Another Big Fat Negative.

Unfortunately the story continues. Last Monday I did a home pregnancy test and being 11 days post 3 day transfer we should have been getting happy new by then if it was going to happen. Day 12 was another negative and so we knew what to expect when the blood test results came in on Thursday. Obviously I was very disappointed after investing so much into this 4th cycle. I was actually quite confident that it was finally our time so it was crushing to hear that negative result again. 4 stim cycles, 5 embryos transferred, 2 years and still no closer to being parents.

After some thinking we have decided it’s time to get a second opinion. While we have been really happy with our old specialist and feel like he is doing everything he can, but it can’t hurt to have a fresh set of eyes look over our case to see if there is anything else we can do. We have booked in with Lynn Burmeister who is known as ‘the baby whisperer’ here in Melbourne so hoping she may be able to try something different. We are seeing her next week and hoping to throw lots of questions at her. I’m hoping perhaps a different approach will bring us the happy news we so desperately desire.

While I am very disappointed and upset that we still have to continue this journey I feel positive that we are going in a different direction and trying something new. I have heard that Lynn can be quite ‘clinical’ in her approach which some people find a bit confronting but I just want to get her honest opinion so we can make the best informed decisions. There is no point in us continuing this path if she honestly believes we need to consider egg donor or surrogacy. Neither of these options I feel great about but if that is what will make us parents then that is the way we go.

I will post another update after seeing Lynn with our next plan of attack. x

 

6 Days post 3 Day Transfer.

It has now been 6 days since we transferred our little embryos and I have been so far feeling pretty good. I had 2 days to totally relax after the transfer which really helped me mentally to know we were doing everything we could to help these little embryos stick. I relaxed on the couch with my pup watching movies and relaxing. It was great. Over the weekend I went back to my normal every day activities like walking the dog etc but still taking it easy and not doing anything more than we have to.

I feel like we have the progesterone injections down to a fine art now and although they bruise up and tend to get itchy for a few days they are really no big deal. I am so proud of my husband who is now doing these injections for me. They need to be done in the upper buttock area and I simply can’t reach to do them properly myself. I’m still doing the bit where I stab the needle through the skin but he does the rest. For the guy who couldn’t look in the same direction of me doing the initial injections this is amazing progress. He has really come a long way with being scared of ‘medical stuff’ and I hope this bodes well for when we are hopefully in a delivery room one day.

I am still feeling positive about this cycle and just hoping like hell things are finally going to go my way. I have been a bit tired the last day or so but nothing too bad otherwise. Not enjoying the daily Crinone gel. It leaves you feeling very bloated and a bit crampy but if it helps an embryo stick then I’m all for it! My husband is at home sick with the flu which is not ideal. I’m doing everything I can to avoid him and avoid his germs! I do not need to be getting sick at the moment! I am sleeping in the spare room and spraying the house with Glen20 to hopefully kill any potential germs. Hopefully he improves quickly and we can both enjoy a quiet weekend away next weekend. It’s weird to think it’s only 8 more days until we get our results and will know the outcome. While the 2 week wait usually goes very slowly I am finding it not too bad this time. Just taking it one day at a time!

Wish me luck for avoiding the flu and that this little embryo sticks inside me!

Transfer – Embryos on board!

So yesterday we were lucky enough to transfer 2 little embryos. One frozen one that we had from a couple of cycles back and one fresh one from this cycle. The frozen one was better quality and had 11 cells at transfer while the fresh one was a little behind at 4 cells. I was so pleased that the transfer went ahead and went smoothly. Last time it was one of the more uncomfortable experiences of my life while this time was much much better! The embryos were in and we were headed out the door all of 20mins after arriving. I felt happy, relieved and hopeful. While my lining was still not perfect thickness it was displaying the required ‘tri-laminar’ or 3 layered appearance which is better than we have had before.

