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.  

Calm, cool, and collected? Hah.

This has not been the best of weeks. On Sunday, I got the Day 2 fertilization report that was less than optimal. On Monday, my keyboard decided to stop working, negating my plan to start work early in anticipation of being out Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday. On Tuesday, I abruptly ended a meeting with my supervisor (13 minutes before I had to run a second meeting and 90 minutes before we were planning to leave for Jax) to take a call from the office.

The news was not great. Of the three embryos that had sort of taken to fertilization, only two were really still growing, but they were growing very, very slowly. So slowly, in fact, that it was doubtful either would be full blastocysts by the time of my scheduled transfer the next day.

There was still a tiny chance one would make it, so the nurse bumped my transfer time to the last one available to give the embryos as much time to grow as possible, and recommended we come in Tuesday evening anyway because if one did make it to a blast, they'd move the transfer back to the originally-scheduled time.

If neither made it to an early blast (morula) or a blast by transfer time, they'd have to cancel the transfer (waiting another day wasn't possible because they time the medication very specifically and a delay would mean the uterine lining was no longer hospitable). If that happened, I'd stop the medicines, wait for my period, and wait another 2 days to see if anything made it to a blast. If yes, I'd start the whole transfer prep process again. If no, the doctor's office would fax paperwork to the egg donor facility, I’d hope they accepted it and agreed that their guarantee wasn't met, wait for us to pick out a new donor (as this one obviously didn't have great eggs), and then start the whole prep process over again.

I had 2 minutes to explain all this to my husband before I had to run an hour-long weekly status meeting for one of my clients. And after the meeting, I had to finish up a few things before we got on the road because we had to make it to Jax in time for me to do my evening meds as scheduled even though it seemed the transfer would not be happening.

It was not a good day.

The nurse had said she'd call with another update Wednesday morning, and thankfully she called early this morning. The news was meh. There was one embryo that made it to an early blast stage - a morula. The doctor was willing to transfer that (it's not unusual to transfer at that stage), and they were still watching the other, but it didn't look promising. The problem with transferring an early blast/morula is that you don't know if it's going to keep growing, but it was all that we had so the transfer was moved back to the original time.

I feel like the transfer itself hurt more than it did last time, but maybe that's just because I'm more stressed this time. It's our one shot from the donor eggs, and since their guarantee covers “an early blastocyst,” it's unlikely they'd provide a replacement set of eggs if this doesn't take.

And now we're in the waiting period where I have to act and eat like I'm pregnant without knowing for sure. Given how slowly the embryo grew, I am not very hopeful, and please don't tell me that it takes only one. I know that, but this one seems like a very long shot. The blood test is on June 17, so nothing more until then.

The transfer results

Prepping for the Transfer