I haven’t been able to bring myself to write for the past couple of weeks. The outcome of this past embryo transfer left me confused and once again extremely disappointed and sad. My first HCG test result was “5”. In order to be considered a positive pregnancy result, it needed to be over 50. I have not experienced anything other than a clear “not pregnant” result or a number high enough to jump for joy. It is hard enough seeing that I’m not pregnant but in this case, I couldn’t just get the negative result, be sad, deal with it and move on. This was a dark cloud that stuck around for a week. I had to retest two more times to see if the number changed. In the mean time, I worried about possible ectopic pregnancy or who knows what else this number could mean. The first retest stayed the same (even more confused) and the next one finally returned back to a normal “not pregnant” result.   My doctor said that most likely it was a chemical pregnancy where it is possible that the embryo attached and started to develop for 2-3 days, then stopped. I quickly moved into another cycle as soon as the final test result was confirmed as I luckily started a normal period right away. In a matter of 48 hours, medications were ordered, the next cycle was scheduled, I had a baseline ultrasound and bloodwork and my first injection was Friday night. I realized that I’ve been pushing myself to move on to new embryo transfer cycles as quickly as my doctor will allow as I’ve had the looming one year contract hanging over my head. As part of our egg donor process we paid for what is called a “refund plan” which allows us to have as many embryo transfer cycles as needed for a full year until we can have a pregnancy without any additional cost. Due to the logistics in general, plus a pregnancy that lasted about 9 weeks and recovery time from surgery, we have only been able to fit in 3 transfers so far. I have been so worried about the contract ending, meaning we would have to start paying again that it was causing me a considerable amount of extra stress. I talked to my doctor about this and found out there is a process to extend the time on our contract. And suddenly a huge weight was lifted off of me. I feel much better going into this cycle and I decided that if this time does not work, I’ll take a few months off. This will give me time to re-focus on my well-being and find my internal sunshine as it has been covered by many clouds of disappointment and heartbreak for such a long time. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this time is the one.

Photo by CJE