I feel like I've officially lost my ability to cope today and my husband suggested I try to find some support online because, after being at home with me all day yesterday, he really did have to go to work today.  I found this group and thought maybe posting something here -- knowing I'm not alone -- would make me feel less like I'm spinning.  My husband and I found out I was a fragile x carrier shortly after we got married.  My sister had previously found out when she was pregnant that she was a carrier (fortunately her baby is not a carrier), and we decided to get tested.  I have what is called a pre-mutation of fragile x, which basically means that our child could potentially have ADHD or other more benign symptoms, but that their children would be at risk of a full-fledged syndrome.  Fragile x basically can have symptoms like Intellectual Disability and in older males may look like Parkinson's but with a greater memory loss/Alzheimer's like component.  We decided, because we could afford it, that it made sense to eliminate this from something we could pass on to our children.  That was nearly a year ago. 

We opted to do PGD IVF testing, create embryos, have them screened, and implant one at a time until we got pregnant.  It seemed like it couldn't be that difficult, I'm young, healthy, the doctor's thought it would be a cake walk.  Every step in this process feels like it has a trap door.  They first tried to switch my birth control to a different hormone dose, which messed up my cycle and meant I couldnt come in for testing for another month and a half.  They they had a hard time getting us in for egg harvesting because the lab was backed up.  Then the lab closed for the holidays, so even after testing, we couldnt get an embryo for implantation.  Then my period was late because the harvesting messed it up and they had to give me other hormones to regulate it.  Finally, we transferred our first embryo.  Those 9 days were the hardest in my life.  The thinking you're pregnant, the hoping you are, the deciding what to eat, what to drink, where to go, what to do, all worried about jostling this little embryo that you have hoped and prayed and spent so much energy on.  And then they call, and you learn you never had it to begin with.  You were never pregnant.

So what can you do? You cry and lose it and fall apart, but at the end of the day you had a plan.  You made a promise to try and do more for your kid becaues you want them to have everything -- including a perfect x chromosome.  So we tried again, yesterday.  And now we're waiting.  But it is so hard, after knowing how much it hurt the last time, to not focus on that hurt - -to not prepare and protect yourself for the possibility that this didnt work either.  To not obssess about whether you have cramps, or spotting, or nausea, like the universe owes you some sign.  I feel like I've lost my ability to wait but I don't have any choice.