Three months...

Hard to believe that as of tomorrow it’s been three months since our world was completely turned upside down and life as we knew it was changed. Sometimes I feel like it’s been so much longer; the emotions of grief make time seem to slow and require so much effort to move forward, yet at other times it feels like yesterday. We’re trying though to both honor Lily’s life and continue to live ours. We’ve accepted that our lives will never be the same; we will always carry with us the pain of losing Lily. The happy moments in our lives will forever be colored with a bit of sadness, knowing that there is a person missing, someone that should be also sharing in the memories that make up our family’s history. I will never again be able to answer the question “do you have children” with a simple answer. I will always hesitate, unsure of how to answer. I should have been about to go into my last month of pregnancy with Lily, instead I am remembering her on the three month anniversary of the day she left this world.

Now on to more hopeful news; our embryo adoption is thankfully moving forward smoothly. We had a phone consult with the doctor at the donor family’s clinic on Friday. She has agreed to have our clinic here follow her prescribed protocol and complete the mock transfer, then we’ll be flying to their clinic for the actual transfer. We were also relieved to hear her say that she would recommend a single embryo transfer; she believes that given the quality of these embryos and my history we would have as high as a 50-60% chance of success! This clinic obviously has FET’s down to a science, she said their embryo survival rates after thawing are around 90-95%! This was also a relief as we hope to have more than one child with our donor family’s embryos. So when my next cycle begins, I’ll be starting on BCP’s again and gearing up for hopefully a November or December transfer.

I came across this ancient Chinese proverb the other day and I thought it was a fitting way to describe this journey we’re on with our donor family. It is a journey none of us could have predicted or imagined, but one that we are embracing with hope.
 “An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.”