What a failed IVF cycle feels like:

I found this article on another website and thought I'd share. Be warned, it will make you cry.

Fourteen days, 336 hours. Two weeks. To the infertility community it's 2WW or the dreaded two-week wait. It's hell, it's long, it's how long you wish the time felt when you were in Hawaii or falling in love. My 2WW started after our first round of IVF with me on a mandatory 72hr. bed rest, great, right? Not so simple, it let my mind wander and obsess on every twinge I felt in my nether regions. Cramps? Hmm must be implantation cramping. Note to self if I start spotting it is implantation spotting and in no way should be confused with my period. My boobs are definitely bigger and although all the hormones I have been injecting into my belly sure as hell could be the reason for the puberty like surge I am still comforted while laying in bed by the distinct possibility my two embryos are burrowing in and changing my body to provide baby nourishment. I listen to my IVF meditation tapes. My progress is punctuated by the title of the CD "Post Transfer: Week 1 of the 2 Week Wait" I started with the pre-injection CD. Now at least 50 injections later I am listening to a peaceful voice telling me to visualize my embryos growing and strengthening. I hear my IF doctor "70% chance, these embryos are beautiful." I always knew my husband and I would make beautiful babies. I focus on the picture we have taped to the closet door in front of me, the pictures of the 2 embryos we transferred and the 3 we froze, siblings for the 2 we have growing. I am proud of myself. We made it this far and it will work. This is all before I knew it didn't. This is all during the 2WW that I came to find out was more like heaven than hell because hell is knowing it failed. Because during the 2WW I believed, I felt, I lived like I was pregnant.

But back to me lying in bed. I cheated once, well what I consider cheating, I went on the Internet. Which simultaneously is the infertile women's best friend and greatest enemy. It supports our grandiose ideas of how to get pregnant, (back when we thought that meant having a lot of sex) like propping a pillow under our hips after sex to aid the sperm in traveling north. It also has stories of women drinking green tea for weeks prior to embryo transfer, eating only leafy vegetables and wearing socks all the time because cold feet equals a cold uterus. I was reading this in June, in California, stuck in bed trying to angle my body closer to the AC and fan. What?? Why didn't my doctor tell me that all my issues were due to a lack of green in my diet? Shoot, what do I do now? My embryos are already implanting and I haven't been eating greens like a rabbit although there was lettuce on my tostada last night I doubt that is what the women on the Internet had in mind. I know my uterus is cold, I am hormonal I am having hot flashes and the thought of socks is about as pleasant as starting the 2WW over again. Why did I research the Internet? I had done so well, I even avoided The Nest (read infertile girls Bible). I tell myself and ask my mother and husband to re-affirm that not only have I had enough greens but also my uterus is warm and cozy enough for my growing embryos. I feel better for a little while. My embryos are warm and floating in green leafy vegetables. Ok, some damage was done to my post transfer psyche but I think with a little help from my CDs my mind will be back to baby burrowing.

And then bed rest was over and I entered the living, breathing world surrounded by people who had no idea my body was creating a miracle right then and there. It was all I could think about, all I wanted to talk about. I scheduled my Beta appointment. On the 30th I would find out I was pregnant. Only a little over a week to go.

Then I did what most everyone told me not to do. I tested. Most of us infertile gals have a case load of pregnancy tests left over from the early days of conception or pre-diagnosis. I had at least 12 still and there was a girl on The Nest (ok, I internetted more than once but I needed confirmation that cramping was normal) that got a positive 5 days after transfer, it's Sunday and it's day 5. I break the cardinal rule and don't use my first pee of the morning. I wait the allotted time, which felt just as long as the entire two weeks. I look, it's negative. But surely the girl on the Internet was a rare case of a positive that early. I show my husband and he confirms that it's way too soon and he scolds me for cheating and he's not talking about internetting, I had promised I would not test. I feel bad. I feel un-pregnant. My gut tells me it's not too soon, my gut tells me it's over. I wake up on day 6 so that's 24 hours of increasing HCG and yes, I test again. It's still negative. I pour over every Google article reading only the ones that affirm what I pray is true, it's too soon for a positive I tell myself as I start crying. It's not over, it can't be. 70% could not have turned into 30% in just a few days. I ask my husband to hide the remaining tests. He does so gladly and I am proud of myself for not peeking when he hides them.

