Fab Five (+ one)

When I answered a call from Dr. Huber a few weeks ago, he started off with 2 questions:

“What emotion do you feel when you see me calling you from my cell phone?”
Honestly? ALLLLLLL the emotions: joy, nervous, excited, anxious, overwhelmed, scared, relieved…

“Do you ever feel like eventually it’ll be your turn to catch a break?”
Abso-freaking-lutely!

“We finally caught our break”

We FINALLY caught our break. #Hallelujah! We had 5 embryos make it to Blast from our third retrieval. We sent all 5 off for testing. Of those 5, ALL FIVE came back normal. All of them. The entire bunch. Y’all. I’m pretty sure I told Dr. Huber to STFU when he told me the news. Ha. My bad, doc. I didn’t mean it! I know I cried. I still cry when I think about it. I cried telling Kirk. I cried telling our families. I cried telling the besties.

This batch is numbered instead of named: 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5. These five plus Alpha (which is still on ice), means that we now have SIX beautiful baby embryos ready & waiting to be transferred!

So how do we decided which embryos to transfer when? Well, it’s pretty much a beauty competition. There’s a whole slew of factors that go into “grading” each embryo. It’s a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to me, but basically, our embryos are ranked like this:

First Place: tie between 1 & 2
Second Place: tie between 4 & 5
Third Place: 3
Fourth Place: Alpha

Our next transfer will be sometime in mid- to late March. We had a long discussion with Dr. Huber on not only WHICH embryo to transfer, but also HOW MANY. His preference is always to transfer a singleton embryo. Kirk thought transferring two was the original game plan. My preference? I was on the fence. I wasn’t leaning more one way or the other. We discussed the pros & cons. PROS: transferring 2 could *potentially* increase our chances of a live birth. CONS: there’s no guarantee of a live birth; my chances of a multiples increases to 30% (!!!); & my risks factors increase, too (preeclampsia, preterm labor, birth defects, gestational diabetes, miscarriage, bed rest - just to name a few).

It’s ultimately up to me to decided and Dr. Huber made it very clear that if transferring 2 was my choice, he would back me up on that. But to me, the risks outweigh the reward. I trust Dr. Huber. That’s why we continue with his care. That’s why we haven’t (& won’t) gone elsewhere. I’m literally trusting this man with my life & my future. Not to mention, he knows what he’s doing. He’s kinda a big deal in the fertility world. If his preference is a singleton transfer, then that’s what we’ll do. He’s gotten me preggers before. I bet he can do it again. LOL!

Next Steps? Waiting. Again. Joyfully. For Aunt Flo to arrive. I’ll have to have a saline sonogram done first, and then we’ll start meds for our next FET (frozen embryo transfer) with Embryo #1. The sonogram is standard procedure to check the inside of my uterus. This has to be done about once every year just to make sure everything is good to go for the transfer. It’s not super pleasant, but it’s the least unpleasant of all the infertility tests. I’m taking that as a win.

My emotions are still all over the place. I’m excited to be moving onto the next step in our fertility journey, but I’d be lying if I said I was calm, cool, & collected about it. On the inside, I’m kinda freaking out. Our last transfer resulted in our first ever positive preggers test. Followed by a miscarriage. We told the world our good news before having to turn right around, with our hearts shattered, to tell everyone the news no one ever wants to share. And I spent months informing those who missed the initial bad news report that I was no longer pregnant. It was like the world kept slicing open that wound; refusing to let me heal. Refusing to let me move on on MY terms. Constantly making me say the words out loud. “We lost the baby”. I know that could happen again. I’m hopeful that it won’t, but I’m not naive enough to think it can’t.

BUT. We trust Dr. Huber. And we trust God’s plan (even when we don’t like it or understand it). We’ve got SIX more chances to bring Baby Fabre home in our arms. And I’m ok with that.