If at first you do not succeed…try, try, try again. You learn that phrase as a kid and it resonates. Your gaining life experiences so these minor obstacles so in most situations the problem can be easily overcome. With each successful hurdle jumped your kid self's confidence rises. The more life experiences you have the easier it is to avoid these obstacles. Until one day you run into a problem as an adult that you have no life experience in. You hit a proverbial wall that seems so high that you have no idea how to traverse it. Jumping doesn’t work. Free soloing this wall has failed. Going through it isn’t an option. You are stumped.
This is where we are at right now with Ripley. We are at a huge wall that seems impossible to climb.
Here is how we got here. After finding out the first attempt at insemination was not successful we wanted to try again right away. Our surrogate, Zila, had her period and was eventually cleared to resume hormone therapy to prepare again for another insemination attempt.
We had one viable male embryo left and one female embryo left. We want a baby boy. The whole female anatomy is not something two gay men know much about. Having a daughter we are trying to educate… probably not a good match. We paid an extra $20,000 to make sure that the guaranteed live birth was going to be a male. The smartest decision we could have made because I am writing this as a way of processing the last male embryo we attempted failed to stick.
This one was pretty painful and is leaving us with a few more bruises than our last attempt. So what happened?
Due to prior commitments and Covid concerns we did not attend this insemination. Our coordinator was able to go for us and took a video of the procedure. She got a way better view of this than I did. Yet, I still see nothing.
Now that the bread is in the oven it has to bake for a few days. About 10 days after insemination, the surrogate goes to the lab and gets bloodwork done to see her hCG levels. This is the hormone that indicates if she is pregnant or in our case…if the embryo took.
June 1st, 2022 (Wednesday)- Zila goes in for her blood work. She gets an afternoon appointment so we are all sitting on pins and needles waiting for the results to be in by the end of the day. Nothing. Unlike last time, the lab is behind and is unable to give us the results. Sleepless night #1.
June 2nd, 2022 (Thursday)- At around 10:30 am we get news that we truly didn’t understand. The results were positive (woohoo) yet the hCG levels were very low. The nurses reporting the results also indicated that this may be a chemical pregnancy. Do not worry— this was a new term for us too?
According to the Cleveland Clinic, “A chemical pregnancy is a very early miscarriage that happens within the first five weeks of pregnancy. An embryo forms and may even embed in your uterus lining (implantation), but then it stops developing. Chemical pregnancies occur so early that many people who miscarry don’t realize it.”
So what is it? Good news. Bad news. This feels worse because it’s neither, it’s both, and it’s more of the unknown that is slowly eating us away from the inside. Sleepless night #2
June 3rd, 2022 (Friday)- Zila gets up early and goes to get more blood work to see what is truly happening. If the blood work is done in the morning we are expecting to get results at noon. The timing is horrible. I have an all-day, in-person work event with literally everyone possible with this organization. Due to the design of the room, and just an unfortunate seating arrangement, my chair happened to be right next to the presenter.
I am feverishly updating my phone every 30 seconds. My watch is buzzing that I am resting, but my heart rate is above 120. Noon hits and still nothing. 12:30 hits and nothing. I feel obligated to let the people around me know why I am staring at my phone. 1:00 pm hits and I politely begin texting. What’s going on? Where are the results? A slight poke.
2:00 pm rolls around and I am getting panicked. Why do we not know? Do we know and it’s not good results? I start insisting on calling the lab. This is ridiculous. I come to find out via text that my coordinator is not in the office, but rather in the emergency room with her son who has broken his arm. I am trying to be empathetic to her, but I need to know.
She calls and states she has contacted the lab. I get a text back that the lab may or may not have already sent the results, but the doctor's office’s internet is down. Come on. She says that she is trying to reach out to a different office’s nurse, but the doctor still has to review. I tell her I just need to see the results myself as I can do the doctor's job for him. If the hCG went up then we are still pregnant. If it went down then the pregnancy failed.
3:16 pm- I get the text that the levels went down. Not pregnant. I am heartbroken. Where do we go from here? I have to tell this person, this person, etc. All while this is going on— there is a presenter who is speaking about the board of directors/ staff responsibilities. I am trying not to embarrass myself as I am holding back tears. Definitely not a great look. I know a few people knew what had happened, but I am hoping most people were focused on the speaker and not the crybaby in the front. The speaker stated we would be breaking up into small groups and I wanted to leave at that point. But, she kept finding another slide, and another slide, and another slide. I am sure in real time it was like 5 minutes, but it felt way longer inside my head. When she was finally finished— I bolted. Fortunately, everyone at my organization understood and was supportive.
So this is where we are at. We have 0 viable male embryos. Our egg donor appears to be out of eggs so we have to find a new egg donor. We have to create brand new embryos. The legal contract we have with Zila states 2 attempts - so we have to figure that out. We have to speak with the doctor about if they recommend continuing with Zila as our surrogate or changing to someone brand new. If new, we have to match with someone and then start a new legal contract. Basically, we got to the top of the wall had a glimpse of what was over it, and have fallen to ground zero.
Nothing in Grant or I’s life has prepared us for this. Yet, we are resolved to find a way to scale this wall. It hasn’t defeated us. We are just going back to the foundational lesson we learned as a kid to apply when faced with these types of problems— try, try, try again.
