Four.

We have four frozen embryos.

The leftovers.

The ones that weren't chosen. If the doctors had chosen differently, Rhys or Quin could be neatly preserved in a medical freezer in Boston right now, instead of playing happily on our living room floor.

At first I was thrilled with our four frozen embryos. I felt so lucky - to suddenly be pregnant with twins AND have four more embryos sitting quietly in wait should we need them.

And now the thought sickens me. Haunts me.

My four little embryos. Waiting. With uncertain futures.

I am a card holding member of the National Organization for Women. I will always stand up for, support, and believe in a woman's right to choose. I hate the way pro-lifers make the right to choose about something other than a most basic human right. They make it about "when life begins" and the "rights" of a fetus. Or an embryo.

It's not the pro-lifers who have gotten to me. I don't care what they think about infertility or infertility treatments or frozen embryos. But I have gotten to me. The mother that I have become has gotten to me.

When we chose to freeze them - or back this up even more - when we chose to create them or maybe have them created for us, I understood what we were doing. What I didn't understand was how it feels to be a mother, or the painful pull of the love I would feel for my children.

I feel that painful pull for our embryos.

I let my mind go all of the places that logic tells me not to go. I wonder about the children they might be. Would they coo like Quin? Give big open mouthed kisses like Rhys? Or have their own endearing traits to make me fall helplessly in love? Do they have souls yet? When does that happen, that an embryo, a fetus, a baby grows a soul? Why do I sound like I should be standing outside of an abortion clinic thumping my bible?

We don't know if we want any more children.

And if we do want more children, maybe we would want to see if it could happen without medical intervention this time.

But what about our embryos?

I consider donating them to "the right" couple. And believe almost immediately that I love them too much to chance that. To chance that they wouldn't be loved enough, or that I couldn't live knowing they were out there, mine but not mine.

I consider how selfish it would be to try and have a baby "naturally" when we have four we already started just sitting there waiting for us. I consider what that would say to Rhys and Quin about how they came into this world.

I watch Rhys and Quin play. I listen to them babble together. I look into their big blue eyes and am awed by their simple innocence. Behind the love is a layer of guilt.

Four embryos, waiting.

as pregnant as I've ever been...

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the awesome language of infertility, I'd like to introduce you to a very important concept:

The 2WW, otherwise known as the dreaded "two week wait" during which you anxiously ponder the results of your latest fertility treatment, waiting to take a pregnancy test. Or not waiting, and taking four tests a day, certain that the negative result is simply due to a faulty test.

So I am now in the midst of the biggest, and certainly the most expensive, 2WW of my infertility journey thus far. The IVF 2WW. Perhaps you've noticed the large blue countdown to the right.

The 2WW can be a difficult time. No matter what anyone says, it is absolutely impossible to spend less than 23 hours a day wondering if the pregnancy gods will finally shine the light of favor over this cycle. Yes, I think about it while I'm sleeping. Do I judge your dreams?

I can't pass by this topic without stopping to point out how many times I have been told to focus on something else. Maybe this makes me bitter, but I'm pretty sure that telling somebody to "forget" that they may or may not have a fetus growing inside them is like asking somebody to forget that they have a left arm.

Anyway.

The 2WW is hard. Infertility is basically comprised of waiting and a good deal of neuroses. The neuroses is not necessarily a precursor to infertility, but it is certainly a side effect. Try having your uterus scanned three times a week and see if you DON'T end up making Jerry Seinfeld seem sane.

Another aspect of the 2WW is dealing with people who point out to me (as if they're the first to discover the world is round) that if my pregnancy test is negative, GASP, all the people who know about our IVF will know! People will know that I am not pregnant! People will know I am sad and disappointed! Gosh, I guess I really should have thought about that BEFORE I started airing my dirty laundry so publicly. What will people think if I fail to get knocked up? Will I be forced to live in some sort of infertile exile?

There is another way to look at this. Many optimistic infertiles have familiarized me with the term PUPO, or, "pregnant until proven otherwise." I may not necessarily be pregnant, but by golly, I am PUPO. And I have never been quite this PUPO before.

I know for a fact that there are two deliciously adorable embryos taking up habitat in my uterus right this very moment. I've never been able to say that before.

I could spend the remainder of my 2WW anxiously wondering how things will turn out. In all honesty, I can promise you that I will spend many moments doing exactly that. But it's not the only thing I will do.

I will also love the tiny little lives in my belly that my husband and I created. In the very least, we made some good progress...we got to cell division! And I'm not stopping there. I'm going to enjoy this time of hopefulness and wonder at all that it could become. Perhaps one day soon I will be shopping for some adorable organic onesies. Infertility can beat the dreamer out of the most imaginative of people. What once felt like harmless hopes and dreams become the sharpest knives in the artillery until hoping and dreaming feels so forbidden that you forget how to let your imagination go. For the next 7 days, I'm taking my imagination back. I'm going to dream until I'm drunk.

