Time to Regroup

It has been almost a week now. A couple of sleepless nights. A new plan. More on that in a future post.

A few things that I want to share and then closing this chapter and moving onto the next. First of all, we do not blame anyone for this outcome. We know in our hearts that this baby was simply not healthy enough to carry on. Yes, we are saddened, disappointed and to some extent disheartened, but we have to keep trying. And we will keep trying...not with the same clinic however.

Now, nothing magically changed in our relationship (with the clinic) with the arrival of this news. In fact, the handling of the miscarriage was a mirror image of the 4 months leading up to this event. After several days of thinking, one thing is clear - when you want something from a relationship, you focus on the positive - halo effect of sorts. You recognize the challenges, but you choose to focus on the positive. That is my best characterization. In this relationship, the communication was poor - at times non-existent. It drove me (particularly me more than Steve) crazy! I have written about this more times than I can count. The workload of the small team in this clinic is immense and I am amazed they manage to deliver the service they do today.

If we had carried this baby to term, we would have still said the communication was horrible, but we would have been much more forgiving. I do see attempts to improve. For example, when you email the clinic today, you will receive an auto responder that advises a 48 hour response and direction if you do not receive a response in that time frame. Yes, this is an improvement. I hope continued progress is made. With so many successes to date, they know what they are doing when it comes to assisted reproductive medicine. There is no denying that. If the service component were improved, the total package would be incredible.

So, in closing, we find that moving forward with this particular clinic is both cost prohibitive (2/3 of the surrogacy fees are non-refundable, as per the contract, in a 1st trimester miscarriage) and emotionally prohibitive. I am just not the type that can go weeks on end with no news about my unborn child - just can't handle it. Maybe that's my issue, so I'll 'own' that one. There's no easy way to write this last part and not sound bitter, but it needs to be written - we did not receive one update from the clinic between the 7 week scan and the notification of the miscarriage (5 weeks exactly) and the news of the miscarriage...how did we learn of this loss?

In an email.

Chapter closed.