Ramblings......

So I have been doing ALOT of thinking since my last entry. Really where do we go from here?

I can honestly FINALLY say that I am "okay" if I never get to be pregnant again. It's taken me almost three years to get here. I am to the point now I just want another child. I don't really care how I get said child.

Allen and I have seriously talked about foster to adopt. While I think this is the most financially sound way to "have" another child, it's not the most emotionally safe way for obvious reasons. I actually got up the guts to call the foster care liason here in Ocala. We talked for a while and I ended up telling our situation. She said that reunification between foster children and their bio parents is about 50/50 depending on the situation. She explained that before we agreed to foster a child we would be given their ENTIRE background, reason for being "in the system" and how long they think the child will need to be in care. She also said that sometimes the parental rights are already terminated when the child is placed in foster care. We would be allowed to specify the age range we want to foster which would be birth to two years.

My reservations are of course the risk of the child being taken back. I keep trying to tell myself that I could handle it but I just don't know. I never thought I would be able to raise a disabled child either and I am doing it. I think knowing the situation that the child is in would be a small help in our decision of what child we could foster. Obviously we would only want to foster a child that had a small chance of reunification. This wouldnt guarantee anything but it would give us a small shred of security maybe?

We still plan on applying for the IVF grant and re-appealing with our insurance company. I just need to know that I tried everything. I think that will give me some sort of peace in all this.

As much as I hate to rant on this I am going too anyway......it's my blog so I can do that ;-)

I will never understand why it is that some people in AWFUL situations are able to just become pregnant without a second thought. Then they have healthy babies and don't really care for or want the child. Then there are people like me who would give their right arm for a healthy child and in order for me to have one I either have to get a $20K loan and pay for one or go through some pretty rough medical treatments that may or may not work.

I am not alone either. I know a few other women with the same type of genetic translocation as me. One of which had a son that was "unbalanced". God bless his soul, he lived 3 months and his body shut down, he passed away in his parents arms. They suffered a miscarriage after that and now a new pregnancy has ALSO turned out to be an unhealthy one. Another woman in our "group" lost one child and is now pregnant with another. On ultrasound this baby looks GREAT but the bloodwork reveals the baby is "unbalanced". What horrible decisions these women face and I don't know how you get through things like that.....other than you just have no other choice but to face it and move on. What else can you do? Lay down and die? It's just not an option. So much like me they make decisions that NO PARENT should ever have to make for the sake of their child. It's sad, it's not right and most times the choices they are given are both heartbreaking and WIDELY judged by so many people. I remember the nieve days when I would look down on people in similar situations if they made a decision I may not have agreed with. I am thankful that I have learned not to judge someone unless I have walked a mile or so in their shoes. I now see that not everything is black or white. There are far more gray areas than I ever imagined in life.

Denial...after Six months of waiting....

Well after six months, 20 pages of appeal information and many phone calls I finally received a denial from our insurance company. They will not pay for IVF w/donor eggs. They "reason" is that it is not in their plan and that if they do it for us then they will have to do it for everyone else. *sigh* I get that but EVERYONE else that is wanting IVF usually carries the diagnosis of infertility. Technically I AM NOT infertile. I can get pregnant. Just getting pregnant with a healthy baby is the problem. I will appeal it again but I am not expecting anything different. I just feel like I have to exhaust all my appeals to feel like I did all I could do to make it happen. I will go on to express once again the risk THEY are taking if Allen and I try getting pregnant on our own. It will be financially draining for us and the insurance company if we get pregnant and have another sick kid. We are not going to try naturally, they don't know that though.

I am feeling low about it. You would think I would have prepared myself that this was going to happen, I mean what were the chances that ANYTHING would be easy for us?

I am going to send my application to the organization that does IVF scholarships next month. That process also takes about six months. My second appeal to the insurance company will be sent at the same time.

If none of this works, we will move on to looking at adoption.