IVF Diary Vol 2: 2-8 Feb 2016

February 8, 2016February 8, 20165 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Progesterone in Oil 1ml Intra-muscular injection, vivelle dot estrogen patches 0.1mg x2. I have failed to pierce the skin myself yet, I am so close, but I have managed to do everything else, including doing the actual injecting part…I had a couple of mis-haps, including one evening as I removed the needle, blood gushed from the injection site. The blood poured down my leg and I just managed to catch it before it landed on the nice white hotel towels. I have no idea why it happened, I guess it’s going to happen once in a while. The injection site was sore for a couple of days after that 😦

I had to put a plaster (aka band-aid) on this one after the blood gushed from this injection site! Minions to the rescue!

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil

What are my symptoms? I have had a few sharp pains and cramps here and there. All good signs I guess. I have also managed to catch a cold and sore throat. WHYYYYYYYYY??!!?!! Now the wisdom of the internet says this is an early pregnancy symptom. Well, it is the runny nose/cold part which is the symptom that can be explained by the extra estrogen caused by the pregnancy, apparently that creates a stuffy nose. Well, I have a sore throat and that can’t really be explained by that theory. Some argue that your immune system drops after implantation. Well in my case, this cold was inevitable because it was going around at work. I was the last person to catch it because it was going around mostly when I was out of office for the stimulation/egg retrieval part of the IVF. There were some remnants of the cold hanging around the office when I returned. It was bound to happen. Also, this happened to me the exact same time last year during my second IUI, excitedly thinking it was an early pregnancy symptom, I was wrong. SO I am not taking this cold as a sign of anything except for being a pain in the butt.

The night sweats. It’s gross and I hate it.

The cats have been on my lap again (two nights in a row)…I have already written about this (Can your cat tell if you are pregnant before you do) and whether it could be an early pregnancy sign. I think they can detect a change in something, whether it is pregnancy or just a change in your body temperature, I don’t know. One thing I do know, they can’t tell if the pregnancy is going to stick around or not 😦

Sushi sitting on my lap and tolerating Diesel laying next to her, it’s not a common sight

Having said all that, today I do feel a little nauseous and I couldn’t bare to eat my chicken sandwich. So who knows? May be I am pregnant! I don’t know because I haven’t tested yet!!! Yup, today I am 9DP5DT (9 Days Past 5 Day Transfer) and I haven’t pee-ed on a stick yet. I am impressed with myself! I’d like to thank a very lovely lady who I met at my local Resolve Support Group who is IVF cycling with me…she encouraged me not to do the test it out thing, and to wait it out with her!! Last time around I tested 12DP3DT (i.e. what would be tomorrow, when my period would ordinarily be due). But this time I am not testing until the evening before my Beta test (which is scheduled for Friday).

How do I feel today? You may have noticed my absence for the past week. Well I took my ‘Must keep busy during the 2 week wait’ a little too literally! Although I have been hampered a little bit as a result of work. Last week I got home in the evenings with my brain frazzled – I wasn’t doing overly long hours, just lots of hard thinking and writing. The thought of updating my blog was too much for my poor brain, so I did mindless (mindful) things such as knitting, TV watching and colouring in. I even taught Chris how to knit 🙂

My IVF knitting project 2/3 complete!

Chris learning how to knit!

We also went away on a mini road trip/city break to Charlotte, North Carolina to see the Charlotte Hornets v Washington Wizards (Basketball). My first NBA game, it was my birthday present from back in December. I had a fantastic time, I really enjoyed the experience and appreciate the very talented athletes. I think it might be my favourite American sport so far! Along the road trip we visited some random places, like a Lemur conservation, the world’s biggest chest of drawers, and a mountain that was only 350ft tall (it was a slightly misleading name of a state park!!!!). Planning a city break in this 2 week wait was perfect! (Except for the catching a cold part).

Our first NBA game!

