A chink of light

DH made it home yesterday afternoon, and yesterday morning I actually managed to get a little bit of Christmas spirit as I did a bit of shopping for our snowed-in Christmas.

I got little things to go in DH's stocking, a couple of presents for his family and a few bits and pieces for the celebration we're going to have with my family at new year. I considered getting some turkey breast or something for tomorrow, as there's no point in having a whole turkey just for the two of us, but ended up settling for a hunter's pie - something completely different from usual Christmas fayre, but also a little bit special.

It rained quite heavily last night, but the snow didn't melt, so we now have a thick layer of ice on top of the snow. I've only seen one car trying to move so far this morning, and substantial amounts of digging were needed - twice - before it was able to get going. Our car is definitely not going anywhere today, so we'll definitely be waking up in our own bed tomorrow morning.

We talked last night about our next steps. He really isn't interested in adoption, so we've discounted that for now, although I have asked him to keep it in the back of his mind as something that we'll at least discuss again if all else fails. Given how selective his hearing has been about everything else in this process, I'm not sure that he will...

He obviously hasn't taken in a word I've said about embryo donation/adoption. The first thing he said about it was that it would be a shame that any baby we had wouldn't be genetically mine, but at least we'd be using his sperm.

I thought we'd talked about the fact that, as his sperm are as crappy as my eggs (if not crappier), if we went down the donor route we'd go the whole hog. I also thought we'd talked about the fact that embryo adoption is much more acceptable to the Church than egg or sperm donation alone. And I thought he knew the difference between an egg and an embryo.

Once he finally understood that we were talking about embryo donation and not egg donation, he said that, while it's not what he really wanted (as if either of us ever wanted any of this business), he's willing to give it a try.

He agrees that there's no point in trying again with our own eggs and sperm if there isn't a realistic chance of success. We'll go for our appointment in January with Mr No Nonsense, and I'll ask him what he thinks our chances are and whether there's any chance of improving them. If he just offers us exactly the same protocol again, we won't do it.

We also won't consider changing clinics in the UK. We both agreed that this business is stressful enough without having the added difficulty of juggling daily appointments at a clinic that's a lot further from home with work and other commitments. Many people do it, and I admire them for it, but it's not for us - not now that we know how low our chances of success are.

But even before we have that appointment, he's agreed that I can contact the clinic we would go to for embryo donation and make initial enquiries.

So we have a new plan, and we have a little bit of hope again. We're both sad that we almost certainly won't be having a child that's genetically related to us, but our dream of parenting a child isn't completely over yet.