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Hi there, and welcome to this board.
I'm 42 years old and about 14 weeks pregnant through the use of donor egg (and sperm actually). My journey was a fairly short one, since I didn't start trying to get pregnant until I was 41 years old. (I'd gotten pregnant while on the pill when I was almost 39, so I tended to believe the claims that feminists make about how the media exaggerate the decline in fertility with age. On the basis of that misinformation, I had an abortion that time. I can't express to you my regret over that, even though I did it with thoughts of what would be best for the child.)
I'm very sorry to hear of the setbacks you've had in the adoption process. And I can certainly understand your thought about perhaps trying a donor egg in the meantime, while the adoption is on hold. I can also understand your concern about finances. I don't know much about the costs of adoption, although I thought that there was a federal tax CREDIT of about $10,000 for those who adopt, so that at least some of the costs are offset. As for donor egg, my clinic charged about $20K for everything (including the fee that went to the donor) for a single recipient cycle. Some of that will be tax-deductable, since that's over 7.5% of our annual income.
As for your concern about the medications, you should bear in mind that as a recipient of a donor egg, you won't be on any stimulating hormones. You will, if my protocol was standard (as I believe it was), be suppressed with Lupron (subcutaneous injections with an insulin syringe and needle), and then you'll be given estrogen (in my case through patches) to make your uterine lining receptive to the embryo(s), then finally, you'll be put on progesterone (intramuscular injections in the "hip") to keep your body from shedding your lining. It is a lot of exogenous hormones to take, but the estrogen and progesterone are given only in quantities about like what you would naturally produce. So it's a lot different from being on stimulating hormones, where you get far more FSH than your body would produce on its own--well, until you hit menopause when you produce FSH like crazy.
I don't know if any of that was helpful to you; I hope it was. Mostly I just wanted you to know that the issues you bring up are ones that others have thought about. Maybe that will help you to feel less alone in the journey. Oh, and just by the way, I have Randine Lewis's book, and I had acupuncture before and after my embryo transfer. I'd be interested in knowing how the retreat with her marked a turning point for you.
Best wishes to you.
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