Consider adoption! Good kids out there need good parents :)

I wholeheartedly agree. To me it seems pregnancy is overrated or perhaps people feel a child is not truly theirs unless they give birth to him or her. Which is sad considering all the children who long for families. Having given birth 4 times I would say given the chance to spend thousands of dollars to create a child artificially just to go through pregnancy and deal with nausea, back pains, sciatica, and then hours or days of contractions, and labor, or to adopt a child needing a family. I'd choose adoption and I intend to the next time around. :)

Yes, we considered IVF but could not morally justify it for ourselves. Also, we've witnessed two failed IVF procedures in our family and to see the pain they had to endure was just horrible. They tried again and succeeded, but now the child has health problems and their finances are just drained because of all that. We look at it as, you know there are already lots of healthy babies being born that need homes, why not take the money we would spend on IVF and put it towards adoption instead? And the life our daughter has now is 180 degrees from what it would have been, and as you said we never had to deal with all the complications of pregnancy and giving birth. Is our daughter our blood? No. Is she still our daughter? There is no question there, and I wouldn't have it any other way. And besides, I don't see anyone else coming to take care of her in the middle of the night and changing the bad diapers! I've considered posting an IVF themed Think Tank question, might just break down and do it.

Go for it! I'd love to see others thoughts on the subject. Thanks for sharing your experience. It's nice to have this stream.