What next?

I've been trying to raise the subject of what family building, if any, we do next.

I'd quite like to provide the Boy with a sibling. I think we've got a good chance of treatment working again.

However, I thought that last time. And I don't think I've got it in me to do another five cycles over two years.

I'd also be a bit more cautious about the number of embryos transferred, and with one at a time you have less chance of a sticky embie than two.

Another baby would be lovely, it's just weighing up the cost, the pain, and the chance of having to do repeat cycles. Given the odds, I think we'd be have to be prepared to do at least two.

I also wouldn't rule out adopting. I think if we'd tried to adopt before we would have been told to wait until we were properly over the IVF failures and losses.

The main fear I have with adoption is that we could be setting the Boy up to have a sibling who never comes to terms with the loss of his birth family, no matter how hard we try to make him or her feel welcome. And/or, if it was an adoption with some form of contact, that it would be potentially allowing people into the Boy's life, even on a peripheral basis, that we wouldn't particularly want him having any sort of contact with. Closed adoptions with very young children are rare.

I would try and talk this over with my husband, but I think he just thinks it's too soon after everything else - although, I'd rather know what we're aiming for.

Overall, though, I'm in a much happier place about thinking about #2 then I was when going through IVF #5. By the end of treatment I'd conditioned myself not to get my hopes up to the point I had trouble accepting I was actually pregnant. I also think I kept up treatment out of sheer bloodymindedness; it partly became about beating IF, as if IF is some sort of dragon that shrinks every time an infertile gets pregnant.

Another one would be nice. But I count my blessings already.