The End (for now)

I think I'm in shock.

I'm calm, sad, stoic, a bit numb, but in shock. So, as most of you know through my text sent today, our blastocyst passed on this morning and our cycle was cancelled.

So, since I've captured everything, it's time to capture this experience too.

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I could barely sleep all night. I was so excited. I beginning praying early in the morning, to my passed loved ones, to Beanie, to all of my friends on the other side, asking for guidance and strength in this process. I danced for Mark in the kitchen, what I like to call the "corn dance" and we talked about how exciting that today we'd be bringing our little one home. We laughed and smiled and made all sorts of milestone comments, the morning was sweet, and rich and full of hope. It was beautiful and nothing can change that.

My morning with Jonah was also sweet. I nursed him on and off the entire morning, because I had wanted to feel *just him and I* one last time before bringing the blast home in my womb. I just wanted some me and him time, and I made time for it and it was good and fulfilling. The time came, the nanny came in, we acclimated and Mark and I drove off. We were giddy, excited, hearts racing. We took a video (we took a video every single IVF appointment and milestone with Jonah's transfer) and we talked to the screen about how today was the day and we would meet our little one again. Mark was cautious as he always is, but the ride there was another exciting time (full of stops to pee, my poor bladder! I'd been drinking since the morning time.)

Once we got to the hospital, Mark suggested I get out and pee first and then he'd park and meet me in the lobby. I checked in up front and made a joke with the receptionist "I'm here to take home my bebe!" (I said that with a Austin Powers accent, by the way)

I curled up into the same chair in the lobby I always curl up into and picked up a People magazine. Flipping through I kept looking up to see when Mark was coming. The nurse K came out to see me and I said excitedly "So good to see you K! Today's the day!" Mark came through the door and I smiled at him and I thought the look on his face was strange. He said he needed to talk to me in the back room. I was confused. Why would he need to talk to me if I'm about to go into acupuncture?

He pulled my hand into an empty room and all of a sudden I was outside my yard again with the neighbor bringing my mauled chihuahua. The shock of loss while in such a complete opposite mindset is a trauma I cannot explain. When everything is good one moment, and then gone the next, it's unsettling, truly the word disturbing. To my soul, my psyche, my ability to just simply understand.

The same energy of Beanie's death loomed in the air and he sat me down on the chair and said while parking the car, the clinic had called him and told him that the blast had died during the thaw. I don't think the information really sunk in. I stared at him, the floor, the walls. And we cried. We held each other. We talked. And cried more. I cried for 41 days of medications and plenty more days of hope. I cried for the loss of something I don't think I could possibly explain.

And then I accepted. I accept. I accept that this has happened, I accept that it didn't make the thaw and that life must and will go on. I accept that this is a risk we knew the odds were on our side,but we knew this could have happened and unfortunately it did and we must heal and move on.

I will tell you I have a sadness in me that hits deep. My chest is heavy, the loss of the potential is overwhelming. I feel foolish for researching baby things over the last months. I admit to a mourning of not only my blast, but the thoughts and dreams I'd had over Jonah and his sibling at this age, proximity in ages, taking pregnancy tests over the next week, getting morning sickness, feeling movements all over again. Sure, just a bit delayed, but a sense of grieving none the less, if nothing less than potential.

And so that's it. That entire journey, gone within seconds. I started this blog almost six months ago, wow.

As I promised in my letter to my blastocyst:

"And with this letter, I must say my little blastocyst, that should you not survive this process, should you not survive the thaw, should you not survive to live ten months in my womb like your brother, that I thank you for giving us hope and experience in this journey. I thank you for letting Jonah "go first" and I thank you for the three years you waited to come back home.

Should you not join our family little blastocyst, I promise you I will acknowledge, recognize, and honor the menstrual blood that separates you from me weeks later. I will take pause and appreciate the precious things around me, the amazingness which is every single second of life that we often forget."


So I will do this and of course leave room for my sadness and healing. We'll try again early next year sometime. We will need to do a full "fresh" IVF cycle which involves a lot more meds, a lot more injections, one surgery for Mark and one for me. It's a tough road, a full cycle. But we'll get through it.

