Four For A Boy?

I’ve been a bit silent here. I’m not sure why. I usually write to find comfort and make meaning of what I’m going through. But, I’ve just come through my very first IVF cycle and I didn’t feel compelled to write at all. To be honest, I didn’t feel much of anything at all throughout the process. Maybe gentle curiosity?

It is a pretty cool process if you’re a nerd. You inject yourself twice a day and every second day you go in for a scan of your ovaries and watch them turn into little egg machines. If you ask, the ultrasound technician will let you see the screen. It looks insane but I found it reassuring. My follicles were growing as they should. My body was finally doing something it was supposed to do. The hormones actually kind of suited me, I felt kind of high energy and a bit frisky. Our trips into the clinic were nice. We’d get a coffee and a pastry and have a laugh. The receptionist and nurses were reassuring and kind.

The last day or two before egg retrieval was less pleasant. I joked with friends that I felt like a clucking hen, barely able to move from my brood of eggs. My tummy swole up to twice its size. I could feel my ovaries as they dropped down from their weight. Still though, it felt good. Things were working. I asked Chat GPT to explain how many eggs we might get based on our follicle count and went in for the retrieval with realistic expectations. I got knocked out while my partner had to go make his eh..deposit..in a sterile room.

When I woke up I was in pain. But the nurse assured me that was because I had ‘busy ovaries’. I liked hearing that.

The doctor came and told us we got 24 eggs - a very good outcome for ‘someone my age.’ He then told me to not get my hopes up about numbers too much because ‘I’m not 22’. Reader, this doctor has now called me old and fat in my simple and noble pursuit of having a baby after repeated miscarriage. Anyway, I’ll get back to him later (and i’m paraphrasing).

Over the next few days we got periodical phone calls. For anyone who hasn’t done IVF, the pipeline can feel pretty brutal. The numbers go down every day. You’re reassured that this is a ‘good outcome!’ by lab technicians, but it doesn’t feel that way. You just have to ride it out and hope that at the end of it you will have enough normal embryos for a decent chance at a baby.

I thought that the best approach was to imagine that we’d have zero normal embryos and prepare myself accordingly.

It didn’t really work. My OCD (or maybe just regular magical thinking) brain shouldered it’s way to the forefront of my consciousness and I found myself counting finches that were bathing in the gutter in my garden one day. There were four. For a second I thought - a sign - 4 embryos? Then I started counting magpies and of course kept spotting 4. It’s gonna be four said my little delusional brain.

It’ll be zero! My rational/downer brain would interject. Two parts of me vying for control over the uncontrollable. I probably should have come here to write, it would have helped.

Anyway numbers kept going down. Out of 24 eggs, there were 14 mature and 12 fertilised.

9 made it to day 3.

7 made it to day 5.

4 made it to day 6 and were biopsied for genetic testing.

FOUR!!!!

Still, my rational brain held firmly to the wheel. My husband and sister mocked me for saying ‘look, if we’re really lucky, we’ll get two normal PGT tested embryos.’ They insisted that ‘really lucky’ meant that all would be normal. I rolled my eyes.

Unfortunately Christmas came in the middle of everything so we had to wait almost a month for PGT results. It was ok, I was distracted. I drank and smoked and put the future off in the way you can only do during the two week fugue of Christmas. We even got a wee trip to Edinburgh in that was delightfully creepy (surgeon’s museum, witches tours, old graveyards.. kirkyards as the Scots call them). It was lovely and romantic and we said things like ‘isn’t it great to have the freedom’.

But January came and we had to face the music. On January 8th we had a Zoom call with our doctor (the one who thinks I’m a fat old bitch). It turned out I hadn’t really shut my emotions off as I realised they were curdling in my belly as I opened the link. I think I could have gone on for a long time not knowing anything.

Anyway, to my doctors credit, he got straight into it ‘Happy New Year and Good News’.

The finches/magpies were right.

We have 4 chances at having a baby. 3 really good ones and one decent shot. We have one embryos that is mosaic trisomy - it has a roughly 40% chance of resulting in a healthy baby. The other three are genetically normal. They have a 70% chance at making a baby.

3 chances at 70% is around 97.3% (thanks Chat GPT). And we also have a fourth at 40%.

But ever the pragmatist who loves making me feel like a fat old infertile bitch, the doctor said ‘this is probably good news, but I suppose it could be bad news. Maybe genetics was not the cause of all your miscarriages.’

Whatever. This is the best shot we’ve had in years. We’re taking the good news.

But we were also a little shook. We were prepared for another round of egg retrieval, for more uphill battles. So when the doctor said we could implant next cycle, I immediately said no.

I’ve spent the last year and a half preparing myself for the prospect of not having a baby. In that moment I realised we might actually have one and I wasn’t prepared anymore. We’d just spent a good chunk of the Edinburgh trip talking about how good life could be without kids and actually meaning it.

I’m not broody anymore. I have other goals now. I like my relationship how it is.

We’re still gonna go for it, but maybe not until May or June. I need time to prepare for the prospect of success. I’ve built too much new life in the mulch of the failures. I don’t want to let it all go now.

I’m going to work on letting myself imagine a life with a baby again, and hope that after all the scar tissue, my heart still wants it.