When the Answer is "No"

It has taken me over a month to write this, for lots of reasons. First it was too fresh, then we were in "well, where do we go from here" stage and I thought I should wait, then it seemed like it was too late. I've realized, that if for no other reason than processing my feelings about this, it's not ever too late.

We went into embryo transfer day HIGH on emotions. They got a video of their (ADORABLE toddler) son telling me "Thank you Allison for growing my baby" and that "I praying for you". It was possibly the cutest video ever made. Like, ever. I was 100% positive as we waited in the waiting room. The dad was calm and collected, his usual steadfast-self. I can't tell you what the mom felt, but I can tell you that she was a lot of emotions in one little person. I KNOW there was anticipation, excitement, and nervousness flying around that room. All she wanted was to know how her embabies (a super scientific term I have learned from searching gestational carrier hashtags on instagram) were doing. We knew that they had thawed the embryos that morning and we were about to find out if they were going to implant the embryo she had been thinking about all these years, or another one. 

*Background* That morning, they thaw the frozen embryos one at a time. They thaw the highest grade embryo first (they give them a letter grade before they are frozen). If that embryo doesn't survive the thaw, they thaw the next highest grade. And so on.*

After what seemed like forever (but really it felt like SO long because we were just SO ready), they called us back. The mom and I went back, that room is tiny and there will be a nurse, the fertility doctor, and the embryologist packed in. The dad waited in the waiting room.

I was riding pretty high at this point, and then I saw the table. 

What. was. that. giant. hose? And more importantly, where did they think they were putting it?! 

The nurse laughed at my reaction (yes, I have no filter and I literally said "Where do you think THAT is going?") and told me it was just warm air to keep me comfy. Ooh la la. 

The mom joined me in the room and we chatted excitedly. There were lots of smiles and lots of chuckles as we waited to see the doctor and get this embryo put in. 

Then he came in. The mood of the room was instantly serious. He obviously had bad news. Even when you know bad news is possible, it still hurts when it becomes real. I may have felt sad and taken off guard, but the hardest part was watching the mom have to deal with the news that the embaby she'd been thinking of all these years (since she had to choose between it and her now son) didn't survive the thaw. If getting bad news is like getting hit in the stomach by a bat, this was like sitting next to someone as you slow motion watch them take that blow. 

I grabbed her hand, she cried, and I tried to process what he was telling us all while hoping to let her grieve the loss of this embryo. 

It was rough. It was just rough. 

The doctor handed her one of those disposable liners they put on the table to use as a giant tissue as he read the room to know when it was ok to tell us about the remaining two embryos.

He told us that they thawed the next embryo, but he didn't think it was a good candidate, so he thawed the last one hoping it might be better. It wasn't. Sadly, it was worse.

At this point my brain started spinning. What did this mean? What would she choose to do? What were the options? He said that at this point he would recommend putting them both in. BOTH? As in TWO? My head continued to spin spin spin.

Then, in an instant he cleared everything up. He said something like "I think you should know, they won't survive another re-freeze and thaw in this condition". That's all I needed. The spinning immediately stopped. I looked at her and told her that that was all I needed to hear (she knew what that meant). She, being much more reasonable than me, suggested that I might want to call Rico.
Oh, right. Maybe, "Hi hunny, by the way, we went ahead and doubled the number of babies I could be growing" doesn't really seem like the best way to greet someone coming home from work.
She went to the lobby to talk with her husband and I called Rico. I described what just happened, and his response was "Well honey, what do YOU want to do?" I told him that I just couldn't let those embabies not have every possible chance at life. He agreed, and I had yet another moment appreciation for how awesome he is.
She came back in and we told the doctor that we were ready for them both. As he was setting me up for the transfer (by framing my…bottom half….with sheets. Literally a picture frame of folded white sheets. I think this may have been the oddest part of the whole day) some life came back into the room.

We were hopeful again.

He did the first ultrasound to show us the "target" (the spot we would be aiming for in my uterine lining). He was impressed by the crazy amount of fluid I had in my bladder (they told me to drink lots of water beforehand, and I CERTAINLY wasn't going to mess that up) but suggested that I try to empty it a bit or I might be uncomfortable. So, I wrapped the sheet around me like a toga and ran through the hallway. I'm pretty sure a guy paying his medical bill may have seen a flash of side butt, but at this point I needed the comic relief.

They announced (very officially and clearly, so I assume somewhere there was an audio recorder) my name and had me confirm. It was on my i.d. bracelet too. There was NO way their embryos were going to end up in the wrong person. She got a picture of her embabies somewhere around here too.

This is literally them. The embryologist said that this picture was taken in the morning and even though it was only a few hours later now, they already looked different from the picture. Whoa.

 We were getting all set up and she realized, "Wait! The contract!" Oh, yes, that contract that says in about 20 different places that we are only putting in one. "Eh, I'll initial whatever I need to initial". Oh man, we were living the crazy life now! Rebels, that's what we are.

