Do You Believe in Rainbows?

This time yesterday, I was inspired to write this blog post motivated by rainbows and how they are “miracle-like”. I’ve never been one to really believe in miracles or that good things come to those who wait. This trying to conceive journey has greatly blown this theory out of the water especially after more than 2 years of trying, countless failed natural attempts, 3 failed IVF cycles and 2 miscarriages. I don’t call that a miracle or a good thing by any means. If good things come to those who wait and who are patient, I would be pregnant 100 times over by now. But somehow, the events of the last few days, have allowed my mind to wander and think that perhaps this IVF cycle will be “the one”, a miracle will be gifted, for once God will answer our long awaited prayers, and good things WILL come to us. I just had that “good” feeling. I’ve been told before from a psychic that I have psychic abilities and that I just need to tap into them. I did have the intuition of our very fist pregnancy eventuating too. So maybe for once I am right. Maybe a rainbow would come to us this time.

In simple “scientific” terms, rainbows are produced by a collection of colours reflecting from a raindrop and requires two things, light and raindrops.

In simple “trying to conceive” terms, rainbow babies are a baby that is born following a miscarriage or still birth. In the real world, a beautiful and bright rainbow follows a storm and gives hope of things getting better. The rainbow is more appreciated having just experienced the storm in comparison. The storm (pregnancy loss) has already happened and nothing can change that experience. Storm-clouds might still be overhead as the family continue to cope with the loss, but something colourful and bright has emerged from the darkness and misery.

In our case, the dreadful storm is still lingering, the two horrendous miscarriages we have endured, toppled with the pain, heartache and helplessness of infertility. Over the events of the last year and constant failures, I have lost all hope and stopped believing that a rainbow would ever come our way. But yesterday, something happened. I believed again. I started to believe that a rainbow WOULD come our way.

You see, on Friday, we did get to transfer not only one, but two of our beautiful embryos, as a result of our 4th IVF attempt. Two beautiful embryos who I already love so much, and hope will become a beautiful baby or babies to hold in our arms and love. In scientific terms, the embryos were both POOR quality. Both Grade D. Which at my clinic, is second from the bottom. They are fragmented, which means they have less chance of implanting in my supple uterus. I hate that my beautiful babies are graded like that and judged in a way to degrade them. Which is why we were recommended to transfer the two. The chance of a multiple pregnancy would be a mere 5%. I would be just so grateful to even have one embryo implant and become our muchly wanted take home baby. We had one leftover embryo which was also graded as a D, and we were told that on its current state, it is no good to freeze and would be left to grow out to blastocyst stage, but would most likely die overnight. Call back on Monday.

This news left me feeling depressed. The whole cycle had been a waste of time. My body had produced “junk”. My eggs are crap. My AMH must be getting lower. My time is running out. I will need to use donor eggs. I will. Ever have my own biological children. This transfer won’t work. They can’t even freeze them. What hope do the two embies inside me have? These were all the thoughts that ran through my mind.

I have spent the last few days in an anxious mess, reading every google site I could about other women and their POOR grade embryos that have SUCCESSFULLY implanted, in the hopes of lifting my spirits and regaining my hope. I read so many pages with women just like me that had been given the disappointing news that their embryos too are fragmented and have gone on to achieve pregnancies, and also the opposite, women who had transferred top notch embryos every time, and still not achieved success. This helped to lift my spirits, and I spent the whole weekend praying for a miracle that our leftover embryo would grow nice and strong and gift us that miracle we needed so desperately by this stage. You see, I was also terrified, the kind of terrified you feel when you hear a noise outside your window on a dark, quiet night, about what would come next. If this cycle is not the one, what will we do next? We have no back up plan planned whatsoever at this stage, and it scares the crap out of me. Every other time, we have always had a back up plan to fall onto, but this time, we had nothing. I was hoping the leftover embryo would fix this problem, and bear good news for us.

You would never believe the ELATION I felt when I rang up on Monday morning to hear that our little leftover embryo DID in fact make it to blastocyst stage and from what the scientist indicated, had improved in quality. It was now a C grade embryo!!! It was the kind of elation where I felt like jumping up and down on the spot and squealing! It would be left to grow out one more day, and then frozen after that, and I had to call back the next morning to confirm. Not only had our embryo survived when it was given a death prognosis, it had also improved in quality!!! This gave me so much hope that a rainbow was coming our way at long last! Surely the two inside me are doing the same thing, if the leftover embryo performed this way in the laboratory! It made me believe in miracles and have faith. I felt the best I have in a long time about all this mess. I began to ponder what it would feel like to feel pregnant again, daydreamed about baby names, due-dates, obstetricians, ultrasounds. Such beautiful thoughts. And also the scary thoughts, like another miscarriage.

But it was all short lived. This morning when I phoned to confirm that our embryo was frozen, I was dealt with the massive blow. That NO, unfortunately our embryo CANNOT be frozen, it is of too poor quality too freeze. A C/D grading which means it cannot be frozen. Too much fragmentation. I felt devastated. My heart sunk to the floor. I went to bed and cried. Like a baby. I felt heartbroken. How dare someone say our little baby is not good enough. So now we are robbed of another opportunity, and we will be back at square one if this transfer does not work, with no future plan in place. We can’t lean back on any frozen embryos, because we have NONE. And we just can’t do IVF whenever we please or feel like it, because it costs money, money doesn’t grow on trees, and our clinic is 4 hrs away, which means it needs to be scheduled in with work when we do decide. My doctor also takes a month break over Christmas. Next year seems an eternity away. And with my shocking egg count, I am terrified that every month counts, when I have been given the prognosis of 5 years until I reach menopause. And most disturbing of all, our embryo is still growing and doing all the things it should be doing, what will they do with it? How dare they just destroy my baby because it is not good enough……. 😥

So now, my hope, elation, belief in miracles and rainbows has once again been stripped from me. I did enjoy it while I had the chance. The rest of this two week wait will be hard, and I still have so long to go. I wish I hadn’t have taken long service leave to do this cycle now, as right now I could really do with the distractions of work. So once again, I have proven that IVF is a rollercoaster ride. See my previous post if you missed it. So sick of all the highs and lows, it is just severely draining on all levels. 10 more days to go of this crappy two week wait.