Devin’s birthday is quickly approaching and his gifts have both arrived!

From me, the train I chose. I decided to go with the pewter just because of upkeep. But I am really really happy with how cute it is.

And from Kel, which just arrived today, the Loving Angel. <3 A year ago one of my mom’s friends got me the Angel of Healing, which has since had a place of honor on Devin’s shelf. I told Kel that I wanted to get another one for this year, but I didn’t know which one… so she picked one out for me, as her gift to me/us. It’s perfect. She said this past year has been full of grief, but also so full of love: for Devin, for my husband, for our future kids.

He/we probably won’t be getting any more gifts – not many people buy gifts for a dead baby, not even grandparents. But while most babies get a plethora of toys for their birthday, I am incredibly happy with the two perfect ones I have.

This waiting is going to give me an ulcer, I swear. These are by far the worst days of the cycle. Granted I was pretty terrified before the maturity/fertilization report, but I was also in surgery so it made it easier to not think about it. Right now I have nothing to do but think, and it’s driving me crazy.

I woke up way too early this morning and decided to just take a pregnancy test, just so I could go back to sleep – I knew I wouldn’t be able to if I was just waiting. It was negative, of course. Expected, and yet it sparked so much fear in me. I stood there staring at it, wondering how on earth I could possibly expect anything different, ever. Even when I had it once – that feels like a fairy-tale now. This is the reality, this blank stick, heart pounding, sending silent wishes out into the universe that this cycle could pull this off for me. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. I don’t know when.

So I spent the rest of the day just struggling with the fear and anxiety. There were many times when I randomly felt like bursting into tears, just out of fear that this isn’t going to work. I can’t even describe to you the feeling. Most of you know it. It’s so unlike grief. Grief is something already set in stone – something bad has happened, and now you have to come to terms with it. It is hard, too, but hard in a different way. Fear is the unknown. Fear exists because it is not yet grief, and it might not be grief – but you don’t know. There are two different outcomes, and you’re sitting in the crossroads, not sure of where you’re going to end up.

This morning I felt a tiny bit of cramps from my uterus, a lot more cramping and aching from my ovaries. My lower back is a little achy, too, which I was warned might happen because one ovary is tucked a little behind. But tonight there is a tightness I do not remember… a fullness, a weight. It could be my imagination. It probably is. It’s probably just more bloating and pressing against my ovaries. But maybe it’s not.

I am tired. I am sure I will find myself in the same predicament tomorrow morning: wide awake at 5am, heart pounding, mind being drawn to the pregnancy tests in the bathroom. I will test again, and wait, and shiver with the anxiety.

Only a few more days of this… then we can move either to the joy or the grief.

I am terrified.

And suddenly, here it is. I start testing in the morning, and I am terrified. Not that I really expect a positive on 11dpo (last time I was testing negative until 13dpo), but it’s the fear of continued nothings.

I’ve never been in this place before. I’ve been in similar places, waiting to test – many with a lot of hope. But they all ended badly. The one cycle that ended well I had NO hope and no anticipation. So in a way my brain really can’t wrap around the possibility of this ending well. I spend all day imaginging it, clinging to it, believing it… but when night falls and that pregnancy test looms close, all I can ever imagine seeing is a plain white negative.

Apparently getting pregnant once doesn’t really lessen the fear that it will never happen again, like I had hoped.

I think it could pretty much go without saying that I’m a bit of an airhead this week. I even drive home and then realize I don’t remember the last three lights. I just cannot focus on anything.

I am trying so hard to just let everything else go while I’m at work and focus on what I’m doing, but apparently I am failing. And I am getting very exaspirated. I absolutely hate doing things wrong, especially repeatedly. And I just don’t even know what to do about it at this point, other than apologise profusely.

So this afternoon I came home and had a good cry – half over the constant screw-ups, half because I am just emotional as hell. I felt slightly better when that was done with, but I’m still just… frustrated.

I hope next week is a little better in terms of not screwing things up, but I highly doubt my concentration level is going to be any better. I’ll be taking pregancy tests, my beta is on Thursday, and Devin’s birthday is on friday. If there’s ever a week to count on me being out of touch, this would be it.

::

I have felt such real joy over the past week, it’s absolutely amazing to know that it’s really possible to feel joy like that – excitement, instead of hurt.

The other day one of my coworkers brought in a newly purchased little baby outfit. My first reaction, as it has been for the past year, was a pang of sorrow. As has become my defense I just kept my head down and my mouth shut as the others all cooed over it. But then I heard the coworker say, “And if [intended recepient] doesn’t have a girl, maybe Natalie will!” Suddenly warmth flooded into me. Maybe I will. Maybe baby things won’t just be about Devin and what was… they could be about the future, too.

