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.

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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.

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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.