I had another session with my therapist today. I'm going to be meeting with her monthly up until we do our frozen transfer with our last embryo around March of next year.
We did another session of EMDR (go here for a description of what that is).
We started off with her asking me what feelings I had or what I thought about most when I thought of the upcoming transfer. My answer was that I can't help but think that it is not going to work, given the fact two fresh cycles of IVF didn't work. Statistically, frozen transfers are less successful than fresh cycles. Basically, this is a last ditch effort so that I can say that I've done everything I can do.
Then she asked what I could do to think about it more positively. I couldn't come up with anything. We talked about my current job situation and how something shitty (my new co-worker being brought in two pay grades above me) forced me to value myself enough to apply for another internal job. That in turn made my boss give me a promotion.
I thought about it some and began thinking about how this time around I'm in a much better place. I'm going to therapy, will be starting accupuncture, am getting back in shape, etc. Also, since this is a frozen transfer, I won't be pumped full of follistim and feel like shit. Keeping all that in mind, she suggested to try to not concentrate on percentages of success/failure, but to instead focus on my body being open and accepting for the transfer. During the final round of the EMDR, she asked me to come up with either a word or visualization (or both) that symbolized this for me. For whatever reason, the first thing that came to mind was a flower, specifically a daisy. I saw it growing from a seed, like you see in time-lapse photography. It almost seems like too much of a cliche to me (seed, growth - could be growth of an embryo or at the same time the personal growth I'm doing now). I guess my mind works best with cliches. I've always said I lack originality. :)
I left the session feeling very positive about it, which is what we're trying to accomplish so I feel good about that.
3 comments:
I think it's awesome that you're working on this in therapy. I've heard good feedback about EMDR as well. And I love the daisy image--cliche or not, it sounds like a great one to me. :)
I had meant to comment on your Decisions post recently... Looks like you guys are aiming for next March then! I just had a similar conversation recently with another blogger who has some frozen embryos. I remember when I signed all the paperwork for my protocol that there was paperwork for what to do with any leftover/frozen embryos. It ended up that we didn't have any to freeze, but I remember thinking at the time that I wouldn't mind donating to science. But now? I know with a full heart that I couldn't. It is a crazy difficult decision to make, for sure. I've adopted a "path of least regret" approach lately. Now I'd have to do whatever I felt brought me little or no regret. I share that just to say that I getcha.
Keep up your hard work, lady! :)
Thank goodness for good therapists! I always felt like mine was able to help me replace the negative thoughts with positive ones, like magic. I love your visualization of the Daisy seed growing into a flower.
Sounds like a great appointment!! There are definitely some things about frozen cycles that make them much easier than fresh.
Thinking of you!!
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