Six years ago on this day, we transferred one embryo.
Just one.
That tiny little spec of molecules was the result of a tapestry of feelings: vulnerability, fear, angst, sadness, and hope. As I laid uncomfortably in the hospital room, the edges of my brain blurred. The Valium the doctor gave me helped calm the nerves, but also dulled my senses. Everything seemed like it was, to quote "Stranger Things", happening in the upside down. I was alert, yet completely oblivious. Cold, but burning with excitement.
More than anything, I was ready. 2015 had just begun and it felt like the start of something new and exciting. The beginning of a new life for our family.
My husband was there to watch the entire process from start to finish. He remembers it well. All I can truly recall is thinking it looked like a giant video game being played all up in my lady parts. I remember thinking it was astonishing that we were willingly paying a stranger great sums of money to do this to me.
I remember thinking that we were willing to pay great sums more if it didn't work this time around.
(Just kidding it ended up being October because the kid was then and is now on his own timeline.)
A half decade has passed since that day. Since then, each year a bright blue envelope has arrived like clockwork in our mailbox. A letter asking if we wished to pay the fee to keep our remaining 13 embryos. Or did we want to release them, or donate them?
Over the last six years I had struggled to make a decision about what to do with those little icicle miracles. Even though we didn't have plans to expand our family beyond our son and my husband's two daughters, I never wanted to tempt fate by letting the embryos go.
As crazy as it sounds, I worried that releasing the embryos would somehow initiate a chain reaction, or a butterfly effect, that would ultimately result in us needing them.
I never said I was logical.
This year the envelope arrived in the mailbox - and I waited for that feeling of uncertainty to creep into my stomach.
But it didn't happen.
A shift had occurred.
Maybe it was the sh*t storm that was 2020. The knowledge that our lives are in a much more precarious place than we think or want to admit. The awareness that other women and men just like us are out there, during a pandemic, amidst racial tensions, watching what feels like the world falling apart...and waiting for their own miracle. Meanwhile I had my miracle right in front of me, yet was still pondering if I wanted to ask for another one.
It felt selfish and silly.
After all, for years I begged, pleaded and made 3:00 AM bargains with any God who would listen to please let me know what it was to be a mother. To celebrate first birthdays. To snuggle on Christmas mornings and put Band-Aids on skinned knees. I only ever asked for one chance to experience that.
And I got it.
Why did I need more?
And so in the last month of 2020, we made the decision (together) to let our 13 embryos go. What to do with them wasn't even a question. We chose to donate the embryos to science rather than disposing of them.
Our embryos were donated to science - something we believe in more than ever in these times - in the hope that perhaps a different type of miracle might be created. The miracle of doctors and scientists using our embryos to potentially identify why infertility affects so many, and how it can be prevented.
Maybe those 13, tiny little embryos will hold some answers. Or maybe they won't. But I will know we tried to help in our own way.
As for me, this doesn't conclude my fertility journey. Not by a long shot. I will continue to reach out and offer an open ear to anyone who needs it. I will continue writing blogs (hopefully more than I have recently) and articles and memes. I will speak loudly about my experience so those that are suffering infertility in silence might find the courage to speak up and ask for help.
To all of you: I'm here for you. I hope you get your miracle.
