Mitigated joy

Monday we had our viability ultrasound and everything was just fine - so we're starting to relax and begin to believe this is really happening.

This has been the oddest cycle we've done. A donor cycle that has brought me face to face with a lot of unexpected feelings and strange realities.

I've done online dating and I've done online donor choosing and the donor choosing is definitely weirder. I was lobbying for the 5'10' slender natural blonde Russian whereas DH wanted something perhaps a little closer to my physical reality (!) We both wanted smart and funny and positive and ambitious and hardworking and.......well......me. We both wanted me. But I'm 44 and on the wrong side of 3 IVF cycles and more miscarriages than I choose to count so we refocused on what really mattered and went with a proven, 22 year old donor.

The next weirdness was how little information I asked for on how our donor's cycle was progressing. The clinic (PNWF - excellent) was the one who proactively told me a few details every so often, I never asked. On the eve of retrieval I realized I didn't even know how many follicles, never mind E2 levels and all the other things I've obsessively tracked for my cycles. Talking to my mother I found myself saying 'well, I'm out of control on this one, so it's easier' and then found myself wondering what on earth made me think that I was ever 'in control' on any cycle. Still, it was much easier to feel the pressure was off me and my performance, to have high hopes for the cycle but not to feel it was my fault if it didn't go well.

On the day we got 26 eggs, 16 were mature, and 8 fertilized. DH and I immediately and completely freaked out at the rate of fall off and I started to wonder if we would even get to day 3 never mind day 5, if perhaps we should abandon the plans to transfer only 1 and put in whatever we had. The clinic was bemused - what part of proven, 22 year old donor eggs did we not understand. This response was consistent with her previous cycles but more to the point......um.....these are 22 year old eggs. I realized that perhaps all the wonderful and lovely things that had always been said about my 40+ responsiveness to the meds and my attractive Day 5 blasts were the equivalent of 'she has a lovely personality'.....true but perhaps not the central point at issue.

In the end we persisted with a single embryo transfer as after the loss of our daughter we're both terrified of multiples. We froze 4 blasts which is quite a comfortable number. And my odd detachment continued with no POAS (first time ever).

First beta on a Friday 92. Second beta on the following Monday 399. Delight and excitement - but not unmitigated joy. Let's just wait and see if we see a heartbeat at the viability ultrasound, perhaps then it will feel real. Perhaps then it will feel like my pregnancy.

So that took us to Monday and the most perfect looking yolk sac, a baby measuring exactly 7w3d and a strong 150bpm heartbeat. I'd thought a lot about how I might react to what we saw, whether good or bad. In the end it wasn't what I predicted. The magic of hearing a heartbeat - again - steady and soothing and alive. A sudden remembrance of the last time I'd heard that sound - midnight on 4 Jan 2010 - and how much I'd missed it. An instant connection. Hello baby.

J