Tag Archives: embryo transfer

Aunt Becky, PhD, and the Prayer of Relinquishment

At the end of the race, there are almost always bananas.

At the end of the rainbow, there is supposed to be a pot of gold.

At the end of a journey, a destination.

 

{Source}
{Source}

And at the end of the five stages of grief, there lies acceptance.

I don’t know that I’ve ever grieved heartily and with enough awareness as an adult to really notice any given stage of grief. Not until yesterday… when in less than 24 hours I managed to go from stage 1 (blissful denial) to rapid vacillation between stages 2, 3, and 4 in a torrent of tears and snot (so much snot) before I finally settled into a puffy-eyed, rosy lipped (my lips get very bright pink when I cry a lot) depression.

Puffy-eyed bedtime and only the Chamber of Secrets could provide me solace.
Puffy-eyed bedtime and only the Chamber of Secrets could provide me solace.

 

So, what happened, exactly? We’ll do it stage by stage.

1. Denial

I had a lovely time on Sunday night, the night before the embryo transfer. My cousin-in-law Megan had her second annual Take Steps for Crohn’s and Colitis fundraiser at UPaint and Party in Wausau. Almost everyone painted a gorgeous picture of a lovely little bird silhouetted against a bright sky flying from it’s cage. My painting somehow got a dementor in it, but I still had a blast. It was nothing but fun and I was in good spirits about Monday’s transfer. Yes, I only had three embryos, but it could be great! That was three chances — making for a potential family of five humans and my sweet Curly girl to boot. I was good.

The dementor just kind of happened...
The dementor just kind of happened…

Even Monday morning, though nervous and stressed about heading out the door a bit late, I was still making The Jerk-based jokes with my family.

Courtesy of my Shabsky.
Courtesy of my Shabsky.

And that’s all I need…

2. Anger

We arrived in Madison a mere 4 minutes late for our scheduled appointment. Big thanks to the state of Wisconsin for upping our speed limits to 70 mph — big help yesterday. The nurse brought us back to the procedure area, same as before, and began to collect vitals, provide information, prep us with our gowns and caps and booties and all that… and I noticed that all the while, she kept saying “the embryo.” Part of me assumed it was because they were planning to just transfer one, which was always the goal. A much darker part of me knew what it really meant though.

There was only one embryo left. Two of the three we had, the three I had been banking on, had stopped developing. Just stopped. We were going to transfer only one because we had only one.

The one. I'm sure someday I'll make Highlander jokes about this. Too soon.
The one. I’m sure someday I’ll make Highlander jokes about this. Too soon.

And that one? Not even ideal. Not sure on the details… and this image means pretty much nothing to me (no wonder they call it a ball of cells, eh?) so I can’t exactly glean anything from that, but something about it not being as developed as it should have been — an early blast instead of a mature/late/something one. I don’t know. It was hard to hear the embryologist over the buzzing in my ears that always comes when I start trying to hold back tears.

I was so unbelievably, inconsolably (even by Valium) sad. And angry. ONE?!?! After ALL THAT?! After all we had been through, all the thousands of dollars and hundreds of injections and ultrasounds and trips and tears and everything… just one. One shot. One sub-par shot.

But we did SO much. We’ve been through SO FREAKING MUCH. And so many people who do NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, but get it on once or twice have babies all the dang time. ALL THE TIME. Why are they special? Why am I not? Why are they so obnoxiously #blessed and is #cursed even a thing?! Because I obviously am. What’s wrong with me that even with thousands and thousands of dollars of medical intervention this is still the best I can do??? One.

And if that one doesn’t work? There’s nothing in the freezer to try again. Nothing. We have to start over from zero. Physically, emotionally, financially from zero. Do it alll over again. And I know I’m too close, and I know this isn’t where we are yet, but I can’t. I shouldn’t have to! I don’t want to!! It’s not FAIR!!! (Which is truly the worst thing you can say as an adult because by this point in my life I am well aware that life is not fair and nobody every said it would be.)

3. Bargaining

But it only takes one. One is enough. One is better than zero and I’ve prayed and hoped and begged and done everything right. Everything I could do. I would do anything — hasn’t what I’ve done so far proven that? Wouldn’t we be good parents? Don’t we deserve a family?

Even just this weekend, the priest talked about the little boy who made a miracle happen by bringing Jesus his meager loaves and fishes. I’ve brought him mine, haven’t I? With everything I have done, all that I’ve been through… it’s time for our miracle now, isn’t it?

And there it is… the little embryo between the two air bubbles.

embryo ultrasound labeled

Or so they tell me. I wouldn’t know. As far as I’m concerned, this actually could be a print out of an ultrasound from a cow and I’d be none the wiser. But that has to be good, right? That you can see where it is? Inside me? Please, I’ll do anything to keep it there, to make it grow, to let it be life.

