The not knowing

Things started so promising yesterday morning. I awoke from my retrieval to learn we'd gotten our best haul yet: 14 eggs! We'd finally hit double digits and solidly so. Just a couple hours later, the maturation report came in: only 10 of those 14 were mature. Still double digits, but our biggest hit by far in any maturation report. And the hits kept coming: today's fertilization report dropped us down to just 7 2PN zygotes—meaning cells showing two pronuclei side by side. Technically some of those other three 0PN zygotes could still go on to embryo stage—we saw that in one of last cycle's batch, though the odds of success are lower.

I can't believe that we're just one day into this cycle's "March madness" and we've already dropped to last cycle's numbers at this point in the game despite beginning with 55% more eggs. This time around, our clinic squeezed us for every last penny with all the non-covered bells and whistles they convinced us to add on, and for what? A drained bank account and the greatest drop-offs we've seen yet. It's incredibly frustrating and disheartening.

The little bruises from this cycle's injections (52 of them) and blood draws (6) haven't even healed and I'm already juggling my calendar to squeeze in cycle number four before our big Eurotrip later this summer. (Yes, I know how lucky I am to have a health insurance that offers unlimited IVF.)

Survived: 52 injections, 6 blood draws, and 1 surgery in my own private suite. I was the only egg retrieval my clinic performed yesterday! After kicking off the weekend with a couple hours in a surgical facility, we improved things with fancy coffees, brunch, and my very first exercise of my right to vote as a French citizen. And of course no egg retrieval day is complete without some fur baby snuggles on the couch.

I know I should stay positive, but I just don't have it in me. Maybe getting down now leaves less room to fall when the next round of losses arrives. I know this is terrible framing: I'm focusing on what we didn't get when there are still seven little chances remaining. I've done this before: each cycle so far yielded one healthy embryo, yet I spent weeks aching for all the ones that didn't make it instead of celebrating those that did. Our future family may already be neatly tucked away in cryopreservation. It may be experiencing its very first cell divisions as I type these words. But I just don't know, and the not knowing is so hard.

And, in a total non sequitur, today marks exactly 10 years since Nicolas and I first met! I'd never have imagined this journey—moving to California, landing in the heart of the neurotech revolution, becoming home owners in the Bay Area, adding a puppy to the fur baby menagerie, and now exploring creating our very own lab-grown family. Life together doesn't cease to surprise.