6 Years, $100,000+, Hundreds of Needles, Countless Tears

And still no answers.

We got our CGH results today, exactly 7 weeks to the day from when the cells were sent off. Of the 10 embryos that were biopsied, 6 were abnormal. The other 4 were "no results."

I was prepared - as much as one can be - to be told that all 10 were abnormal. I was prepared to be told that only 1 or 2 were normal and the rest were abnormal. I was not prepared to be told that we still have no answer for 40% of them.

All throughout this process, I kept telling myself we might not get a baby, but at least we would finally have an answer, at least we would know why. But we still don't.

I suppose having 6 of the 10 come back abnormal seems like an answer, but it doesn't feel like one to me. I know the reproductive system is inefficient, I know a lot of embryos that are created are abnormal even among normal, healthy couples who don't need reproductive assistance to have a baby.

RE didn't really have much to lend to the results, either. He said if he was a betting man, he'd bet at least one of the four "no results" ones is normal. But then again, when I first counsulted with him three or four years ago, I'm sure if he was forced to bet on our chance of success, he would have bet we'd have a kid by now.

He did say they could attempt to retest the four free of charge. But that would involve thawing them, re-biopsying them, re-freezing them and then ultimately re-thawing them again if any of them are normal. That's a lot of stress to put them through, so on the off chance that one of those four is normal, I don't want to make them go through that.

As crazy as this sounds, I've never felt like a mother more than today. I feel so fiercely protective of those embryos. They're not just groups of cells - those are our babies. I will attempt to get pregnant again by transferring them, knowing the odds are it won't end well. But deliberately going through all of that, risking the heartbreak - it's not really even a choice. It's just what I imagine any mother would do.

However, before we do a transfer, we'll most likely be heading back to the clinic to do one or two more rounds of retrievals. That's because there's another wrinkle in all of this: I'm about 95% sure that my IVF coverage is going away as of June 1. Since the retrievals are the most expensive part of the process, I'd rather use my coverage for those.

RE agreed that that was probably the best approach. If we did a transfer first, I could end up with another pregnancy like the summer of 2007, where I made it to 10w5d with a pregnancy that had an unsurvivable chromosomal abnormality. If that were to happen again, by the time my body would recover and be ready for a retrieval, June would already be here and my coverage could be gone.

We will definitely do CGH again, because even though it didn't give us any answers with regard to "normals," at least it let us know some of the ones we shouldn't transfer back. However, I still need to talk with RE about exactly what kind of approach we want to take. I think I remember a blogger (please forgive me for not being able to remember who - I'm still kind of foggy brained from the surprise of all this) who had the polar bodies of her eggs tested rather than the embryos themselves. We may take that approach next time around to see if we can get more information about whether it appears to be an egg issue. Maybe that would also create less "no results" outcomes, though I don't know that that's the case, it's just a hope on my part.

Well, there is a Kleenex box keeping me company on the couch and a pizza in the oven that is soon going to be offering some tasty (albiet temporary) comfort, so I probably should get going. You'd think after six years of sucky, heartbreaking news, I'd be better at dealing with it. But it turns out that numbness I thought I'd developed to heartbreak and disappointment is only skin deep, because underneath, it still hurts like hell.