So today marks my second day of chilling on the couch and doing my best to relax. It has been quite strange sitting at home watching netflix all day when I’m not sick? I don’t recall ever doing this and not being either sick, hungover or devastated after a failed cycle/bad news. It has been lovely enjoying lots of cuddles with my pup and just trying not too let my mind jump ahead to the possibilities of what the next few weeks may hold. I am still taking Progynova tablets twice a day, Progesterone injections every 3 days, changing estrogen patches every 4th day and Pregnyl injections today and next Tuesday.

I’m enjoying the quiet time and not feeling even remotely guilty for doing nothing. If it gives these little embryos an even slightly better chance of sticking then it’s all worth it! While I’m feeling very hopeful at this stage it is nice knowing we have an appointment booked for a second opinion if this cycle doesn’t work out. 13 more days to wait…

Egg pick up – when things don’t go to plan.

Yesterday was a tough day, tougher than I had thought it would be. We arrived at the hospital at 7am, checked in and everything was running smoothly. I spoke with our specialist prior to the procedure and I was feeling confident that things would go well. He seemed confident too and the main concern going into egg pick up was going to be how my lining was looking. Ideally we need it to be around 7.5-8mm for transfer and at my last scan it was only at 5.5mm. I went off to sleep and woke up about 40mins later.

My first question to the nurses was ‘how many eggs did they get?’. I remember asking a few times in my half awake state and them telling me our specialist would be in soon to tell me. I didn’t think this sounded right as he told me before hand he would have to rush off and likely wouldn’t see me post op. They wheeled me back down to the ward and still no answers. My husband arrived and I just had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good given I was still waiting. I heard the girl in the bed next to me happily telling her husband they got 23 eggs and I just felt sick. Eventually one of the nurses tracked down the report for me and told me that sadly only one little egg was collected. The same as our very first cycle nearly 12 months ago.

Somehow I managed to hold it together. I just wanted to get dressed and go home. When I got into the car a few tears slid down my cheeks but I think I felt numb more than anything. I was so disappointed that this meant another cycle would most likely be unsuccessful. Our chances of this being the last stim cycle just dropped dramatically. I made the decision in the car on the way home that it was time for a second opinion. I can’t keep pumping my body with drugs and hoping for the best if it is all really just experimentation. I wanted a fresh set of eyes to look at our case and see if there is anything we are missing. As soon as I walked in the door I made an appointment with likely Melbourne’s most highly rated fertility specialist. Everyone says if anyone can get you pregnant it’s her so I figured lets give that a try. It was a month before they had availability but that gives us time to work through what might be left of this current cycle but have our next step ready and in place.

My specialist called in the afternoon to confirm that yes my lining was still too thin and I would need to add in some more medications to help improve it before transfer. This now means daily Crinone – morning and night, daily Progynova – morning and night + estrogen patches – to be changed every 4 days and Progesterone in Oil injections – every 3rd day. I just have to hope like hell this all works and helps our little embryos implant.

I got the good news this morning that our one egg from yesterday has fertilized and turned into an embryo. We have to hope like crazy that it keeps dividing over the next few days and makes it to day 3 for a transfer. We have also organised to thaw our one frozen embryo from 2 cycles back and hopefully at least one of them will be strong enough for transfer. It’s all just a waiting game from here. As crappy as these results are I’m still feeling hopeful that it only takes one good embryo for us to achieve a pregnancy.

Trying to stay as relaxed as I can between now and transfer day and hope that not only my lining improves but also we have an embryo or 2 to transfer. Going to need all the baby dust I can get!

Day 12. Feeling the effects.

Day 12 has rolled around and I’m feeling pretty tired and bloated. Otherwise I can’t complain. Injections have all been pretty straight forward and no complications with anything. Feeling a bit nauseous at times but finding that a few slices of ginger in hot water is doing the trick to keep that at bay.

I have a few big days ahead of me in regards to work and appointments and a couple of birthdays so trying to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m looking forward to Saturday night when I can relax and not have any more rushing around to do. Assuming all goes well at the scan tomorrow then Egg pick up will be booked for Monday morning. I hope this is the case just so I can move forward to the next step. I’m not frustrated, or sad, or angry, just a bit tired. Still hoping like hell this is the lucky one for us and we don’t have to do this again but still a bit scared that it will be negative again.

