This is NOT a Pregnancy Announcement…

My period is late.

Cut to: 20 negative OPK tests and one BFN.

Or maybe it’s not that my period is late, but my ovulation was delayed. The stress of hearing B’s news came three days before I was supposed to ovulate. This would explain 20 negative OPK tests.

Wait—why all the OPK tests if I’m not trying to get pregnant the fun way?

My RE wants me to do the ReceptivaDx test, a uterine biopsy which tests for two proteins essential for implantation. It’s a non-surgical way to diagnose endometriosis, but also used to test uterine receptivity in women like me who have repeat implantation failure. The test is only reliable when your luteal phase hormones match what happens during the transfer cycle. In other words, if you’ll be taking progesterone for your FET, you have to do the biopsy on progesterone too. The day you get positive OPK test is the day you start taking the progesterone.

Back in the good ole days when I thought I would get pregnant the old-fashioned way, I soon learned that I don’t have much luck with OPKs. (The third consecutive month, I caught my LH surge in the middle of the night, and I’ve joked about having a reproductive system on London time ever since.) Knowing this, I told DH that I’d like to use this month as a break from hormones and invasive procedures, focusing instead on doing an OPK trial run.

I tested multiple times a day starting on CD10. Although the second line got a little darker, it never got as dark as the control line before it started fading again. Hence, 20 negative tests and my assumption I’d missed the surge.

But the Type A side of me haphazardly took my temperature some mornings. There was no temperature jump until CD25—two days before I was supposed to get my period.

And, fuckadoodledon’t, of course, this coincided with sex…

I think about how I was given a 3% chance of conceiving spontaneously in any given cycle. It’s a small chance, but a chance is a chance, and I start to hope. Against the odds, people have primary infertility and then get knocked up by surprise. Doctors don’t know everything! Why shouldn’t that be me?

The real answer: because my infertility ain’t just about egg quantity. When 75-100% of embryos I make would be abnormal, that combined with a 3% chance of conceiving means my chance of a healthy take-home baby is probably one in a million.

Best case scenario: I fall into that one-in-a-million statistic.
Worst case scenario: I’m headed for a miscarriage.
But realistically: My ovulation was delayed and my period will arrive in a few days’ time.

I dream about the best case scenario. I think about what kind of impact there would be to have a donor-conceived child first, genetic child second. How would I explain that—not just to myself, but my children? And then I imagine how healing it would be to—poof!—get pregnant. Just like that. Accidentally. What would it feel like? How much past trauma would be resolved?

I turn to worrying about the worst case scenario. Would a miscarriage be easier, knowing ahead of time the pregnancy was doomed? Would another D&C further reduce my chances of future DEIVF pregnancy? And how much of a delay would all of this cause?

I shake my head and pooh-pooh such thoughts. Realistically, I know there will never be a golden egg baby for me. Time to get my head out of the clouds. Time to scrape together the money for additional tests ahead of the next FET.

Update: my body temperature dropped this morning (Tuesday). I’m expecting my period will arrive Thursday, and then we begin the whoremoans all over again.