Yesterday, we got the bill to keep our embryosickles frozen for another year. Our clinic much prefers we move blastocysts from their freezer to a storage facility, and so ups the price each year as incentive to make the move. We have twice now decided to just pay the bill to gain some time, as we’d otherwise have to decide if we’re keeping the blastocysts in Hilly Quirky, or moving them to Canuckia, which is a significantly different endeavour.
It got us talking about timelines, and whether we thought we’d try a FET within the next calendar year. I was prosaically talking about age gaps and tenure timelines. Pea at one point was exclaiming “but Spud is so cute! Imagine if there were two! How much cuteness there would be!” with a HUGE smile and, I kid you not, an unironic, unplanned kermit-arm-flail. It was possibly the most excited I’ve ever seen Pea.
It made me laugh. It made my heart burst with love for him, and his love of being a father. It made me wince, a little, because there are a lot of what-ifs with this. How long do we try on our own, assuming my cycle returns with the magical no-dairy diet? What if none of our embryosickles stick?* What if I decide I am done, for career reasons?**
I am still struggling with having brought Spud into a world where catastrophic change is likely to occur in his lifetime. Can I double down on that risk?
I am still picking up the pieces of my brain after seven months of sleep deprivation.
I am still catching up on work, and getting my research program back on track. I have an intense five years in the offing, both for what I hope to accomplish and for what is expected of me (for tenure and to renew my fancy chair, which is a higher bar than tenure).
I catch myself thinking that, next time, I’ll stay home a bit longer, because Spud is so fun right now. I catch myself thinking of what timelines make sense for daycare versus nanny if a sibling is in the mix. I catch myself refusing to mourn lasts with Spud, assuming I’ll have a do-over. I might not, but these moments make it clear to me that I’m not done yet unless I have to be.
I’m also not ready to start this game again. I want more time with my current baby. I want more time with my fledgling lab and research program. I want more time at this current level of break-neck pace, before making it even busier. I want at least a few months where I can eat whatever I want, without fear of damaging my son’s intestines or my reproductive chances. I am not ready for daily needles for months and months, which I would face with a natural or assisted pregnancy because of the clotting disorder.
That said, FETs next summer would make a 2.5 year age difference, so it’s not a crazy idea as ideas go. It just makes me feel breathless.
* Thus far, we have transferred embryos four times (six embryos total). I have been pregnant three times from those transfers, if only briefly twice. This is either (a) a reassuring mathematical trend or (b) all of my implantation luck up front.
** There is a quiet unwritten rule in academia that it’s totally ok and encouraged and wonderful and lovely for a female prof to get pregnant and have a baby. Once. It’s arguably progress that once is now the “correct” way to do things (another post unto itself), but more than once has entirely different optics. I’m not going to make life choices around optics, and I have great support for leave and delaying tenure, and my lab would be in better shape later on. It is whether or not I want to permanently change the amount of focus I give my research again. Probably, but I do need to think it through and not just get caught up in muppet-style enthusiasm.
labmonkey2 
SO many variables, and the extra shitty thing about infertility is you don’t always get to be the one making the decisions in that you can decide what you want but not necessarily get it.
Everyone’s situation is different. The only thing I will say is that everyone told me going from one kid to two kids was crazier in terms of how busy you get than going from zero to one (or, as I’ve read somewhere : twice the kids is more than double the work). And I went, yeah, yeah, whatever, we are amazingly organized and it will be fine. And then we had two kids and I realized what everyone meant. And then we had two kids and two working parents and HOLY FUCK HOW ARE WE STILL STANDING?!
It really is an enormous change. And while I am all for more babies, especially cousins, I think it is worth keeping this in mind, given how important your work is to you. It is also worth keeping in mind (which I have also read in many places and can see the truth of it) that older kids need more time from their parents, not less. It is a different kind of need from the baby to preschool years, but it is there, especially with teens. So it is not likely to be the case that the research goes on the back burner until they are both in school and then it is full speed ahead. I think you are wise to be thinking of it in terms of every child representing a permanent change in how you view your research and its priority level.
“you can decide what you want but not necessarily get it” – this, this, a thousand times this. I’m also not ready to gird myself for possible failure to get what I want. I have all that I want at the moment, for the first time in a long long time, and I’m happy for it.
I’ve heard “little babies, little problems” from a “things get harder for parents’ relationships” perspective, but also from a general parenting level too. More time later is good to keep in mind.
But you should’ve seen Pea. Frigging beaming. I really only pushed to have a baby for him and he’s been over the moon about Spud. I am besotted as well, but the grinding fight against infertility was for Pea, I’d have given up pre-IVF.
Now I won
Wonder (!) if we have the same clinic, or if this simply is a common pricing model. Just paid again as I still haven’t quite succeeded in getting through all the paperwork and logistics of shipping them here.
But very glad that I live in a place where having several kids is perfectly fine, regardless of one’s job. (Whether that’s in the cards for me is a different question…)
Oh interesting! I was with UCSF, in San Fran. You?
It might be a common model, especially if they are incentivized by the storage companies. Shipping them scares me, AND my clinic strongly prefers I come to them versus the embryos come to me… so I am planning on going back to Hilly Quirky for a combo of work/networking and a transfer at some point, with Pea who can work at the Golden Company office there for the time, and with a grandparent or nanny in tow to take care of Spud. $$$ but also we love that area of the world, so an excuse to go back would be welcome.
Same! But without the working there option, mostly, and a much longer flight. I’ve attempted two in-transit-transfers, but both were cancelled… hope you have better luck!
Oof, yes, I hope we both have better luck! I would have the monitoring done locally, and just pop down there for the transfer, so hopefully if there was something odd, it would flag a week beforehand. Not that that does a lot when one has booked flights, but the change fee is smaller than the cost of going twice!