Strike One

Forgive me for going incommunicado this past week. I have been too depressed for words. On Thursday of last week, just five days after my embryo transfer, a Sense of Impending Doom descended and would not disperse no matter what I did. It was far too early to tell whether the IVF had worked or not, yet somehow I knew that my little embryos had died. It's finally official with today's beta.

When Jeremiah died, I felt death come for him but dismissed the feeling as silly paranoia. When Miles died I knew it but didn't want to believe it. When I called the clinic they were very dismissive of my worries, but a few days later my worst fear was confirmed. Even with my last loss - a very early loss cruelly termed a "chemical" pregnancy - I felt the same unshakeable and crushing darkness suddenly descend just before I got the beta results showing I was pregnant. It's a macabre sixth sense. Have I developed such an intimate relationship with death as to feel its cold hand accutely even when it comes to snatch something so tiny as my embryos?

I feel like Death has me in, well, a death grip. It stalks and kills any small hopes I try to cling to. It makes me despair of ever escaping this darkness. It follows me wherever I go. It leaves me dark shadows where laughing children should have been.

Since my doctor is gone this week, there was no discussion of how to proceed from here. I suppose the plan is to plow ahead and do IVF two more times. Sure, maybe I could actually get pregnant, but then what? It's hard to see much hope in this. I feel possessed by death such that every new life that tries to grow in me is already infected with death before it even has a chance to begin.