Closing the door

When we moved into our new house a few months ago - we decided not to paint one of the upstairs bedrooms. We left it the eggshell / white color that the rest of the house initially was. Each of the other rooms we had our painter complete in whatever color inspired me at the moment. When our painter asked why not that room as well - I said we weren't sure what we were going to use it for. We already had one bedroom painted a sky blue for a playroom, and one bedroom as ours, as well as Brynn's painted a sea foam green. But the fourth upstairs bedroom - we left it as a blank canvas. In the back of my mind both my husband and I secretly wished we could say without a hesitation that it would be our second child's bedroom. I threw a few boxes of extra linens and pillows in the closet and shut the door so Brynn wouldn't run in there.

Then we found out we were pregnant last month. One Saturday - I found the door open to the extra bedroom upstairs. I glanced inside and my husband had moved the diaper genie in the one corner. My heart smiled, at least it felt that way if hearts could actually smile. I left the door cracked, it somehow seemed wrong to close it now. Each night when I went into Brynn's bathroom to give her a bath, I would glance at the door to the spare room cracked open a bit. I wondered when we would pick out a paint color - the door would be wide open then. Then came the crushing news that we had lost the twins we were pregnant with.

As the days past, I decided to close the door to that room for now. It hurt too much to look at it cracked open. The crack in the doorway to the room just reminded me that my heart felt cracked in two.

Two days ago we got a letter and a phone call from our fertility office. Due to various reasons they were going to be moving all embryos stored at our hospital to another location that happened to be one state away. Nothing was changing with our office, their practice or the future of the care of patients. Basically no big deal, our embryos would just be taking a road trip, free of charge since the clinic was paying to transport them. We needed to sign a consent form allowing them to transfer the embryos or we could give consent for them to be donated for research - or else discarded. The last option actually made me gasp. There would be NO way under any circumstance I would EVER discard my embryos. I called my clinic and spoke with my favorite nurse. I mentioned to her that we were currently kind of in limbo land due to our recent miscarriage. She was empathetic as ever and said that even though they would be moving all embryos for people who chose to - that the clinic would be holding on to all embryos that were planning to be transfered with FET (frozen embryo transfer) cycles in the next four months. Basically, if you were doing a FET in the next four months at the clinic, there was no point in moving your frozen embryos.

Basically, we had some serious decisions to make. My husband and I have been talking things through and I believe are making some progress. I called the fertility office today and told my favorite nurse that we would like them to hold on to our embryos and not transfer them out of state. That puts us in the group of patients who would like to do a frozen embryo transfer in the next four months or so. How we ended up in that group is still not clear to me. Maybe it's because I want to be able to crack the door to our spare bedroom open again - even if it's just a crack. It's a start. I'm just having trouble allowing my heart to be able to look at a cracked door, knowing it could swing either wide open or slam shut on us again.