How Do We Heal?

I'm sorry I haven't written in a while.  I just haven't had much to say.  It's been almost 2 weeks since the ultrasound that crushed our dream.  I survived the bleeding and it actually wasn't too bad.  Which isn't surprising since it looks like we lost the baby around 6 weeks.  But considering the emotional pain I was am in it felt like it should have been more of an event.  Slowly my thoughts and focus have started to move away from the baby and miscarriage to other aspects of life.  Last night was the first night I didn't cry myself to sleep, which seems like a big milestone.  I've found my motivation to try and get rid of the 10lbs I've gained from 2 back to back IVF cycles.  I laughed for the first time in what felt like forever on Friday when I shared an ice cream cone with my silly dog and she was so excited (yes I'm that person who shares food with their dog - don't judge.  She's the only baby I have).  Life is slowly getting back to normal.  And when I think about that it brings fresh tears to my eyes.  I don't want my life to go back to normal.  To what I've always known.  I WANT to be pregnant.  I want to be experiencing changes and feelings I've never had.  To be planning for a future that includes a baby.

Instead I find myself trying to heal from what has been the most painful experience of my 33 years.  And I have absolutely no idea how to do that.  The grief and sadness is always there.  Sometimes I can push it away and other times there's no controlling it.  I've noticed that when I think about us having a child my mindset has switched from "when" to "if".  This thought makes my broken heart feel as if it will never be whole again.  And while I'm not ready to give up on us having a family (which is the only dream I've ever really had) I just can't shake the feelings of hopelessness.

Which leads me to our next steps.  We had our WTF meeting with Dr. H which was SO hard.  While it was nice to see the wonderful staff at my clinic it was hard to go back to where our world came crashing down.  But these people have been with us every step of this journey and they are so caring and compassionate.  I am grateful for every one of them, as they have truly made this difficult battle a little easier on both of us.  Dr. H didn't have a whole lot of insight for us.  As he put it, everything that we can control went right and we were successful with getting me pregnant.  He explained that this in itself was a victory since so many women have problems even getting pregnant.  Now our mission becomes keeping me pregnant.  He thinks the miscarriage happened because the embryo that implanted was not chromologically (is that a word?) healthy.  He explained that at Day 3 even embryos who look perfect still have a high percentage of arresting.  However, for those embryos that make it to Day 5 almost 90% of them are genetically normal or healthy.  That being said his recommendation was for us to move forward and transfer our 1 Day 5 grade 2 embryo that we froze.  I know you hear mixed messages about the success rates of frozen vs. fresh.  Dr. H said that their success rate with frozen transfers is higher since my clinic only freezes Day 5 embryos.  Based on the fact that our 1 embryo made it to Day 5, and that one of it's "siblings" implanted, he thinks our success rate for a FET would be between 60 and 70 percent.  D and I both have our doubts about transferring just 1 embryo since we transferred 3 and we are right back where we started.  But Dr. H addressed these concerns by saying that transfer DID work.  And this embryo is much further along and we know a lot more about it than the 3 we transferred last cycle.  When you factor in that a FET runs us around $3K (vs. $15K for fresh IVF) it seems like the right thing to do to transfer this one and hope it works.

So right now we are back to waiting.  How I hate the waiting.  I need to have a period and then we start me back on birth control while we wait for cycle to start.  The FET protocol is pretty easy.  I'll take Lupron injections to keep me from ovulating and then I'll do E2V estrogen injections every other day leading up to the transfer.  Once my estrogen levels and lining are where they need to be we'll do the transfer.  Then it will be the standard PIO injections and estrogen/progesterone suppositories until we get the beta results. Sounds like a walk in the park compared to my last round of IVF.  Unless something strange happens and my period comes early it doesn't look like we will make May cycle so we are most likely looking at June.  And honestly I'm okay with that.  I know I need time to try and heal and to grieve.  And as I mentioned earlier if I can get some of this weight off I think I will feel a little bit more like myself.  As far as the hope I have for the FET it's running pretty low right now. I know it only takes one but after all we've been through it's hard not to focus on the fact that we are running out of time, money, and options.  Which puts a lot of pressure on this lonely little frozen baby.  I pray that it's God's plan for us that this is it.  I pray that He can provide me some peace and some hope.  I pray for a miracle.