Back to waiting. We are back from Colorado and it was a complete whirlwind.
Three days before we left, I developed a fever and a severe sore throat. I was positive that I had strep, so I went to the doctor to get my throat swabbed. Negative strep test. I got antibiotics anyway, but by the time the trip came around, I still felt terrible.
The flight out there was direct, but it was a sardine can. Tiniest plane that I have ever been on. We were seated in the next to last row and our rolling duffle bag wouldn’t even fithough in the overhead bin. It was hot. It was cramped. Flying with a cold caused a ton of ear pain. We weren’t comfortable.
Then, as we approached the Denver airport, there was turbulence. It seems that no one bothered to warn us that flying in over the rocky mountains is always a bumpy ride. Now, I get motion sickness in cars and on boats, but I thought that planes were safe. Nope. I was so focused on not throwing up during the landing that I snapped at David. He needed me to calm him down during the bumpy landing and I couldn’t do it.
Once we were off the plane, neither of us could hear. My hearing was muffled the whole trip. (My ears cleared right before we got on the plane to go home, and they plugged right back up during the first flight home. They stayed muffled for days afterwards.) We hiked through the (very large) Denver airport to get our rental car. We had just enough time to pick up the car and drive straight to the meeting with the intended parents. (Ips or, for privacy purposes, Em and Ben, which are not their real names.)
The lady at the rental car counter told us to go outside and get on the bus at stop 4 to get to the lot. So we did. And we got all the way out to the rental car lot…of a different company. She forgot to tell us that more than one shuttle bus stops there, so we got on the wrong one. Now we are going to be late to our meeting. We have to take the shuttle all the way back to the terminal and then wait for the right shuttle and go all the way back to the right lot, which was about half a mile from where we were. It was cold and windy on a busy road with no sidewalks.
David came to the rescue with the brilliant idea to call an Uber to take us from the wrong rental car lot to the right one. So we got our car and drove to the meeting. And instead of being an hour late, we were only 15 minutes behind schedule.
We got to the agency, where everyone was already waiting. We all sat around the conference table and it was weird. The ladies from the agency walked us through the process and led us in some getting to know you questions. This is where we hit our first snag.
They asked us how many embryos we wanted to transfer.
I didn’t know the details of Em’s situation ahead of time, just that she already had some frozen embryos already. My expectation was to just transfer one. When you transfer an embryo, there’s always a small chance that it will split into twins. And I am willing to carry twins, but no more than that. One embryo is ideal for me because there is no chance of more than two babies.
But, Em and Ben explained that they only have two embyos left. They tried ivf previously with no success and they don’t have the financial or emotional means to do more than one transfer. They wanted to transfer both because this is their one and only shot at having a child. No pressure for me, right?
We left that meeting with me wanting some time to talk it through with David and to consult with Em and Ben’s fertility doctor.
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