This year might be a turning point for me, both from a family and a work perspective. In terms of work, it’s time for a new job, and that means increasing my days of work to four days a week instead of three so that I am at least marginally competitive in the labour market. Hopefully I’ll find a job closer to home too, which would make a huge difference to my working week: it currently takes me 45 or 50 minutes to get home and I’d prefer that that was closer to 15 or 20. In the short term Heidi has said she’ll drop her shift at the gym’s crèche where she works on Tuesdays to look after the girls so that I could work the extra day, and in a few months the girls will be going to the German immersion playschool two days a week, so Heidi’s extra day won’t be needed.
All that’s required is to get a new job. My criteria:
1. That it’s worthwhile work that improves people’s lives;
2. Ideally, that it’s closer to home (I know it’s shallow but this would take priority over criterion 1);
3. That they agree to me doing the work four days a week; and
4. At least unless I get really desperate, it should be at the same level of seniority.
Apart from that, I don’t care what the work is. I’ll have to take my colleagues as I find them. And I’m prepared to learn some very different subject matter and put in extra hours at home while I do so.
In the meantime, it’s approaching decision time on the family front too. We have decided we want another baby, but how much time and money do we want to put in to it? Lara and Rhea were excellent value for money in IVF terms: the first IVF cycle, the first embryo transfer and the embryo split in two so we ended up with two of them. And that was more than three years ago, before the Government’s policy changes which now cap and exclude the 80% rebate in medical fees for IVF treatment once the Medicare safety net has been reached (for good reason, I understand – it was blowing out the cost of Medicare as many gynaecologists took the opportunity to put up their fees – but still, it’s making quite a difference to our IVF costs).
This time around has not been so successful. I had three frozen embryos in storage, meaning I haven’t had to undertake the very time consuming and intrusive follicle stimulation and egg collection phases.
The first embryo was thawed a couple of months ago, and after about ten blood tests monitoring hormone levels (each test involving an early morning rise and inconvenience to get to the clinic, usually by bus and bike before work), and a couple of ultrasounds, the embryo was transferred in to me. It lasted less than two weeks.
The second embryo, after the same process of endless blood tests etc, was transferred two weeks ago. It lasted even less than the first embryo. They told me it was gone on Friday.
I wasn’t able to take the medication to increase the chance of a successful transfer the first time because I had still been breastfeeding, but although soon after that I weaned the girls off breast milk, I didn’t take it for the second transfer two weeks ago either because the first transfer had been successful, at least initially, without it. For the second transfer I also rejected the progesterone pessaries (pessaries!) that apparently help develop the lining of the uterus optimally for embryo growth. I figured that I had not been offered for either of the other two embryo transfers I had had, even though I was assured that it was standard procedure, and I could do without the extra cost (more than $130) and inconvenience of picking them up from only two pharmacy outlets that supply them in town. Now I am not sure that I made the right decisions here. We are $4,000 less well off after these two embryo transfers (and that’s after the Medicare rebate totalling $3,000) and we have only one embryo remaining. I have been thinking since Friday about what to do if that one is unsuccessful too.
It brings me back to the question of why we want another child. ‘Why would you want another one?’, some people have said when we’ve told them. It’s true we didn’t intend to have three. When our gynaecologist suggested we’d be back for more we just laughed. We only kept paying the storage fees for the frozen embryos because we couldn’t decide what else to do with them. And for the first year and a half there was no thought of having any more children. But somehow it feels to me like the girls are a bit like ‘only’ children. I’m sure I wouldn’t feel that way if they weren’t twins. They don’t have the distance and resulting different dynamics that normal siblings have.
I think the girls themselves would love to have a baby sister or brother. They love and are still obsessed by babies. It’s not about having a boy after two girls either. I was one of three children until the age of twelve, then I was one of four. And Steve, though not as enthusiastic to have another one, is from a family of three children, so such a middle-sized family feels more familiar. For all these reasons, it now seems that only having two would be a bit of a loss for us all.
So my crossroads of a year is a bit interlinked, because I will be looking to work four days a week partly to pay the IVF expenses, which would reach $10,000 by the end of the year, with at least that amount again paid by Medicare. We think we’ll do another IVF cycle if the third embryo doesn’t last either. Take the gambler’s chances, pursue it at least until the end of the year (or the second embryo collection runs out, if that is early next year). If there is no pregnancy, at least we will have tried. We’ll roll the dice and see what happens.
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