After that it didn’t hurt to look at the little baby clothes.

::

In a way I think I’m a little glad that my last two cycles have coincided with big dates in terms of the loss: last cycle and the first Christmas, this cycle and Devin’s birthday. I think, were those four dates completely separate, I would spend a lot more time obsessing. But this kind of gives me something to distract myself when I need it. The last few weeks I’ve been so wrapped up in the IVF cycle I wasn’t really thinking much about how Devin’s birthday is coming up – and now that there’s nothing to be done for the cycle I can plan his birthday. That limits me to one short week of building anxiety, rather than a month. This is a good thing.

We are having a small dinner on his birthday… just a couple of family members. I bought a tablecloth (since we had no plain ones) and some little things to make a centerpiece out of. Now we need to figure out what to make. I’ll have some candles lit, his train set out, and I’d like to get some white carnations. (Roses are typical, I know – but I like carnations.) Some words spoken over dinner thanking our guests for coming and remembering with us. That’s all.

The results of my beta will certainly set the tone for the evening. It is just so hard to plan anything at all right now.

::

Den and I feel really good about this cycle… so good it makes us nervous. In many ways it feels like if we really believe this worked then we will be hurt, that we will not get what we want. We feel like we have to protect our hearts, be cautious, remove all expectations.

But it is so hard when this cycle has gone so well. Devin couldn’t have been just a fluke. And this cycle is so so much more promising than that one ever was. How could this not work?

There is expectation and hope… and much, much fear. As much as I kept saying now it won’t matter because we have frozen embryos, of course it matters. It will shatter us all over again if this one, too, comes up empty – especially after all the positive build-up of the past week and a half. This has been nearly the perfect cycle – and if even this doesn’t work, what more do we have left to hope for?

Today I was feeling better, thank the light. Still very tender, but I wasn’t in pain. Though my coworkers did say I was quite pale today. But I got a good night’s sleep and was actually awake all day today… what a terrific idea. Too bad I’m not late shift more often.

::

Tonight we went out for dinner. Den told me that they had ordered up a special dish of rack of lamb for the dinner, but he wasn’t so certain I would like that.

I said, “Probably not.” Then I thought, lamb. “Ummm, no. Definitely not.”

Den suddenly knew what I meant. “Oh. Oh. Yeah.” Silence. “I think we might be taking this symbolism a little too far.” Another pause. “But now that you said that, I don’t think I can have that, either.”

Next time we’re going to have to plan a little bit better when choosing an animal.

The other day I said to a cycle buddy that if as far as I knew OHSS would show up within a few days of retrieval, if it was going to happen.

Oh so ironic.

No, I’m not in the hospital or at the doctor’s office or anything. I am just NOT comfortable. The past two days at work I have been walking very, very tenderly, a little hunched over, wincing whenever I jarred my stomach. SORE. Very very sore. Like a have two large, inflated balloons in there.

I scanned back through my notes from last cycle and this is apparently lasting a little longer than last time. In one way that’s surprizing, because, you know, the major overstim last time. But on the other hand it kind of makes sense, since last time he had me trigger with ovidrel, which has a much shorter half-life than the novarel I used this time.

I think I am feeling a little bit better… maybe this is on its way to being over with. Today is one week since transfer, so that timeline is pretty normal… if it goes away now.

::

The good news is that I only have a week to wait.

The bad news is that I have a week to wait.

I have the urge to pee on something, even though there is NO way anything would show up right now. It’s just this itchy need in the back of my brain. Must. Pee. On. Stick.

I feel so good about this cycle – I mean, everything has gone so so well. But I’m still so scared… nothing is a guarantee.

There is apparently a pregnancy surge all over. This time I want to be a part of it.

The nurse sounded happy on the phone. “This is the second-best call I’ve made this week!” she said. 2 frozen blasts of my 5 remaining, when they warned us we might not get any.

I admit, for a tiny split-second I was a little disappointed there weren’t more. Probably in large part because I guessed 3 and Den guessed 2, and he’s been right every. damn. time. this cycle. He guessed 25 eggs, 6 embryos, 2 frosties. I am not kidding. I want his crystal ball(s).

But then I hung up and said to myself HOLY CRAP WE HAVE FROZEN EMBRYOS. That was it, the crowning achievement – this cycle will officially go down in history as the Best Cycle Ever Imagined. First blastocyst transfer, first frosties, and obviously the best maturity rate EVER. This cycle is like My Cycle In Heaven. It’s unbelievable.

Our lab, as I said, only freezes the very BEST embryos. Their freeze rate is apparently very low… they warned us to not expect much, even with the number of blasts we had. So these two that we have frozen, they aren’t second-quality embryos that we could maybe throw in and see if they make it. We KNOW that they are equal in quality (or at least close to it) to the one we transferred this time. We have some fabulous, beautiful embryos frozen. For the next time… and the time after that.

