Sweet Orange Fox

I don't know why I expected anything other than for things to go terribly wrong....because it seems that has been the pattern on this entire journey

Here I am getting ready to go into the retrieval...things are good! We are so upbeat and positive and excited to get these little eggies out! I don't even have the energy to go into all the details and occurrences of the day, but the main piece of information is that they retrieved 15 eggs...which is supposedly the "magic number" according to the Internet...pshh.




The next morning, we found out that 9 of the eggs fertilized normally, 2 might possibly fertilize later, 2 died immediately and the last 2 fertilized abnormally and were discarded. I was hoping for a few more to be honest, but I was okay with 9. I figured we would probably have about 3 or 4 make it to day five which would mean we would have a couple for transfer and a couple to freeze. The embryologist said she would give us another call on day three (Feb 17) to update us on their growth.

So the morning of the 17th I get a call telling us that we had one good embryo, one okay embryo and all the rest had died or were poor quality. WHAT!?!?! I honestly felt like someone punched me in the stomach. The ONLY thing we had on our side going into this was the fact that being so young my eggs should have been ABOVE average quality...we should have two perfect ones to transfer and more to freeze. I was devastated. Those two might look normal on day three, but they could be completely abnormal by day five. Again...I can't even bring myself to get into all the details of the conversation, emotions, etc.

Then came an even bigger blow. The embryologist said the only option was to do the transfer in the next few hours. My world came crashing down. This was NOT how this was supposed to happen. A day 3 transfer? Almost ALL dead/abnormal eggs? Nothing to freeze? How can this be??? How many rounds of heartbreak do I have to go through? The ups and downs of the miscarriage...the months of struggling...the countless failed treatments and cycles...the realization that IVF was our last and only option...the MISERY of ovarian hyperstimulation following the retrieval (that is another story entirely)..and now THIS!!??! It just feels like everything is against us.

But we had no choice. So we dropped everything and headed in. Here are the two 8-cell embryos they transferred in on day three (2/17/12).




I have spent the past two days on bed rest going between hope, despair, positivity, negativity, anger, sadness, faith, confusion, speculation, impatience and so much else. I don't know where we will go from here. I really don't. I am thankful for my wonderful family who has come to visit and helped try to keep my spirits up, but all I really want is for this wait to be over and just to know. This has been the most difficult ride of my life, and I just want off.