My Golden Ticket

So last time I did this whole fresh cycle IVF thing, I had one embryo that got the doctor salivating. It was "very high quality" and it appears probably did get me, albeit so temporarily, pregnant.

Now, though, I'm not sure if it was overblown, to make me feel good, or if it was really an exceptional embyro. Because now when I talk to other people, they had the same quality or better, so maybe the doctor was just making me feel good. I think it's sort of like when you're a kid, and you bring home some really horrendous picture of a dog that really looks like a big brown blob, and your mom tells you it's beautiful, and you believe her because your picture isn't next to the one drawn by a child who could actually make a dog look like a dog. You get the idea. I thought that embryo was mighty fine until it was sitting next to everyone else's. (And of course, the only reason I cared is because it didn't make a baby.)

Anyway, we found out today that 3 of our embryos were frozen. This makes me happy because (1) it means we won't be transferring embryos forever and ever (we have a total of two frozen cycles remaining, and if it can't work by then, I'm pretty comfortable saying that it probably can't work at all and that I gave it a good old, overachiever's try), and (2) I bet my husband there would be three, which makes up for the bet he won about how many eggs we'd get at retrieval (my guess: 10) and now means I don't owe him the pizza he won.

But the really good news is that, although we got two embryos I'd classify in the "eh" range, we did get one with the grade "AA," the best you can get and even BETTER than the one the doctor oohed and aahed over last time. This is good news, right? But then I started to think--maybe that was my golden ticket. If the AA was sitting in the dish, does that means the ones that were put back in were crappy? And can't make a baby? Because what are the chances of getting two AAs? And how badly will I feel if I transfer that AA and STILL can't get pregnant?

How is it that I can turn this success into a failure? Welcome to infertility! There's only one golden ticket out there...