In early May 2006 I began my 3rd try at IVF. To say that I was not optimistic is a very great understatement. In fact, I had completely lost hope. What we thought would be a quick means to an end turned out to be a living nightmare. Suddenly we had to confront not only the fact that we had really serious fertility problems but the idea that this might not work for us – EVER. I doubt many of you remember me going through this – because I basically went into a cave and shut everyone out. My wost fears were coming true. You see, I’ve only really and truly wanted two things in my life – one was to be married to my husband and the other was to have his children. Getting that man to the altar was exhausting enough – but IVF was threatening to do me in for good.

I started the cycle reluctantly – I had already made an appointment with a new RE at Cornell and was tempted to wait out the month and give my body a break but C urged me on. I’d been reading a lot about PGD and it seemed from what I read that the process might be damaging our embryos. This time I decided that I wanted to do a blastocyst cycle. Typically an embryo is transferred back to the woman’s uterus on day 3 of its little life. A blastocycst transfer takes place on day 5 when the embryo has divided into hundreds of cells. The theory behind transferring on day 5 is that most abnormal embryos will not reach the blastocyst stage. Transferring a blastocyst gives you a much greater chance of pregnancy. Most doctors will not transfer more than 2 grade A blastocysts for fear of multiples.

On May 15, 2006 10 eggs were retrieved. C and I had a running argument about ICSI. He didn’t think we needed it. He was convinced that his sperm was just fine and that 3K extra to spend on the embryologist hand picking and force fertilizing the eggs was a huge waste of money. He convinced our RE to give him an egg or two that would be placed in a dish with his sperm to fertilize naturally. When I found out that they had retrieved 10 eggs I agreed to give him 2 eggs for his experiment. The remaining 8 were all ICSI’ed and of those 7 fertilized. The two eggs involved in Chris’s experiment did not fertilize which is something we still don’t like to talk about to this day.

On Saturday May 20th 4 grade A blastocysts were placed in my uterus. I returned to our home upstate in Pawling, NY that afternoon. Most of my friends from high school were visiting that weekend and I remember not being allowed to walk up stairs or lift anything lighter than a glass of water.

The days following were long and boring. I was anxious and negative. The doctor had told me that the blastocyst would implant sometime between Saturday and Tuesday. On Monday I went to the acupuncturist – a lovely Chinese man name Dr. Wan Yu. He felt my pulse and told me that he was encouraged by its strength but he was certain that nothing had implanted yet. On Wednesday I had another appointment with him. “I’m sorry, nothing has implanted yet” he told me. I was concerned. “Let me try something”…in went the needles into my ears. About an hour later I began cramping. On Thursday evening I broke down and bought some First Response Early Result pregnancy tests. The result was negative. I told C and he was a bit deflated. “We’ll try again next month”…. I went to bed that night with a heavy heart.

The next morning I decided to try just one more test before I went to work. The result was negative, as expected. I called C to tell him that the cycle was officially over. As we were talking I glanced at the test and saw a very faint line. So faint that I thought perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me. “Don’t get your hopes up, honey”, C advised.

I quickly got dressed, grabbed the pregnancy test and got in a taxi to go to work. When I boss showed up I pulled him aside and showed him the test. “Yep, you’re pregnant” he told me. My friend Cheryl sat there shaking her head at me…”I can’t believe you just pulled out something you peed on and showed it to Rob”.

Finally I’d found a small glimmer of hope….but as you will soon find out, it didn’t last very long.