The rollercoaster of emotion hasn’t stopped since my chemical pregnancy. Although I’d said before going into this IVF cycle that it would be our last one, I’m reevaluating the options. I feel pulled to continue IVF because I’m emotionally very connected to a successful pregnancy when I’ve only experienced unsuccessful ones for no obvious reason.

Last week I met with my doctor as a post-mortem this third IVF cycle. He’s a lovely, obviously caring man who has more than 30 years of experience with infertility. He’s the Peyton Manning of reproductive endocrinologists. He’s got that time and many wins under his belt; he’s consistent. Then he has a patient like me. During our appointment he referred to me, albeit very kindly, as an anomaly and his personal project. He’s determined to make me a mother in the same way that Peyton was determined to come back after neck surgery and win another Superbowl. No, this metaphor isn’t over-the-top at all, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

As I anticipated, there’s not yet a good explanation for why five perfectly normal-looking embryos haven’t resulted in a sustainable pregnancy. He showed me the math of it and it was incredibly depressing.

So how does he recommend we move forward? The simplest possible response is another biopsy to check for my old nemesis chronic endometritis, and while we’re painfully removing my uterine tissue, reserve a sample for the ERA test, too. My lining is, perhaps, optimal for embryo transfer too early or too late for the standard progesterone window. The ERA test has been growing in popularity in the infertility community (I’d actually asked about it prior to my chronic endometritis diagnosis), but my clinic has only performed the test three times to date as they tend to be pretty conservative on new tech and labs.

Given that we have one remaining embryo, Kristoff, he also suggested that I consider another stim cycle to create more embryos and PGS test the whole lot of them to weed out the shoddy ones. We considered PGS in our first go ’round, but the added cost prevented us from moving forward.

Again, none of these recommendations came as a surprise.

What’s next? We’ve decided to get a second opinion. I really like my clinic, my doctor, and of course the greatest nurse on the planet, but my husband and I both feel like we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least talk to another doctor before making a decision. So I’ll be meeting with another doc, who has successfully helped two friends get pregnant via IVF, in a few weeks. His clinic also has a great reputation, and I’ve heard their treatment protocols are a bit less conservative, too.