Thursday, March 15, 2012

Future Baby Yales

I will say that becoming a parent has been such a rewarding experience.  Steve and I waited a while before we both decided it was time to expand our family.  We have been together 11 years, with the last 2.5 being married.  Soon after Baby C was born, we started talking about a second child.  We figured we would wait at least until Baby C was 1 before we would try for another.  Unfortunately, breast cancer has thrown us for a loop, and future babies are undetermined at this time.

The treatment I will undergo gives me a 50% chance of infertility.  On top of that, by the time I am finished taking the hormone blocker Tamoxifen, we will be 5 more years out after chemo/radiation.  We discussed egg harvesting, but that holds additional risks for me.  I would need to get hormone injections to get my eggs ready for harvest.  Because I just recently stopped breast feeding, I have not had a period yet, so the doctor was not sure how long it would take to get the eggs ready.  Having hormone injections poses a recurrence risk for breast cancer since I have an aggressive hormone driven type of cancer.

We decided to proceed with treatment, and if there are meant to be babies in our future, it will happen.  We had talked about adoption even before we had Baby C, so that is always a possibility.  I will try very hard to keep myself (and especially Steve) from spoiling our little sugar muffin.  If she ends up being an only child, we are doomed, and she will get whatever she wants :O) 

   

5 comments:

  1. Tough decision - but you are so lucky to already have one precious, happy and healthly little girl!

    Start a chemo countdown - it will help you get through the next 20 weeks! And by this time next year, you won't know what to do with yourself because it will all be behind you!

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  2. It's probably hard to think this way at a time like this, but thank goodness you had baby Char before all of this. What a miracle she truly is, and she will bring you such joy through all of this!

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  3. Hi there! We have a mutual friend, Carey L., and a mututal disease. I was also diagnosed with breast cancer, was pregnant at the time, underwent mastectomies, chemo and radiation. And I survived it all! (I am still taking tamoxifen...sounds like we had the same type of cancer from reading your posts.) I woudl love to offer support, advice, an ear, anything that you think you may need. Please know this is not forever and that you will be a survivor, like me. We will both be able to say that we kicked cancer's butt!!!

    Sending hugs and well wishes,
    Heather

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    1. Hi Heather. Carey has shared some of your story with me. Thanks for contacting me. I can only imagine what you went through being pregnant. Part of me wishes I had my lump rechecked while I was pregnant since it might have only been stage 1 at that point but I think it’s a blessing in disguise. I might not have been able to handle the additional stress on the pregnancy, and it gave us 4 months to get her on a schedule and become comfortable being new parents.

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