The waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!

Hopefully some Simpsons fans will pick up on my post title...

Saturday was the Day 5 check-in for our embryos, to see whether any of them made it to be frozen for a future transfer.  All week I had been getting my phone messages from the clinic between 9 and 10am, so I didn't really have too long to wait with a knot of anxiety in my stomach before I got the news and could go back to concentrating on work.

 Saturday?  Those fuckers didn't call until 1pm.

I have this theory (a totally scientific one, don't question my credentials!) that the quality of the news you are about to receive is inversely proportional to the length of time it takes you to receive it.  As in, you'll get good news right away.  But bad news?  The person who has to give it to you will put off delivering it (since it's an unpleasant task), or will find someone else to do it.  In this case, when I hadn't heard from the clinic by noon I was convinced that all of our embryos were dead and that the nurse didn't want to call me herself, so she had passed on a message to our RE to do it.

I tried everything I could to distract myself.  I planned our meals for the week.  I went grocery shopping, sure that M would get a call when I was out (there was no way I was taking my cell phone only to be reduced to a blubbering puddle of tears in the dairy aisle).  He didn't.  I finally decided that I'd better do my workout before I got the news, since I'd be in no mood to do it afterward.  Mid-squat, the phone rang.

We have one blastocyst on ice.

This is the first time in my life that I've cried happy tears.  I don't even cry at weddings, including my own.  But after all that waiting, and believing with almost 100% certainty that they were all gone and we had done this for nothing and we would have to do it all over again...well, having that one measly frozen blastocyst felt like just about the best thing that had ever happened to me in my life.

They cultured the other three embryos until today hoping that we'd get more, but no dice.  This little guy is our only shot for this cycle.

And this is the part where my nasty pessimistic side starts rearing its ugly head.  First, I'm worried that it won't survive the thaw and we'll have just wasted the next two months waiting for an FET that will never happen.  And if it does happen, what are the chances that this one embryo will implant and grow to term?  I mean, my eggs are sufficiently crappy that they only had a 50% fertilization rate and a 25% blastocyst rate.  What are the odds that this lone survivor is really good enough to make it?

I voiced these concerns to M earlier today after we heard that our three other embryos didn't survive.  He responded with, "Well, isn't your blog called It Only Takes One?"  I said, "Yeah, but I kind of picked it ironically because it's the platitude that everyone gives you when you have DOR!"  And yet here we are, with all of our eggs...er, egg...in one basket.  Freezer.  Whatever.

Anyway, there's clearly no point in worrying about this stuff since what will happen is out of my hands.  And don't get me wrong, I'm still overjoyed at the fact that we do have one.  I'm going to spend the next two cycles trying to de-stress from the IVF and get my body as healthy as I can for our FET.  Gotta tidy up.  Important guest coming!