I didn’t know that was possible

Yesterday is over. Thankfully. We retrieved only 2 eggs from the IVF Egg Retrieval. Although there ARE TWO, and there are still hope for those 2, statistically speaking the likelihood of a mature and quality egg that fertilizes and continues to experience the appropriate cell development long enough to make it to PGS testing, and then make it through PGS testing without findings, and then freezes, and then is transfers to successfully turn into a pregnancy is lower … when there are only 2. IVF cycles are a game of numbers, the more eggs you get, the better the odds because at each step of the cycle you should expect to lose 50% of your viable population - at least that’s what I was told. But then again, it only takes 1 and Gigi is proof of that. 

I felt so positive about this cycle. I felt like I did everything possible to put myself in the best mental space - the social media and news cleanse, the meditation, journaling, editing vegetables, avoiding stress as much as possible - you get the idea. I had committed to myself that this round would be ‘better.’ I didn’t have a definition for what that would mean, but surely it would have to be better than the cycle in March where none of the embryos made it to testing or freezing - yielding nothing more than a big fat waste of my time. And everything about this cycle did seem better - we weren’t packing a house and moving at the same time, it wasn’t the rush of panic from the first month of the pandemic, I wasn’t sick with an upper respiratory infection or a yeast infection…things felt good. 

The daily ultrasounds and blood work told us that the increase dosage of menopur had brought me 8 follicles - almost all of which seemed a nice size to bring a quality egg. We even stimmed a day longer thinking that the two littlest ones would catch up. I was prepared for the news to say that not all of them fertilized, or that they stopped developing - because we’ve been through that and although shitty I was already prepared for how that news would feel. I was not prepared to hear that they only retrieved 2 eggs - that one of the big follicles was nothing more than a cyst, and the other 5 were empty, not even any fluid in follicle to indicate that an egg had been there. I was so positive that yesterday we would celebrate part 1 as a milestone. I didn’t even know that was possible to go wrong - and that’s why this news really hit me hard. 

Yesterday, with anesthesia and discomfort, was my day to feel sad. Today that feeling is not welcome and I am going to feel optimistic that the two little guys they did retrieve may turn into kiddos. Fingers crossed.