This cycle produced THREE top quality embryos. Just stop and think about that for a minute. My previous cycles? Two embyos of questionable quality, or one embryo of really good quality (once). I was hoping and wishing for ONE really good one. I got three.

Our biggest hope is that I get pregnant with Shooting Star and then we can use our two frosty stars for future children. This is just the best position we could possibly be in. And in the event that this little Star doesn’t stick, we can put another one back in.

Either way, I am done with stims for some time. As much as we seem to have found something that worked for my eggs, it’s still hellishly stressful – to my mind and my body. Am I going to overstim? Are there going to be any quality eggs? Will they fertilize? Will I get OHSS? Will my body fuck up the timing of everything again? My body gets a break. I get a damn break. We have some known quantities now.

The nurse said this is the most excited and confident she’s ever been for me. Which would, I assume, include the cycle that I actually did get pregnant with a baby. So that’s quite something, isn’t it.

One week to wait. It’s going to be a long week… especially if things continue like today and I keep fucking up everything I touch at work. If I’m this bad now, how much more spaceheaded will I get when I’m actually pregnant?? Does not bode well for my work. All I wanted to do was get home and post about all of this and bask in the happy glow of a cycle going RIGHT.

I really enjoyed working the past 6 months because it gave me something to do other than think about what I was going through in my life. But right now? My life is going WELL. And I’d really LIKE to sit and think about it. Work kind of takes a second seat to happiness.

We were worried that of the six embryos we wouldn’t have many making it to blast stage… we were both really sweating it this morning, wondering if we were going to get a phone call saying that nothing made it. The phone call never came, so we drove in.

Happily about halfway through the drive my valium started kicking in and I could feel my anxiety creep down several notches. When we got there the nurse got me situated in my bed, but she hadn’t heard any news from the lab so she had no idea.

People started trickling in… the ultrasound tech (whom I LOVE), one of the nurses, the doctor. They all looked excited. They all said, “I’m so excited to see you here today!!”

Someone said, “I spoke to the lab, and they sound very happy!” But no numbers yet. I got wheeled into the OR, warm towels wrapped around me (oohhhh I love the warm towels), and one of the embryologists from the lab came out with sheets of paper. She checked my bracelet, verified my name and date of birth, then pulled out the report card. 25 retrieved, 8 ICSI’d, 6 fertilized, 6 cultured to day 5…. 1 transferred on day 5, and 5 to be cultured to day 6 for possible freezing. Did you catch that? I did. “So there’s still six??” Yes. There are still SIX embryos – now blastocysts. She said some are a little behind, but that that’s pretty normal (especially since my eggs weren’t all ICSI’d right away), but that tomorrow they’ll see what meets freeze criteria.

And the one they’re transferring, they said, is “beautiful.” Ultrasound tech was beaming, everyone was just so thrilled for us that we were there today, on day 5, transferring a perfect looking blastocyst.

The ultrasound tech took a quick scan, measuring things that I couldn’t even see (seriously – she was drawing a little map of things that I couldn’t even tell were there!). There was a resident there observing, and asked if this was our first time. Ha, no. He asked if we’d ever gotten pregnant. I explained we had, but had a third trimester loss. So while I talked with the ultrasound tech Den answered some questions about Devin. (The Resident was very nice and didn’t give us some stupid speech, yay.)

And then the embryologist brought in the catheter with our little blastocyst in it. The catheter was carefully placed – I could see on the screen the little shiny tip showing exactly where it was. And poof, there it went. But instead of just a little blip on the screen like our previous transfers, this one streaked a little bit through my uterus. “A little shooting star,” the ultrasound tech said. “Sometimes they do that, sometimes they don’t.”

After being wheeled to recovery and updating twitter, Den and I thought, you know, that’s the random thing we’ve been waiting for to spark a name in our heads. It’s our little Shooting Star.

I layed in bed for 20 minutes, as is their procedure, and in that time people kept poking their head around the corner to congratulate us. They kept saying how fantastic this embryo looked. And the tech and nurse told us that the entire clinic – the lab, the nurses, the doctors – were all so absolutely thrilled with the news of my egg maturity and fertilization. You could tell, they were just beaming.

We were warned that their criteria for freezing embryos is very strict, so not to be surprized if very few or none actually get frozen – but the lab still thinks several of them are good contenders. I asked if they could call me tomorrow with the news… waiting for the mailed out sheet just sucks. So hopefully tomorrow we will have some more good news.

But, as they said, the most important thing was this, transferring one perfect, beautiful little blastocyst.

I go in on March 5 for my beta.

