Transfer day - Bottom of the rollercoaster again

I am writing this feeling very low. I shouldn't be, all things considered, but I just can't help it.

We set off for my 10am acupuncture pre-transfer appointment and I was late, which wasn't a good start. I am a very punctual person and being late stresses me out. Anyway, I had the session, which was good but I could tell I was stressed and working hard to relax.

I legged it over to the clinic (as fast as I could with the dodgy leg!), running about 10 mins late. Lovely husband had gone off to the shops while I was having the acupuncture and said he would wait for me at the cafe at the bottom of the building. He wasn't there when I arrived, so I headed up to the clinic reception and he wasn't there either. The receptionist said he'd gone looking for me, so we must have crossed over in the lifts, which we did one more time for good measure. So, not a great start to having a nice stress-free transfer.

Anyway, we had our chat with the embryologist, who said he was quite disappointed with our fertilisation report since things had looked so promising on egg collection day. But there was more bad news. Of our 5 Grade 1/3 days embryos, only 3 had made it though to Day 5 blasts. One was grade 2 (fair) and just starting to expand, one was fully expanded but grade 3 (poor) because it had a huge vacuole in it and the other was just looking very bad and unlikely to go on.

So he and Dr D recommended transferring the two 'best' looking ones and we readily agreed. She said not to be disheartened, as she put it - 'I've seen many bad looking blasts produce beautiful babies and many beautiful blasts do nothing at all'.

This was a big blow and has really knocked us down. We really should be more positive because we still have a good chance of success this cycle. I've of course been trawling blogs to see if others have transferred dodgy looking blasts and got babies and of course they have. One woman had to wait until Day 7 to get blasts, and transferred two and gave birth to a girl this year. So, there is always hope.

But the possibility of permanent childlessness has reared its ugly head today. My eggs just seem to be very low quality. Lovely husband is really struggling with it today. I think he has realised for the first time that we just might not succeed at all in becoming parents. I feel incredibly sad for him - he has been so positive until now and I think he is taking it hard. In his mind, this cycle is already a failure. That's ok because he prefers to think pessimistically and then be happily surprised.

And me - well, I've been welling up with tears most of the day and trying my damndest to remember my 3 mantras:

1. Take things just one day at a time and don't focus on the big picture
2. Its not over until we get a negative pregancy test
3. Lots of women have no pregnancy symptoms.

Well, ok the last one is pretty irrelevant today but will become important in a few days time :-)

I feel like I need to be the strong one this cycle to give LH support. There is always some hope and we said at the start of this process that we would give it 4 cycles to see how we go. I also reminded him that technically we haven't actually finished our first cycle, since we still have the 4 frosties waiting for transfer.

Tomorrow is another day.