Not the News We Wanted to Hear

I'm not going to keep you in suspense. This is a post that I hoped I would never have to write. The news is not good. Dr. Duffy called this morning with the report. I started sobbing early in the conversation, but this is what I think he said:

1- 5 cell
2- 4 cell
2- 3 cell
2- 2 cell

A day 2 embryo should be 4 cells, which means more than half of mine are behind. He also mentioned that the 5 cell is already a grade B, so he's not very optimistic that it's the leader. Of the 13 eggs retrieved, only 8 were mature. They successfully fertilized one of the immature eggs, but it has since died. As has one of the mature eggs. That leaves me with 7 total embryos. Essentially, what this all means is that my babies are dying. They of course don't call it that... the medical term is arrested development, but that's not what it feels like. It feels like my babies are dying.

His recommendation is to move ahead with a day 3 transfer. I debated a 3 day transfer all along, so you would think that I'd be fine with this. But I'm not. I'm not because I wanted to transfer on day 3 (possibly) just because it was best for the embryos to be in the natural environment rather that in the lab. I never wanted to be recommended a day 3 transfer because they don't think they'll make it to a day 5... that feels really different. It feels really awful. He also mentioned that we should start thinking about transferring 3. Before anyone reading this gets excited that my doctor will let me transfer 3 and has beautiful images of triplets in mind, let me assure you, he doesn't recommend transferring 3 because he wants me to have triplets (or even expects me to), he makes the recommendation because he's not sure transferring 2 will give me a good shot at a viable pregnancy.

I never thought I'd be here.

He called my embryos "fragile".

My babies are dying.

I can't even describe where my head is right now... I guess it's in the lab where the result of our money, blood, sweat and tears are fighting for life. Where my fragile embryos fight to simply divide one cell into two. My heart is in that lab too. Broken into so many pieces I'm not sure that I'll ever find them all... part of my heart will probably always remain in the embryology lab where our embryos fought and lost.

We're meeting with Dr. Duffy in the morning before the transfer to get an updated report and to discuss what we should do. I obviously want to know if he has any idea what the issue is. 7 embryos fighting for life is a far cry from the place everyone predicted I'd be.... making babies and freezing future siblings.

One million thoughts have gone through my head since I received that call. Things like: "we should go straight to CCRM" and "we'll never be able to afford CCRM". Other things like: "I don't think we can do this again" and "maybe adoption is our next step". The one thing that I can say for certain is this: everyone criticizes me of being a pessimist. I call it being a realist, but whatever, the name doesn't matter. In this, in IVF and our chances, I was an optimist. I may not sound optimistic and that's because I don't want to get other people's hopes up... it's bad enough to deal with my own disappointment, but adding in everyone else's is just too much. So I use "pessimism" as a defense mechanism. I share the sad, terrifying, awful stories of my friends so that no one expects too much, but I never really expected those stories to be mine. I really expected to get 20+ eggs; to fertilize 12 eggs, and freeze the rest; to see the embryos make it to day 5; and to become pregnant. For days now, I've been thinking about twins. I already had plans for future posts like sharing all the things I did (i.e. no carbs, acupuncture) or how it feels to leave the frozen embryos behind in Jacksonville. I don't care what it looked like, or how it came across, I was optimistic about our chances. Right about now, it feels like I was cocky. And now, I'm officially not.

I never in my wildest dreams thought we'd be here. Not me, the girl with an AMH level of 5+... 2 embryos on track after IVF... that's unheard of. But it's reality. It's the current situation we're in and all we can do is move forward. The easiest course would be to mentally give up, to say these embryos are doomed and start thinking about our next steps. I'm refusing to let me mind go there, to let my heart give up. I serve a God of miracles. There is nothing I can do for them at this point, but He can. I'm not going to give up on them until the end had come.

Transfer is set for 9:15am tomorrow. More to come. Our story is not over.