A Glimmer.

I've always been a very positive person.  If there is at least a glimmer of hope, my brain defaults into thinking that happiness and goodness is winning out over sadness and badness. As a child, I was deliriously happy,which in adolescence turned to cautiously happy with a touch of realism and I think I've stayed that way ever since.  I like to think happy thoughts. Finding a way to think them, even when the most obvious emotion to feel is a negative one.  My brain is persistent.  It wants what it wants. And it wants to be happy.  Eternally so.  However, infertility is not a jolly prognosis.  It is the thing that keeps my brain searching, reaching, thinking thinking thinking.  Thinking that if we try hard enough, fight hard enough, want this bad enough...we will succeed. 

After my egg transfer was canceled, I broke down for the first time in a long time.  Like really broke down.  I've been quiet after bad news before.  I've teared up after dashed dreams.  But I've never fully broken down.  My stomach was filled with poison gnawing at me and I couldn't release tears and sobs fast enough.  I was mad.  SO mad. So pissed. So defeated. I couldn't believe that all of our work.  Everything we had gone through.  It was for nothing.  Nothing.  19 eggs = 2 morulas and an almost blastocyst.  The transfer was canceled. There would be no baby.

Then, I was told that the lab would call with results of the final 3 eggs. Would they make it to freeze?  My nurse sounded doubtful.  Especially of the 2 morulas.  It didn't look promising.  Well, I didn't receive a call.  An entire weekend passed and I did not hear a thing.  Parts of my brain continued to think that we just needed to try IVF again.  We just had to give it another shot.  Try harder. Be better.  But then reality would hit me.  It completely did NOT work this time.  Could we go through this disappointment again? And again? When the hubs said that he didn't want to see us go through the sadness another time, it was the first sign of defeat I'd ever seen in him.  When he said that he thinks we can be happy without children, I couldn't argue with him.  I could see that his brain was finally concluding that we may never succeed.  He had lost hope in the process. It was over.

I was expecting a call from the doctor on Monday morning to discuss the cycle and my next steps.  She, unlike the weekend lab people, actually did call when she was promised to.  Thank God.  She said things like, "you responded well" and "nice follicles" and "estrogen up to 3500."  I listened, writing her words feverishly until she also said, "And you can always do an FET cycle with just the one embryo if you don't want to do another fresh IVF right away."  

huh?

I literally could not put the breaks on the conversation quick enough.  Rewind, please! What do you mean FET? What do you mean 'embryo'? Where was my weekend call from the lab?! What the hell was going on?!

My heart soared. My glimmer of hope was happening.

Yes, I'd been overlooked for an extremely deserved phonecall, but it didn't matter.  I had 1 blastocyst make it to freeze.  1 beautiful little overachiever with the cell count of 8 and the grade of 6 BB.  We had done it and it was perfect. 

I will take this as my sign that something can come of this. I will take from it what I can.  I needed to feel hopeful. I needed to share good news with my husband.  I needed to shout it from the rooftops!  Something good will happen.  IVF didn't completely fail me! THANK HEAVENS.  Now, will I jump into a FET with only one embryo when it could possibly die before it's even thawed?  Probably not.  But it's there.  If I wanted to, I could.  And though I still feel sad about the outcome of my cycle, I also think that our one embryo has given us renewed hope.

I think it's important to hang onto any positivity I can find at this point.  So that's what I intend to do :)

xoxo
L