This is really hard. I know raising a child isn't all rainbows and unicorns, but shouldn't the conception part be fun? I hate that we have to think this hard and make such difficult decisions, in order to have a biological child. 

In many ways I had closed the door to biological children before my miscarriage. I had just accepted that children would come into our life through a different door. We are excited about the foster care program we are in training for. (BTW-Northern Virginia is one of the best places in the United States to do foster care). I am still following the fertility diet, doing acupuncture and debating the merits of doing a few more rounds of IUI in the Fall, so I hadn't given up all hope of bio kids, just moved my focus elsewhere. 

And then this happened and we headed back to our doctor's office. The meeting we had with him didn't settle anything or give us any answers, just lots more to ponder. He says his gut is telling him that we just have horrific luck with our fertlity, but he would like to run one test definitely and wants us to consider another. The definite test is to determine if we have "balanced translocation" issues. Here is the wiki page to explain it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosomal_translocation -- it isn't exactly clear enough for me to explain it yet. It is a simple blood draw for us and would mean that if we have this issue, we would definitely have to have a specific type of IVF in order to have a viable pregnancy. 

The second blood test is to determine if I am having clotting problems, meaning my blood isn't getting to the babies after 9-10 weeks of pregnancy. While this could have been the cause for the first miscarriage, this last one happened too early for it to be a factor. It is almost a guarantee that pregnancies lost this early are due to chromosomal deficiencies. The problem with the clotting test is that it grades on a pass/fail basis. So I could "fail" the test, but only by a small margin, and we will never know if the clotting issue would ever be bad enough to definitely cause a problem in my pregnancy. The only way to determine if the clotting issue is definitely a problem would be if I continued to lose pregnancies late in my first trimester (which sounds like HELL to me). If I failed the test, I would have to be treated for it throughout my pregnancy-- which means daily shots of heparin, a blood thinner. 

Do I want to subject myself to this treatment, if it isn't definitely a problem? On the other hand, if it is a problem and I do not have the test and treatment, any other pregnancy I had would end in miscarriage. The thought of going through this again makes me crazy with grief. I hate that the cost factor is also part of the equation, it might not be covered by my insurance and would cost $2000+.

Infertility medicine is still such a new field, diagnoses and treatments are being made on a weekly basis and there are hardly any definite answers. Everything I deal with is a "gray area",  for once in my life I would like some positive black and white.