Pregnancy Thread

So my wife just informed me today that she is pregnant. To most people this would be a big deal, but to us it's like a miracle. Reason being, my wife had 2 kids 9 years ago, and then had her tubes tied. We never had the money for IVF, so we really had no other options. Apparently these things can fail though, and for us that is a good thing. I have 2 stepdaughters, but always wanted one of my own, this will be my first biological child. I am so excited, but at the same time I am soooo terrified that something will happen and she will miscarry or something. She had a few miscarriages before she had her 2 daughters she has now. Now it's just a waiting game I guess, we go to see the doctor next week.

Hate to say it, but yeah, that's why couples usually won't tell anyone until the 3 month mark. My wife miscarried a year and a half before she was pregnant with our son.

OneofOne_sl said:

Hate to say it, but yeah, that's why couples usually won't tell anyone until the 3 month mark. My wife miscarried a year and a half before she was pregnant with our son.

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Yeah we are keeping it on the downlow for now. Other than posting here, that's just cuz I don't really care here lol.

Id stay with the professional knife thrower story whos re entering circus business cause of bad economy in general and still looking for practice partners.

I'm sticking to the "shovel and forest" variant.

What do you do if you are presented with a situation in which you did not know that you had a child and out of the blue they show up and say hi?

Do what Masuka did in Dexter.

Eyashusa_sl said:

Do what Masuka did in Dexter.

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Give her a job at the lab? I don't work in a lab.

Eyashusa_sl said:

Do what Masuka did in Dexter.

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Go to the topless bar that she works at and stare at her tits?

joeboo_sl said:

Go to the topless bar that she works at and stare at her tits?

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bingo

I don't remember that part of Dexter but I wouldn't have a problem if she wanted to be a stripper as long as she worked as hard at studying.

Wife and I are moving forward with IVF, starting hopefully next week. About a $20k out-of-pocket price tag when all is said and done. If it doesn't work the first month it is about another $4k per month after that (assuming there are embryos left over).

Now we have to decide whether to transfer 1 or 2 embryos at a time. 1 embryo gives us about a 50% chance of a successful pregnancy with a less than 1% chance of twins. 2 embryos increases our chances for a successful pregnancy to 70% but with a 30% chance of getting twins. They won't/don't transfer more than 2 at a time for a young healthy couple like us because of the health risks to the mother associated with having multiples (nor do we have any desire to be the next Jon & Kate).

I hope this shit works, dealing with infertility has already been so emotionally frustrating (especially for my wife). I can't imagine the toll it will take if we drop that huge chunk of change and still have issues.

We did talk about adoption, and it can also end up being that expensive (although not always).



It really came down to being wary of the process and me thinking I have superior genetics that need to be passed on I know that there are plenty of positive adoption stories out there, but both of us have had experiences in our lives with friends/family who through no fault of their own ended up with adopted children who have "issues" for lack of a better term. It's not that we are against adoption but just decide we would rather exhaust options in trying to have our own children first so we have control over what happens to that child from conception on.

Adoption can be very expensive depending on what you want. International is going to be exponentially more expensive than domestic. Doing Foster Care -> Adoption is going to be the cheapest if money is an issue. Also adopting older kids is easier because everyone wants a baby.

A lot of agencies that work with birth parents will "market" you to prospective mothers and that costs money too.

I had friends who wanted to adopt a healthy white baby (aka impossible) and didn't want any other race. They paid through the nose for marketing and shit. Then they ended up connected to some girl through their church and adopted her son and guess what... the kid is black.

Yeah, here is another chart showing some average costs broken down by route. We would definitely want a newborn, but I don't think race would be much of an issue for us. Outside of going the foster-care route (which has its own non-financial hurdles and risks) the cost is pretty much the same as IVF. Not shown on the chart is that fact that 35% of attempted adoptions don't go through and the average costs for the "false starts" are around $5,000. So basically we have the same 'success' chance as IVF.



You see the chart mentions an adoption tax credit, yes we would get some money back to offset that cost, but not a lot because theydid not make the tax credit refundablewhen they made is permanent this year (which is ass-backwards to me, but whatever). We can also write off any expenses for IVF that exceed 10% of our AGI this year, so that makes it all kind of a wash.

I work with this guy and he and his wife couldn't get pregnant. So they did that type of adoption where the woman is still pregnant and they can be involved throughout the pregnancy and take the baby home when he/she is newborn. They did this with both of their kids. It makes it hard to remember that they didn't "make the baby' themselves.
SO last time I was pregnant, he's talking to me and saying that his wife wants to have another baby blah blah. And they're close to 40 so he feels like they're too old to start over (their kids are like 7 and 11).
SO I start going on and on about getting pregnant and how being older increases your chances of having twins (I was prego w/twins at the time). And how as women, we only have a small window to have kids so do it now if you really want to blah blah. And he's just nodding and whatever.
Then after he walks away, IT HITS ME LIKE A TON OF BRICKS that she can't get pregnant and they adopt.
I felt like a total douche. Why did he let me ramble on about her getting pregnant? We have history. He could have just said "Well we would be adopting".
I have also heard people gushing over how much his kids look like him and he just chuckles or says thanks.
Is it a sensitive subject to tell people you adopt?? Guess it is for some people...