Faithfully Following God's Plan
Any couple that has experienced any kind of fertility treatment knows it's a lot of hurry up and wait, and it's the times leading up to procedures that are the hardest! The day had finally arrived for my egg retrieval. Even though there is no cutting involved outside of the body this is considered a surgery, I went under anesthesia and the doctors used a needle guided by ultrasound to open the egg sacks on my ovaries and then remove the eggs inside. I was so excited for this day and had high hopes that they would retrieve a ton of eggs, I had close to 30 growing, there had to be a lot of mature eggs in there.
We were shocked to find out that day that only 9 eggs were mature…WHAT how could that be? A few tears were shed but I quickly reframed my state of mind, I had 9 beautiful eggs that would turn into 9 beautiful embryos. The next day the lab called with the report of how many of our eggs had survived day one of fertilization and we were devastated when we heard that just 5 had made it through the night. I was shocked and in utter disbelief. In 24 hours we had gone from being told we would get our entire family out of this to holding out hope that we would have even one to implant.
In an IVF cycle the doctors will either implant your embryos 3 days after fertilization or 5 days after. The goal is to make it to day 5 as you have a much higher chance of success, however with only 5 eggs we couldn’t take the chance that none would make it to day 5 and we would have nothing to implant. So on day 3 we returned to Fargo, had 2 embryos implanted and 3 sent to extended culture. What that means is they let those embryos mature for another 2-3 days. If they are still successfully growing they then freeze them for future IVF cycles. We went home that Friday and I was put on 3 days of bed rest. It was pretty nice being waited on hand and foot however I have to give kudos to any mama that has been on bed rest for real. OMG not easy!
We held out hope throughout the weekend that we had a baby cooking and embryos to freeze. I opted to work from home that Monday because I knew I would be getting a call from my doctor with an update. I’m glad I made that choice because it was very hard to hear that none of the embryos had survived the weekend so we were down to the two babies hopefully growing inside of me. The initial blood work looked great and we were sure this was it. Nothing could prepare me for the phone call we got a week later. The pregnancy test was negative, there were no babies and my world was crashing down all around me.
How do you pick up the pieces after such a huge let down? Where do we go from here? We made the decision with this cycle to let our families in on the process and had been keeping them up to date with each stage. Again we never thought this wouldn’t work so why not have the extra support and prayers, but this also made things difficult as updating that many people while trying to process the news yourself isn’t easy. One teary call, text or email after another got old quickly. Reliving grief over and over again isn’t fun. I cried more in that week then I have in my entire life. I was a walking zombie living a never ending nightmare. Just writing this now is bringing tears to my eyes. We had let ourselves down but we had let our families and friends down too. They say patience is a virtue but mine was wearing thin. I know God has a plan for us but I wanted my plan to work just once. I pray that some day we will meet those two little babies in heaven and get a chance to tell them how much we loved them, even if they were only a thought and prayer they were ours.
