One vs Two, Revisited

Tomorrow I have my first ultrasound. We will find out if there is one sack or two. One heartbeat or two heartbeats or no heartbeats. One sack and one heartbeat, two sacks and two heartbeats, or two sacks and one heartbeat. Or one or two sacs with one strong heartbeat and one weak heartbeat. Or just one weak heartbeat. Oh, the combinations. This sounds like a math problem. Or a Dr. Seuss book if I could make it rhyme.


I am 90% confident and only 10% percent worried. That's not bad. I had to rearrange my work schedule to come in a half-hour late due to the appointment. Which means that I will essentially be rushing from the appointment straight to work. Straight to dealing with patients and focusing solely on their issues. I'd say this is pretty good test of faith. It did suddenly dawn on me how stupid of a decision this could be if things don't go well... Ok, enough of that.

I have been thinking a lot about our decision to transfer one versus two embryos and now my anticipated reaction to the hopeful scenarios of either one or two strong heartbeats. In case you don't remember, or don't want to look back, the simple recap is that less than one month ago I was pretty terrified of having twins and would have preferred one single, healthy child.

Fast forward to now. Now that there are/were two embryos inside me, two potential lives, now I don't really want either of them to have not made it. It just seems wrong to wish for only one when we gave two a chance to begin with. No, I don't think I will end up mourning the loss of an embryo, but I will definitely be left wondering why? Now, with many people knowing that we transferred two, it will feel like a letdown to tell them that we're only having one baby. And that is ridiculous because one healthy baby was really the only goal in the first place. Now, we have a printout of the two embryos that were transferred and we may never know which one is actually our child and which one is the potential-twin-sibling-who-never-made-it-past-blastocyst.

In some odd way it feels like I've almost created a lose-lose situation. Either there are two babies and then I return to being terrified, or there is one baby and then it feels bittersweet, or there are no (healthy) babies and then I am devastated. Or my predictions about my anticipated reactions to any of the above are completely wrong and this whole anxious post was a big hypothetical waste. I can already tell that I've going to have a lovely night of attempting sleep...