The Underdogs: Transfer Day

Before our appointment on transfer day. Deja, Lucas, Derek & Ambree

I’m not sure I’m ready to write this post, but so many of you have reached out to me, and have been anxiously waiting to hear about today. Many of you have followed our story so closely and when I promised to share our journey, I promised to share it all…  I consider you all my dearest friends and family—and we share our heartaches and achievements, today is no exception. 

We went to our appointment at 3:00 today. Derek, Ambree, my mom, Lucas and I all went. They tell you that transfer day is a big, special day, at it certainly is, so we wanted to be there together.

Ambree took a Valum when we got there, to relax her before the procedure. She was then taken to a room, the same room I did my egg retrieval in, and we all followed her shortly after. I had to run to the restroom and out in the hall I ran into my incredible doctor, Dr F,  he’s wonderful! I smiled at him, and he at me, but immediately I senses something just wasn’t right. We went into the room and Dr. F came in shortly after. He sat down next to Lucas and me and handed us a piece of paper, a black and white print-out. On this sheet of paper were two little circles, which turned out to be our embryos. Remember from the previous post he told us that we would pick out our embryo upon arrival.

As he sat down he said, “First off we were amazed the day after transfer that you had a 100% fertilization rate, out of the 30 patients this month, yours was the highest. Then on day 3, we were still so happy that we had 6 solid embryo and 3 semi-solid, 9 options, again we were thrilled. Deja and Lucas, then something happened yesterday, most all of them started falling apart. Today, today we have 2, one is fairly good and the other has already began to deteriorate”.

My heart stopped. It sunk to my gut as I stared at that sheet of paper. I was numb and my eyes started welling up.

WHAT?????

He went on to tell us that on day 4 we “hit a brick wall” (those words are still ringing in my head). The embryo’s starting falling apart, and quickly. He told us that my endometriosis was more severe than they had imagined and was in turn, contaminating the eggs. All I could think of in my head was FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!!! My body had failed me and now I’m looking at just TWO embryo. He rated them between Teir 1 and Teir 3, one being the best, the first was a tier 3 and the second a tier 2. In the blink of an eye I went from so much hope (6 solid embryo) to complete and utter heartbreak!!

I stared at that sheet of paper and my heart burned. I couldn’t control my tears anymore and I sobbed. Dr. F was so kind and caring and said, “We still have one good strong one we can use today.” Ambree asked if this type of thing was normal and he kindly replied, “No, to go from that many to 2 is not normal”. Again…FAIL FAIL FAIL!!!

At that point I think we were all in tears and/or shock and just kind of looked around the room at each other. Of course we would implant the one semi-strong one and hope for the best, but what are the odds of it working? He said it wasn’t great odds, but by implanting both the odds would increase slightly. Dr. F explained to us that it was an incredibly hard decision, but that implanting both embryos would increase the chance we would get pregnant—and because the embryo were not of great quality, Ambree’s odds of having to carry twins would be just 5%.

Ambree asked a lot of great questions—she was super calm and collected. I listened as hard as I could but felt like I was in someone else’s body. We talked for a few minutes about what to do, all along Ambree has said, “Only one embryo”, and I’ve tried to respect here decision. I asked the doctor if we could have a minute to talk, Lucas and I went outside and talked, and Ambree and Derek staying in the room and talked. It felt like I cried in Lucas’ arms for a long time but I don’t think it was really that long. A few minutes later they called us back into the room.

At this point Ambree was already prepped for transfer, the doctor was in there and was already prepped to go for it. One of my favorite songs of all time was playing in the room, “Clocks” by ColdPlay, for some reason it brought me some comfort. At this point, none of us (my mom, Lucas, nor I) had any idea what Ambree and Derek had decided, but I knew it had to be her decision. It was her body and she was just letting us borrow it. The doctor preceded to “prep” her for implantation and NONE OF US ASKED WHAT THE DECISION WAS.

It was just a weird experience—and I didn’t want to feel like I was pressuring her (although it was clearly about to happen anyway). The doctor let me stand real close to the ultrasound machine so I could see what he was doing. After Ambree was prepped, and they inserted a catheter to load the embryo, the sweet women from the lab, who has a great Australian accent, and who was the one who called me the first day to tell me I had a 100% fertilization rate, came in with our embryo.

She repeated back to the doctor, “Powell/Hatch embryo” and handed the doctor a long needle syringe. I watched on the monitor and you could see one tiny embryo (that looked like a white strain of rice, make its ways up and into the uterus. And then another tiny embryo followed behind.

Ambree decided to do both embryo to increase our chances and I cannot tell you how blessed we are she was willing to do that for us. It’s something she has not wanted to do, but in that moment she felt it was the best choice for us and I love her for that.

At the end of the day, we have two little embryo sitting inside Ambree.

I can’t begin to document the emotions I’m feeling. When I got home, I bawled and cried and screamed and yelled at Lucas. I was angry and heartbroken at the fact that my body “did this to me!” That I failed at the one thing I needed to do to make this process work…make an embryo. I still feel like we had a huge loss today, a loss of hope, and a loss of a second change. Today, the two surviving embryo are clinging to life—and that’s it. There are no more to freeze. There isn’t a second chance this go around. There isn’t the comfort that if this transfer doesn’t work, we still have “a few saved up.” In 48 hours, all of that went away. The two we do have aren’t particularly strong, one is visibly falling apart already. My. Heart. Aches. It hurts so badly that I want to rip it out of my chest. My eyes are swollen and red and I feel pain all over my body. I went from an enormous amount of hope, to a glimmer.

BUT we have 2 that survived! We have 2 little fighters that hung in there long enough to make it to today. We have 2 little slivers of hope to get us through the next 10 days. We have 2 embryos that despite all odds, are here. Lucas is a constant reminder to me of looking at the bright side. Sometimes I want to slap him for it, but it’s true. Today we implanted not one but TWO little embryo. He is also a big fan of the underdog, he always roots for the underdog when he can. So this week, this week we are rooting for our two underdogs and we hope you’ll join us in rooting for them too. My heart aches tonight as I write this—but I know eventually, eventually I will also realize that the joy of what happened today. I will better understand why we are here. I will know, maybe not tonight, but sometime soon, that even if this doesn’t work out, there is a glorious plan for me.

And if I may, please throw a prayer in for myself, Lucas, Derek, Ambree and I, that we can find peace in our decisions, and peace in our hearts and minds.

Join us in praying for, and cheering on, our little underdogs this week! On April 2^nd, we will know if they were meant to hang on.

XOXO,

Deja

P.S. So sorry if this doesn’t make sense. I’ll try to edit it later.