Sunday seemed to go on forever. It was a gray day with bouts of light rain. I did everything I could to distract myself, but nothing really worked. I tried to practice mindfulness, breathing in I would notice what I’m doing, breathing out I would just focus on that thing. It becomes really hard when what you are doing is obsessing or wondering. In this moment I have a slow growing embryo in a dish with my name on it. That is all. I tried to tell myself it was over. That the chance of a miracle was slim so I could start preparing to let go. We were on life support but the chances of recovery were almost nil.
How was I going to break the news to my grandmother, who has been so hopeful and excited by modern science? How am I going to go back to work, and just go about my life as if nothing were different?
I had a hard time falling asleep and tried to imagine Dr. N’s voice going in either direction. “Good morning Maya, good news…” or “Hi Maya, is Noah there too? Unfortunately…” When he calls, I try to decode the cadence of his voice to detect a tell in a subtle pause or inhale as his brain tells his mouth the news he must share. A momentary hint of what I’m going to be feeling for the rest of the day. His entire day is spent in a “good news bad news cycle” so he’s gotten good at covering up any hesitations or expressions of emotions. We know he wants this to work for us. We know he understands our disappointment and our excitement. But for him, it’s just another day at work.
That night we prayed. I lit a candle and rang a bell and said Nam-Yo-Ho-Rehn-He-Kyo to summon my Buddha nature. It was a Japanese prayer my mother said at different times, but often when things were not going well or for protection when we were afraid. It seemed like the right thing to do. Noah read the Serenity Prayer out loud and we went to sleep.
When the phone rang at 7:12am I took that as a good sign. I decided if it were good news he’d call the second he got into the office and knew what was going on. If it were bad news, he would wait until around 7:30am, guaranteeing we’d be up and expecting his call. If it were 7:30am on the dot then it was definitely bad news. I made up all kinds of arbitrary rules to the lawless land of IVF. I picked up and waited for him to talk. My brain created a crazy situation where Dr. N started saying --though it’s never happened before-- the lab made a mistake. The other embryos in the lab that he thought were someone else’s were actually mine, and they mixed things up. I felt awful for thinking that, but hoped so badly he would say it. Someone else was going to get bad news today, but not us.
“Well…” Dr. N began. I never heard “Well…” before. He proceeded to tell us our six-cell embryo was now a nine-cell embryo and should be around 100. He said it “probably” stopped growing but he wanted to look in on it one last time at noon just to make sure. He didn’t want to give up either. He was grasping at straws just like us. How comforting.
“But it’s basically over,” I said.
“It’s not looking good,” he agreed.
Convincing myself that it was a lost cause the day before was actually helpful. I was a little more desensitized. I was expecting the worst, hoping for the best. The best didn’t come.
I scooped up all the empty boxes of Menopur and the leftover progesterone and estrogen patches and shoved it into a bag and hid it in a little closet we have under our stairs. I didn’t want to look at it anymore, but I couldn’t throw it out. I immediately started looking up adoptions agencies, embryo adoptions and other IVF doctors who could give us a second opinion. I started making a list of things we could do. I wondered if my sister had good eggs and when we could get them. My mind went into overdrive, trying to find something we could control, some action we could take to keep the momentum going, but in this moment there really wasn’t anything to do but peel the last two sticky estrogen patches off my back and try to scrub off the lint crud outline the adhesive had made from my clothing.
I’m trying to tell myself we are not at Square One. That we have more information and can revise a plan, come up with a new protocol using the experience we just had. But maybe it’s too soon to reason with myself. I feel we are indeed at Square One, back to zero. We set out to make a baby and I didn’t even get a chance to have anything put inside me to try that. It felt horribly unfair but I can’t say it was a waste, it was just unfortunate. This was our only choice for a biological baby, so we tried it and we failed. Maybe it would work on the next round. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe we are meant to adopt. In this moment, I don’t know. Noah says we have to put everything on hold to get some perspective, but nothing is on hold for me. Just because we don’t have an immediate game plan doesn’t give me space and perspective; it gives me fear and panic. We’ve been floating along and Noah wants to come up for air, but I don’t know how to do that, how to be normal and not drown.
How do we regroup and move forward? How do we make a plan and process that we’ve just been spit out on the other side of this empty handed and heartbroken? I’ve known exactly what I was supposed to do for some many months, decrease stress, go to yoga, don’t drink caffeine, take herbs, go to acupuncture, inject shots, go to the doctor. Now I don’t know what to do. I’m on self-inflicted bed rest with no good reason other than I don’t know where else to be or what else to do. I’m going to have to pick myself off the floor, get myself out of bed and rejoin society.
Maybe I will do it tomorrow.
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