They put in a very long (very tiny, very flexible) tube with the embryos, and we watched it appear in my uterus on the sonogram screen. Wouldn't you know it, that amazing doctor hit the bulls eye! They both landed exactly on target. Good work sir. The mom was praying over her little embabies the entire time (thank goodness, because I was just so fascinated with watching him tilt my uterus- yes, physically tilt my uterus, and the entire process that I COMPLETELY forgot.)

Next, I had to lay for 15 minutes. The doctor also told me that I could do basically all normal things, but that I shouldn't do anything super intense like ride a horse or anything. I laughed…but later realized that only the night before I had been in tears (thank you hormones) about wanting to ride an elephant at the circus that weekend.

The mom sat with me for a long while, it may have been closer to 45 minutes (we literally just stayed until the embryoloist came in to lock up the lab to "keep all the embryos safe"- how cute is that?)  We mostly just said a lot of "Two?! Did we just put in TWO?" and "I can't believe this all just happened!"

She thought about how her husband would be doing with the events of the last hour. She thought about how best to tell her mom. She asked me how I was feeling. She literally thought about everyone but herself.

We left and and I gave her the "thinking sticky thoughts" basket I'd put together,

 and she gave me a prize pack of goodies. Really good goodies. Like I have worn at least one of the things she gave me every single day since she gave it to me. Every. Single. Day. We took a picture outside the office, and I called Rico. He was still trying to grasp what was going on.

*The blurred out part is their son's name…isn't it cool to think that since they harvested all the eggs at once, and made all the embryos at once, it would have been just like carrying his fraternal twin- only two years later! Whoa.*

I went home and ate pineapple core, Brazil nuts, and Pom juice every night. (It's a thing all the cool kids who are gestational carriers or are getting IVF do for transfer…google it if you must. I hold little stock in it, but I like all those things and I like doing what the cool kids do, so I participated)

Over the next week I reported any and all pregnancy symptoms to the mom…and boy did the nausea pick up. The tricky thing is, since I am taking hormones, there's no way to really know if it is the hormones I am taking or a potential pregnancy that might be making me feel that way. Each time I felt odd, I hesitated to tell her because I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. Then I realized 2 things
1- our hopes were already up, who was I kidding
2- I would want to know if I were her- even if it meant I might get my hopes up.
It was my job to give her all the information I had, not to try to protect everyone's feelings.

She bought over the counter pregnancy tests for us to take before the official blood test, just in case we might get to find out early. I'm sorry that literally NONE of these are facing the right direction, I squint when I take the pictures. I squint SO hard that I make sure I can't read the stick. That includes being able to tell which side is up. 

Then, I send that picture to the parents (all still squinting, it's pretty entertaining to watch I am sure).

Then, they text me back and tell me if I am pregnant or not. 

Waiting the 2 minutes for the test is nothing, but waiting the 30 seconds after I send them the text is VERY exciting. 

Day 1's negative wasn't so bad. None of us really expected anything.

Day 2's stung a little. Day 3 stung a little more.

Day 4 (the last day before our official blood test) wasn't great either. We all still had hope, after all, we were testing early.
*teachable moment: pregnancy tests work by looking for something called "HCG" in your urine. HCG is released by your body when you become pregnant, but it takes time for your body to start producing it, and even more time for it to be concentrated enough in your urine for an over-the-counter to find it. I feel like you all knew that, (and if you are one of my old students you BETTER have known that!), but just in case*
 TO be honest though, I had my hopes up for this 4th and final one. I even picked a "their pea, my pod" towel background for my lovely pee-stick display. Still though, it was early. I still had hope even though it was negative.

I went to my moms' group at church later that morning. We went into the worship center and we were set to sing "Holy Spirit"…yep, the song I wrote so much about before, the song that immediately focuses me on  this process. I knew, right then, that God was going to be talking to me. 

Not in a round about way. 

In a very clear and obvious way. 

I remember holding my breath for a second and thinking, "Alright, tell me what I need to hear" and feeling like I was on a roller coaster in the dark- having NO idea if what He was about to tell me would make me exceedingly happy or sad and disapointed. 

Then the speaker began to speak. 

She was a woman who had always believed. 

She didn't have a dramatic testimony, she just believed. 

She hadn't faced much adversity in her life, and in general, what she planned of life came to be.

 She would ask God for something, and almost all the time He said "yes". 

(umm…is this lady me?)

Until she got a "no"

The hardest "no" she will (hopefully) ever get 

*her infant daughter was diagnosed with a disease and passed away within less than a month of diagnosis.*

I felt like God was preparing me for my own "no"

I bawled. For the first time in this whole process (even since then) I just cried. 

Thankfully, I wasn't the only woman ugly crying, I just wasn't doing it for the same reasons everyone else was.

He was lovingly preparing the perfect way, literally tailored to my personality and my needs, to say "Sorry honey, It's a no this time" 

The speaker continued on to talk about praising God for His ultimate wisdom, and the blessings He gives us. 

I mean, God literally brought me to His house to tell me, cushioned the "no" as gently as possible, and then followed it up with a practical and tangible map for how to escape getting lost in the sorrow. 

I had tangible and meaningful reminders of how to keep Him first and praise Him through the storm

Even when He says "no".

