I came home from my egg retrieval, and when I was finally well enough to scroll through Instagram, I came across a post by an old friend. He and his wife had just had their second embryo transfer. His wife had poured her heart out about their fertility journey, describing how they had never imagined they’d find themselves going through this journey, how they had lost their pregnancy last year, and how she had taken half a year off of work to relax and “get [herself] back.” I couldn’t stop crying for hours. I couldn’t imagine the pain of losing your baby, and I had also felt many of the emotions she described when I first went through fertility treatment three years ago. I later messaged both of them to offer support and to share that I myself was going through this journey again.

Three years ago, I did four or five rounds of IUI, and one round of IVF. We only ended up with one genetically viable embryo, so we began a second IVF cycle. At that point, it wasn’t uncommon for me to break down at work in front of my boss, who said all the wrong things at first but became one of my closest and trusted supporters throughout the process. I was also exhausted from the number of appointments and blood draws, especially considering the drive between my clinic in downtown Chicago and work in the suburbs could take anywhere from forty minutes to two hours. One day, likely from all of the stress, I lost hearing in one ear. I was desperate to get my hearing back, and gladly took the prescribed steroids. I must have mentioned this to one of my fertility nurses, because one Saturday morning, my fertility doctor called me, a little bit furious, and told me that I needed to stop the steroids and IVF cycle right away. I was heartbroken. I had invested so much, emotionally, and physically, and now I had to throw it all away. We agreed to take a break, and then restart with my next period.

So I took a break. We went on a little trip to a Michigan football game which of course came with multiple tailgates. I went to a couple of wine-tastings with ex-colleagues and took advantage of free company booze. I went to a birthday party for a Mexican friend with delicious palomas and home-made soup. That month, my period never came. Ten months later, my beautiful daughter was born.

After trying and failing for a second child, we started fertility treatment again. I told the doctor I was in a different place than I was three years ago. “If IVF goes well, great, and if not, we already have a perfect daughter.” What we didn’t know was that it would be hard this time around too; that our first IVF cycle would again only yield one good embryo, and that our first frozen embryo transfer wouldn’t be successful. We had believed for the past three years that this embryo would become our second child. But we lost our little boy in what seemed like an instant. 

The fertility journey can be full of grief. You may have a miscarriage; you may have to terminate an ectopic pregnancy, your embryo may not implant, your eggs may not fertilize, your eggs may not mature, you may not have any eggs left… Grief during fertility treatment is over what could have been. Our little boy can only be buried in the grave in our hearts.

There’s also guilt – the guilt of not being able to give my daughter a sibling, of having walked my dog and taken my daughter to the beach and vacuumed the house instead of sitting still after my embryo transfer, of not having stopped breastfeeding earlier and started IVF earlier this time around, of not having been mature and stable enough to have had kids when we were younger.

We have our next appointment tomorrow to discuss next steps. Our future family might look like many different things. But for now, we’re going to hang onto hope and try again.