Later this month......

So most of my family stayed in Denver an extra day for the funeral. I am terribly homesick, so it was hard to leave but Jon and I had to get back, for a variety of reasons. Un-benownst to my family, we had an ultrasound immediately after landing in Phoenix, and embarked on our next IVF round. I wasn't telling them this time. The only people that knew were my boss and a few people helping me with coverage at work.  This one was going to be low key, and routine. I would tell people when there was something to tell. Like a 12 week pregnancy, or a miscarriage.
Everything went pretty routinely.  Shots were easy this time and I was not as uncomfortable or as sore as I was this summer. I had my egg retrieval last Thursday and they took out 29 eggs. Twenty of those were fertilized, and we just had to wait through incubation. Embryos are always checked after 3 days, and if all is going well, they go back in the incubator for a Day 5 transfer. So after 2 days of basic bed rest, I was eager to be productive Sunday before football started. The list was long, clean house, do laundry, do some experimental gluten free baking, knock out a quilt. I couldn't wait to get back to work on Monday, take Tuesday off again for the transfer, and see what becomes of our last IVF round. I was also interested to see how many extras we get for future attempts. And then my phone rang. It was the doctor's office. We needed to come in right away this morning for the embryo transfer. This has never happened before so after panic came disappointment and shock. As I abandoned my hopes of a productive day, I slipped on my new sock monkey slippers and headed out the door.
Upon arrival, we were escorted into the procedure room to change and as I hopped up on the table, the embryologist and my fertility doctor came into the room to discuss what was happening. The embryologist said he had never seen anything like it. Three of the embryos has to be immediately discarded, no surprise, because of basic fertilization complications (accepting 2 sperm instead of just one). But 12 of them just stopped developing after a day. They had 3 that looked promising, and recommended that all 3 get transferred into me, another first (the usual is 2). There were 2 more that were lagging behind a little and were going to go back into the incubator for possible growth and freezing. We won't know about these until Wednesday, but they don't look great. They said that if there were 4 that looked good, they would have put all 4 in me.
It comes down to this - poor egg quality. This would explain my constant miscarriages. The embryos don't have the strength to continue in development, and results for future attempts (if we tried them) would probably just get worse. The only known factor in egg quality is age, so they were surprised that they watched the decline in someone so young.
All I heard through the translation was "You will probably never have children of your own." So even though they then proceeded to transplant 3 in me, and it only takes one good one (which is possible), I had a really, really, really really bad day.
Before this round I kept saying, "I have this great life that I am not living. Lets do this and find out if we are having kids, or if we aren't, so I can move on." Is it that easy? I thought yes, but I have now realized that that statement is a lot like the death of my grandfather. Easy to say and prepare for, not so easy to accept and deal with.  This is something I was prepared to deal with after another miscarriage. I even had a friend lined up to use my frozens as a surrogate if I miscarried from this one. But per the doctor, it isn't my inability to carry a pregnancy. It is that the embryos keep dying. I fully expect a positive pregnancy test, and then fully expect to miscarry a week and a half later, like usual. If that doesn't happen I will be surprised. But it probably will.
I am devastated, heartbroken, etc. I am sure you can only imagine. I am trying to work through a lot of emotions right now, and am in predominately in shock. Though I have 3 in me, and 2 in a freezer, I have pretty much written them off. I don't want to hear anything about thinking positive. I haven't done anything but be just that up to this point, and it hasn't done me any good. And I am sick of it. I have earned the right to be upset, and negative. And that is how I will need to be for a while. So please don't ask, because I don't want to talk about it. I'll let you know if there is anything interesting to say. I know I am supported, and I appreciate that, even if I don't show it. Just let me be cranky for a while. Because this sucks.