The Path to Baby #4: Pt. 4

I was so upset. We said we were only going to do it once and if it worked, great. If it didn't, it wasn't meant to be. We really didn't factor in emotions. Suddenly, I felt desperate again. I didn't know how much I wanted another baby until I saw it slip away. The door was closing and the whole, "at least we tried," meant nothing. I was grieving that baby I had imagined in my head. I already loved him/her and already made a place in our family. Now, they were telling me he/she wasn't coming. Poor Leo. If he knew me as well as I thought he did, he probably saw it coming. If he really believed I could only do it once and if it failed, I'd walk away, then he didn't know me very well. Then again, I thought I could walk away so who would blame him for not knowing. The issue of money came into play and if you ask me how we came up with the money, I have no idea. We just did. That's what being desperate does. Blinds you to all things practical. When I think about it, it had to have made him sick to spend that money on a chance. That was it...just a chance to get pregnant.

We saw the doctor and we heard about the chances with my age and how when you take a cell from something that only has 7 or 8 cells, it makes it that much harder and my body's response to the meds wasn't great and blah, blah, blah... Could we do another cycle or not? He was going to be more aggressive and yes we could do another cycle. We were set to start in the beginning of June once I got the signal that it was time to begin.

Tommy was having sinus surgery for the first time and our CF doctor at the time talked us into him having a broncoscopy at the same time. We really didn't want him to have it done because he was healthy besides the sinus issues. He didn't even cough so we didn't think it was a good idea to mess with that. The doctor was adamant about doing it too see how much lung involvement he had and we trusted him so we okayed it. Another time when we should have listened to our gut and not the doctor. The doctor came out of the surgery and said, "His lungs look great! Not at all like a kid that has CF. We had to really dig to get a sample." Yeah, well...he dug so much that Tommy's lung collapsed. We, of course, didn't know this when we took him home. He woke up gasping for breath. Literally gasping for breath and in so much pain, he couldn't speak. I rushed him back to the hospital (of course, it wasn't the one across the street but the one 20 minutes away). Leo didn't even want him to go back so calling an ambulance was out of the question but that is how bad I felt it was. He ended up being admitted needing treatments around the clock. We brought them a child that needed a treatment once a day and they gave us back one that needed them every 3 hours. We were livid. It was then that we switched doctors (even though it took us 6 months to finally do it). Why am I sharing this story now? It was in the midst of all of that chaos that I got the signal that it was time to start the IVF cycle.