Negative again.

This is probably a tl;dr, just so you know.

I woke up pretty early this morning to do the pee test. Just for funsies I did two. I got a 'not pregnant' from the EPT and a flat out 'no' from the First Response. So that pretty much sealed it in my mind. I went back to bed.

I hadn't planned to wake my girlfriend since it was really early, but she probably heard me get up anyway. After we cried for a while we decided to get out of town for the day. All summer we've been sitting around waiting for this pregnancy to play out. But since we didn't have to do that anymore, we decided to go on a road trip. We packed, fed the cats and were out the door before 7:00.

We stopped by my mom's house to drop off a house key, just in case. Then we got the tire pressure in my car checked. We got some food and snacks. And although I felt it was completely pointless, we went and got the blood test. The doctor was there, which was unusual. She had on her hairnet so she must have just done a procedure. She smiled and said she felt great about today. I didn't tell her about the pee tests so I just smiled and mumbled something. She said that my levels had actually increased from the first blood test to the second one so she was feeling confident. We hit the freeway right after that.

We had been on the road a couple of hours when the doctor called. I have Sync in my car, which has Bluetooth so I was not talking on the phone and driving. Anyway, she confirmed that it was negative and she sounded like she felt really bad. Probably not as bad as we felt, but it's nice to think she really might care. She said she thinks my uterus isn't working. I kind of thought she might be joking, but she totally wasn't. She suspects I might be missing a protein created by the uterus that, without it, implantation can't occur.

She wants me to have a biopsy to check for the protein. It's a whole process in itself. They have me tentatively scheduled for it in the beginning of September but I have to call with day 1 of my period again to finalize what we want to do. We also have to talk to the financial coordinator now because we're not sure if we're going to get any credit for the fresh attempt we didn't get and also to find out how much this biopsy is going to cost. It sounds like something my insurance might pay for, but I can never be sure of what they'll cover and what they won't.

Now, the thing is that if the protein IS there, then the doctor is really stumped as to why this isn't working and I have no idea where to go from there. I even tried praying this time! Seriously! Maybe I didn't do it right or maybe I prayed to the wrong deity or maybe it's all bullshit, which is what I suspect. But I am willing to try anything.

If the protein isn't there, well then it will be nice to have a reason for this madness but I don't know how this changes the process. The doctor did suggest switching vaginas again, but we can't afford to have my girlfriend miss a semester of work (she wouldn't get maternity leave). My cousin offered to be a surrogate, but she doesn't live in the same state so I don't think that would work logistically.

I did some research on this and it may be tied to endometriosis, but I don't think I have that. The doctor did say it's pretty rare, but that just makes it more likely for me to have it since I get all the weird conditions. It's not tied to my diet, though.

So that's where we are now. We're heartbroken, obviously. A couple of weeks ago our counselor asked us to think about what it would mean if it turns out that we can't have kids. Now that it's more of a possibility, we're going to have to start really dealing with that. That's going to be very rough and I don't know how we would ever get over that.

We have some thinking and decisions to make in the coming weeks so I guess my next update will be whatever our next plan is going to be. Thanks for all your kind words and thoughts.

-Jacky