Elm Street

They told us it would be two weeks before we heard anything. So imagine our faces when the 856 number popped up on my phone at 8:45AM on Saturday March 30, just five days after they received our embryos. We were in the truck heading my friend’s 5K that she hosts every year in honor of her Father. We were arguing over the GPS directions because we were on some weird back road neither of us recognized. I’ll never forget the name of the street now… Elm Street. There was no one on this street. Thank God for that. Our puppy, Sasha was in the back bursting with excitement, she could not wait to get out of the truck and to our destination. I told Mike he needed to pull over and silence her so I could hear the phone call. I answered. It was the lead embryologist, he sounded excited to talk to me. “Jennifer, we have your results, is now a good time?” Do people actually tell him no? YES! Now is the perfect time, as long as it’s good news! I shhhhh’d Sasha and told him yes. He told us three came back perfectly normal. My eyes were instantly filled with tears. He went on to tell me one other came back with some abnormalities, but it was transferrable as long as we spoke to a genetic counselor first. I asked him about the fifth, and he said that one was abnormal, and they would not transfer it. I wasn’t too concerned, we had four our of five come back, three of which were HEALTHY. That is all that mattered. I asked him if he knew the genders. He said he did, and asked if we wanted to know. I said, “is it a combination of genders, or are they all the same?” He said it was a combo. In that case, we wanted to know. I put him on speaker phone, and right there in the middle of Elm Street holding hands, with an excited German Shepherd, we got our first glimpse of our future babies. I saw them. I heard us calling them by name. I closed my eyes and pictured what family would some day look like. I glanced over at Michael who was also filled with tears. It was the happiest moment of this entire journey so far. There was light at the end of the tunnel, and we were walking towards it.

I hung up with the embryologist after thanking him over and over again, and then turned back towards Mike. There we sat in the middle of nowhere hugging one another. Out of all the days and times for that phone call to come, it came on the most beautiful day in March, and we were together. I felt so grateful and so blessed in that moment. We had no idea what was in store next. How the transfer would take place, whether or not it would be successful. We were just overjoyed and hopeful.

March 30 was the day we became parents.