I've learned that my body doesn't want to make babies naturally. Infertility is fairly common, but very few people talk openly about infertility. I am.  

The transfer results

Today was beta day. This is the first hurdle/blood test to determine whether the transfer from two weeks ago stuck. My husband and I went to the local hospital to get the bloodwork done at 8am this morning, and they told me the results would probably be available sometime in the morning. Around 10am, I began checking my phone every 5 minutes to see if I missed a call. Around 11am my stress levels began to rise even higher than they were to begin with. At noon, I lost most of my ability to focus on work, but with the doctor’s office closed daily from 12pm - 2pm, I knew I wouldn’t be hearing anything for at least two hours. At 2:07, I called the doctor’s office to see if I could get hold of someone (I had to leave a voicemail for a nurse). At 2:37, I called back and very nicely (and as least agitated as I could be) asked if I could speak to a nurse — not voicemail — because I had to run a meeting for a client beginning at 3pm and I really did not want to be in that meeting when the call came. I spoke with a very sympathetic nurse who told me my chart with with my nurse (not the woman I was speaking with), but she was in with a patient and the results hadn’t been uploaded to the system yet.

About 15 minutes into the meeting, I got the call. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I told the folks I was meeting with that I’d be back in a few minutes and took the call outside.

It was bad news and semi-good news. Bad news: The transfer did not take. Semi-good news: One more embryo clawed its way to becoming a blastocyst despite all odds, and it’s now frozen and awaiting transfer. It was graded at a high-ish level, so it’s a “good” embryo, unlike the morula that was transferred two weeks ago.

What happens now? Well, my immediate next step was to have a beer (which I may or may not be drinking as I write this). Then I wait to have a phone consult with the doctor sometime next week to talk through how to proceed. I have some questions about tests that could be completed to make sure there’s not something else going on internally that is preventing the embryos from implanting. I’d rather cover every angle possible since the currently-frozen blast is our one and only remaining chance from this batch of donor eggs, but I don’t know what the doctor will say so I have to wait.

And that’s where we are. The last 2+ weeks of irritating medicines, complete and total exhaustion, being starving but not hungry, and generally feeling pregnant due to the medicines was a lie, and I’m not really sure I’m looking forward to going through all of that again for another unknown result.

I guess the next update will be after I talk with the doctor sometime next week.

The post-failed-transfer doctor consult

Calm, cool, and collected? Hah.