A story that isn't done

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of stories in human existence. Stories are how we make sense of the random series of events and experiences that form the course of our lives. It's how we define our family, our nation, our collective history. It's how we sell a CV filled with various professional experiences that we cobble together to pay the bills and hopefully find some meaningful way to contribute to society.

I tried to sell myself on the story of being the future mom who accepted the data that told her that four euploid embryos and one low-level segmental mosaic were sufficient: that odds of 199 out of 200 are squarely enough to feel confident that motherhood is secured, that it's time to move on and not agonize over the tiny reserve of eggs withering away before we thaw out our five little hopes of creating a biological family. But that's not my story. I realized I couldn't stop my fertility journey on so much heartache. The decision has torn me up and left my intestines in knots. What about our bank account? What about the odds that I now endure multiple failed cycles?

Once again, there's comfort and sanity in the stories we tell ourselves: I'm not a woman who failed IVF but a fertile woman who has created five viable embryos and who's on a mission to make a few more. I'm not someone just embarking on embryo banking but someone who's already successfully banked what most doctors would call enough for two children, and who's circling back for a couple of bonus cycles while enjoying the benefits of having hit her annual out-of-pocket limit.

We can't know what the last chapter of the IVF journey will look like, and to be fair that final bits won't come until we've implanted in years to come. All I know is I can't live with the narrative that I gave it anything less than all I had. And what I've got is two more cycles, two more tries for another frozen miracle who might one day make me a mom.

Get those seat belts back on: this ride isn't over yet.

Paris 2024

Defying all my family vacation fears, we enjoyed what I'd call our best trip back to Europe since the big move Stateside. The ambiance was wonderful—celebratory, joyful, welcoming—in short, everything Paris does not have a reputation for being. Crowds brought their national support and enthusiasm in a way this city normally wouldn't deign. Instead of hopping from place to place, we unpacked our bags for a solid nearly two weeks of relishing in all this city had to offer while the world shone its spotlight upon us, and Paris did not disappoint.

I flew out for my first time using my new passport.

While our families and bags stayed put in Paris, we made a quick hop up to Lille for an overnight stay and a basketball match between Canada and Spain, where we enjoyed a free upgrade to the fan zone's 10th row seats!

The Concord Urban Project, a space in the dead center of the city where the skateboarding, break dancing, and basketball 3-on-3 matches were held.

Beach volleyball under the glow of the Eiffel Tower, followed by a midnight stroll through Paris past the Olympic torch hot air balloon? Yes, please.

Even a couple of matches of field hockey under a brutal summer sun was more fun than expected. And the Dutch fans brought their A-game, braving the heat in all sorts of bright orange gear.

An exciting upset for the French basketball team against Canada in the quarter finals had the heart of Paris cheering in unison.

We had a pretty sweet view for the men's triple jump, various hurdles and sprints, and two new discus Olympic records! And at a distance, the women's pole vault final was a tight competition that completely drew me in.

The Spain/Netherlands women's water polo match was a nailbiter down to the very final seconds, ultimately ending in Spain's favor during shoot-outs.

With a local sweetheart among the top-ranked players, even a day on the golf course was filled with more enthusiasm than I'd expected.

We swapped out my aunt and parents for Géraldine and Merlin as our vacation partners for the final couple days in the City of Lights.

Our final Olympic event, held on the morning of the closing ceremony, was the modern pentathlon. I still tear up thinking about the moment a French competitor (at 35 years old) crossed the final finish line in second to raucous applause with her arms held proudly over her head, following the champion who'd just set a new world record. To see such joy and pride for a second place finish moved me, and there's probably a life lesson for me somewhere in there. When it came time for the medalists to approach the podium, the entire crowd broke out in a round of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, as the silver medalist cried tears of joy. It's not often the silver medalist is also treated to her national anthem. And fun fact: we witnessed the very last ever appearance of horses in the modern pentathlon! They are going to be replaced by an obstacle course in the next summer Olympics.

I suppose it wouldn't have been a proper Emilienne-and-Nico-visit-Europe vacation if we didn't squeeze in a little something extra, so we spent a night in Lisbon en route back to California. For dinner, we treated ourselves to an excellent tasting menu at Bairrices.

Dinner was followed by an after-dark tour of the heart of Lisbon. It wasn't enough to do much more than admire some panoramic views and some beautiful but dangerously slippery Portuguese cobblestones before we had to call it a night and set our alarms early for the next leg of our journey.

I'd created this blog, "Expat Homecoming", asking myself how, after a decade abroad, one can come back "home". I'm starting to understand that I'd gotten it all backwards: this blog is indeed tracking a journey back home, but that home is on the opposite side of the Pond and I'm still figuring out how to get back. I cannot wait until the day we fly to Paris one-way.

