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.