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.