We failed

We failed. And there is nothing we can do about it. There are no fixes, no do-overs. We lit $6k on fire, and we've run out of money to make it right. All of the hoops I jumped through—hiding in restaurant bathrooms to administer meds, begging and crying and paying and bleeding my way to fix a false positive FDA test result, sacrificing my work, getting stabbed and prodded and bled out, losing all the skin across my shoulders and back to hormonal acne, missing out on aerial silks, and undergoing surgery solo while Nicolas traveled overseas—all for nothing. We tried.

Not a single embryo was compatible with life in our final cycle.

It's time to move on to the next phase, and I do not feel safe. Statistically, our five embryos should be enough. Our clinic says it. Our surrogacy agency says it. But our future as parents comes down to the outcome of five coin flips. Five chances. It would be so easy for things to go wrong, for our entire future to slip through the cracks, and by the time we'll know it's happened, it will be too late to go back. My eggs will be gone. We could ensure ourselves against that today: I still have good eggs. In fact, that last embryo in the set of this cycle's results failed exclusively due to a paternal issue. Statistically, the segmental aneuploidy listed in the first embryo more likely came from a paternal source too. (While most full chromosome abnormalities are from the mom, most segmental duplications or deletions are actually paternal in origin!) So even in this last cycle, my body didn't yield nothing useful. But pretty soon it will. A clock is ticking and our bank account balances don't align with it. I am completely terrified.

From the highest of hopes came the lowest of lows

Don't get me wrong, I want to be done. I can't tell you how much I hate all the distractions from my life, all the uncertainty, the emotional rollercoaster, the physical side effects, the scheduling conflicts. I hardly want to add more battles to my ongoing fertility coverage war with Cigna. I need to go back to 100% at work. I want my body and my life to belong to me again. Can you believe I actually ran on a treadmill for the first time in months yesterday? I still haven't internalized that I'm allowed to chase Lily when she's playing outside. Even these sorts of simple activities have been banned for months.

I just don't want it to end this way: as a failure. As someone who made nearly enough embryos to ensure herself a future she chased after, a second chance at parenthood after the collapse of the foster-to-adopt dream. As someone who gave up after coming so close. As someone who didn't have what it takes. But money is part of what it takes, and we don't have it. I can't allow myself to be the person who sacrificed all her family's financial resources, who tossed aside her responsibilities to her husband and fur babies in pursuit of a dream that was out of reach. It is out of reach. Five chances are all we'll get. And we don't know if they will be enough.

A few more in the freezer

The latest round of embryonic March madness is drawing to a close, and another 3 fighters made it to be biopsied and cryopreserved. Now it's just another 10-14 days until we get the pre-implantation genetic testing results to know what we've truly banked. In a first for us, one of our poorly scored day 3 embryos actually made it into the final countdown. (Embryos get rated on day 3 based on number of cells, fragmentation—the fraction of the embryo composed of incomplete cell chunks, and symmetry of the cells.) This embryo proved to be our ugly duckling, coming through as the most highly scored embryo on cryopreservation day. Proud of you!

We did it—again!

Another cycle in the books. Now to let the embryos grow (hopefully)!

This cycle was our best so far—a full 25 follicles at my final monitoring appointment, no ovarian or breast pain, and frankly I walked in and out of today's retrieval feeling great. I didn't tear up even a little when getting my IV. In fact, I kept my eyes open during my last blood draw earlier this week, and even snuck a peek at the blood mid-flow late last week—talk about overcoming a phobia. To top things off, I had surprisingly productive afternoon in the office after the ritual post-retrieval coffee cocktail at The Royal in downtown Oakland.

That's not to say we got a drama-free cycle. There was an FDA test scare that required a last-minute re-run of the full panel (after much cajoling), and due to an inconveniently week-late ovulation, my retrieval timeline was pushed precisely to the day after Nicolas flew out to Europe. My battles with Cigna continue—although they now, for the most part, acknowledge that Nicolas isn't my sperm donor, I found myself yesterday filing my first complaint with the California Department of Insurance under Spring's guidance.

After all the highs and lows, here I am enjoying an injection-free evening while the fate of another 10 mature eggs lie in the hands of Spring's embryologists.

Even Lily got in on celebrating the end of my fourth cycle!

And guess what else? My parents send us their congratulations! That's right, now that we're done* making our embryos and our future surrogacy agency has acknowledged receipt of our retainer fee—yes, that also happened today—it was time to share the news, which went over pleasantly well. They even said I shouldn't feel guilty about the choice to use a gestational carrier. It'll be a secret from the rest of the Aloia/Repak clan for now—no need to jinx it or break the hearts of cousins whose dream we might be trying on for size—but getting my parents' approval about becoming a parent on my terms has lifted a weight that was bearing down heavy for the past 8 months. It's nice to have earned a night off.

