[squirrellypoo]

Hi Ayleen.

Yes, I understand now, thanks!

Neil is right, though, the chances of a natural conception after the chemo and radiation involved in a BMT are very low (maybe even zero?). When my doctors told me that I needed a transplant, they also asked if I ever wanted to have children, and then immediately started the process for me to go through IVF to freeze embryos. In the UK, if you do not already have children and your fertility is threatened like mine was, the first IVF cycle and freezing storage for 5 years are completely free. Since time was very important with my failing health, everyone moved very quickly and the entire process took about 5 weeks, from the first injection to the egg harvest at the end. Since this was done in conjunction with my donor search, my transplant was not delayed at all by the IVF stuff.

I'm really glad we had to option to freeze embryos, too, because now that I'm ~20 months post-transplant, my hormones are still very very wrong. As expected, I am in early menopause without the medication I'm taking, so I can't imagine I'd be able to conceive naturally anymore. And I even had a "mini transplant" with no radiation, too.

There's only about a 20% chance of a live birth for each frozen embryo (the chances are much, much lower for frozen eggs), but I feel that that's still much higher odds of having children than if we'd not done it. Only time will tell if we're lucky enough with our 7 "popsicle babies".