Toxic

My uterus is the place where healthy, viable embryos go to die. There's no other explanation. It really is the only explanation, and honestly, it's what I have to believe or I will think that there's something more I can do, something else I can try, when really I have to believe that I've done all I can and it's time to move on.

The finality of that is frightening, because it makes me wonder if it will ever really happen.

I have to move on to plan B. And I will have to get my head wrapped around the fact that I won't ever be pregnant. I won't ever feel a life move inside of me. I won't ever experience the look that other people give a pregnant woman. I won't hear that there's a glow about me. Or that I'm carrying low (or high). Or that I'm breaking out because I'm having a girl and she's stealing my beauty.

I won't experience labor or delivery. And almost certainly, I will not hear the first sounds my baby ever makes.

I pulled pregnancy books off my shelf last night and piled them at the top of the stairs, not sure what to actually do with them. I have bins of maternity clothes to return to my niece, including some that have been bought specifically for me, just in case. And I have a $50 Motherhood Maternity gift card to do something with.

When I started this process with the egg donor, I went in thinking I would have at least three chances. Given the number of embryos they had previously extracted from Ginger, I thought the odds were in my favor. Even when I heard that there were (only) six embryos, I thought that I would have two chances.

Over the past nine days, I tried not to think about what FG had said about the remaining embryos when I asked if we were freezing those. I tried not to think about "if they're viable."

And so after 13 tries, it really is over. And it's time to move onto Plan B. Whatever that is. However that looks.