Two months ago, my husband and I met with our fertility Doctor. The purpose of this visit was to review our failed IVF transfer to see what could be done differently the next time. We went in expecting a new medication plan and a date for our next round of IVF. This was not what we got. Our Doctor told us that there were no adjustments to make, that the conditions for transfer were perfect and he could not explain why the transfer was not successful. He told us that he was not comfortable doing another transfer without immunological testing, which was done with the assistance of a lab in Greece. Blood and samples were taken and off to Greece they went.
Well, we received the results, and honey, they ain’t good. It turns out that my body is attacking my husbands/the embryo’s cells. My body is recognizing the embryo as a threat. This is intensely bad news to receive when one dreams of getting pregnant. I received these results on a Thursday, opened them and read them matter of factly. I did not react. I texted my husband saying, basically my cells are attacking the embryo – like it was no big deal. I sent this in a text. What the heck? I was able to share the news, but I was unable to process it.
Sunday night rolled around, and the results finally sunk in, it was like I had a epiphany, I most likely will never be able to get pregnant. This brought about an intense sense of loss and sadness. I have always wanted to be pregnant, feel the baby growing and kicking inside of me, be able to care for and nurture my baby as it develops. In short, this most likely will not happen.
We still have to meet with the Doctor to discuss our options, I am no Doctor myself, but the results seem to be pretty clear. This leads us down another road of unknowns. What do we do next? Do we look into surrogacy? Adoption? We still have 6 frozen embryos. I am trying not to skip ahead. I am doing my best to recognize that this is a huge loss and needs to be mourned. I need to sit in this emotion and deal with it before I can move on to making a decision.
This is not a dead end, but rather a fork in the road, of which we have encountered many. We will get through this as we have the ones before and the ones we will hit in the future. Sometimes the only way around is through.