A week and a half ago a care package arrived for me from a friend. I don’t know where she found the items, but they were perfect… bath powder, a chocolate bar called “Instant Gratification,” incense sticks called “Hope”… and three candles in a package labelled “Miracles.” I lit the candles and an incense stick that night, resting in bed with my laptop in the glow of the candles.

I’m not exactly a spiritual person, to say the least. I can’t tell you that I believe that this gift is what brought good fortune to me – I simply don’t think life functions that way. But it all has a certain poetic feel to it.

I lit what’s left of the candles again tonight, to remind myself. There is joy in this world, there are good surprizes, there are so-called miracles.

::

I feel a glimmer of the old me coming back. Not just dogged desperation, but hope… and joy. A little bit of joy. Thankfulness.

I can look back on the year of pain and sorrow… I can recognize it, respect it, without really being mired in it. I feel much like I did after I got pregnant the first time. It’s not like the shit we went through to get pregnant magically disappeared, it’s not like a light switched and suddenly I was totally fine. I still hurt, at times. I was still angry. I was still scared. But that wasn’t all I was.

In a way I feel like I’m glad the last cycle happened the way it did. As emotionally draining as it was, it got me to this cycle. My second cycle we should have changed protocol, but we didn’t because the doctor thought ICSI would fix the problem. But I got pregnant. In a way, it worked. So when it came time to do IVF again we all thought just doing the exact same thing again was the best course of action. And it occurred to me today that if I had somehow gotten pregnant last cycle, despite everything that went wrong, we never would have figured out what protocol works for me. Next time we do IVF, for another child, we’ll probably be without insurance. Imagine where we would be then. All we would have known was the crap cycles I’d always had.

Last cycle was a huge kick in the pants to all of us. It told us: let’s try something new. And now look at where we are. We could have frozen embryos – good ones. But most of all we have hope. I was about ready to start seriously looking at donor eggs – I knew I couldn’t keep barely scraping through, hoping we got one good egg. And now look. 6 embryos. I still cry in joy and relief every time I think it.

There is a chance this cycle could still not get me pregnant, even with a perfect blast. But even if it doesn’t, it still will not be a failure. This cycle succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. It helped build me back up. It helped let me know that the unexpected joys are still possible, that there are good things in our future.

::

Transfer is in the morning at 11am. I am trying hard to stay positive. I still worry that there will be bad news. I debated calling today to ask them to check on them, but decided I could wait until tomorrow the final verdict. I decided I would just keep assuming there were 6 until informed otherwise (though I certainly don’t expect to still have 6 tomorrow).

In a way I like this process, but it does show me just how hard it will be when I get pregnant. Every few days a new update – an ultrasound, a bloodtest, an embryo report. This cycle has been amazing, but I still only spend a day really excited – then the next day I’m already worrying about the next step, the next news. It helps know that I could, if I wanted, call and ask them to check in with the embryos. Just let me know what’s going on, I could say. And they would. But then the embryo is placed carefully inside me and it’s lights-out for the duration.

I so look forward to the news tomorrow. I can only hope for continued good news.

I actually did manage to sleep last night, but 6am I woke up. And when I say woke up, I mean my eyes popped wide open and my heart was beating loudly. No chance of sleep at all. I just layed there, thinking about the phone call that was yet to come. I figured they would call after 8, so another 2 hours to wait. It doesn’t matter what type of news you expect or hope for, just the fact that you will be getting some news is so anxiety-ridden. Always the fear.

I tossed and turned for 2 hours, playing with my blackberry a little bit. Den was half awake, too, but still managed to drift off to sleep time and again.

At 8 Den got up to go to the bathroom and start the shower. I layed in bed waiting. The phone rung.

It was someone from the lab, a perky, young female voice. “You will be doing a 5-day transfer on Tuesday, come in at 10:30 for an 11am transfer.”

I thanked her and hung up. I, errr, forgot to ask how many we had or how they were looking, or anything of the sort. I just said, “Oh wow! Okay! Thank you!!!”

And then I walked over to the bathroom door and knocked. “Hey Den? I think I’m just going to go back to bed.”
“No, you aren’t!” he shouted back through the door. “You’re taking a shower!”
“Nah,” I replied. “I’m just going to go back to bed.”
“… Why?”
“Because we’re doing a 5 day transfer!”

Of course then he asked how many we have and I said “I don’t know” and he was a little grouchy with me, LOL.

So we crawled back into bed for a little while, smiling at the ceiling. We have at least 4 top-grade embryos. We’re going to blast. We’re doing a 5-day transfer. Wow. Just… wow.

Oh, and this quickly solves the question of how many to put back – for a woman under 35 they only recommend transferring 1 blast. And it has a higher pregnancy rate than 1 day-3.

We’re going to blast, baby!!!