And I'm going to enjoy everything wonderful that I do have. Like this moment, sitting and writing on my deck with my husband lying next to me. Our sweet puppy is lounging in the shade and panting in the yummy June heat. Our grass is green and freshly mowed. My gardens are overgrown and lush with weeds and flowers alike. My ears are filled with birds and wind and always, good music. I smell grass and summer and sweat. And in this moment, I'm as pregnant as I've ever been.

Where's my cool breeze?

The embryos and I are resting comfortably.

They, like their mommy, enjoy turkey burgers and a good nap around lunchtime. It's a leisurely life we three live. And I could get used to this whole bed rest deal.

In all of this luxurious relaxing, I haven't forgotten that I had promised the details of my rather embarrassing moment of realizing I was still wearing my underpants as I sat on the operating table. And in deciding how to describe this in greater detail, it occurred to me that nobody wants to go back and read the details once I've spilled the punchline. Yet here I go, sharing details. Because I love details.

So. My loving husband and I are shuffled into the operating room for the big embryo transfer. He got to look all sexy and Gray's Anatomy-ish in some blue scrubs and face mask. I got to look all nursing home-ish in brown slipper socks, a johnny, and a robe. And let's not forget the powder blue shower cap. The nurse instructs me to sit on the table and pull the johnny out from under my bum. This is getting old hat for me. So I do as she says. And she's chatting away, attaching the big yellow stirrups to the table (these are no normal stirrups, ladies), when I realize that something feels, well, wrong. And I'm all nervous because here's my scrub-sporting husband and we're getting ready for the biggest, most glorified pap smear of my life, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what feels so, so wrong.

And then I realize. It's my cool breeze. It's missing. So in disbelief, I reached down under that johnny just to be sure. And where I expected to hit skin, I hit cotton. And by now, the operating table is all set up. The nurse has the big yellow stirrups waiting. The embryologist is smiling expectantly and I'm pretty sure making eyes at my husband. The doctor is at the back of the room, washing his hands. And I say, sheepishly, "um, I think I'm still wearing my underwear." Either that or my vagina is especially cottony-soft today. And she doesn't blink an eye. Doesn't miss a beat. She says, "oh honey, happens all the time!" (NO, it doesn't. Ask any infertile, and she will tell you that the first thing she does at any appointment is meticulously hide her underwear safely from view. Well doc, joke's on you, cause this time, I decided to hide my woo woo instead.)

So, what else could I do? I looked around the room. At the nurse, the nurse in training, the slutty embryologist, and the hygienic doctor. And I slipped those undies off in two seconds flat, bunched them up into the smallest little wad I could manage, and handed them to my husband with a smile. Who says IVF isn't sexy?

E-Day Update

I will probably write more about this experience later, but for now, just the short and sweet version (then I will go rest with my baby embryos).

But I promise that sometime soon I will share my mortifying story of realizing, as I sat on the operating table, the little fact that I had forgotten to remove my underwear. Kind of makes it hard to get at the goods with my pink Vicky's in the way.

Anyway.

Transferred two embryos of "excellent" quality. Had one of the nicest nurses on earth. Froze four more excellent embryos. Pretty sure that these embryos are Claudette and Whitey, they were really fighters.

Finally, our beautiful, beautiful embryos.

It's E-Day

Today is THE DAY.

July 7th will also be THE DAY, but today is THE DAY for right now.
(July 7th=pregnancy test).

Today we transfer my little embryo-yos to their true home: me.

I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

I'm terrified and want to cry.

I've done everything I can to be ready for this moment. I've meditated. I've blogged. I've cried. I've yoga'd. I've cried. I've acupunctured. I've cried. I've read. I've cried. I've talked. And talked. And talked. And talked.

My efforts are not without reward.

I've discovered that I have a support network that previously, I might only have dreamed about. I have fabulous, kind, loving, funny, supportive people in my life. When I ran my first 5k last year, I remember feeling that the course felt much longer than anything I had ever practiced. I felt tired and alone. I had a cramp, I was running slowly, and didn't know anybody around me. I worried that I wouldn't finish, or that I would finish dead last and everyone would laugh as I stumbled across the finish line. But then I came upon the last half mile, and one by one, supporters started to fill the sidelines of the course. They didn't know me, but they cheered. And the closer I got to the finish line, the more people there were, standing and cheering words of encouragement. I felt so proud, so supported, as I crossed the finish line. These people didn't care that I was slow, that I had bad form. And I'm realizing that those people are with me now. Except for this time I know them, and they're all wonderful. And if it weren't for infertility, I might not know that right now. Some of them, I wouldn't know at all.

I don't know what will happen today, or in the next 12 days. Not knowing still gets to me. Even now, I haven't gotten used to it. But the reality is, I know exactly what will happen: I will be pregnant, or I won't. Simple as that.

And even beyond that, I know what will happen. Pregnant or not, I know I will survive.