And that’s a wrap

I had the stupid announcement already written in my head. It was going to be a play on the numbers: After 5 long years trying to conceive, including 4 cycles of IVF, 3 countries, 2 different fertility clinics, and 1 amazing egg donor, we are finally pregnant.

Except we’re not. I took a home pregnancy test yesterday morning (11 days after our 5-day transfer), and it was a definitive negative. This was confirmed by a blood test this morning.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up at all. I knew the chances were very low, and the embryo didn’t have the best grade. I told myself this over and over again, attempting to lessen the impact of the eventual failure. But this was also the first cycle we’d used donor eggs, and our egg donor Marie had both her kids on the first try. And even though that was a few years ago now, a small part of me was hoping that — somehow — those fertile genes would fight their way through all the necessary stages and help us to finally beat the odds.

The last few days, the progesterone side effects were also playing into the fantasy, with my lower back pain and other potential ‘pregnancy symptoms’ growing progressively worse. A few days ago, I got a weird spam email predicting big news today, and last night, I had a vivid dream that we got a positive pregnancy test. If I had actually been pregnant, it would have been very tempting to conclude the Universe was giving us signs.* Instead, we have to cope with the fact that after 5 long years, 4 cycles of IVF, 3 countries, 2 fertility clinics, and 1 amazing egg donor, it’s still not our turn.

The positives in the negative

I’m not going to pretend that this news didn’t suck big-time, or that I didn’t have a private pity-party after seeing the result. Sure — we can try again — but what if it doesn’t work next time either? Or the time after? What if it never works? When should we resign ourselves to that fact and, like, start breeding rare iguanas, or sail around the world?

The only way I’ve been able to cope with this latest negative result is by focusing on the immediate positives, of which there are several:

POSITIVE #1: I can stop taking these <expletive> hormones and hopefully return to feeling myself again! (If you’re pregnant, you have to continue taking them up to 12 weeks). This has been the silver lining of each of our failed IVF cycles, and you have no idea how excited I am about it.

POSITIVE #2: We have people in our corner. This is the first cycle since we ‘came out‘ about our IVF journey, and having that support has been a huge help. Not just the literal support from Marie and her husband — which has been immense — but the emotional support as well. If you’re going through your own IVF ‘journey’ (such a euphemism…) and haven’t come out yet, I highly encourage you to consider it. Nobody should have to go through this alone. For this latest cycle, it’s gotten us through the well-meaning questions from more distant acquaintances (“You don’t have any kids?”) without poking our eyes out with our plethora of used syringes.

POSITIVE #3: We have 5 more frozen donor-egg embryos thanks to Marie, which means 5 more chances. It’s true that I’m not particularly in the mood to go through everything involved in another embryo transfer at the moment — much less FIVE more — but I do acknowledge that it puts us in a privileged position compared to many other couples. It’s certainly never a luxury we had with my own eggs, and for this we are thankful.

POSITIVE #4: Each failure makes you stronger. This is something that took me a while to realize. I used to feel each failure wearing me down, making me weaker. But looking back, I now realize they have slowly-but-gradually been making me stronger. How many people can say they’ve gone through IVF, or donor-egg IVF? How many people have had four (or more!) failed cycles? If you’re in this camp too, I salute you, because you are next-level badass.

*This just goes to show that confirmation bias is a real thing, and we create our own ‘signs’ where we want to see them, true or not. (Also, how dorky am I that I chose to use an emotional post about infertility & grief to make a point about cognitive bias…)