POKEY

Recently I have found myself thinking a lot about Pokey.

Pokey was embryo number four out of four that we got through our donor egg cycle which ended up on ice, all by his lonesome. He was also a little late dividing and I suspect he is not of Best of Show quality and more than likely a bit of a mouth-breather.

When it comes to left-over frozen embryos, there are three options that families face (I say “families” since it would be only logical to assume that only patients who have already had a successful transfer would have the three options):

• Destroy
• Transfer
• Donate

Now for my conundrum.

At one time, back when I was an IVF newbie, I referred to my embryos as “embies” and I experienced quite a mental fuck when my first and only FET attempt was cancelled when all three of said “embies” arrested the morning of my transfer. To help myself get over that, and because I grew up just a bit, they simply are now called Embryos.

Even though I have tried to keep myself emotionally distant from any embryos we had created since then, Pokey is something special because he has a sister who I cannot, not even for a second, imagine my life without. Even Mr. DD walked a minefield by stating, “If we hadn’t gone through all the shit, we wouldn’t have ZGirl.” Refer to this post on how I feel about that kind of talk.

It’s with knowing the potential that I find myself very opposed to destroying Pokey.

Why not transfer then, you ask?

Such a simple solution except with one minor problem: Mr. DD does NOT want to go through any more treatment, even a rather uncomplicated FET. Not only that, but he does NOT want another baby; even though the likelihood we were to get pregnant with Pokey would be a one in a million shot. However, see THIS post about what happens when you put one egg in your basket and run though a forest on five-inch heels. In other words, stranger things have happened, even though they can (and did) end badly. Very badly.

As a couple who seriously considered donor embryos, I am more than willing to donate Pokey. But would any agency want to bother with a lonely embryo, and of suspect quality? I don’t have proof that Pokey is pokey. I only remember when they called with the fertilization report on Day 2 that Pokey had fertilized late and was slower in dividing, hence “Pokey”. I should have transferred all four since even with the three good-quality embryos transferred, my pregnancy never was more than a strong singleton (thank god).

I guess that’s why if I was a betting woman, I would say that Pokey doesn’t stand a chance, even in the best of wombs. Yet, knowing this, I still am not able to consider just destroying the little slacker.

I ask you, what would YOU do if you had a sub-par, single embryo on ice that no one other than you would want and your Significant Other doesn’t want to do another cycle, much less have another baby? If you say destroy it, how do you get over the sentiments attached to it when you know how beautiful and funny and endearing that baby would be because you are raising its sibling?

(Pardon the links down memory lane. That was a whole lot more painful then I expected it to be.)