I finally took a POAS (pee-on-a-stick) HCG test yesterday, 13dp3dt. Today, Day 14, was the blood beta. They were both negative.
I guess granulated cytoplasm is, after all, a very poor sign. I had been hopeful that the embryologist said it should work, that there have been people who succeeded on three day transfers, on less than perfect embryos, but we have not been one of those.
We always knew the probability was higher of a negative than a positive. But I had hoped. Hoped that we would catch a break. Hoped that we might get a miracle. Hoped for something.
I am not surprised, I am not unable to accept this. After the tears came, they dried up. Over the day, I cried intermittently, once in gulping desperate sobs, most times just with tears making a silent trail. Each time, they dried up. There is no point belabouring that it is unfair and it is hard. It will not change how I am, nor how other people are. It's not going to change me looking at other people's babies and pregnancies and feeling like the damned within the unlucky.
But I am sad that our precious, beautiful embryos are gone. I am angry and pained at the amount of medication I've taken for nothing. Indeed, the two years of medications that have all been for nothing. I'm frustrated that after so much, we are back here, behind everything and far from where we would like to be. I'm frustrated that the pendulum keeps swinging back.
Because it took so many months to plan and lead up to the FET, it feels like I've been in limbo and now, released to the pace of my again-normal life, I feel almost lost. I struggle with the idea that time has passed, that I can now go on the near-dated work trips that I've already missed including myself for, that I can carry my heavy suitcase or dry-cleaning, as if my schedule and expectations have been bypassed and fast-forwarded without that magic change. I hate the idea that life is moving on anyway, because we have not moved on, we're still here within the mechanisms of this horrible vacuum. And I'm scared because I don't know what to do.
Do we push on with the remaining poorer quality embryos? It takes a crap load of medication to do a transfer, not to mention the cost, the planning and the heartache. But if that fails, where does that leave us? If we push on to a fresh cycle, do we do it earlier? Do we change doctor? Do we go back to a public hospital? How much is too much, when it never feels like enough?
Right now, I can't comprehend another round of this. I can't comprehend being back on DHEA for three months. I can't comprehend throwing more money down the drain, or more medications and the rounds of crazy emotions. I don't have the strength to do it, the patience or the mood to regroup. We will get there eventually, but we just need time and space to process that it's not going to be now.
I sat in my car, in the carpark, for half an hour this morning, willing myself to screw my heart to its sticking place and walk into work. Get on with life. Do something productive. But all I wanted to do was curl up in bed, for the world to stop turning or to just leave me alone.
My blood beta HCG was so low, <2, it was non-existent. The embryos probably never even implanted, as the implication is my body stayed entirely unpregnant. But to me, even if they weren't viable, it is so hard to say goodbye when you've spent almost 3 years working for it.
