I contemplated writing a suicide note yesterday.
But I couldn't do that to my husband.
But maybe it wouldn't be a terrible thing. He could find a wife that wasn't broken and have a baby. It isn't fair to him. It isn't fair to his parents or my dad.
We were so happy for a couple weeks. The embryo transfer was September 5th, and the clinic called the 19th with the results of my blood test. I was pregnant. The sense of relief that washed over me was like nirvana. Finally, after almost two years.
We told our parents, my grandma, my aunt, our siblings, and some very close friends. I even mailed my brother a potato with the announcement on it for shits and giggles. Everyone was so happy.
Yesterday I had my first ultrasound. Six and a half weeks. Ben took off work that afternoon because he wanted to be there for the first ultrasound. I'm glad he was there. I don't think I could have been in that room alone with the OB.
She explained to us that we should be seeing something inside the gestational sac, but it was empty. No baby. My body thinks it is pregnant. It's producing hormones that have been giving me terrible headaches and making me queasy, but it's kidding itself. The embryo didn't make it. We did everything right. Everything, and it wasn't enough. I'm broken. I'm the problem. God doesn't want me to ever be a mom.
I sat on that table with my legs up in the air while learning my baby was dead. She went to go find the doctor, but she came back and said he was caught up. Not sure what she wanted me to feel, but she let us know that the doctor let out a few expletives when she told him what the ultrasound showed.
He knows as well as we do how fucked we are. With diminished ovarian reserve IVF was an extremely expensive process without great hopes. Most people get dozens of eggs when they undergo IVF treatment. We got three, and only two made it to embryo stage.
I remember when the doctor told us that we had two healthy embryos. We were so ecstatic. We even had one female and one male. The best possible outcome. I always wanted one of each. One baby girl and one baby boy. The doctor said with the embryo quality being so good and my uterine lining looking great we had a 70% chance of a live birth after transfer. With those odds we decided that it would be fun not to pick the gender, since for the second baby we would know what it was before it even transferred.
Now I just want to know what I lost. I guess I'll call the clinic and ask. Should I grieve for the daughter or son I'll never have? Did I lose Loretta or Luca?
The OB asked if I wanted to go into a consultation room or stay there. I couldn't move. I couldn't make any choices, so she told me to sit down where I was. She began to tell me my three options. I can just stop taking my medicine, no more estrogen or progesterone. My body may or may not figure out it isn't pregnant, and I'll bleed. Or I can take four small pills and...I couldn't stop crying. She asked if I wanted to wait until another time to talk about the next step. I never did learn what option three was, but I can guess.
I feel sick. I feel queasy as I write this. I still have hormones surging in my body, but for nothing. To support an empty sack. I can't escape it. It's inside of me. My joke of a pregnancy is inside of me. I didn't take my estrogen last night. I didn't finish my array of vitamins. I put everything away in the medicine cabinet. I don't want to look at it. I deleted my pregnancy app. I blocked baby ads that kept showing up on my social media. And I thought about slitting my wrists and taking a bath. That's how I would do it. I love my giant bathtub. I thought I'd have to give up hot baths for the next nine months. I'd use bath salts and light candles, so as the water turned red I could just tell myself I was going to take a great nap.
I would need to mail letters to everyone though. Explain to them that I don't want to fuck up their lives. That my legacy is over because I can't have a kid. My name, my genetics, all done so why bother continuing? I'm a walking reminder that my dad and my husband's parents can't be grandparents. My husband is a fantastic man. He isn't very good at flirting, but some wonderful woman would notice him like I did and swoop him up. Her ovaries would work. Her womb would be a home. Staying alive means I have to shift my entire mindset. I've always planned a family. Not being a mom was never part of the plan. How do I even plan for that? It seems like painful work.
I don't think I'll do it. So don't call the cops. I had thoughts like this when my mom died. Only then I knew if I did it I would just drive into a telephone pole. I was 19. Now I'm 30. It's weird, so many things change as you age. Including how you want to go.
I told my husband God hates me yesterday. He's atheist, so I don't think it hit home. But I'm not. I have a cross tattooed on my back left shoulder blade. I taught Sunday schools for years in college. I haven't been in years now though. But doesn't it seem a little skewed? For me to lose my mom at such a young age and now I also can't have kids? How many people out there hit 30 and the only funerals they've been to are for grandparents? Lucky assholes.
But again don't worry too much. When I couldn't stop thinking about how easy it would be to press on the gas and veer off the road each time I got behind the wheel in college, I found help. I went to the free counseling sessions the school provided. I didn't want to make things even harder for my dad, brother, and sister. I don't want Ben to come home and find me. I'll see what help I can find until these thoughts go away.
We have one embryo left.
