January 3, 2018
Before I begin, let me start with a word of advice. Do NOT do a fertility cycle during the holidays. Just don’t. I tried to avoid it. However, this IVF cycle had a few unexpected twists and turns and lasted about five months from beginning to end. If I could go back, I would have never done it over the holidays. It’s no fun sitting in the waiting room of your doctor’s office when you’re pretty sure you’re going to miscarry while listening to “Santa Baby” blaring through the office speakers. Just saying.
So here’s the long and the short of it.
- Did the frozen transfer in mid-December
- Got a positive pregnancy test via blood draw two days before Christmas
- We were SO happy and relieved
- Started spotting about 12 hours after the blood draw
- Happiness quickly turned to fear
- Bled a little on Christmas Eve
- Googled “spotting/bleeding in early pregnancy” a zillion times
- Tried to smile through Christmas for Kaia’s sake
- Second blood draw the day after Christmas
- Results were not good. hCG level went down instead of up
- Third blood draw a couple of days later revealed levels had gone down again
- The cycle is labeled a very early miscarriage or chemical pregnancy. Stop all meds. Wait for a period
The period (a.k.a. the mother of all periods) arrived on New Year’s Eve and is still going strong. Again, let me repeat, do not cycle during the holidays!
This cycle was intense. It didn’t start off that way. I thought it would be easier the third time around. I mean, this is our third IVF cycle and we imagined we had seen pretty much everything. We were very wrong. It was SO much harder. If anything, I was dealt a huge dose of reality. There is no “easier” when it comes to IVF. No matter how many times you’ve done it – it still has the ability to shock you. I didn’t take one step of this process for granted. I never assumed we would get pregnant or that our chances were higher because we had previously conceived. But, still, I hoped our chances were maybe a teeny bit better because I had been pregnant before. I’m not even sure if that makes any sense.
So where do we go from here?
The answer is I don’t know. We don’t know. We need to meet with our doctor first. I have had no contact with her since the transfer. We have a scheduled follow-up appointment in mid-January usually referred to in the world of infertility as the “WTF Appointment”. We will sit and listen and maybe cry. I honestly have no idea what she is going to say. Is it just one of those unfortunate things? We had the perfect embryo. PGS normal. Hatching like crazy on transfer day. What the fuck happened?
Mentally, I know this was not our time, not our cycle. Yet, in my heart, I feel lost. Whatever “plan” we had has been blown to smithereens. I hate the uneasiness. I’ll let you guys know what is going to happen after we talk to our doctor.