I was given a gift by one of my patients at work yesterday which knocked me a bit for six. She is a gorgeous elderly lady who loves knitting and crocheting who gifted me a beautiful blanket and booties for ‘when we have babies one day’. It was so kind of her and yet I felt so scared that I will have to give them away to someone else announcing a pregnancy rather than keep them for ourselves. For now I have put them in the back of the cupboard in our spare room and I hope the need for them comes sooner rather than later. Holding them and imagining our baby wrapped in the blanket was a bit much and bought a tear to my eye. I can only hope she is some kind of psychic and knows whats around the corner for us.

Hoping for good results at the scan tomorrow. Hopefully our little follicles have continued to grow and but I am a little nervous about how thick my lining will be given that has been a real problem in the past. Fingers crossed for me that its all heading in the right direction.

Coming good.

So it has now been about 2 and a half weeks since the news our cycle had failed. I’ll be honest that it has been a really hard time and I have struggled more this time around than previous failed cycles. I think the longer this whole process goes on the tougher it is mentally and emotionally. You can cope with anything difficult for a short period of time but when the difficult stuff keeps dragging out and there is no end in sight it’s a real battle.

In the last few weeks I have really battled with my emotions. While feeling physically OK and thankful to not be taking buckets of drugs every day I have struggled more mentally than I have before. I had a period of a few days where I felt completely hopeless and like a total failure. I felt like there was nothing I could do right and that my body was letting me down. I felt so angry at the world and all the happy people going about their life complaining about simple little things when I had real issues going on. I was angry that there is no simple solution to our problem and no magic way to make me pregnant. I just wanted to go to bed and wake up when this period of our lives is over.

I was not a nice person to be around and I feel sorry for my poor husband. He has been amazing through the whole process but I resented the fact that he didn’t have to take all the horrible medications, endure the painful procedures and then feel like a failure at the end of it. I resented the fact that his body is working the way it should and yet mine isn’t. I also felt guilty and like I am letting him down. If he was married to anyone else he would already be a Dad and I feel like I’m holding him back.

I’ve learnt that a part of this process is feeling shitty sometimes. As long as the shitty feelings pass and you can be honest with those closest to you about how you are feeling then the days will get better. I am still sad and I am still disappointed. You can’t just make those feelings go away when you have invested so much energy and hope into something and then it doesn’t work. I have sat down and spent many hours talking and crying with both my Mum and my husband and I am feeling much better. I have learnt that you can’t just keep pretending you are OK and you need to let the emotions out. It’s not good to keep it all bottled up inside.

For the next few weeks I am trying to keep myself busy with re-decorating our bedroom at home and I am excited to see it coming together. We then have a 2 week holiday in the sunshine booked in 4 weeks time and I hope by the end of that I will be ready to take on another cycle. We are seeing our specialist next week to discuss the next step so we can be ready when we return from our holiday. So at this point in time I am OK. I’m not great, but I am in a much better place than I was a week ago. I have amazing support around me and I just need to open myself up to it. This blog has been my outlet at times but that’s not always enough. A good hug from your significant other as you cry into their shoulder is sometimes the best medicine. Oh, and chocolate. Chocolate is always a good idea.

A shout out to the loved ones of an infertile woman.

The last week has been hard. Really hard. Hard to stay motivated and positive. Hard to get through each day at work. Hard to pick myself back up again after another failed cycle. But it has also been very hard on those around me. I dare say I have not been easy to live with and I have struggled to keep my emotions in check around those that I care about the most.

I work in a job where I am face to face, one on one with patients all day. I am expected to be happy, helpful and on the ball to help people solve their foot problems. That is hard work having that expectation at the best of times. It becomes a whole lot harder to stay positive and happy when you are feeling terrible and like a failure. When you just want to burst into tears and yell that life is not fair. When you have to listen to people complaining about trivial little things in their life, like having to fly economy to Europe, like its the worst thing that could happen to them. When inside you are screaming ‘FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS PEOPLE!’, try battling IVF!

