A Mosaic of Emotions: Our First IVF Loss

On August 12, 2018, we had our very first embryo transfer. It was nerve wracking and exciting and exactly as we had hoped it to be.

On August 13, 2018, my Papa passed away. I tried so hard not to be swept up in the grief of his passing, and my husband worked to protect me from as much of the logistics and stress as possible. At his funeral, I talked openly about how I wished I could’ve made him a Zayde, knowing full well that the tiny embryo in my uterus was fighting to grow at that same moment. 

On the morning of my beta blood test, I took a home pregnancy test. 

When it registered as negative, I felt numb. 

We drove to the doctor in silence, my husband and I both holding some naive hope that the test was wrong, that it was early, that the beta would give us different results. 

When my nurse called that afternoon, we both crumpled into sobs. 

We had done everything we were supposed to. Everything we could have done.

And yet, it failed. We failed. 

At that moment, we felt grateful only for the three remaining embryos we had stored on ice, and that we’d already sent biopsies from each of them off for Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS).  

The following week, we learned that each of those three embryos were chromosomally normal, meaning that any (or all) of the three of them could potentially become our baby. 

We knew we’d launch immediately into prep for a Frozen Embryo Transfer, and looking back, it’s easy to see that we sort of shelved our grief in the name of pushing forward. Our sadness was present, our frustration loud, but the only way to keep going was to keep moving forward. The only way to find success, to become parents, was to try again. We didn’t stop to sit in our feelings. We didn’t even feel them fully, to be honest.

We just took deep breaths and leapt, again, into whatever came next.