Welcome to IVF This, Episode 192- IVF and The Last Embryo

Hello, hello, Hello my beautiful friends.

Today we’re talking about something that carries a very particular kind of weight.
Something that feels different in the body.
Different in the chest.
Different in the breath.

Today we’re talking about the last embryo.

And when I say “last,” I want to be really clear—
I don’t just mean the last embryo you’ll ever have.
I mean the last embryo of this cycle.
The last embryo after others didn’t work.
The last embryo you’re transferring before you’re not sure what comes next.

The moment when the options narrow.
When the margin feels thin.
When this transfer starts to feel like it’s carrying the weight of everything.

If that’s where you are right now—or where you’ve been—I want you to know:
You are not imagining how heavy this feels.
This moment is different.

There is something uniquely heavy about the words the last embryo.

Not because you’re dramatic.
Not because you’re “too attached.”
Not because you’re doing IVF wrong.

But because last changes how the nervous system responds.

When there were multiple embryos, the brain had wiggle room.
Possibility.
A sense—real or imagined—that there was more coming.

But when something becomes finite, the brain shifts gears.

This is no longer just a medical procedure.
It becomes a meaning-making moment.

And meaning is heavy.

When you approach the last embryo, a few things tend to happen internally.

First: scarcity kicks in.

The brain is wired to respond differently when something feels limited or endangered.
Scarcity activates survival mode.
And survival brains don’t do nuance.

Second: meaning accumulates.

This embryo doesn’t just represent itself.
It starts carrying the weight of every injection, every phone call, every loss, every version of the future you’ve imagined.

Without meaning to, we stack years of grief onto something impossibly small.

And third: responsibility creeps in.

This is where the pressure shows up.
The “this has to work.”
The “I can’t mess this up.”
The belief that how we feel might somehow determine the outcome.

And I want to share a personal story here—because I’ve lived this from more than one angle.

My First “Last Embryo”

In August of 2020, my husband and I did what we believed was our last embryo transfer from our first IVF cycle.

Our first transfer had worked.
That embryo became my now middle-little.

So I walked into this transfer with a lot of confidence.
Honestly—probably too much confidence.

I didn’t do the things I now talk to my clients about.
I didn’t cope ahead.
I didn’t failure-plan.
I didn’t emotionally prepare myself for another outcome.

Not because I was avoiding—it was more like… hubris.
This quiet belief of, Why wouldn’t this work?

And when that transfer failed, I was utterly heartbroken.

Not just disappointed.
Not just sad.

I mean shattered.

Because I hadn’t just lost an embryo—I lost the future I thought was already decided.
The family I believed we would have.
Three kids.
No question marks.

That loss sent me into one of the hardest seasons of my life—and one of the hardest seasons of my marriage.

I was grieving deeply.
Not just the embryo, but the possibility that this might be it.
That the picture in my head might never come to be.

And grief changes people.
It changes how we communicate.
How we relate.
How safe things feel.

My husband and I struggled.
We talked.
We argued.
We went to marriage counseling.
We sat with questions we had never had to answer before.

And slowly—over months—we grieved together.

Not rushed grief.
Not tidy grief.

Real grief.

The “Last, Last” Embryo

Eventually, after a lot of conversation and honesty, we decided to give it one more try.

We did another stim cycle.
We got three embryos.

And then—after genetic testing—it dropped down to one.

One embryo.

The last, last embryo.

And here’s what surprised me.

I walked into that transfer completely differently.

Not confident in the way I had been before.
Not armored.
Not performatively hopeful.

But calm.
Grounded.
Clear.

I had already faced the grief I was afraid of.
I had already sat with the possibility of loss.
I had already reckoned with the fact that I would survive—even if my heart broke again.

That calm wasn’t certainty.

It was integration.

Meaning Is Not the Same as Outcome

And there’s something else I want to name here—because IVF makes this easy to forget.

This process does not have to end in a positive pregnancy test to be meaningful.

And I want to say that slowly:

Something can matter deeply
without working out the way you hoped.

IVF quietly teaches us that meaning equals success.
That effort earns outcome.
That if you just do enough, endure enough, believe enough—you’ll be rewarded.

But that’s not actually how meaning works.

Meaning can come from:

• The courage it took to try again

• The honesty you had with yourself or your partner

• The grief you allowed instead of suppressing

• The boundaries you honored

• The way you showed up even when you were terrified

None of that requires a positive test.

This isn’t about giving up hope.

It’s about refusing to make meaning conditional.

Because when meaning is only allowed if the outcome is perfect, the cost becomes unbearable.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Matter

This is true for embryos.
It’s true for transfers.
And it’s true for you.

This process doesn’t have to be neat, successful, or storybook to count.

You don’t have to get a baby for this season to have shaped you, changed you, or mattered.

That doesn’t make the losses smaller.

It just means they’re not empty.

Letting This Be Important Without Letting It Be Everything

There is a middle space here.

Where you don’t bypass the weight.
But you also don’t collapse under it.

You might say:

• “This matters deeply—and I don’t have to make it mean everything.”

• “I can hope without asking this moment to define my worth.”

• “No matter what happens, I will need support—and I am allowed to ask for it.”

This isn’t detachment.

It’s containment.

If you are standing at the edge of your last embryo—
Whether it’s the last of this cycle or the last you can imagine yourself doing—

I want you to know this:

You are not weak for how heavy this feels.
You are not doing this wrong.
And you are not alone in this moment—even if it feels unbearably lonely.

Whatever happens next, this moment mattered.
Not because of what it produced—
but because of how deeply you lived it.

This season deserves tenderness.

I’m holding you here.
And I’m so glad you’re here with me.