The World’s Largest Chest of Drawers – It’s in a town called High Point in North Carolina!

Any results? Not much longer to go now!

What’s next? Beta HcG test will be 4 days from now :-s

Weight. NSTR.

Waist. NSTR.

Boobs. So, so sore and sensitive!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal) and CoQ10 200mg gummies daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

The sugar monster

November 10, 2015November 10, 201513 Comments

Hello, my name is Dani and I am a sugar addict. Phew. Glad I got that out into the open now :-s

After reading ‘It starts with the egg’ by Rebecca Fett I decided to give up sugar about 2 months prior our 1^st IVF cycle.

Actually what I really gave up was simple/refined carbohydrates. The science behind it all is rather compelling so I thought I’d give it a go. It turns out that women who follow a diet of low-glycemic/slow carbohydrates have a much lower rate of ovulatory infertility. Research shows that high blood sugar and insulin levels significantly decrease egg quality. This in turn reduces the proportion of embryos that can successfully implant in the uterus, reduces IVF success rates, and increases the risk of early pregnancy loss. As we have no clue what causes my infertility, I thought it has got to be worth a shot.

Well fat lot of good that did me! Although, as it was my first time doing both the diet and the IVF, it is difficult to know what would have happened had I not followed the diet. I mean, it was the first time I ever saw two pink lines, so there was definitely something that helped!! Whether it was the IVF or the diet we will never really know. I’m not willing to experiment.

Chris helped me and we made some general food choice changes. We swapped out white rice and pasta with the brown and black stuff. We bought quinoa, lentils and whole wheat cous-cous….all slow release carbohydrates. Our portions also became smaller because we got fuller quicker. I bought a bread machine and we made our own whole wheat breads. We got rid of the chocolate, cookies and other bads and replaced them with nuts, fruits and plain yoghurt.

After the news of our unviable pregnancy the comfort food came out and the diet went out of the window. At first, everything was too sweet and I couldn’t eat much of it! But it soon became easy to eat the bads, and we treated ourselves to whatever we liked.

Today we are back onto the path of a low glycemic diet and exercise. I got a call from my nurse co-ordinator who went through some dates with me for our second round of IVF and we are looking at starting Birth Control Pills around my Birthday (yey! Happy Birthday Me! Have a BCP!!!), starting stimulation injections around about 7th Jan 2016. So that is 2 months of healthy eating (minus Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays).

At the weekend we bought a new book called ‘the sugar free kitchen’ and we have stocked up the cupboards with the good stuff.

Does it seem ironic that there is ice cream on the front cover of this ‘sugar-free’ cook book??!

Our menu for the week looks like this:

Breakfast:

Toasted oats cereal with banana and milk

Lunches:

Chicken salad (no change this is what we usually eat, we just vary the meat and vegetables week to week)

Snacks:

carrots, celery, pistachios, wholewheat cracker bread with butter

Dinners:

Avocado, bacon and chile frittata with peas
Quinoa, squash and pine nut salad
Flat bread pizzas with garlic zucchini ribbons and salad
Squash and chorizo quiche
Italian meat sauce with whole wheat pasta

Homemade Treats:

Raspberry and mascarpone ice cream, frozen yoghurt cups, Ginger and oat no-bake cookies.

Quinoa, squash and pine nut warm salad. Actually pretty darn tasty and easy to make.

We are generally healthy eaters and cook all our own food from scratch anyway, but the biggest change is the treats. I get the sugar-low cravings in the mid-mornings and after coming home from work….this is when I typically snack and eat a lot of sugary things. So for the next week or so my body will hate me as I come off my sugar high. Hopefully it won’t be quite as bad as last time :-s

We are also getting back onto the exercise. I was going to be playing dodgeball this winter season, but the league was cancelled. And our local yoga centre shut down. So we have to motivate our butts to get moving. Chris is still recovering from his sprained ankle earlier in the year so we can’t do anything too energetic like insanity….but we will do some P90X again. We won’t follow the programme religiously, but enough to get a bit fitter than we currently are. So, here we go!

