Stressin' Over the Next Step...

Sort of. The next step is basically out of our hands so there is really no reason to stress. Sort of. Saturday we will drive 45 minutes to the fertility clinic. I will drink 32 ounces of Gatorade on the way. We will get there and I will change into a paper gown that is open in the back. I will put on paper booties and sit on a table with stirrups. By this time I will seriously have to pee, but I can't. My bladder needs to remain full for the transfer. DH & I will nervously make small talk as we sit in a dimly lit room starting at the ultrasound machine. We will not have had an update on our embryos for 2-3 days. We will make stupid jokes to cut the tension and anxiety we are feeling and we will wait. We will wait for someone to come and tell us how many of our little embryos are still strong and how many, if any, are no longer with us. Then we will be asked the question that haunts me, how many would you like to transfer? Obviously that implies, and please oh please let it be so, that we have more than one little lone ranger left. Last time we had decided before the cycle even began we were transferring one. The RE told us we had a 67% chance of success by doing a single embryo transfer. She said if we transferred two our chances of having twins was over 50%. She stressed that we should do our own research as far as what we were comfortable with in regards to the risks of multiples. And I did. I researched and researched and researched. I talked to women who had multiples and I weighed the risks. It's hard to be objective when you so desperately seek a baby for years, and hey who wouldn't want double helpings of what they desperately seek? Yet DH and I clearly felt one at a time was the way for us. And our RE was right. It worked. We were having one beautiful baby, sprung forth from our single beautiful blast we transferred. Although transfer day I waffled. I was nervous to put all of the pressure of our hopes and dreams on this single beautiful embryo. The RE performing the transfer even had to leave the room to allow DH & I to confer one last time. I had warned DH from the beginning that he would have to remain strong and keep me grounded, remind me of the research and risks, and make sure I stuck with our original plan-elective single blast transfer. Yet at that moment as we both realized the weight of the decision, he deferred to my feelings. And although I had hoped he'd remain strong and firm in our previous decision, he knew I needed to be allowed to consider the options one final time to feel secure in our choice. This time however I'm torn. At our WTFWW meeting causally my RE mentioned that it was time to consider transferring two. The way she so nonchalantly slipped it into our conversation totally threw me for a loop. In fact I didn't even register that she had actually said that until DH & I were on the Metro on the way home. I looked at him and said did she really say we should transfer two? After she spent so much time convincing us to transfer one during our first IVF. He confirmed her comment. Immediately my mind started reeling. I had visions of premature babies, NICUs, and months in the hospital. I thought about the cognitive deficits my children could face if two of them roomed together in my womb. These were the things my RE originally told me to focus on. Dutifully I focused on them, suddenly it was as if she was asking me to forget these things. Here I am two days before transfer these things weighing heavily on my mind. I'm torn because my womb has not proven a safe harbor for those who've tried to room there before. How can I be sure things are different? How can I be sure it's ready to be a long term home to my children? I fear because of my size(5'6'' and 112lbs) two babies will have no room in there and decide to debut early, possibly too early. I feel like if we have two blasts on day 5 we should transfer one and freeze the other, just in case the causes of my miscarriages are not resolved. At least then we'd have another blast to be transferred when we did figure out what keeps going wrong, or we could put our frostie in a surrogate who hopefully wouldn't end up losing it. And there's always my RE in the back of my mind telling us it's time to consider transferring two. She really believes that because the majority of miscarriages are caused by chromosomal abnormalities that ours were chromosomal, despite testing that indicates otherwise. So I think she is pushing for two assuming one will be chromosomally abnormal. Now Saturday may come and all of this agonizing may be for naught. Last time our final fert report before transfer was 7 embryos doing well, we expected to show up and have 2-3 to freeze and 1 to transfer, turns out we had 1 to transfer. This time our final fert report was 6. What happens now is out of our control, but the agonizing will continue.