We Do Everything Twice

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.”  ~ William E. Hickson

Well, we are back. Yes, somewhat reluctantly, but we are back.
 

Let me clarify what I mean by “reluctantly.” Yes, we are attempting the in-vitro process again. That part is not where any reluctance comes into play. This adverb is reserved for our decision to continue making our progress public for round two.
 

Now, if we are perfectly honest, there is some apprehension that could be called reluctance at some level. After all, we were devastated when we learned Kristina’s HCG levels were not where expected after ten days post-transfer. We had to wait three long days, over a weekend, to get the confirmation that the result was only a chemical pregnancy and not a true implanting of an embryo.
 

The details of our decaying hope were too painful to reveal at the time. Imagine for a moment as Kristina took a home pregnancy test the day before going in for the first in-clinic test. When it failed, we told ourselves that it was just a little too early and reassured ourselves by researching the sensitivity of the brand used to discover it required a higher-than-average level of HCG to show a positive result. We knew one more day and specific number-reading from the lab would reveal we had just been impatient.
 

Kristina and I sat at Starbucks across the street from the hospital, waiting for the phone call promised to be within the hour. The call came, but the news was that the machine to analyze her blood sample had unexpectedly malfunctioned and it would probably be the following day before we would get the results. Of course, the next day when the numbers only in the 3 to 4 range (of an expected 25 or higher), we told ourselves that the age of the sample must have had something to do with the low value.
 

Keep in mind, six months before we had been given an 80% chance success of my vasectomy reversal working. We ended up on the failed-side of the odds. We had convinced ourselves of the gambler’s fallacy when it came to beating the odds for the IVF process.
 

As I said, we had a whole weekend before another blood draw could be taken. We researched other IVF stories, crunched numbers, made projections. But finally, we faced the reality of an unchanged HCG value. We were not pregnant.
 

The second failing was painful and remaining hopeful was close to impossible. Atop all this, we had several readers following our enthusiastic and detailed reports of our journey. To explain all this, while angrily barking at God and questioning any greater meaning in the universe, was simply too painful. So, our reluctance comes in whether to share the experience so publicly again.
 

However, as we have shared the plan with a few close friends, we have been encouraged to post the experience again. As before, we hope to harness the prayers and positive thoughts from those following our journey. We hope for any edge we can gain on the odds as we approach our second chance.
 

That said, we are not planning to post with the frequency or detail of the first “forty-nine” days. Our approach both publicly and privately is obviously different this time. While we are cautiously optimistic, we do have some advantages this go-round – mostly, we understand more precisely what to expect. With any luck, that knowledge and understanding will create a less stressful environment for us – and that slight difference in our stress levels might be the x-factor that changes the probabilities.
 

Of course, our close friends understand the implicit joke in the title for this post. Kristina and I do seem to do everything twice. I bought the engagement ring twice, proposed twice, and we nearly fell off the mountain two-days in a row. So, should us doing IVF again really surprise anyone?
 

At any rate, here we go again. Today is Day One. We will keep you posted.