One of the Hardest Years of Our Lives
by Alex Kornswiet
2018 was horrible for us in terms of trying to have a second child. The surrounding years were not great either – but 2018 was even worse. And it all culminated in the fact that our doctor forced us to pick our own embryo – minutes before the transfer. A transfer that ultimately ended in a miscarriage. I didn’t realize how wrong this was until much later on. I didn’t realize how traumatizing it was, how confusing it was, and what a mind F it was.
This year was extremely difficult because of the doctor we were seeing. All of it has been hard, but in addition to bad news and loss, we had a doctor that didn’t care, and a coordinator that made me constantly feel like everything was personally my fault. For example, when I begged for a new protocol because 2 cycles in a row got cancelled, she told me the doctor was a genius and there was nothing wrong with his protocol. She said he didn’t change it for anyone, my body just obviously didn’t respond correctly.
What a horrific way to respond to someone going through infertility. We are already terrified that it’s our fault, taking every precaution to control what we can. So to be told by the person who is supposedly trying to help get you pregnant, that you are indeed the problem, is inexcusable and unforgivable. There should be support and help, not giving up because the doctor and coordinator are so arrogant.
I could rant for a long time about her and him, but I’ll focus on the embryo selection story now. It was finally the day of the transfer, over a year after we’d first met with the doctor to get started again. After multiple cancelled FETs (frozen embryo transfers) due to my thin lining, and waiting for my hormones to regulate for months each time, we had done a fresh round of IVF since that had worked with our first son, just to try something new. He had me on stims medications for 21 days (compared to a typical 10-12 days or so) and I was miserable, but hopeful. My lining only got to 6mm, but he made us feel like that would still be thick enough – I had no clue what was preferable at that time. He was 2 hours late to the transfer – which was unfortunately normal for him (even for the retrieval)…but we had PGS tested our embryos and we were anxiously awaiting the results. They tested embryos from this fresh cycle, and thawed our original embryos from our first cycle to test as well. I know how lucky we are to have embryos – that’s the one thing my body could do sometimes. But that doesn’t guarantee those embryos will become babies, so we were still very nervous.
He came into the room, and I was expecting him to give us the full results and then show us which embryo they had selected. They had never called us with any updates or results so we had no idea what to expect. Instead, he gave us a few sheets of paper with photos of embryos, and a confusing grade system, written in pen beneath each one. Not the normal system, such as 4AB or 3BB – but HEB a and HB B – which I had no idea how to translate. I tried to ask him and he said since they were PGS tested they were all essentially the same rate of success (not true).
He started pointing at them and said, “okay choose which one you want”.
What? No. No no no. That’s not my job. I can’t be responsible for that. What if I choose one and it fails. What if it works and I miscarry. What if. What if. What if… I felt trapped, and terrified, and I hated that feeling when I should have felt hopeful. Why wouldn’t he just do his job? Where was the embryologist?
I asked him why he couldn’t pick it, and he said – well you have a boy right, well this is a girl (and pointed to an embryo), how about a girl to balance your family. And that’s when I realized he had also made pen drawings to say which were boys and girls. They hadn’t asked us if we wanted to know, they just decided for us. I said, “well, is that the healthiest one? The best chance?”. And he said, “well, this is a boy, and it has a slightly better chance. I’d say 99% chance for the boy and 98% for the girl. They’re all virtually the same rate because of PGS testing.”
What a lie. No one has those rates of success. I don’t know if he truly believed those rates were true or if he was flat out lying. And I don’t know which one of those reasons is worse.
I do know that we were in a state shock and just wanted to do the transfer. We had waited so long and honestly felt blindsided and just needed to make a choice. A choice that felt all wrong. A choice that should not have been up to us. A choice that a professional should have done in advance. A choice that made us feel suffocated. But nonetheless, we had to decide.
So we picked the girl. I feel weird admitting that, but we did. He just kind of sold us on the idea and made it sound so guaranteed. And I remember feeling numb and terrified, I remember going back and forth a million times. But he didn’t understand and just said he knew it would work. KNEW. PROMISED. GUARANTEED.
Well yes, I did get pregnant. But within a week or two, I lost that little girl – I had her for a few weeks, and miscarried. I started lightly bleeding during the day, called them terrified and kept begging to be checked out. The nurse said if I was losing the baby, there was nothing they could do anyways, and they were busy and couldn’t fit me in. How nice. I woke up in the middle of the night with the most horrific cramps of my life and I knew it was over, but I couldn’t really believe it. I ran to the bathroom, and sat on the toilet in the dark. I felt gushes of what I can only assume was blood pouring out – and our baby, our little girl… I wasn’t going pee. I knew what was happening. But I was numb. I refused to turn on the light. I could not handle knowing for sure in that moment. I wiped, flushed, crawled back into bed and prayed for a miracle.
The next day I insisted on at least getting blood work done to see if my betas were still rising… I knew they weren’t, but I hoped. I went in, and it took them 30 minutes and 10 needle pricks to get the needle in for the blood work. They had to take a break from trying just to give me an ice pack because I almost passed out. I thought – seriously? You’re going to make this part hard too?
I sat in a parking lot when I got the call. I could’ve let it go to voicemail, but I needed to know. And the doctor didn’t even call me himself to confirm. The coordinator did. She said I was right, my numbers were going down, but they could schedule another transfer once my levels evened out. What? I didn’t want to talk about that – I was still pregnant and holding on to every moment with her. But she was already gone. I called my husband sobbing, I drove home shaking, and we just hugged and cried and let ourselves be the saddest we had ever been up to that point.
I had never experienced such a deep pain or deep sadness. I felt like I couldn’t see straight, and I couldn’t get out of my cloud of grief. I felt trapped and suffocated and I couldn’t imagine anything but sad feelings. I was distracted from everything and everyone around me… And I had experienced pain before. I had experienced loss. I had experienced some really difficult times growing up. But nothing compared to this pain. It was so deep and so raw – and I could see it affecting my husband in the same way, but I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t even help myself. I felt like I couldn’t reach anyone, like I was behind a glass wall, separated from the world. Over time, this pain and grief became less consuming, and I started to feel like myself again, only to be knocked down more times – but we got through it together. Because we had to.
Needless to say, we left that clinic immediately…
They wouldn’t even do an ultrasound or check after I miscarried. They refused to help me at all. I later found out that I had scarring so bad from this that I had to have a surgery to try to fix my uterus, so they potentially kept me from having a chance in the future as well…
The doctor eventually called me (after I insisted he follow up) but he had his lawyer on the phone.. what a joke. And I wish I could warn you against who he is or where he works, because they protected him against me when I sobbed to the HR about what he did. They protected him. Choose him. Over their patients and lost babies. But I know others who have tried to warn people against him, and when him and his clinic found out, they went against them with defamation of character lawsuits and tried to destroy more families. So he terrifies me, and I can’t risk losing more to him than I already have.
All I can say is advocate for yourself. Most doctors are good, but some are not. And if it feels wrong, it probably is. It’s okay to question things, to fight for yourself, to change clinics. They are not automatically right just because they are the ones “in charge”. YOU ARE WORTHY. YOU MATTER. And you should be made to feel that way, always.
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