The title is in bad taste. You can either forgive me, or stop reading this post.
Thursday morning at a very early hour I get a call. Our old lab in NY is calling with some bad news. Given that I am no longer a patient on that rollercoaster called fertility treatment, I know the news already. You don't have to tell me, I say, but the words come through the phone line regardless.
There's been a bit of an accident with your embryos.
(Deep breath)
The last round of IVF we froze the embryos we didn't use. With almost two dozen eggs retrieved, even after accounting for some poor growers, we knew we'd have leftovers. When you're under the advanced maternal age bar, doctors are reluctant to place more than two.
It's unlikely they were ever going to become children. My uterus is a mess, having more than one "black hole" as my reproductive endocrinologist referred to them. These are spots an embryo would not implant. Because of this, and some other things, including my history of miscarrying, it's more than likely that I would never have been able to carry a child to term.
I was never sure how comfortable I was with surrogacy for my husband and myself either.
And really, our marriage is hanging on by a thread, it's not like we are where we were back then.
Still, we paid the freezing fees, and continued to pay the storage fees. Every six months writing a payment out because it seemed too hard to just let them go. We went to the trouble at the time of drawing up papers, stating what would happen to these embryos in case of death or divorce.
I even spoke with the physician about what we could do rather than discarding them when we were finished. I knew I had the option of placing them without drugs at the wrong point in cycle, knowing my body would reject them. I knew I was free to donate them to another couple, or to science. For me, it isn't so much a religious or political thing as it was a personal sense of responsibility.
The worst part was telling my husband. Being a strict Catholic, I think certain parts of that process were difficult for him. He's grieving the children we never had all over again.
It just seems like such a waste. All the money spent keeping them stored, all the effort to produce them in the first place. I still kick out eggs, contrary to what the physicians thought. I don't know how viable they are, but I do. Still, there was comfort knowing that I was able to produce those embryos, and knowing they were there. Maybe it was wishful to think science would come up with something to help me in the years I'd still be able to be a mother, but I believe I saved them in the hope that someday I would still have children.
It's hitting me harder than I care to admit.