Bodies………………. ready??!?!?! Three….two……one…….*Whistle blows*

(If you ever watched the gladiators you should shout that sentence out loud in a Scottish referee type accent, if you have never watched the gladiators, I am sorry for my randomness but here is a video to help explain it)

10 days of eughhh

September 18, 20158 Comments

It’s been 10 days since I started to miscarry and I am just exhausted from all the emotions and the physical madness that is going on with my body.

My 7 day post-methotrexate injection hCG blood test went very well today. My levels have almost exactly halved since monday, from 2696 to 1358, and dropped 58% overall since the injection was administered. This bodes well for successful treatment. I am even allowed to travel to Stockholm – as long as I am not having any pain. I am not going to hide it, I have been suffering with pain for past two evenings now (weird how it is mostly in the evening). Last night I struggled to sleep because of it. The 500mg extra strength acetaminophen doesn’t seem to cut the mustard, but the acetaminophen with codeine #3 I was prescribed for pain relief after my egg retrieval seems to work a bit better.

My favourite nurse drew my blood today, she asked how I was doing. I just replied ‘eughhh’. She understood and nothing more was said.

Here are two photos of my cat Diesel….sympathising with my ‘eughhh’ feeling. Chris managed to take these beauties yesterday evening in an impromptu photo shoot…..

Chris captured Diesel in beautiful way yesterday evening

What would we do without our fur babies to keep us sane?

How to get the most out of your doctor

August 23, 2015August 23, 201512 Comments

It took me about 24hrs after it was confirmed that I am pregnant to realise I do not know how to be pregnant. This might seem very weird considering we have been talking about this moment for more than two years now. Once we started trying to conceive I just of buried my head in the sand. I didn’t want to jinx our chances by buying a book about it, and I started to avoid all pregnancy related websites and apps after 6 months of failing to succeed in our quest to make a baby. I know the basics, like smoking is a big no-no, drugs are dangerous, avoid raw meat and reduce caffeine, but really, that is the limits of my knowledge. So yesterday we went to the book store and bought two books on pregnancy. One was the standard text book “Great expectations: Your all in one resource for pregnancy”, and the second was “Expecting Better”, beautifully demonstrated in this picture by Sushi:

Sushi, my book keeper

This second book interested me because I have always wondered whether Japanese women stop eating sushi, or French women stop eating brie when they are pregnant. Really? I don’t think so. I hope that this book will enlighten me to what the conventional wisdom really means. But when I started reading the first chapter I didn’t need to go much further with it to be completely satisfied with my purchase. Why? Well the author, Emily Oster, is not so different from me, she was not happy with what her doctor was telling her. I realised that my experience with my fertility clinic’s doctors and the feeling I had that there was a poor lack of communication. All of this was because I was not asking the right questions. I didn’t know I needed to ask them. And this is silly because all along I had the key questions in the back of my mind…I use them everyday at work!!!

In my job I help leaders make decisions every day…I do this by presenting the evidence, the facts – for and against a decision – I do some analysis on the data that supports the decision, I try to be unbiased and objective in my analysis, and then I present a recommendation to the leader on the best course of action. The leader doesn’t always go with my recommendation, but I have presented them with the facts and figures to make their own mind up. Sometimes I feel a bit hurt, but then I remember, I am not the one taking the risk. So when it comes to our healthcare and doctors, WE are the decision makers. We need to be presented with the arguments for and against, and be told what the supporting evidence is. WE are unique in many different ways and the decisions we make will be unique, blanket guidelines are not always appropriate for everyone.

