And I’m more than a little disheartened.
2 day transfer of 4 embryos. That’s not great news right there. But wait! It gets worse!
The two day transfer is more related to the day of the week than the holiday – which was something of a relief. I was feeling sort of put-upon that Memorial Day was more important than my transfer, but Mondays are apparently my doctor’s usual day off. And, as he explained it, his success rates when he’s the one doing the transfering are better than when his partner does it. Ok. That sounds fair to me, plus I like and trust my doctor. But when I asked the embyologist why are we transfering all four, are they not in good shape? He said that 2 had divided on schedule – little 4-celled bloblets, but the other two were ‘lagging behind’. And why might that be? I asked. Answer is: Good old comes-in-handy advanced maternal age. Which is also why none of my embryos were classified as “Excellent” or even “good”. They are average. “Average, for your age of course, miss.”
Goddamn it all to hell.
My doctor said that if we were shooting for a blastocyst transfer on day four or five, waiting til we had a better idea if the lagging two would catch up might make sense so we’d have a larger pool of candidates to work from, but since we’re not feeling like gambling quite that much, it’s better to transfer the whole shebang and hope that one of them decides to stick around. Uterus is better than petri-dish, I guess is the line of thinking. Can’t hurt, might help.
But four. Given that my clinic is noted for, and proud of, their extremely low triplet rate, that means that they really really don’t think there’s a good chance for any of these little guys.
At the moment, I am kicking myself for allowing myself to be talked into any sort of relationship-preserving delay at all. I should have tried to get myself knocked up with donor sperm as soon as my divorce was final when I was still a peach-faced 35. Fuck, I should have recognized what was happening by the time I turned thirty with the ‘oh, someday we’ll do that, dear,’ lines of bullshit I was fed. I always meant to be a mother by age 30. I had a plan to get my buddy to knock me up since we knew he made such pretty babies. But I thought I had a bit of time, and my late twenties, early thirties were so busy. My thinking – if thinking it can be called – went like this: “I’m healthy, in good (if not great) shape. I’ve got some time. My mom didn’t enter menopause until her late fifties, and hey, celebrities have babies after 40 all the time” But it looks like I really don’t have that time. It sunk in today that none of this might work. There might, literally, be nothing to be done. I waited too long, and now I’m looking at a long, solitary life stretching out ahead of me and it terrifies the shit out of me.
I got weepy at the transfer, which was embarassing as hell. My doctor reassured me as best he could, but I could also tell he wasn’t thrilled with what we got, either. And he tried to make me laugh by reminding me that some of this was just the hormones wreaking havoc on my emotions. It was all I could do not to burst into tears at the thought of all those wasted hormones. They should have gone to someone who could use them better than my old worn-out body can. Oi. Even I know that’s out of hand. These next few weeks are going to be a good time, let me tell you.
And before you ask, yes I have considered my options, actually. They’r e not great. Adoption is the most appealing, but between my age, my partner’s age, our unmarried and one-divorce-apiece state, we’re pretty much ineligible to adopt overseas, and domestically, our choices are limited to adopting a special needs kid, or a 12 year old foster-kid who needs a home.
Which I don’t want. I want a baby, damnit. And I want to be with that baby while it grows through toddler-hood and little kid-hood. I want to be a mommy, not just a mom. Besides, I work with middleschoolers. I don’t want to adopt one. And I don’t want to be a foster-mom. Nor do I want to take on a special-needs kid by choice. That might be selfish, but fuck it. The quest to have a baby at this point in my life is selfish and that’s just how it is.
So anyway, the transfer went fine. The doctor gave me a hopeful but sort of sad smile on the way out, told me to “think gestational thoughts.” Yeah. Doing that. “The tomato seed is not an indicator of what kind of plant you’ll get out of it.” Yeah right. Whatever. I liked the “gestational thoughts” concept better.
Ok, deep breath. It’s not the end of the world. My lining is measuring a nice plump 11.-something mm. Which is good. And the tranfer went without a hitch. I brought home an US souvenir picture with my four little ‘bubbles’ in it. Not to mention the bubble-cuddling embryos themselves, as well as the new prescription for something else to stick up into my already crowded girl-goods. I took a pregnancy test this morning, so I can track the HCG from the trigger shot leaving my system, so that I can then try to take a HPT ahead of my scheduled blood test on June 9, since I know myself well enough to know I wont’ be capable of waiting that long. But part of me just wanted to see how it would look. If I was. Because I’m realizing it’s something I can’t count on ever being able to experience for real. I sort of wanted to see that mythical ‘two lines on the test’ state. Just because.
It’s going to be a long long two weeks.
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