Yesterday saw me back at old Dr IVF for a proper girlie swot check up after my recent trip to the ER. He is one of the best doctors with the most accomplished bed side manner I’ve ever encountered (and I’ve met more than my fair share of quacks). Even though I haven’t seen him in years he enquired about Mr K, BigSal and my Dad – he remembered nearly everything about me which is amazing considering how many patients he must have had in the interim. Predictably there was an enquiry as to what my intentions are for the ten little embryos that I have in the freezer. Every six months I have been getting a letter which asks me if I want to
A) continue storage (for a fee of course)
B) arrange an appointment to use the embryos
C) dispose of them thoughtfully or
D) donate them to another infertile couple
And every time I get one of those letters I find myself getting dredging up all the pain, sorrow and angst that I went through during all those years on IVF. That and the horrible feelings of failure that I continually endured while riding the IVF emotional roller coaster. Oh and the overwhelming indecisiveness about what to do with them. I can’t bring myself to flush them and as much as intellectually I’d like to donate them to some one else… how would I feel if someone else had MY baby!!! Oi 🙁
I had my last FET (Frozen Embryo Transfer) I think in about Sept 2005 and I honestly can’t remember how many treatment cycles I went through in total. We were going to discuss going back to use the remaining embryos after my father passed away in Jan 2007, but we never did and it has kinda become the elephant in the room that we don’t want to talk about. Now my embryo dilemma has another element of difficulty thrown on top of it…. the state of my back is much much worse than it was in 2005. If I were to opt to use the embryos and by some fucking miracle actually manage a viable pregnancy… how on earth will my back hold up to that? Angel was born at 36 weeks because the back pain was unbearable and I can’t imagine what a viable pregnancy would do to my back now.
It’s an absolute minefield of a topic and time has not dulled it’s impact.
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