I think a good example of this is when we were told we should do ‘ICSI’ because of our unexplained infertility. We didn’t ask the questions: What are the pros of ICSI? What are the cons of ICSI? What are the improved success rates with people like us? (i.e. what’s the supporting evidence/data?) We were not armed to make a decision, we just went with what the doctor said, and in the back of my mind I felt like I had not been given a chance to make a decision. I did actually do a lot of this research myself, but it would have been better if my doctor would have told me – after all I am not the medical professional, I just have the fortunate ability to interpret statistics from studies and experiments. So although I was finally happy with the decision to do ICSI after my research, something inside me was niggling about our doctor’s communication.

Another example is when it came to our embryo transfer. We were told that it is the standard practice at the clinic to transfer 2 embryos on day 3, unless there were over 6 fertilised embryos then maybe we would be a candidate for waiting to Day 5 to transfer 2 blastocysts. We did not ask the questions: what are the pros of us waiting to Day 5? What are the cons of us waiting to Day 5? What are our personal chance of success with 4 fertilised embryos compared to if we had had 6? (i.e. what’s the supporting evidence/data?). Again, I did a lot of this research myself.

I could go on with other opportunities throughout our infertility treatment where I could have asked these three simple questions that would have revealed the knowledge I needed to feel like I was in control of making a decision. We rely on doctors to make the decisions for us…and most of the time I am happy with that fact, but there were times that I felt like we should hold that responsibility for a decision. When it comes to my pregnancy I want to be able to ask these questions to my doctors and nurses so I can take the responsibility for making some of the big decisions such as prenatal testing or birthing plans.

Emily Oster suggests reading the book “Our medical mind: How to decide what is right for you” by Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband. I think I might try it, and I’ll let you know how it goes. Has anyone read this one?

In the meantime my friends, next time you are in a consult with your doctor, remember these three simple questions to help you make the best decision, for you, and get the most out of your doctor….

What are the pros (for me)?
What are the cons (for me)?
What is the evidence/what are the chances (for me in particular)?

The Cat’s Meow: Helping us through our infertility journey

June 9, 201513 Comments

I’m not sure what I would do without my two cats – Sushi and Diesel. These two feline friends have helped us along our journey through infertility. How? Well there are three main ways….

1. Stroking a cat has been scientifically proven to be therapeutic during stressful times. Although Diesel, our ‘terror-quisitive’ cat runs away if you were to approach him for strokes, but he will happily to come to you for strokes. Many strokes. In any shape or form. Very therapeutic. For both human and cat alike!

2. Cats like to help you read important books like “The IVF patient’ guide to IVF” or “It starts with the egg”. They want to make sure they are helping you every step of the way…

3. We can learn a thing or two from cats. For example, they help us to learn how to just chill out and take it easy. When things don’t go our way or we get a bit stressed, take a leaf from their book. Look – it’s easy!!! Just stretch, lay back and relax.

Now this is how you chill out. Just stretch, lay back and relax!

Anything else I’ve missed?? How do your pets help you on your pudding club journey?

11 DPIUI and there is a cat on my lap

April 19, 20156 Comments

Sushi my cat is not much of a snuggle cat with me, it’s been about a month since she last snuggled with me. And here she is…lying on my lap.

Although I wasn’t pregnant last month and I wrote about cats knowing you are pregnant, there is definitely something strange about her behaviour. Maybe my body temp is just generally higher at this time of the month, but I have to say it there is something weird going on here!

Can your cat tell if you are pregnant before you do?

March 27, 2015March 29, 20157 Comments

Several months ago I googled ‘can cats tell if you are pregnant?’. My female 3 year old cat, Sushi, was being overly affectionate just around the time I was coming close to pregnancy testing time. It turned out I wasn’t pregnant that month, so I kind of forgot about it and didn’t think much more of it. But two nights ago I had BOTH of my cats on my bed snuggling up to me. This is very unusual because Diesel, my male 9 month old kitten, tends to push Sushi off the bed as soon as he realises she is on the bed with me. So as it is close to pregnancy testing time again, I wondered about this question again and decided to research a bit more into it. So what did I discover? Can cats tell if you are pregnant?

