Back to the future

Well, we got back late last night after an absolutely marvellous holiday - I'll show you some pictures later in the week and tell you more about it, but suffice to say that I have the best suntan I can remember having and we spent so much time relaxing in the sun that for the first time ever I ran out of holiday reading material. I also went for the longest I've gone in at least three years without touching a computer (unless you count the blackberry that only deals with my work e-mail - and I only checked that once a day).

This morning we finally had our review appointment with Mr No Nonsense. He said that our embryos weren't actually very good quality and it wasn't a huge surprise that they didn't take - I was a little annoyed about that, as there had been no earlier suggestion that they were anything other than good-looking little chaps. I read upside in the notes he was looking at and saw that they were both Grade 3 - if I'd known that, I might not have had such high hopes and then been let down so badly when it didn't work out.

Anyway, he said that as both my eggs and DH's sperm were pretty rubbish, he didn't think there was anything that could be done differently next time to get a better result. I asked about assisted hatching, and he said they do it quite a lot there and it wouldn't help in our case - it's not that my eggs have hard shells, but just that they're really poor quality. So that made me feel good about myself.

He said they would go along with whatever decision we made, although he did raise the issue of donor eggs. We said that given the low quality of DH's sperm, if we went down the donor route we'd probably go the whole hog and go for embryo adoption, but we weren't really ready to get into that yet.

If we do go for embryo adoption, we would have to go to a clinic abroad, but Mr No Nonsense confirmed that our current clinic could still do the scans and anything else that was needed for any part of the treatment that happened in the UK, which was reassuring.

He said it was a frustrating decision for us to make, as there's a very low chance of success, but not no hope. He put it at about 1 in 10, which is kind of what we were looking at the first time round. We said we still wanted to go ahead, so he sent us off to talk to Nurse Perfect, and as soon as AF shows up (should be the end of next week), I'm to ring her and we'll start the whole rigmarole again.

At the moment, I feel... indifferent is the best word I can think of to describe it. I was so devastated when the first round didn't work, and we've just spent a week basically nursing our mental and emotional wounds and getting ourselves back on an even keel. As I said to DH, I just can't enter into this again with the same hope that I had first time round, but if we don't have hope, what's the point in going through it all again and spending another £6,000 for the same result?

I wonder whether, now that I've got to the point where I'm able to contemplate the very real possibility that we will never be parents without instantly turning into a quivering, blubbering mess, I ought to just accept it and give up on this dream. I'm terrified of failing again and going back to where I was just a couple of weeks ago. But then, I'm also terrified of looking back in the future and regretting that I didn't give it my best shot.

I'm certainly going to approach this round differently - I'll try to be more realistic in my expectations, I'll try not to let it take over my life to the same extent, and I won't be telling as many people that we're actually going through it this time, because if I pretend to myself that it's not really happening, perhaps the reality won't hit me as badly.

So, that's me at the moment - old eggs, crappy sperm, but a great suntan.

Thanks for your visits and comments while we were away - I've read all the comments but not had time to respond or visit any of your blogs yet. I'm off to do that now...