4. Depression

But then again, it really doesn’t matter anyway. It’s out of my hands and come next Wednesday, when we can finally test, this will all be over. Yes, pregnancy is a possibility. But really? If after all that, we were left with one embryo. Just the one, just hanging in there, is it really very likely that we’ll be pregnant at all? I have lost my hopefulness, my optimism. The best of it, the stuff on the inside. I have to keep saying to everyone, “Oh yes! It’s very exciting! We could be pregnant right now– not too much longer ’til we find out! Keeping our fingers crossed!!” When really, I know otherwise. I know, you know? And the best news of all — my attitude will not change anything and if ONE MORE MOTHER EFFING PERSON TELLS ME OTHERWISE I AM GOING TO FREAKING LOSE IT. (Oops… that bit might have been anger again.) You cannot visualize or positive energy or pray or wish or hope yourself into pregnancy. It’s biology. And my biology hasn’t really felt like cooperating so far. It is what it is (sorry, Aimee — I know you hate that phrase, but isn’t it the best depressive phrase kind of ever?) and I am where I am and what’s done is done and it’ll all be over soon.

Back and forth and back and forth, sometimes anger, sometimes bargaining, sometimes depression over a frightening number of cycles since yesterday afternoon. And then sometime this morning, as I chatted with my friend Marie (Seth, if we ever do have a baby, her middle name (or even his middle name, to be honest) is going to have to be Marie — fair warning) about normal things, the things we chat about all the time, and I felt my funk start to lift just a bit I started thinking about what acceptance might actually mean. And I realized that Seth’s Aunt Becky had kind of already set me up for it a while ago, believe it or not. Probably on purpose too. She’s super wise and all knowing like that. Like Dumbledore. A doctor even, the good kind, PhD-style like me. Her PhD isn’t actually in theology, although as a self-taught theologian she’s quite impressive, if I do say so myself.

Aunt Becky is on the right -- she says cool things like "academic wonks," is the homeliest in a good way person I know, AND throws groundbreaking bachelorette parties for her colleagues.
Aunt Becky is on the right — she says cool things like “academic wonks,” is the homeliest-in-a-good-way person I know, AND throws groundbreaking bachelorette parties for her colleagues.

A few weeks back she sent me a link to this article about the prayer of relinquishment:

The Prayer of Relinquishment by Catherine Marshall

Maybe I’m really late to the game and this is old news for everybody else, but in this moment, I’m so crazy grateful to Aunt Becky, PhD, for sharing it with me and I can’t recommend reading the whole thing enough if you’re in any capacity inclined toward spirituality. It’s so good.

This is the crux of it all, at least to me and right now:

“…it says, ‘This is my situation at the moment. I’ll face the reality of it. But I’ll also accept willingly whatever a loving Father sends.’ Acceptance, therefore, never slams the door on hope.

Yet even with hope our relinquishment must be the real thing, because this giving up of self-will is the hardest thing we human beings are ever called on to do.”

5. Acceptance

So as Catherine Marshall says Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne said once upon a time… why should I doubt the goodness of God?

I wear my bracelet all the time, the one that says “Always.” as a reminder that God is good. Always. No matter what. Why would this moment be any different? Pregnant or not, my life will go on. Pregnant or not, Seth and I will still love each other and we’re really lucky to have that. Pregnant or not, our little family will continue to flourish and decide what to do from there. All I can do right now is accept what is to come, relinquish the notion that I have any control over it, and carry on for the next several days until we have an actual answer to which I can react.

Yes, it’s hard. So so so hard. But as Melissa told me last night, even Jesus got angry. Why shouldn’t I? God gave me all these emotions and I’m free to feel them. They’re not wrong. They’re normal. And this is so hard. It’s no wonder that I feel angry and sad and depressed and worried and even hungry at times. (So so hungry.) We feel things. It’s what we do.

 

So stages of grief and all that aside… we had an embryo (i.e. the embryo) transferred to my uterus yesterday. At present, it’s a little ball of cells floating in space and the hope is that it will eventually implant into the uterine lining, effectively establishing a viable pregnancy. I don’t know how likely that is or is not. All I know is that on August 5th, we’ll do a blood test for HCG — a pregnancy test (not the pee on a stick kind). A negative is the real thing. Negative = negative. A positive could still be a false positive though, so if we do get a positive result, we have to do another blood test two days later on August 7th to look for rising levels of HCG, which will effectively confirm the positive result. It would be lovely to think that maybe I could look for signs and symptoms of pregnancy in the interim, but with the hormone overload my body is currently going through, I already have just about all of them and there’s no way any sign of actual pregnancy could be differentiated from the craziness happening in my body baby or no… so we wait.

Wait and accept and relinquish and let that little bit of hope in because that’s pretty much all we can do.

IVF: post-egg retrieval, pre-embryo transfer, all kinds of blah

It’s only been 5 days since the last time we chatted… and yet, three of them have been some of the roughest of my life, so it’s felt considerably longer. Can I get a wah wah?

Waaaah waah.

