My Egg Donor Cycle Didn’t Work and Now I’m Terrified

This article originally appeared on Mom.com on December 9, 2014. Read the original article here.

When I announced my less-than-positive beta result on my Facebook page (because I couldn’t stomach telling anyone but my husband in person), I received a lot of support and encouragement. As the days went on and I decided to come out of my cave and actually talk to people like a real human being, I got a lot of sympathetic looks; a lot of, “Are you sure you’re OK?” I nodded my head in determination. “Yes,” I said firmly, “I’m fine.” I even used the rather snarky comment, “This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.”

I’ve become used to accepting the loss: the pitfalls, the negatives, the setbacks. Sure, the multiple losses don’t make it any less shitty, but it’s become my new normal. Start meds, blog about my follow-up appointments, get crappy news about my fertilization reports, get even crappier news about embryo quality, lament about my fears during the two week wait, and then get a phone call that the whole goddamn thing didn’t even work anyway.

So after three years of these intense procedures, not to mention the two years of medication and timed intercourse, I’ve gotten rather good at bouncing back to plan out the next treatment.

Until this last cycle didn’t work. Until I realized that even another woman’s eggs couldn’t even get me pregnant.

The first three cycles were either covered under Attain or insurance. My third IVF cycle with my own eggs failed last year and we got all that money back, about twenty thousand dollars. Before the donor cycle this past October, my husband and I agreed: treatments for a baby will continue until that money runs out. The plan was relatively simple: go to Texas for a frozen donor cycle. If that doesn’t work, then we would continue with our clinic for a fresh cycle up here, and pray it worked.

But then the frozen cycle didn’t actually work. I had a chemical pregnancy, my second now, and suddenly we were faced with biting off more than we could chew. There is something wrong with my body—something more than just shitty eggs. There is something else going on and I don’t know how to deal with that.

“I’m glad to see you’re doing OK,” someone told me a few weeks ago. “I was expecting you to be sad.”

Sad? Sad was three cycles ago, when I had my first miscarriage, but there was hope to try again. Now I am just fearful.

I walk around with my head spinning, smiling and politely agreeing with everyone that, “Yes, this next cycle will work.” It’s better to reassure people that I’m hoping the next cycle will be it rather than opening my mouth and letting the scream loose: I am terrified. I’m fucking terrified that the reality of me having a child is getting slimmer and slimmer. The money is going to run out. I have two, maybe three cycles left. Emotionally, I can handle ten more. Physically, I can keep self-injecting medications until the doctors tell me to quit. But soon, sooner than I can handle, the money will be gone, and with it, a baby. Because I have never been able to get pregnant on my own. IUIs are a joke. The only way I can even catch a glimmer of a pregnancy is through a $15,000 IVF cycle. And, friends, we don’t have the means to continue that.

So I will await the blood work that will hopefully tell us some sort of next game plan. And then we will pursue another cycle, whatever that entails. I will keep my mouth shut tight, and agree with all my loved ones: This next cycle will work. It HAS to.