Wow.
Receiving a phone call and hearing that only two of the eight fertilized eggs had reached the blastocyst stage was deeply disappointing.
I had been managing my expectations in a way that I thought would allow me to stomach this news. But the intensity of my disappointment revealed something important: I was far more attached to the outcome than I realized.
This process makes it incredibly easy to become mathematically oriented. You start thinking in probabilities, percentages, attrition rates, and outcomes. There is always another number to track and another milestone to reach. Without realizing it, I had gotten swept up in the momentum.
Getting this news made me pause.
I had to recenter and reevaluate what I was prioritizing and why.
After all, these two blastocysts were not the final result. They still needed to undergo PGT-A testing to determine their chromosomal health. There was still another layer of uncertainty waiting for me.
I realized I needed to step out of the numbers and back into the bigger picture.
Somewhere along the way, I had become focused on maximizing a single egg retrieval cycle. If I needed another retrieval, a part of me would have felt like I had failed.
That realization surprised me.
When you hear stories about women who undergo multiple retrievals, failed transfers, and years of fertility treatment, you feel compassion for them. But until you are in it yourself, there is a lack of perspective. You quietly assume your path will be different. That somehow you will be the exception. That you will beat the odds.
Optimism itself is not the problem. Attachment is.
It is the attachment to one specific outcome that creates suffering.
In fact, after hearing that eight eggs had fertilized, I had already started rearranging my life around the assumption that one retrieval might not be enough. I even canceled travel plans in case I needed another retrieval cycle. Intellectually, I knew that was a possibility. Emotionally, I was still invested in a different story.
When the probability of another retrieval became more real, I wasn’t prepared for how disappointed I would feel.
I am still waiting impatiently for the biopsy results.
But this experience has forced me to reflect on the intentions behind my actions.
If I am honest, there is a small part of me that wants this process to succeed because it would validate something in my ego. It would allow me to be the overachiever. The woman who only needed one retrieval. The woman who beat the odds.
I can recognize the comparison. The competition. The desire to “succeed” at fertility.
And yet that was never why I started this journey.
The deeper intention was never to win. It was to love.
To create space for a child. To experience unconditional love. To give it and receive it.
Somewhere along the way, procedures, numbers, and outcomes began competing with that intention for my attention.
This disappointment has unexpectedly brought me back to it.
The pause has been nourishing.
It reminded me that this journey is not about proving anything. It is about becoming a mother.
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