have the surgery but the possibility of multiple children of our own conceived naturally is back on the table. I suppose I should do a bigger scale pros and cons list with all possible options so we can see what's more likely suitable for us.

I'm still leaning more towards IVF for now because I feel like it has better chances of working out for us and sooner. If you'd like to donate to help us either afford IVF or a reversal re-do, please click the link above or to the right of the blog. 

Thanks! 

Until next time,

Vasectomy Re-Do Pros and Cons

Another one of our options after Jay has scarred over, is to have another vasectomy reversal done. With his original reversal being a failure, I do not believe we would go through the military again. We called the International Center for Vasectomy Reversals to get an idea of how much we would have to pay for a re-do and before any discounts, their average charge is $9,800. Which is about $3,700 more than doing IVF but it gives us unlimited tries to get pregnant IF it works. None of these options are guarantees.

Pros for re-doing surgery

• One time fee for the surgery (unlike IVF which is paid every time we attempt to get pregnant)
• Unlimited tries at getting pregnant (if it is a successful surgery)
• Can possibly conceive naturally
• Less likely to need IVF
• If pregnancy is accomplished, we experience pregnancy and birth together.

Cons for re-doing surgery

• More expensive than one round of IVF ($9,800 before military discount for Surgery vs. $6100 w/ discount for IVF w/ ICSI)
• Jay has to go through surgery and recovery all over again
• We will have to wait until Jay is done with school in order to have surgery which means we can't do it until March
• Risk of failure - No guarantee.

Like I said, we're leaning more towards IVF w/ICSI but I wanted to write out the different pros and cons so that we (and all of you) could see what are the pros and cons to each option.

Jay if there are any pros or cons that you would like to add, please do so but in a different color so we can differentiate between my pros and cons and yours.

I encourage everyone to add comments of pros and cons that they may have thought of that we haven't. All suggestions are welcome but please know that it might not be a priority for us and might not change our minds. 

Until tomorrow!