I’ve just noticed that on 13th February 2013 I started the drugs for my first go at IVF… and on 13th February 2014 I had my 20 week scan which confirmed I was expecting a healthy baby boy.
I like patterns like that.
This hasn’t been the quick way round of getting a baby and three goes at IVF is more than I hoped I’d need to do.
But I guess in the big scheme of infertility that’s substantial progress in a year.
My midwife called the Consultant on Monday and got me an appointment within 48 hours of her call. Easy. Do not even get me started on what a massive difference it would have made to my life if this had happened nine weeks ago when my GP sent me to triage, or seven weeks ago when my first midwife told me to try some ginger… I remain oh so very angry about the decimating effect that this has unnecessarily had on my life. So so so let down.
Almost exactly a year ago I started a journal about my IVF journey, on Blipfoto.
The most important thing that I wanted to do was to be honest – to be 100% honest with myself and by extension my readers about everything that happened as it happened, and how I felt about it. I didn’t want to hide anything, or sugar-coat it. I knew there would be ups and downs and I knew that I’d write things that might seem difficult for the outsider to understand because they might appear contradictory or unreasonable. But I thought that if I shared my feelings there might be people out there that felt less isolated for knowing they were not alone in this experience, and there might be people who can learn a bit about what the process is like and learn from my experience to enable them to show compassion for others in their lives going through a similar thing.
We had the results of the Down’s Syndrome test in the post today. The likelihood of Down’s is 1 in 4,855 which is great (esp as it states the age-related chance as 1:444). Anything better than 1:150 is considered low risk, so that is very low risk. No further testing or action is required.
Still a chance, of course, but I’ll not bother worrying about that.
I’ve had a significant improvement over the last few days, and am now eating a fairly normal amount of food. I think I’m less tired, which means I can cope with the nausea better and the nausea is generally less severe. This meant Christmas went OK, better than I expected. I tried not taking the pills one morning, but it turns out I do still need those.
Despite the improvement I still don’t feel brilliant, still not normal, which is hugely frustrating. Yesterday I did three activities (lunch out, short walk, grocery shopping – great!) but then was wiped out and went to bed at 9.30pm. This remains genuinely depressing, I’m finding it hard to cope mentally with remaining so far from normal life for so long.
During my years trying to conceive and doing IVF, it became increasingly difficult to find out that friends were pregnant. Facebook was a particular issue, with unexpected 12 week scan photos and birth announcements popping up and slapping me in the face. I eventually identified that the problem was not the new baby in itself – I wanted a baby so I could understand why others were excited about getting a baby. No, it was the element of surprise. The fact that I thought these women were the same as me (i.e. not pregnant) and it turns out they weren’t. Instead, for two to eight months they’d been pregnant and not said. I get that, I get why people don’t say until they are sure or feel ready to share. But finding out someone had crossed over to the dark side was always a painful reminder that I hadn’t and couldn’t. And the thought of them having held the beautiful and glorious secret for a number of months just made the news ten times harder to hear. Read the rest of this entry »
It is good news, there’s a live and kicking baby in there.
I was nervous this morning, and woke at 8am – much earlier than planned. So I spent the morning watching TV and feeling nervous. One hour before the scan, as specified in the appointment letter, I had a wee then drank one litre of water. Then the husband and I headed off to the hospital where our scan would take place.
When we got there it was quiet and we were the only ones in the waiting room, then another five sets of people turned up. We all waited a bit. There was loads of notices up – an unusually high number of notices – asking us to make sure we sign in before sitting down, and asking us to give a £1 donation if we want a print out of our scan. Several of each notice.
Just about everyone got called in at the same time, maybe five minutes late so not too bad.
Those that have followed my blog for a while will know how serious I am about my work. How it is part of me, how I want to do it, how I enjoy doing it. I’ve not really taken any time off work to do three cycles of IVF, and even when my Dad died I still did bits and pieces of work amongst the grieving.
You see for me, work is a coping strategy. It gives me pleasure to do a job well, I like the people-contact, I get small victories and achievements that make me feel good about myself. In the big list of things that I let go of under pressure, work is (deliberately) towards the end of the list.
So it has been a really really tough challenge for me to be so sick with this pregnancy nausea to have to pretty much give up work for a couple of months.
Today marks the ceremonial last insertion of an IVF pessary.
I’ve been taking IVF drugs (2 x progesterone pessaries and 4 x HRT tablets) for many months now, with HRT since 27th September and progesterone since 12th October.
Today is 49 days after embryo transfer which is finally time to stop taking all that.
Get me, I’m outside.
Almost normal day at work. Some office work in the morning, then a meeting in town.
Because I woke up, and I could, and I wanted to, so I did.
I simply cannot believe the turnaround. I feel… super tired, but normal in my head. Now I have hope that I might be able to manage this.
So so so much relief.
