Forty-six percent. That was the possibility that we would get pregnant transferring two embryos (blastocysts, if you want to be accurate).
In those first few days after our transfer, with those two little dudes trying to figure out how and whether to stick around, I thought about how good a near-fifty percent chance was. My glass was definitely half-full. In those first 24 hours, I felt sure and terrified that we'd end up with twins, because if they put two of them in there, of course two of them would stick around, right?
As the week went on, I felt the shift in my soul, from the glass being half-full to the glass just being, well, half-something. Not half-full. Not half-empty. Just half. I realized that there was just as big of a chance of us not getting pregnant as there was of us getting pregnant. But I yet continued to remind myself that in nature, if you're doing this whole "let's get pregnant" thing the old-fashioned way, you have around a thirty percent chance each month. And so I clung to the hope that a forty-six percent chance was better than a couple's usual chances in any given month.
And, of course, as we headed into Thursday and Friday at the end of last week, when there was plenty of evidence to point toward a failed cycle, that forty-six percent seemed absolutely tiny to me, a crapshoot, a number that said to me, "It's a fluke if you get pregnant. Probability says you won't."
Throughout this whole IVF cycle, I've been in parallel motion to a friend of mine, also going through an IVF cycle at the same time. There were two of us, each with a near-fifty percent chance of getting pregnant. And even though probability doesn't exactly work this way, I couldn't help thinking that these near-fifty percent odds would mean that one of us would get pregnant, and the other of us wouldn't. (And things happened exactly like that - I am not pregnant, and she is. We are an exemplary pair for showing the world exactly what fifty percent looks like.)
My head and heart are still working to process our bad news, though a weekend away certainly helped me regain a sense of peace and good cheer faster than I would have recovered those things otherwise.
I keep going back to that number: forty-six percent. I keep reminding myself that forty-six percent is not a guarantee, not hardly. I keep reminding myself that our failed cycle doesn't mean that anything is wrong, or that all hope is lost, or that it indicates a forever inability to have children. All it means is that we were on the wrong side of the dice roll.
I try to rely on that forty-six percent to keep myself from getting too emotional, or too prone to unnecessary negativity. I try to rely on the numbers to keep myself from questioning God and the universe about why having kids remains an unfulfilled dream for us. I need to think about numbers and dice rolls and probability to comfort myself and remember that there is yet hope, and that all is not lost, and that one negative cycle has no bearing on future cycles.
And I look at that forty-six percent, and press forward, and muster up the energy to gamble again, to play the odds, to hope that there will be a "next time" for us when a forty-six out of a hundred chance works in our favor.
In those first few days after our transfer, with those two little dudes trying to figure out how and whether to stick around, I thought about how good a near-fifty percent chance was. My glass was definitely half-full. In those first 24 hours, I felt sure and terrified that we'd end up with twins, because if they put two of them in there, of course two of them would stick around, right?
As the week went on, I felt the shift in my soul, from the glass being half-full to the glass just being, well, half-something. Not half-full. Not half-empty. Just half. I realized that there was just as big of a chance of us not getting pregnant as there was of us getting pregnant. But I yet continued to remind myself that in nature, if you're doing this whole "let's get pregnant" thing the old-fashioned way, you have around a thirty percent chance each month. And so I clung to the hope that a forty-six percent chance was better than a couple's usual chances in any given month.
And, of course, as we headed into Thursday and Friday at the end of last week, when there was plenty of evidence to point toward a failed cycle, that forty-six percent seemed absolutely tiny to me, a crapshoot, a number that said to me, "It's a fluke if you get pregnant. Probability says you won't."
Throughout this whole IVF cycle, I've been in parallel motion to a friend of mine, also going through an IVF cycle at the same time. There were two of us, each with a near-fifty percent chance of getting pregnant. And even though probability doesn't exactly work this way, I couldn't help thinking that these near-fifty percent odds would mean that one of us would get pregnant, and the other of us wouldn't. (And things happened exactly like that - I am not pregnant, and she is. We are an exemplary pair for showing the world exactly what fifty percent looks like.)
My head and heart are still working to process our bad news, though a weekend away certainly helped me regain a sense of peace and good cheer faster than I would have recovered those things otherwise.
I keep going back to that number: forty-six percent. I keep reminding myself that forty-six percent is not a guarantee, not hardly. I keep reminding myself that our failed cycle doesn't mean that anything is wrong, or that all hope is lost, or that it indicates a forever inability to have children. All it means is that we were on the wrong side of the dice roll.
I try to rely on that forty-six percent to keep myself from getting too emotional, or too prone to unnecessary negativity. I try to rely on the numbers to keep myself from questioning God and the universe about why having kids remains an unfulfilled dream for us. I need to think about numbers and dice rolls and probability to comfort myself and remember that there is yet hope, and that all is not lost, and that one negative cycle has no bearing on future cycles.
And I look at that forty-six percent, and press forward, and muster up the energy to gamble again, to play the odds, to hope that there will be a "next time" for us when a forty-six out of a hundred chance works in our favor.
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