Even when you don't see ANY reason He wouldn't say "yes".

Even when we don't FEEL like it. 

It was like those moments where you feel the sermon is directly written for you, but to a degree I have literally never even come close to feeling before.

Something she said that stuck with me was something like, 

"We want to make a nice neat orderly box out of God and His wisdom for our lives, but really, we wouldn't want to serve a God whose wisdom could fit nicely and neatly into what WE can understand."

They asked for prayer requests at the end, and I asked for prayers "that the mom feel held, no matter what the results are". Months of prayers, months of anticipation, paragraph after paragraph of specific prayer requests from you all and THAT is what came out of my mouth. 

(flashing forward, I don't think I told the mom what I specifically asked for, but wouldn't you know that THIS is what she posted after our negative blood tests: 

Goodness. 

Officially, we still didn't know if I was pregnant or not. I took my blood test the next day, but after feeling ALL the feels at church, I told Rico that I changed my mind and I wanted him there with me.

I wasn't sure how I would handle it (thinking they would tell me then and there) and we both wanted to ask some questions about what options there might be if it was negative.

We knew they were out of embryos, but we also knew that we wanted them to be able to have this baby. So, we asked about the dates of the upcoming "cycles" (they do clusters of women at a time, in about 3 month "cycles") so we could figure out if there were any way we could be available to them and still be able to have our second child.

We literally sat with a calendar on a bench in the hallway and did the math. 

"Cycle starts xyz month, embryo transfer would be xyz month, add 9 months for carrying their baby, add 6 months to recuperate and be safe to try for our own, then add 9 more months to be pregnant with our kid" 

We wanted to have all our ducks in a row so we could give them the clearest picture of what we had to offer them. We wanted to be 100% sure before we ever even gave them the option of being available to try again. 

The mom called me later that day. Her voice was shaky and tear filled, and I knew it was a no. 

I didn't cry.

People kept asking how I felt and all I could do to describe it was say, "I already did my grieving at church" 

and it was true. 

I was SO sad for the parents, THAT part was still hard, but I was ok. 

The parents had a busy day, a blessing when you want anything but time for your mind to think. 

I couldn't tell you much else about their grief, it would all be speculation. I tried to give them space to deal with it. 

It killed me, and it felt VERY weird to not be texting back and forth with her like we had been nearly every night before, but I wanted them to be able to process at their own pace. 

Rico kept asking, "Have you heard from them? Do you think you should call?" and I just kept telling him that I wanted to give them space. 

Why all the space? 

It's more than just mourning the loss of the three embabies, it was also very logical and practical. In telling them how many more cycles we could possibly squeeze in, we were also presenting them with a VERY hard decision. The decision of whether or not to do IVF all over.

A decision that was NEVER in the plans.

The hard decisions are never ending here. 

Let me give you just a peek into why it's so hard-

Spiritually, is this what God wants? Remember, we don't want to try to bust through any doors He has closed.

Ethically, just how many embryos would they want to harvest? Too many and they have the moral issue of these little embabies just sitting in wait, but you're also talking about two people who just lost 3 embryos in one cycle, so I can imagine they would also have a new fear of creating too few. 

Financially, I don't know exact amounts, but from what I do know, the process of IVF is more than some people make in a year. That's big. That's big especially when you consider that they've already done it once before. It's even bigger when you see all the bills for what we JUST went through. 

Emotionally, they just lost 3 embryos and experienced the full range of super high highs and excited anticipation coupled with the lowest lows. That emotional roller coaster is a lot to take on.

Physically, so the hormones she would have to take make the hormones I take look like a day at the park. They don't play. She knows what they can do to her body first hand- and it isn't fun.

Timing-Wise, while it is true that there is never a perfect time for a baby, the timing of the next cycle was about as bad as you could get if you looked at the things they are juggling in life.

The mommy-factor, IVF requires them to basically move here for almost a week. They live over 5 hours away. Every appointment (of which there are many) would also require these 5 hour drives. That's a lot of time away from her little man. She put it to me this way (I'm totally paraphrasing), "I know that if he were older I could explain to him that being gone was temporary and that the short term lack of mommy-time resulted in a lifetime of sibling time, so he would know it was worth it. But…right now it's just hard to help a toddler understand all that"

Duty and Responsibility- As entrepreneurs, their livelihood is on their shoulders. So is the livelihood of other people. They have responsibilities that have to be met. There's no way around it- certain things have to get done at certain times. Throwing in IVF to the mix has got to feel like looking at a man juggling fine china and throwing and angry cat at him…at least that is how I picture it. 

So you see, this isn't an easy decision. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am SO glad I don't have to make this choice for them. 

Seriously, so, so glad. 

I'm pretty good at listening to God after the fact…with how to get through something. What I am NOT good at is making decisions, even when (maybe especially when) I am trying to make sure it is HIS will and not MINE. 

On one of our last phone calls she said something like, "If you would have told be when we started talking (last April) that we would be doing another round of IVF I wouldn't have believed you in a million years. It wasn't even an option. And now, here we are"

Yes, here we are. 

Tonight,  I took my first hormone shot. 

Here. We. Are.