We were failed

The fifth embryo banking cycle seemed like the great redemption cycle. After a totally failed, all-aneuploid cycle number four, I can back with a vengeance, retrieving the most mature eggs ever, and churning out a full four cryopreserved embryos including my first-ever day-five embryo. (Women of advanced maternal age, such as myself, tend to have slower-growing day-sixers. Generally, a day-five has better odds of being genetically normal and a stronger overall metabolism.) Sounds like time to breathe a little easier, maybe give ourselves a pat on the back, huh? You'd think.

Instead, we lost all of this cycle's embryos. The laboratory that handles the biopsies, the final step to determine which (if any) embryos are good to go, mishandled all but one of our samples. The only one they didn't botch was the day-six embryo with the worst morphology and it was, unsurprisingly, aneuploid. As for the rest including my little pride-and-joy day-five embryo? They're all still sitting in a freezer with an "untested" status. The actions required at this point to learn if they are healthy will all but destroy them, decimating any chance they'd have of being born.

And for the service of stealing our fifth cycle, we were charged $950. Just to add insult to injury.

Casually offering a re-biopsy as though that doesn't all but eliminate the embryo's chances of being born. Cool. We just stole an entire IVF cycle from you, no big deal, yeah?

The cherry on top? My doctor casually mentioned how "it was too bad how that cycle turned out" while she had an ultrasound wand up my vagina and was dropping the news that the sixth cycle I've just begun is poised to be my worst cycle yet - only eight little follicles all looking mighty surpressed. She even offered to cancel this cycle, in case things couldn't get worse.

Sometimes I wonder if the universe isn't trying to tell me there's an off-ramp from my hare-brained idea that I should become a mom.