I have become very good a putting on my ‘happy facade’ at work and ‘soldiering on’. Pretending everything is ok and that life is great. The difficult thing about this is it takes up a huge amount of energy, which is not sustainable all the time. It means when I come home I am likely to crack and the tears start running down my face when I walk in the door. It means I snap at my husband even though he has been amazing and I am short with my parents when they are only trying to help. Yesterday I sat on a friends couch and cried my eyes out at how terrible I feel and the unfairness of our situation when my beautiful friend would so love to just have a supportive husband (she’s single) let alone be ready to have a baby.

So this short post is dedicated to those who are the unwavering support to someone going through infertility and IVF. It’s a rough road for them too. I know I have been a terrible wife, daughter and friend over the last few months and I feel bad that these people deserve the best of me, not the worst of me. I am so lucky to have them in my life and things would be so much harder if it wasn’t for them. So to those supporting someone through this process – you are loved and you are very much appreciated. We may not have the energy or the head space to show it but we still care about you so much. Hopefully when our turn comes to get off the roller coaster you will get your wife, daughter and friend back, plus a little bonus in the form of a child who will love you as unconditionally as their mum does.

 

And just like that, its all over again.

So I started doing HPTs (home pregnancy tests) last Wednesday, the day after my last Pregnyl shot, so that I could track how long it took for the HCG to leave my body. While the good news is I now know it takes exactly 5 days to be gone, I also know this cycle has failed. If I were in fact pregnant it should have started showing on a HPT by Saturday or Sunday. By this morning, still nothing. I knew in my gut it wasn’t going to work but that small piece of you can’t help hoping you are wrong.

I rang the nurses at my clinic this morning to ask if I could do the blood test earlier and they said that was fine. At least I can get confirmation sooner so I can stop taking meds and start feeling like myself again. I should get the results tomorrow morning but I know exactly what it’s going to say.

To say I’m shattered is an understatement. I was really sad yesterday, knowing it was all over, but I think I still managed to hold it together reasonably well. Today is a different story though. Today I woke up angry. Angry of the unfairness of this whole situation that everyone seems to be announcing pregnancies and having babies around me. Angry that we are still stuck on this stupid roller coaster of investing time and money and experiencing pain and heartache and still not being any closer to our dreams. Today I am also angry with my husband for wanting me to take a break. I understand where he is coming from and I know taking a break seems like a good idea but for me it just feels like I’m getting further away from being a mum. At least if I am doing IVF I feel like I am doing something to help our situation. Sitting back and waiting is not going to get me pregnant.

Mentally he thinks the break will be good for me to take my mind off it and I understand he probably needs a break from the monster that his wife turns into during IVF. For me though, there is no switching off. There is no just ‘not thinking about it’ for a little while. I have constant daily reminders of the lack of child in my belly and my life. Waiting only sounds even harder. It’s like delaying the inevitable, I don’t really see the point.

I am getting good at putting on a mask and pretending I’m fine and yet inside I just want to scream at the world and for someone to ‘fix me’ so I can get pregnant. I feel like my body has let me down and that I’m letting my husband down. I feel like life keeps playing cruel tricks on me and I just want to go to bed and wake up when this period of my life is over. I’m sick of the worry, of the feeling like crap, of the daily injections and forever popping pills. I just want to be a normal person who just ‘gets pregnant’ and can then move onto the next stage of life.

Nearly 2 years of this battle and my patience is wearing thin. I’m done with waiting to be a parent. I just want it to happen already.

I’m hoping that little rant will make me feel a bit better. Sometimes getting the words on a page rather than stuck in my head is the best thing of all. There is nothing anyone can say or do that will change how I feel at the moment, but I just have to trust this feeling won’t last.

I have made an appointment to see my specialist in 3 weeks time with the hope of planning our next step. Whether that be trying sooner or later I don’t know but I at least want to plan the cycle. There is no way I’m ready to give up on this dream yet. I have fought too hard already to not have it become a reality.

 

7 days post 3 day transfer.

