04.11.2020 – The day I got pregnant.
This is what everything works towards. This is it. And it wasn’t as straight forward as we were hoping for.
On Day 2, we had 7 embryos still, 6 of which were top grade.
I turn up for our Day 5 Embryo Transfer and they explain to me that one of our embryos has made it to Blastocyst stage and that a few others were a bit behind so they will see how they develop overnight to maybe freeze tomorrow.
Immedietly I am gutted. 1! Only 1 has made it to blastocyst stage so far. At this point, I was sat on a chair in the corner of the room with the consultant, nurse and embryologist stood over me, all with clipboards checking I knew my details and that they had the right details. It felt like it was not the time and place to cry and show my disappointment. How has 6 top graded embryos and 1 just behind ended up with just 1 blastocyst?
“What grade is the blastocyst?” I asked.
“3BB,” or it might have been, “3BC.” I was too overwhelmed to fully take in what she said.
Absolutely gutted. I know, I know. I should be grateful that we have got a blastocyst of any grade, but when you always read about the top 5AA grade, that’s what you set your heart on. And once again in this tortuous journey of infertility, my heart’s desire is not to be.
For those of you who are thinking, “What is she talking about? Grades? 5AA? Blastocyst?” Here is a link to our clinic’s webpage that explains all about embryo grading:
So anyway, there I am, disappointed that only one of our embryos has reached blastocyst, a low grade one at that, and the others ‘might’ make it tomorrow to be frozen.
It takes everything, literally everything, in me to keep it calm. Not only that, I am absolutely busting for the loo.
Then I get changed, sit up on the bed with only a gown covering my dignity. The nurse instructs me to put my feet on the stirrups and slide down the bed chair thing so that my bum is basically hanging off the end. Then he tilts me back and suddenly everything is open for all the world to see… Well, all 4 or 5 people in the room at least. No dignity.
They then stick a catheter up inside me while I have the nurse pushing a medical thing hard onto my stomach so that they can see what’s going on inside….. he is pushing onto my bladder. My extremely full bladder.
It takes not only everything in me to hold my heartbroken tears in, it is now taking everything in me to relax – this makes embryo transfer better – whilst not emptying my bladder onto the consultant’s face.
Before I know it, I am pregnant.
What, what?
I AM PREGNANT.
It really takes a long time for that to settle in. After everything we have been through for this moment, it is finally here. And I am pregnant.
And it is the most underwhelming feeling and moment.
I didn’t get the joy of jumping up and down with my husband after taking my first at home pregnancy tests and finding out it worked first month! I don’t get the freedom of believing that because I am pregnant, I am going to be holding a baby in my arms in 8 months.
Instead, I get ushered off a chair quickly and hurried to get changed. I get sent to the toilet and told to leave the building on my own. I proceed to the car to where my husband is, because of course, my husband wasn’t allowed to be with me when I got pregnant because of Covid.
And when I get into the car, I burst into tears, because all I can think about is those beautiful, little embryos that are full of our DNA, that already have a gender, and how they probably won’t make it. Instead they will be “discarded”…..
Our actual little living cells, with our DNA, with a gender… they will simply be discarded. It is absolutely crushing.
My lovely husband reminds me that actually, we are pregnant! I currently have a living embryo on board and we have never gotten this far. This is a miracle of Science and we are so grateful to God.
I am now home and resting and praying desperately that this precious embaby of ours decides to snuggle into my uterus and hopefully, I will be holding this sweet babe in my arms in 8 months time.
Today I am officially 2 weeks and 5 days pregnant!
05.11.2020 UPDATE
Today we called the clinic for an update of our embabies. None of them are good enough to freeze. Our embryos, our DNA will be discarded because they aren’t good enough.
I am broken.
This is not what our journey should have looked like.
There are no words…
Journeying to Family 