Thanks Christi for writing the last blog. Daniel’s back with a brand new edition, hopefully addition.
The following seven days were agonizing. Christi was on house-arrest and we were forced to play a demented waiting game. The next step was to wait ten days and take a blood test. In the meantime, we discussed every nuance of Christi’s bodily functions. Gas… is gas bad? What about heartburn… is that a good sign? Every time Christi burped, I wanted to catch it in a zip-lock bag and take it to the lab for analysis.
As I muddled through the week, I kept thinking that Dr. Vaughn had put the best two embryos in Christi. Chance… how strange a word. I kept focusing my attention on the statistics of In Vitro Fertilization. The chance of getting pregnant was all over the place… 40%, 60%, 50%. Each website contradicted the last.
I kept making the mental adjustments to the numbers:
- We are both under the age of 40, that’s worth an extra 10% right?
- Christi is physically fit, that’s another 5% right?
- She followed every doctor order; give her 3% for good behavior.
Mentally, it’s such a strange situation. Christi and I were both believers in thinking positively… but… we wanted to have realistic expectations so our rebound wouldn’t be horrible if it didn’t work.
We arrived at the lab on Saturday at around 7am. As I looked around the waiting room it was apparent that these were not people hoping to find out that they would soon be parents. These visitors looked depressed, tired, almost run over by life. My thoughts circled around AIDS and pregnant teens. I felt very selfish.
After a short wait, Christi was escorted to the back to draw blood and returned within 10 minutes. For the rest of the day we tried to keep ourselves busy until 3pm – when the results would be ready. Looking back, I don’t even remember what we did all day. At exactly 3:00pm, Christi called the nurse who answered but did not have our test results yet.
We were headed home from a long day when the nurse called Christi’s cell. Christi put the phone on speaker so we could both hear. (My heart is pounding, right now just, from thinking about that moment.) The first two words came out of that little phone like a bullet through both of our hearts, “I’m Sorry…” That’s all I heard. My ears turned off because the voice in my head was screaming. WHAT?!?! WHY? NO! IT’S NOT RIGHT. IT’S NOT FAIR! I wanted to cry. I tried to cry but even that seemed like it took too much effort.
Christi very patiently and politely thanked the nurse for calling us back and we drove home in silence. The rest of the weekend was wickedly quiet.
Just the two of us.