So I had assumed I would update this straight after the transfer but given a less than ideal scenario I didn’t really want to think about it for a bit.

I got a call the morning of the transfer to let me know that of the 4 eggs we had on pick up day, 3 of them fertilized but then only 2 made it to day 3. Unfortunately one of the embryos had ‘too much DNA’ and was not deemed viable. Of the two remaining one was an 8 cell embryo – looking great for day 3 and the other was a 4 cell embryo, a little slower but still ok. The 4 cell embryo was exhibiting ‘divots’ which means it was likely to split to 8 cells soon.

The decision was made to transfer both of our little embryos and keep our other one from our last cycle frozen at this stage. I went to an acupuncture session in the morning to make my uterus as receptive as possible and crossed my fingers as I headed in to the clinic. My husband met me there and given how the transfer panned out I was so grateful to have him holding my hand. Unfortunately my usual fertility specialist was in surgery that day so the head of the clinic offered to step in and do the transfer for us. He was very kind throughout the whole procedure but it was still incredibly painful and awful.

So turns out when they tried to do the transfer my cervix decided it didn’t want to dilate. Normally it is no problem to insert the small tube containing the embryo and ‘squirt’ them into the uterus. Once again my body fell into the 1% of difficult cases and they basically had to shove the tube up my cervix to get the embryos in the place. It was incredibly uncomfortable and while I tried so hard to stay calm I really just wanted it to be over. My husband ended up with rather crushed fingers but I’m so glad he was there for support. Thankfully they embryos finally made it into my uterus and I could head off for my second acupuncture session for the day.

As soon as I got back into the privacy of my car the tears started flowing. It was just such a horrible experience even though I know the doctor was doing everything he could to be as gentle as possible. I couldn’t even be excited about the possibility of being pregnant when all I felt was pain and sadness that this had to be so bad. I cried again when I got to the acupuncturist’s clinic and she asked me how it went. I’m just generally sick of things being harder than they have to. Not only having to do IVF in the first place but that my body never seems to respond the way we expect.

At least I was able to have a couple of very quiet days with a long weekend away after that and I’m feeling much better about things. Still not super positive in regards to the results but there is nothing else I can do at this point other than wait. I have done two 1500 Pregnyl shots since the transfer and I am continuing with progesterone in oil injections every 3rd day, plus 8mg of progynova each day and 2x 8% Crinone gel suppositories too. I did my first home pregnancy test for this cycle this morning and it was positive however this will still be the Pregnyl at this stage. I figure if I test every day I can see how long it take for the Pregnyl to leave my body so by mid to late next week I should know if the tests are accurate or not.

7 more days until blood test day and will know for sure if our lives are due to change for the better or if this roller coaster of IVF treatments continues. Keeping everything crossed but not feeling confident at this stage.

Egg Pick Up #3.

Yesterday was our 3rd Egg Pick Up and it went as well as we could have hoped. 4 little eggs which is the most we have ever got and I got the call this morning to say 3 of them had fertilized over night which was great news. At this stage we are heading for a 3 day transfer on Thursday, hoping they are good enough quality to make it that far.

I was a little nervous before the procedure yesterday which I think is only normal but overall it was at least nice to know what to expect. Everything went smoothly and while I felt a bit ‘spacey’ for most of the day and was a bit sore, really nothing to complain about. I managed to watch and entire season of Sex and the City which was actually fitting given it was the episodes where Charlotte is going through IVF. The nurse who looked after me in recovery said she had a positive feeling that she wouldn’t be seeing me again so I hope that’s a good omen.

Today I had to start the horrible Crinone pessaries + 2x Prognova tablets morning and night + the scary Progesterone in Oil injections. I’m not exactly thrilled to be back on them but I’m will to do whatever it takes to get our little miracle. This weekend is another long weekend and we are heading to Phillip Island for some RnR with lots of relaxing time reading and walking on the beach. I’m hoping that’s exactly what this little embryo need to stick (assuming transfer goes ahead on Thursday).

Not too much more to report at this stage other than feeling ‘cautiously hopeful’. Keep everything crossed for me!!!