Over the weekend, we just kinda laid low, relaxed, and continued our unofficial pity party. Saturday was my first "tear-free" day. :) I went with my sister and nephew to an indoor recreation center for kids in the morning. That afternoon we watched the Buckeyes game and I finished a Christmas stocking I'd been working on since 2007. :) It seemed silly to keep having to do the progesterone shot each night, but we continued it through Saturday night. I'm still taking my prenatal vitamins of course, but I definitely stopped the night whey protein shake after we got the news last week. On Sunday morning I baked some Valentine's Day cookies and then we went out to lunch and the movies (to see "Gnomeo & Juliet") with some friends. We ran some errands after the movie and then my IVF buddy came over to visit for a bit and brought us some treats- it was nice to chat with her! That night we played with our nephew and I frosted cookies with my sister. We watched the Grammy Awards that night as well. It seemed like a "normal" Sunday.
This morning I had to go in and do my 2nd beta HCG blood test for them to just confirm that I'm not pregnant. I wasn't quite as excited for this one as I was last Thursday morning. I actually forgot my lab order sheet (too preoccupied with the Valentine's Day cookies I was taking into work) and had to turn around to go get it after I was already half-way there. (I'm guessing that had my test been positive last week, that I never would've forgotten that lab order sheet.) The blood test was fine - the nurses were nice as always and I got my Garfield band-aid. I went into work and it was fine - definitely much more emotionally stable than I would've been on Friday. Even though I was feeling good, I headed home at lunch to work from home in the afternoon. I was still a little too afraid to get the "results" call at work. Even though I thought my hopes were down and that I was totally expecting another negative, I didn't want to be caught off-guard in case I secretly had my hopes up without even knowing it. I knew that we had both done quite a bit of "healing" over the weekend and I was a little afraid that the news today was going to open up those wounds and put us back to square one.
I was actually in the car when Dr. Williams' office number popped up on my phone. I answered it and McKenzie told me that the test was unfortunately negative again. Even though it was disappointing to hear, I handled the news okay - no tears or anything. She said that I should stop taking the progesterone shots and said that she could set-up our next appointment with Dr. Williams to discuss if we were ready. So we now have an appointment with him on February 28th (in exactly two weeks) to discuss our cycle and our next steps. Just having the appointment scheduled with him makes us feel so much better - we like to have a plan. :) My period still hasn't really showed up, but she said it would probably show up sometime this week. I got home and told my husband the news and he was okay with it as well. I was relieved that we took it so well and I know that we weren't holding back. Neither of us really like to dwell too much on the past or things that we can't change or control - so after having the weekend to internalize it, we are ready to move on and keep trying.
When we found out the dates of my two beta tests (2/10 & 2/14) way back when, we were thinking this Valentine's Day could possibly be THE best one ever - thinking that we would get good news on my 1st and 2nd beta tests. Unfortunately, with the bad news from last week - we then began to think that this might end up being one of the worst Valentine's Days EVER. Despite the news today, we decided to make the most of our Valentine's Day and have a tournament of games - Yahtzhee, Rummikub, & then Scrabble. I was all sneaky and hid my hubby's Valentine's Day card in the Yahtzee box earlier this afternoon. He was surprised to find it in there and pulled my card out of his back pocket. I love cards and we both wrote sweet messages to each other in them. After that, it was on to the tournament! :) I actually won Yahtzee - by getting the most points in 3 rounds. As loser of the first round, my husband had to cook us dinner - tacos, yummy! For Rummikub (which was round 2), we decided to play until someone got 100 points - which ended up taking a looooong time with just two players. After 7 rounds, my husband broke 100 points and it was past 11 o'clock! So we were tied 1-1, with Scrabble being the tie-breaker.
Each day since last Thursday has gotten easier and I'm happy to say that even though we may not agree with the outcome, we have come to accept the results of this IVF cycle. Even though I'm not pregnant, which is always a huge disappointment - we are very thankful that the cycle did result in 6 frozen embryos. We look forward to meeting with Dr. Williams on the 28th. I'm hoping we can start a frozen embryo transfer cycle as early as March, but April would probably be more realistic. We'll just have to wait and see - you stay tuned and we'll stay positive! :)