What's happened over the past 6 months? Well, a whole lot, while at the same time, a whole lot of nothing...
Since there's oh so much to update on, I'm not sure exactly where to start, and even more so, how to ensure that this post doesn't take one 45min. to read. But I guess I'll just start at the beginning... and when I get to the end, I'll stop... (Isn't that a quote from somewhere? Hmm?).
Anyways...
I guess it makes sense to pick back up from my last post where I summarized our first round of IVF using the Cliff's Notes version by saying: "First we were pregnant, and then we were not."
While I guess that's pretty self-explanatory, here are the details:
It was a frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycle that we had to do back in March (since I had hyper-stimmed while preparing for my egg retrieval in January and we had to freeze everything) - - and we decided to transfer two embryos, which was a difficult decision to finally come to - ugh, I wish I wasn't so over-analytical sometimes.
A couple weeks later I went in for my first Beta and it was positive... somewhere around 155 or something. So a nice decent level. When I went back a couple days later for my next Beta, my levels had risen, but didn't quite double as they should have.
My first panicked thought was, "Are you serious?! How is this happening again?"... I was terrified that I was in the midst of yet another ectopic pregnancy, like I had last fall (recap on that "roller coaster" can be found here and here, and the aftermath here).
But when I had gotten the call about my second Beta, the nurse didn't seem as concerned as the last time around and basically just said that it was still super early and to wait a week and then come back for follow up blood work and ultrasound. Despite me calling back and insisting that this could possibly be another ectopic, and that I had experienced one before, and rattling on about how high-risk and dangerous they could be and early detection was crucial, she again just calmly reassured me that it was still very early and either way, there wouldn't be much that we could tell (or see) at this point, so we just needed to wait.
So that's what we (begrudgingly) did...
A week later I went back as instructed. However, since I wasn't able to make it in until late that afternoon, I had to wait until the following day for my blood results. On the ultrasound, as expected, they saw nothing. As I laid there on the table, I again thought to myself, "How the heck can this too be happening again?!" It literally felt like reliving the first nightmare all over again, to a tee... And the panic started to set in. "I'm about to have to face another ectopic!" I thought to myself. "I need to start preparing mentally because that was the most difficult (both emotional and physical) experience I've ever gone through"... While at the same time still working to process the disbelief that here we were, right smack-dab in the middle of the same exact painful situation as we had faced 6 months earlier.
The next day I received the call from Dr. M's office, and unfortunately, I couldn't answer it at the time so they had to leave a message. As I prepared to listen to the message, I braced myself...
One of Dr. M's nurses said something along the lines of, "Hi Tiffanie... I really hate to have to leave this message on your voicemail, but unfortunately since it's the end of the day we wanted to ensure you received the results of your blood work before we close..."
Dr. M's nurse then proceeded to explain to me that my Beta showed my HcG levels had dropped significantly and currently were around 50 or so... signaling that the pregnancy was already in the process of failing and that it would not be viable.
I'll never forget that moment, as I sat in my parked car listening to the voicemail... simply because of the extreme polarity of the two emotions I felt instantaneously all at once:
On one hand, it was instant relief that the "roller coaster" was over, it was not an ectopic again, and that my body was naturally miscarrying on its own (while at the same time immediate guilt for even having any sort of "positive" reaction).
On the hand, it was absolute devastation... and pain from the sadness of the reality that we had just lost two of our precious little snowflakes.
And then it was shock - - How could this not have worked? Wait, it did work, but then it failed. How could we have just gone through ALL of what we've gone through over the past couple of years, and throughout this whole emotionally and physically draining, up-and-down, chaotic IVF cycle and end up here? Why was God letting this happen, again? It would have been much more bearable if the cycle had just failed altogether, but why allow us to have a positive pregnancy, only to take it away?... Again? Like this?
None of it made any sense.
And trying to wrap your head around all of the whys, especially the ones directed at God, really get you nowhere, but hurt and more confused.
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Sometimes, we just aren't meant to know all the insights of the "why" - - sometimes, we just have to accept, hold on to hope, and trust enough to keep moving forward towards what we can - embracing the opportunity to gain strength along the way.
And sometimes, we just need to pause and gather ourselves, while re-evaluating where we are, where we're going, and how we're going to get there. So that's exactly what we set out to do over the next few months...
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