The past year and a half have involved this black cloud of horrible events in our family. We have had a significant number of deaths including our infant daughter and a suicide in our family. We recently found out our dog has bone cancer. Very upsetting. He is only 11, but also has a tumor in his liver.

Our most recent IVF cycle appeared at first to be a boon with 20 eggs retrieved; however, none made it to the elusive blastocyst stage. This is the second cycle with such a result. We are regrouping, possibly trying naturally and hoping we would a) actually get pregnant and b) our child would fall into the 75% unaffected category. We have also scheduled consultations with two other prestigious IVF clinics. Lastly, I'm going to work to get us on the list to foster or possibly adopt.

What is worst about this scenario is really the embryology lab. The second cycle, the lab director called and stated our two embryos were at the morula stage and they expected (her words, not mine) them to reach blastocyst. Neither did.

This cycle, I received an extremely inappropriate and negative (i.e. lacking any sort of bedside manner) phone call from the laboratory nurse. Not exactly sure the call was warranted or necessary. She was unbelievably rude and incited near panic and depression in me. I'm a realist and had already been worried about the negative possibilities, but she threw me off a cliff. We meet with our reproductive endocrinologist next week. I intend to be very frank with her regarding my opinion of their embryology lab.

To face such heartache after losing our daughter is insurmountable to say the least. I feel we have this black cloud circling over our lives. I love my home life. We have a wonderful loving family. We just wanted to add another personality to the mix