Thank you to all of my friends and family who have supported me and listened to me and maybe been at the end of my Queen Bitch phases. Love to all of you.

Less than 18 hours

Well, the time has come. I am nervous, scared, emotional, excited, all of the above. The clinic let us know that our blast would be thawed early tomorrow morning and would then wait for us at noon.

I feel speechless, or wordless as it were.

So maybe I'll just leave it at that. I've said enough for now. An update after we get home. Hopefully with a picture of our blast.

2 days

2 days. I'm getting excited. The clinic called me today to let me know my transfer would begin at noon. I get there at 10:45 for the acupuncturist which lasts for 45 minutes. Afterward I go into the "operating room" and we begin the procedure.

I found the post I wrote from our last transfer.

As I recall from my own memories....

There are two or three big monitors in this big room, the monitors are looking at what looks like a petri dish. There is a glass panel with a lab person behind it. You never really speak to them except....this person calls out your name and spells it letter by letter, first name, last name, all spelled - confirms birth date, confirms the transfer of one embryo.

Doctor looks excited and more serious than he's been since our first consult, you can tell he takes his job seriously as he carefully moves his hands. (by the way, I'm in tremendous pain this entire time from the bursting bladder, it was hard to recognize anything) Mark was taping the whole thing, so the red light on the flip camera was glowing under the lights.

The lab person magnifies many, many times and alas, there it is. Our blastocyst. What ended up being Jonah. Mark squeezes me as we see them "suck up" Jonah through a straw and then analyze the remaning fluid to ensure they had sucked him up properly.

Under ultrasound the doctor pulls up my uterus and you see it's shape on another screen. He's calling out instructions to a nurse about different things he needs (gloves, gauze, this, that) He says he sees the spot he wants to drop the embryo.

Then they transferred him, and I remember looking up to the ceiling, how weird all of this is! I just had our baby put in me! Afterward, we were wheeled back into the acunpunturist room and I demanded a bed pan. Oh my was that the best pee ever. Siiiigh.

So the needles, and I listed to Enya on my Ipod and imagined the blastocyst falling onto my thick, sticky uterus and staying there and making a home. I pictured it burying into my womb, I stayed calm. It was surreal. It was like "ok, wait - so um all done? Ok, so uh - that's it?!"

Everything is similar this time around with acupuncture and the transfer schedule (hopefully with less bladder pains). I have planned to have Lorena Mckennit's song "Bonny Portmore" playing immediately after the transfer. This is where I will imagine our little blastocyst making yet a new home with me. Back with me, I should say.

Mark's nervous. A lot is riding on this, folks. A lot of work and money and meds and emotional bandwidth, and I've maintained a level of positivity throughout the entire process but sometimes I can't help but get weepy and scared this won't work.

I'm in a better place to understand it, but it will still hurt. The experience however is beautiful, and this I wouldn't change for a thing.

3 more days

3 more days. Whew.

Good thing too because Queen Bitch showed up over the weekend. Not pleasant. Let's move on.

The PIO shots make me tiiiiiiiiiiiiiired. Like pregnancy tired. But I was able to nap today which was like, um, incredibly rare so that was nice. Shots are still going in, so I guess they're going well, but I look forward to stopping those.

We have managed Jonah though and since he HAD to know what we were doing, he now sits on his little chair in the room while "momma gets medicines". He waits patiently and I smile to him while I lay on the bed and Mark gives me the shot. We talk about 'making brothers and sisters' and I know he has no clue what's going on, but the fact that he gets to participate in this process is awesome to me, something I don't think I'd ever thought of before.

I'm gonna try not to fill my bladder as much for transfer. I've been reading more and more about it, and there's no real data saying it improves implantation rates, it more assists the doctor to be able to put the catheter in more accurate, which is great and all, but there hasn't been much data on whether or not the u/s guidance is even needed or a just 'drop it in the womb' approach is best.

all in all, I'm not going to torture myself. This isn't labor. I don't need to 'push through the pain' for the transfer. It was traumatizing the first time around, I felt violated and I don't want to repeat that experience. I can have a full bladder, but I don't need to be in that much pain.

SO ANYWAY - 3 more days.