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Inconceivable: Where do we go from here?

I'm writing this just an hour before I am set to find out if this Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) worked. After two weeks of hell, I am at the finish line. But I'm terrified to have my bubble burst.

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Kathy Hanrahan with her family
By
Kathy Hanrahan
, WRAL Out & About editor

I'm writing this just an hour before I am set to find out if this Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) worked. After two weeks of hell, I am at the finish line. But I'm terrified to have my bubble burst.

Like many women, I took early urine tests to see if the FET worked. I took tests on day 4, 5, 10 and 11. All were negative. With each failed test, I took to the internet and just found a sea of women on message boards who said they got positives on days 4 and 5 and that there was no hope for a negative to change to a positive after that.

With egg negative test, my heart broke. I cried. I cursed. I screamed. I fell apart. The weekend before we were scheduled for our beta blood test, I think I cried nearly the entire time.

The hardest part is that you are taking estrogen twice a day and progesterone shots once a day. Your body feels pregnant. The hormones are making you crazy so every negative test feels like the sky is falling.

Three years

It has been such a long road. November will mark three years we have been trying to have a second child. Three years. I've known people who have gotten pregnant, had the child and are pregnant again - all during this time.

It also hasn't helped that everywhere I've gone I've been surrounded by pregnant women. I'm in line at a store, I turn around and one is right behind me. Every day, I've come in contact with at least once pregnant woman. Is the universe trying to tell me not to give up? Or is it mocking me?

My husband and I have a backup plan. If this didn't work, we will do another FET with two embryos. But I keep telling myself if our AB graded embryo didn't take, why would our BA or BB one take? Is this ever going to happen? Should we just give up?

How much more pain and disappointment can I go through? Can we go through? The sadness, anxiety, fear, weight gain, financial expenses - it is so much. It is almost too heavy to carry.

We have been lucky because we have very supportive family and friends who are literally holding us up in times where we don't feel like we can go any further. They are just there to listen, console and cry along with us. It has been our saving grace - along with our 5-year-old son.

Wait. The phone is ringing....

It’s negative, the doctor said. The transfer didn’t work.

I collapse into a ball. Wailing and crying so hard I can’t see straight. It feels like we just had another miscarriage. Even though we didn’t.

The pain is so intense I can’t breathe.

Where do we go from here?

Kathy is a mom of one and Out & About editor for WRAL.com. She writes for Go Ask Mom about her experience with secondary infertility.

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