We found out on Tuesday that our two remaining embryos didn’t make it to blastocysts. These three embryos inside me are most likely my last chance at ever being pregnant. I am working hard to not dwell on the grief associated with this potential future too much. These three little guys (I’ve settled on calling them “Larry, Darryl, and Darryl”), deserve all the positivity and love I can give to them, and thinking about the finality of this right now is too much to bear. However, I do know if this all comes crashing down in a couple weeks, it’s gonna be ROUGH. But, I’ll cross that path if I need to. It’s just hard to be anticipating the death of something I’ve longed for and striven for. And it doesn’t help that our five year mark of TTC is looming ahead in a couple weeks…
I know we’ll be parents someday. D is going to be a great father, and I hope to be as good of a mother as D tells me I will be. I’m excited to become a mother through adoption, but there will be an adjustment period as a shift from being an Informed Infertile to being a newbie in the adoption process.
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The ladies in my family, after about 45, tend to have lots of uterine issues. I don’t think anyone’s made it to 50 without a hysterectomy, and lots of bladder and vaginal issues because of the hysterectomy (did you know your vagina can FALL OUT?!?). My grandmother, one of my aunts and I all go to the same gynecologist, and I really like that because Dr. OB can see what I have to look forward to in 20 and 40 years.
My mom,who’s still a couple years away from 50, has been dealing with heavy bleeding for a while now and had a hysteroscopy done a few months ago and another one last week in preparation for an endometrial ablation procedure. When she called me and told me about the first procedure, I told her to be prepared to feel like she’d been kicked by a horse. I also welcomed her into my world.
She called last night while we were at the movies to say the ablation went well and she was going home to sleep (A Serious Man was seriously boring), and when I heard the message I felt terrible — she sounded so out of it! However, I spoke with her earlier today and she’s sounding much better. She is hoping that the procedure will prevent her from needing further procedures, especially a hysterectomy. It’s so weird to be on the other side of this… I’m used to being the one who has the lady problems and gets calls while I’m drugged out after procedures. But, it’s also kinda nice to repay all the kindness I’ve received!
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I don’t think I mentioned in my recap of our retrieval the funny things that happened. As background, Dr. B doesn’t have offices of his own so he’s renting out space from another RE, who I will call Dr. S, until he can get on his feet. Dr. S doesn’t have an anesthesologist, so Dr. B also hires out for that service. Maybe these fall into the category of You Had to Be There, but I thought I’d share.
I was in the recovery recliner, BAWLING happy tears, and Dr. S walked by. He went to one of the nurses thinking I was in lots of pain and saying that it looked like I REALLY needed some drugs! The nurse checked on me and started laughing when she realized I was crying because I was happy!
As D was writing the check for the anesthesiologist, he asked me how to spell “anesthesia”… we had to laugh because it took me four times to spell it because I had just woken up from being under anesthesia and was still in a daze!
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Current cycle update: 9DPO, no spotting, tender boobs (I always get these before my period and also when I’m on progesterone, so this doesn’t really mean anything), twinges in the uterus (I felt these the first IVF, but you know how that ended…).
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I’ve been meaning to post the pictures of our embryos here — I keep forgetting! I’ll post them soon, I promise. In the meantime, does anyone have pictures of their embryos they’d share with me… we weren’t given pictures during our first IVF cycle, so we have nothing to compare these to, and the only pictures I can find online are of either “perfect” embryos or bad ones.
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I’m heading out to babysit my last December doula client’s baby in a little while. She’s starting to walk (with fingers! We’ll work on no fingers tonight if she’s up for it!) and she’s AWESOME (super cute, super calm, super sweet, and super silly). I’m looking forward to lots of giggling and snuggling and hopefully some of her baby goodness will rub off and Larry, Darryl, and Darryl will have yet another reason to stick around.