I Don't Know What's Next

I've been putting off writing this post. E and I were able to get to our embryo transfer last month. Everything went smoothly and for once we had a little bit of hope brewing. Last Wednesday we had our blood test. Yes, a blood test. When you go to these lengths to try and have a baby there is nothing left to chance. No peeing on sticks and hoping for two lines. I mean, we could have. But there are too many unknowns with that method for us personally. If it's positive it doesn't mean that the number is actually high enough to indicate a viable pregnancy, and if it's negative then the number might still be growing but not high enough to trigger a home test.

Regardless, all this talk of pregnancy tests is moot. Our blood test was negative. It hurts to even type that word. Negative.

So that's it. Our attempts to be parents are over. And it feels like it's so sudden when in reality it has been three years in the making. This is the hardest experience of our lives. Even though it wasn't a guarantee that the transfer would work we still had hope this time around. Hope is a bitch. A royal bitch. (Sorry, mom. I know you don't like it when I speak French.)

This is grief, pure and simple. We lost our children. We lost the hope of growing old with children and grandchildren around us. We lost the vision we had of what our lives would look like and encompass. Every day is a myriad of tears, desolation, anger and feeling blank. There are moments of joy and laughter and feeling like maybe we'll be okay someday. Grief.

I know that some people will say "Why don't you adopt?" And to them I say "Why don't you?" Those of us who are dealing with infertility (and all the emotional shit that comes along with it) have sunk thousands of dollars into treatment. Most insurances don't help. We personally have no coverage so we've spent tens of thousands of dollars from our own bank account. I know women and men who have spent much much more than we have. No amount of money will guarantee you a baby. That is true of adoption as well. We don't have tens of thousands of dollars more to spend on hoping that someone would choose us as parents for their baby. Fostering to adopt has it's own emotional toll that we are not prepared for.

I feel that I need to be absolutely clear on this. Frankly, adoption is not the right step for us. Just because we can't have our own children doesn't mean that we should be happy with adoption. That's not how this works.

Some people might ask why we don't try embryo donation again. Aside from the financial constraints are the emotional ones. I can't put into words at the moment the sense of failure and shame that comes from having to fight your own body. There comes a point where it's not possible to move forward one more time. If we hadn't made it to transfer in our third attempt we were ready to call it quits. You can only try to grasp the impossible for so long before you're tired of falling short.

I've been pushing all of the feelings aside since we got the news as much as possible. I know that it's all going to hit like a ton of bricks at any moment. This post is the first step toward acknowledging that this is the worst moment of my life so far. As I even type this I'm sitting here crying silently. It hurts too much to touch it for long.

I'll probably blog more about the fallout of all this as it sinks in and I come to terms with not being a mom. I wanted to say thank you, too, for all of the support that you've given us over these last three years.