Choices

So I had to visit with my primary care doctor today to have bloodwork re-done. Apparently the FDA requires people using ART have a certain set of tests EVERY 2 YEARS. The doctor determined that my bloodwork expired sometime at the beginning of the summer. Yep, we have been trying to get pregnant with IVF so long that it is officially time to have the same tests repeated. I was feeling a touch irritated about that until I met a lovely nurse at the doctor's office.

She is a tall pretty blond who is fit and intelligent. She was looking over my chart and began asking lots of questions about infertility and IVF. Turns out that she is 25 years old, married and does not ovulate. She has done some testing but is clearly under-informed. She took Clomid for a year. Now she and her husband plan to try naturally and pray. She said that if she has not gotten pregnant by the time she is 30, she'll try IVF. She thinks that she and her husband will have saved enough money by then. My heart is breaking. That young woman wants a family so badly and she feels that she has no real options to get a baby for 5 years.

So while I am generally quite happy with my life, I had one more reminder that I am lucky. I have found my soul mate and I never have a single day when I do not feel loved. (Occasionally I feel incredibly annoyed or angry at my soulmate but I know those feelings will pass.) I have a job I am good at (though occasionally I question whether I want to do it). And through some incredible luck or timing or whatever, we have been able to do IVF 3x and now a donor egg cycle. So no, I don't have a baby yet. But yes, I still have many things to be thankful about in my life. In the end, I think it all comes down to options. When I look at the options in my life, I feel that there have been enough thus far and I feel grateful to have come so far. I am reminded that I have choices and that is not a small gift to be overlooked.