Wednesday morning was our egg retrieval surgery. As anxious as I was about the procedure, by Tuesday night my abdomen was in so much pain that all I wanted was to be knocked out.

egg retrieval surgery

We arrived at Generations at 7:00 am and by 8:30, I was in surgery. It was quick… especially to me as I’m quite susceptible to anesthesia… and we were back on the road headed home before 10:00.

Before the surgery, Seth, the nurse, and I made our guesses about how many eggs they would retrieve. I guessed 8, Seth 9, and Jen, RN, guessed 12 — double digits are ideal. Sadly, however, I was right. By the time I woke up, the eggies had been counted and 8 was the total. I was ok with 8 on Wednesday. We were told to expect fertilization of approximately 50%. I was even ok with 4 little embryos. (This is foreshadowing.)

Wednesday wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t in a ton of pain… a little, of course, as the only way to the ovaries is through the back wall of the vagina (oy) and the extreme ovarian swelling isn’t expected to decrease for at least a couple of weeks, but I was on good drugs and I sent most of the day in and out of sleep.

after surgery

Sometime well after midnight the headache started to creep in. And it grew and grew and grew to blinding pain. As I lay in bed Thursday morning, trying to crawl my way out form under the pillows piled on my head, my phone rang — it was the embryologist from the lab at Generations calling to update me on our embryos. Of the 8 eggs retrieved, only 6 were mature enough for fertilization. Following sperm injection, only three eggs were actually fertilized.

Three.

And my head was pounding and the room was spinning and I thought for sure I was going to vomit. I stumbled through the getting-ready-for-work motions, crying all the while… I was so sick. And I was so disappointed.

Just three.

In the end, I didn’t make it to work. Instead, I spent another day taking Percocet… in and out of sleep… with a box of tissues next to me… trying to talk myself out of disappointment, out of pain, and back to reality. To calm.

I drank a lot of gatorade, ingested a lot of salt (high levels of estrogen can make your vessels leaky, the salt helps them retain fluid– another stupid thing), laid around, and by Thursday evening, the headache had mostly subsided and I had talked myself into a state of satisfaction with my three maybe babies. Three is better than two… better than one… definitely better than zero. We still have a chance. Three chances, even. And with the lessening of the pain in my head, I became more and more able to handle the emotional toll as well.

After a good night’s sleep on Thursday, I woke up early on Friday and made it into work where I intended to spend a full day being as productive as possible. Except by 11:00 am, the headache was back with a vengeance. I wasn’t honestly certain that I could drive, but I couldn’t get a hold of Seth and I needed to get home so I stumbled to my car, the bile rising in my throat, not helped by a wicked case of hiccups, and somehow made it home to my bed where I laid like a corpse with pillow over my eyes, riding the waves of pain. By noon, it was so bad that Seth forced me to call Generations, who then forced me to go straight to urgent care over concerns about a clot…  another stupid estrogen thing. I spent a few more minutes crying over how much I did not want to go sit in urgent care with this insane headache before I set off. Long story short, I passed the tests, not a clot, took a massive dose of Aleve after talking to the nurse at Generations again (which is ok until embryo transfer), and spent yet another day on the couch in and out of sleep.

Another day wallowing in complete self pity.

I’m not strong anymore. I feel so done. Like my body and my mind have had just about enough.

But not yet.

On Thursday, in the midst of the headache and everything else, we started intramuscular progesterone injections. The progesterone is in oil and gets injected into the gluteus maximus — I can’t do it myself. Fortunately, Seth is a champ, and he’s done a really good job. I took heed of all the warnings and we’ve warmed it up in our hands first, used a sharpie to keep the targets marked, and spent a few minutes sitting on a heating pad afterward. So far so good.

On Monday, we head back to Generations for the embryo transfer. Day 5 embryo transfer, as opposed to the ideal day 3 transfer, can supposedly increase your chances of success if everything else is basically against you. When we get their on Monday, the doctor will discuss with us how the embryos look and how many they recommend transferring and all that. Then I pop a valium to relax my uterus, they pop the maybe baby (or babies) in, and we spend another two weeks waiting.

 

I guess the point of all this woe-is-me is to say that, honestly, I’m not nearly as calm, cool, or collected as I would really like to be. As I wish I were. I feel like I’m barely holding on. I’m feeling super sorry for myself and disappointed in the way things have gone so far. Although outwardly, I tried to keep my expectations low, in my deepest heart of hearts I was hoping for so much more. For eggs in the double digits. A fertilization rate that exceeded the norm. And for a big batch of maybe babies that we could store safely in the freezer and use to grow our family one transfer at a time.

But that’s not life. Certainly not mine. If things worked out that way, I wouldn’t be here at all — taking these desperate measures to have a family in the first place. That’s reality.

 

Honestly, I’m doing a little better today. I woke up early and went for a walk with the pup. I mowed the lawn. I made some cookies and a delicious dinner for Seth and his dad (who slaved all day long working in the garage). I took myself for a pedicure… and splurged on the “deluxe,” complete with hot stone massage and paraffin treatment. Most importantly, I didn’t cry even once. That was especially nice. And tomorrow’s another day.