My Beta is on Monday so I decide to test again on Friday, this is 10 days post transfer and I know that either way at that point the test should be trusted. I tell my husband I want to find out I am pregnant the way most women find out, early in the morning with their husband still sleeping, I want those few minutes sitting on the bathroom floor being the only person in the world who knows I am with child. I want to cry and laugh and feel pure joy sitting on the cold floor no longer having to worry about a cold uterus. I don't want to hear the news from my nurse on the phone. I don't want to hear her tell me it didn't work and we can try again. I want to sit on that same floor and cry and scream and feel pure sadness. I want to be the only one, the first one who knows it didn't work so I can figure out how to tell my husband; the only person in the world who wants this more than me. That is my plan. It's busted to hell at 1AM Friday. I wake up with awful cramping, I run to the bathroom to do what I have been doing since the transfer; I wipe to make sure there is no blood, whew no blood. But the cramps are bad and I just know in that place where I am only honest with myself, I just know I am not pregnant. It's early but it is Friday so technically I can test. I pull out the digital I had secretly bought the day before to surprise him with. I wanted him to see the words Pregnant, at this point who wants to decipher whether or not there is a second line, I wanted it spelled out for us. I had a plan. I was going to wake up around 6, wait until 7 to test, get my positive and somehow wait until 8 so I could go and buy him a daddy to be gift. I had a plan and it was gone with two words "Not Pregnant." I had to believe it; I promised myself that Friday would bring an answer that I had to trust. But I didn't sit on the floor and cry; I walked over to tell my sleeping husband that it had failed, that I had failed him. I didn't want to cry alone. The look on his face devastated me in so many ways but mostly because he believed me, he believed I wasn't pregnant, he wouldn't be telling me it was too soon to know, he knew and I knew it was over. Wait, I read somewhere that digitals are not as sensitive as the two-liners, I tell him this and he pulls out the 10 tests he had hidden. We use 4. There is not a second line; all 4 have only one line. We both cry. I feel like they died. My beautiful, 70% chance of making it embryos died.

I can't go back to bed, I can't go lay down in the same bed that I lay in after the transfer and look at the picture that is still on the closet door and act as if my life wasn't just divided into two distinct moments. There are events in our life that are so poignant a line is drawn dividing life into two categories either pre-event or post-event. That is how I felt about knowing IVF failed; the last resort in the infertility arsenal failed so now what?There was life before I knew it didn't work and there was life after, I now was acutely aware of how much better life was before, it was the exact opposite of the gut wrenching disappointment of the latter. I looked around the room and saw the picture of our embryos, I saw the musical baby pillow that was my focal point during injections, I saw the prescription bottles on my bedside table, I saw my husband, and I saw them all differently. The innocence, the naivety was gone I was tainted. I actually believed it would work. I didn't sleep until the next night. I called my nurse in the morning thinking just maybe there was still hope; maybe all the tests were wrong. The pause on the other line when I asked if there was still a chance was all I needed. After all the tests, all the cramps, all the Internet articles it came down to one pause, one un-pregnant pause. I cried like I have never cried before, I cried so hard I was silent; the emotional pain actually physically hurt, my heart was broken. It would go on like this for at least a week. I was reminded each time I had to tell someone we weren't pregnant, after going in for the formality of the Beta, while packing away all IVF items, during the wait for AF and during shopping trips passing baby aisles.

The disappointment and loss is still new but I am healing. I miss thinking I am pregnant, believing for a short time that I have overcome infertility to become like the majority of women capable of creating and carrying a life in my womb. We have our 3 frozen embryos to concentrate on, to get healthy for. I refuse to go into the FET (frozen egg transfer) with fear and negative thoughts, these embryos deserve the chance the first 2 had, they deserve to have parents who believe in them and want them so badly despite the very real chance we might be hurt again. I do believe this will work, I have to because all there is during the 2WW is the belief that it is working and that finally after this painful journey we will be parents. The next 2WW will be easy compared to what I have been through.

Kristin Enrico has a Masters Degree in Psychology and works in Healthcare. She writes articles on infertility based on her personal experience.