The Research is thin. It is evident that cats can detect smells and vapours that are invisible to humans, after all they have 10 to 20 times more sensory receptors in their noses than humans (but not quite as many as dogs, who are far superior in this respect). But I have yet to find any evidence that associates a cat’s ability to detect pregnancy – I could not find anything that even looks vaguely scientific. I even tried google scholar, but found little of significance. There is, however, a lot of discussion online about the subject, and is well discussed in forums and pregnancy related websites, the evidence is purely anecdotal.

Cats detecting cancer. So what can cats sniff out? Apparently, cats can detect cancer. It turns out that there has been some research into understanding dogs’ talents in sniffing out cancer, but evidence for cats’ ability to sniff out cancer is again, anecdotal. This is mostly because you can train a dog, but it’s a lot harder to train a cat! So research can be difficult to undertake with cats in this respect. However, there are stories about cats who have detected cancer before the owner even knew about it. For example, Fidge the cat constantly lay on her owner’s right breast for two weeks. When her owner went to the doctor, they found a pea sized lump in her breast, which may have killed her if it had not been for Fidge.

Amazing stories of heroic cats using their nose. On my scavange for evidence I came across some other lovely stories of cats who have saved their owner’s lives with the use of their ‘spidey senses noses’.

Oscar. In time, staff at the nursing home began to rely on Oscar as an “early warning system” announcing to those present that it was time to notify family and increase hospice services for those close to death (More about Oscar here).

Basil. As gas fumes leaked from the kitchen stove top, Basil began to swat his owner’s face as she lay in bed, trying to get her to get up and recognise the problem. After an hour of his persistent behaviour, Basil’s nose saved the day.

Tee Cee. This cat can detect when his owner is about to have an epileptic seizure attack. Tee Cee sits next to his owner and stares at his face, indicating an episode is about to occur, allowing him and his partner to prepare for the attack in time.

So, my dear cats – are you clever enough to detect pregnancy before my pee stick does? Just a couple more days to find out for sure…Watch this space!

Diesel – the ‘Terrorquisitive kittie’

Sushi AKA ‘lady muck’

Half way through the two week wait and feeling low…

February 23, 2015March 2, 20152 Comments

So this is it…the half way point in the 2 week wait (AKA the 2WW). I am feeling a little low. It is probably as a result of a mix of things – first of all, being stuck inside all weekend behind a computer, second of all, I am impatient being in the middle of the 2WW, thirdly I am fed up with the progesterone suppositories leaking everywhere. Is there a chance that my feelings are related to hormones and medications? Maybe, I can’t tell.

Diesel don’t look so worried, it’s gonna be OK

My lowness hasn’t been helped that I had two course projects due this evening. Both were programming assignments….the first project I developed a web app that uses the CDC’s most recent data on Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Here is some info on it). I was unable to fully deploy the app online before the deadline. It worked perfectly yesterday on my computer and all day today I have bee trying to figure out why it won’t go live. Sooooooo frustrating. Hopefully my graders will see my code and be generous.

My second project was a little dull, statistics and investigating relationships in cars between Miles Per Gallon and transmission types (amongst other things). I completed my report, but in the last hour before the deadline I could not get it to convert to a pdf file. Such a simple task. I am gutted. I will have to re-take this module as it counts for 60% of the grade.

I will admit that I have screamed and cried at my computer several times this weekend. I am not very good at not being in control of it!

Our cats, Sushi and Diesel, have been overly affectionate the last couple of days. I am sure they can sense when we are down or ill.

Next week is a new week, no more snow, warmer temperatures, back to some gentle exercise, and the end of the week we are having friends over to watch rugby, eat some bad foods, and play some board games. Something to look forward to. With all that fun it will then be time to take the test. Which incidentally, will be the same day as our 3 year wedding anniversary – it would be a good present to ourselves if we got the big fat positive. Monday Monday!!!