Relieved

So, it’s been awhile. In that time so much has happened. A D&C to clear out uterine polyps, an ERA determining that the timing of the first 2 transfers was off by 2 days, (still pissed about that), and then finally another transfer of our last 2 embryos.

The D&C provided a wealth of information. Apparently I had the “most polyps” my doctor had ever seen. Uh… thanks?? The procedure was fine. I was out for it. Woke up feeling super drugged up which was pretty awesome. Mom, Kap and Jen babied me. We watched a ton of Great British Baking and I was back to 100% pretty quickly. When I did the consult after and my doctor showed me the pictures of all the polyps it was crazy. There were soooo many. He said that if I ever do become pregnant this shouldn’t be an issue as the embryo would use up all the estrogen opposed to having it create more polyps.

Next came the ERA or endometrial receptivity assay. I had watched youtubers talk about this test and how 25% of women require a different amount of exposure to progesterone than what’s typical. The test is relatively inexpensive, about $800, and it’s really the same process as an FET cycle. The only difference is that on the “transfer day” instead of getting an embryo put in, you get an endometrial biopsy taken that is sent off to a lab for analyzation regarding DNA markers and exposure to progesterone. I’d read/heard this biopsy would hurt like a bitch. My office said to take an ibuprofen. 🙄 I took narcotic level painkillers and can still say it is the worst 5-10 seconds of pain I’ve EVER felt in my life. Luckily, it really is only 5-10 seconds then I was able to go on about my day. The test is only processed by one company in the world, Igenomix, and it takes about 6 weeks to get the results. I was so impatient waiting. When I got the results I knew I’d be angry if it came back that we’d transferred previously at a time I wasn’t receptive but I still wanted to know before using my last two embryos or moving on to a donor cycle. Sure enough I had not had enough exposure to progesterone either transfer and neither had ever stood a chance of implanting. I was so fucking pissed. And sad. It’s not like we had a mountain of embryos. We had 6. And we wasted 4 because my clinic didn’t offer this test prior to transfers. I calmed down after a few days and then we got ready for our transfer of our last 2 embryos.

For our last transfer we gave it our best. We were really optimistic going in the day of the transfer. We even brought my mom along since she normally is just my designated driver for the appointments I’m drugged up and never gets to come along on the fun trips. Then I saw the embryos. I’ve spent enough time on every fertility forum on earth to spot some runty looking embryos. All our previous embryos were 4ABs. Not perfect but still pretty solid. This time we had 1 4AB and 1 4BB. Looking at the cell structure compared to expanded blasts online these just simply didn’t “look” as good. That being said, we kept the hope alive and I took it easy all weekend after the transfer Friday. I started peeing on sticks and getting negative tests on Wednesday. On Friday, I used my first FRER of this cycle and used one a day through my beta on Monday. Each was absolutely stark white negative. By then we’d come to grips with the transfer not working. Fun fact, it really sucks when you know you’re not pregnant but you still have to do nightly IM shots of PIO and estrogen because you haven’t been officially cleared to stop yet.

This is going to sound weird but after my negative beta yesterday, I’m relieved. I’m super sad our DNA didn’t produce a person but now that chapter is over. We can move on. We started making plans the weekend before my beta since we knew it would be negative. First, we made the decision to attend a foster to adopt meeting that’s in our area a week from today. Second, we have decided to initially do a donor embryo cycle at our current clinic. I talked to one of my nurses about it and because we aren’t picky about ethnicity, gender, parental hair color, eye color, height, etc they should be able to match us very quickly based 100% on embryo quality. I thought I’d have to wait a couple cycles but she said as soon as menstruation comes we can go straight into the donor cycle. I am so excited. So that’s where I’m at today. My negative beta was yesterday and now I’m ready to move on. I just feel so relieved to know we tried everything we could but a child from our DNA wasn’t in the cards. Now we can go 100% unburdened on to next. At the end of the day we will have a family and now it’s just a matter of determining the path.