The Results of Faith, Hope, and Perseverance: Devastation

For those of you who can't do math or don't know how many months it takes for a baby to grow, I'll fill you in. When we went for the pregnancy test on February 17, it came back negative. The small collection of cells that was our child did not survive in my uterus. We were devastated. Devastated doesn't even begin to describe it. We really thought we had climbed our biggest hurdle when there was a balance/normal embryo. We never really considered that it wouldn't live or in other words I would miscarry. On February 17, we had to travel to Iowa City for a blood test to determine if I was pregnant. Then, a few hours later we had to call in to a phone line to hear the results. I actualy forgot to mention the phone line earlier. Every day I had to call the phone line to hear how much drugs I should inject that day. On the day of the pregnancy test, the message on the phone line was not what I wanted to hear. The nurse who left the message gave us a number to call if we had any questions. Of course I had questions. I wanted to know why the test was negative. Unfortunately when we called, the nurse wasn't exactly very sensitive. This particular incident was the only time we were frustrated with the people at the clinic. The nurse made the comment "weren't you expecting it to be negative since it wasn't a blastocyst when it was transferred?" No. We had no idea. We were given every indication that the baby could and would live. After all that work, all the emotions, all the shots, all the trips to Iowa City, we came up with nothing. My initial reaction was that I was never going to be able to have my own child. And, at that point I was not comfortable with adoption, so I thought I was never going to have children. I currently have the most beautiful daughter in the world, yet I sit here crying as I type this entry because that moment sure ripped my heart out. After a few days we called the clinic again and asked if we could meet with our doctor to determine what, if anything, we should do next. We went in mid-March back to Iowa City and were escorted into an office. A short while later, 2 doctors came in. Not 1, not a nurse, 2 DOCTORS. Those doctors sat there and answered our questions, consoled us through our tears, and new our case forwards and backwards. They felt there was not anything in particular that caused the baby to not live in my uterus. They felt there was just as good of a chance to conceive if we wanted to try again. They weren't pushy, but they did give us hope. Never did I feel like a science experiment while we dealt with the in vitro clinic, but at that moment, I truly felt like the doctors wanted Justin and Julie Pegump to have a baby. They honestly wanted to help us. There was also that air of ego there; that "we can help these people have a baby". I am really grateful for that. Those doctors are awesome! (I'm leaving out their names just in case, but if you want to know, send me an email and ask!) When we finished with the doctors, a nurse came to talk with us about when we could try again. It was no question with us that we wanted to. I didn't care how many shots I had to get or how much blood they drew, I wanted to have a baby and this was our path to achieve that. We learned there was no reason we could not start in the next cycle, which was mid-April. We also learned there are 3 different types of in vitro cycles they perform. The first one we did was the standard, slowly give me more and more drugs to help the eggs grow. This time we were going to try a more aggressive approach where they hit me with more drugs in the beginning. The idea was to get more eggs to hopefully give us more than one balance/normal embryo. I can't even remember the third type of cycle because we didn't need it! The new cycle would start in just about a month.