Some people DO get it

Well sometimes I express frustration at the "annoying" comments some make even though they mean well. Well today I ran into a woman at church whom I hadn't seen since July as she goes to the 8:00 service, and I almost always go to the 10:45 one. We had seen each other more regularly during the summer at ladies Bible study. Although she has no personal experience with infertility, her niece is in the middle of going through these struggles. Her niece goes to the same RE that I do and has lately been doing inj/iui all without success. So Anna is keenly aware of the emotional trauma of infertility and also of how the injections can wreak havoc on one's emotions, etc. Well anyhow someone had told Anna that we had transferred 3 embryos this summer and lost those 3 babies. She gave me a hug and told me how sorry she was and she said something about how some day I will get to hold these babies in my arms in heaven. Wow. Someone who truly recognizes these were babies we lost. She knew about the ectopic 2 years ago so she said - you have 4 babies in heaven. I said, actually it's 7. She didn't know that we had 7 babies in August and lost 3 in the lab. She just hugged me again and said she's praying that soon I'll have a baby here on earth to hold in my arms and that I won't have to wait until I'm in heaven to experience that. I told her about the upcoming FET, and she assured me she'll be praying in November for that baby to live. I just can't say how much it means to me when someone acknowledges that these were babies we lost. Most seem to want to think that since I wasn't officially pregnant that it's just a disappointment not a loss.

The thing that rubs me the wrong way the most is when someone refers to the embyros as eggs. GRRR! I try to very calmly with a pleasant voice and expression explain the difference between an egg and embryo. An egg is not a life!!! I know most people just assume if you weren't pg then there wasn't a life involved, and I think for Paul and I that is true with the exception of IVF and the one ectopic in 2005 from inj/iui. A woman on the IVF discussion board recently had the same amount of eggs as me (26) and same amount mature (18) but she ended up with 17 embryos. Given even when ICSI was used we had such a low fertilization rate, I am highly dubious that aside from a miraculous intervention from the Lord that there would ever be an embryo inside me aside from IVF/ICSI. For now, I am just praying very frequently for our one frozen baby. I have to admit I find it a little hard to handle emotionally that our child is frozen at the moment. But I am praying it will be the Lord's will for this last embyro to be our little miracle baby.

On an unrelated note, I have thought a lot about "Ashley" lately since her EDD was 9-20. Probably she already had the baby as that's one common side effect of smoking, drinking, drugs, etc (having the baby early). I had a little concern that maybe not many families would apply, but I don't think that was an issue as several times over the last year we've gotten a follow up email from Mark if #1 not enough families applied (he extends the deadline and pleads for more to apply as the pool is "too small") or #2 if the birthmother wasn't happy with her selection (like happened to us last November when none of the families who applied were from FL and she really wanted a FL family). So I assume that enough families applied and she liked at least one of the families who applied as I didn't get any further emails about "Ashley" from Mark.

In addition to praying for the FET to work, I am also praying we'll get a match with a birthmother either through Cathy (whom we've been contracted with for 3 months) or Lifetime (whom we've been contracted with for 33 months).