*done: as in, we think we won't be making more, but life is complicated so I still took my vitamins tonight just in case.

Second "vacation" of 2024

Indisputably our second stab at taking time off this year was more successful than the first. I hardly answered any slack messages and didn't even write a line of code. That said, attempting a vacation between back-to-back IVF cycles was probably overly ambitious. To our credit, when we converted our Amtrak credits into our first trip to Colorado, we never imagined what our fertility journey had in store.

We landed back home a full week ago and I honestly don't have the energy to do much more than tell a story in pictures. We did a lot. I worried a lot. And I didn't fully absorb the good news that arrived a week ago today as we sat in the airport, en route home, and learned that we had reached our minimum threshold for making our future family.

Here's the best I can give right now at telling the story of a few days where we had a change of pace.

Things started off scenic with our overnight train to Colorado. I can't recommend highly enough the upgrade to the sleeper car that we thankfully splurged for. However, my anxiety levels weren't aided when, before even making it to our destination, I found myself texting photos of Lily for "lost dog" posters after she ran away. One four-lane highway crossing and several hours later, a kind stranger returned her to our dogsitter and I tried to remember to breathe.

We made it to Glenwood Springs and our first taste of summer weather! The town kicked off its 127th annual Strawberry Days Festival right when we arrived.

We were up early the next morning for the first activity on our agenda: paragliding! Sadly, I learned that my stomach is just a wimp. Even with a fabulous pilot who took seriously my ask that we have a smooth ride, the rises and dips just left me feeling a little queasy for an hour or so after the ride. Nicolas, I'm proud to report, isn't nearly such a weakling.

Item 2 on the agenda was actually both the scariest and the coolest: the caving "wild tour". They weren't kidding when they said there was a chest size limit of 42". We shimmied and squirmed our way through passages whose mere discovery amazed me, while I thanked the stars that Colorado isn't on a fault line and admired the heck out of the mom on our tour taking her 11-year-old adventuring for his birthday.

After proving to myself that I could be brave both above and underground, we took the gondola back down and spent the evening in some (overcrowded) hot springs. The pools were all designed to mimic mineral compositions of various springs around the world and, what do you know, I settled on Iceland's Blue Lagoon (which we've previously visited) as my top pick!

Nicolas, who's prepping for his big hike in the Alps in a month, convinced me to brave the heat and we even got some nice shots as we explored Boulder. I'm not sure just when I became a total princess, but it seems I've built a taste for the tastier parts of vacations.

Between hikes, we rewarded ourselves with lunch at the most fabulous university dive bar. It completely tickled my fancy with its MIT East Campus/Senior House vibes and had a great beer selection too!

We dodged the rain post afternoon-hike at Boulder's teahouse, created to celebrate its sister city status with a city on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

And just like that, it was basta - enough. We'd spent two and a half of our five vacation days in transit, so perhaps this wasn't the most well-planned trip, but we'd squeezed in a lot. We capped it off with a trip to Basta, a Michelin bib gourmand rated restaurant where I ate probably twice as much pizza as I'd needed. And that was it. Vacation numero dos was in the books.

The first calls

We had our first calls with surrogacy agencies today. I felt so seen, so heard, so respected in my choices. There wasn't the slightest wince as I told our story, from our meeting through online dating with profiles that listed our intent to be parents as "maybe" to our journey into foster parenting to our round-about arrival at IVF and surrogacy. My wanting to care for and love a child could co-exist with my not wanting to grow it inside of me (and a recognition that the stress and sleep deprivation of my job might not be best for either mom or growing baby). I wasn't judged or made to feel less valid than those seeking surrogacy out of medical necessity. Not only that, I was met with positive reactions as I counted off our four euploid embryos and our one low-level segmental mosaic. The reps praised our choice of fertility clinic, whose embryology lab has particularly high standards, and they taught us that, when working with a surrogate, odds of a live birth from a genetically-tested embryo climb to 70-75%. Now that the healthy and genetically-tested embryos have been banked, my age is no longer a risk factor. For the first time since we began this scary and unexpected journey, I'm wracked with sleeplessness over something new: excitement; hope.

I don't want to sound overly naïve: I understand that surrogacy agencies are a business, and that they have a financial interest in making me feel good, but two things can be true at the same time. Just because one of these agencies may make a profit off of me doesn't mean they can't also bring me validation and the fulfilment that proved so elusive as we fought tooth and nail to make last year's foster placement work.