THAT moment

July 22, 201620 Comments

The Pudding Club Diary @ 16w3d

Chris and I had THAT moment last night. THAT moment when you realise you have the summit in sight, when the pain, tears and anxiety were ALL worth it. And we haven’t even met our little one yet.

As I was getting undressed for bed I pointed out my ‘bump’ and it’s definition. Chris went to put his hands to it. I let him…which is not a usual occurrence because if you are a follower you will know my personal issues with my stomach and understand that I still struggle with this. But I also know I have to let Chris feel the little one too. The day before, I lay in bed before work just staring at my naked tummy for about 20 minutes watching little Rocky squirming around in there. I still haven’t really felt Rocky move, but I definitely have seen him/her moving in the past week or so. That evening as Chris reached out to my tummy – he exclaimed…”I can feel Rocky!!”. We looked at each other, and we were both teary eyed in that moment. It was a moving moment. Silently we knew what this meant. It was real. It wasn’t on some computer screen…it was physically real, in our hands. Our baby is alive and wriggling.

So amazing 🙂

PC Diary: A new home, a new start

July 22, 2016July 22, 201619 Comments

The Pudding Club Diary @ 16w0d

I can’t believe it has been two and a half weeks since my last diary entry. Life has been chaotic as I alluded to in my last PC entry! We bought our house….THREE AND A HALF TIMES over!!! What does that mean? It means that we closed/completed not just once, twice, but three times! We are THAT couple – the one where the realtor/settlement people say to other buyers – well, there was this one time when we did this process three times, so count yourself lucky! None of it was our fault, but mostly put down to an inept realtor on the seller’s side.

The house we had bought was known as a ‘short sale’…which makes things a little different to buying a house normally. A short sale is a house that if sold is unlikely to cover all the debts owed on that house because it is in negative equity, so we had to deal with the bank to negotiate everything. There is little room for negotiating and the house is typically sold ‘as is’. This house had been on the market for almost a year by the time we came to close. It hadn’t been lived in for at least 6 months. It needed some tender loving care to say the least. But that didn’t put us off putting an offer in, even after the inspection came back with a whole bunch of issues:

Active Termites (creepy!)
Leaky roof
Broken toilet that kept self flushing
Rusted up sinks, taps and plugs that all needed replacing
Broken garbage disposal
Broken garage door that wouldn’t open/close
The whole house needed repainting – inside and out – the tenants had not matched the colour of the paint well so it looked like grafitti everywhere!
Outdated kitchen and bathrooms
A garden that had not been cared for and had fallen into disrepair, definitely not housing association approved!
Ants, ants and more ants
A spider/caterpillar graveyard (makes my skin crawl thinking about all the dead bugs there were in this house!!!)

But we could see past the imperfections and loved everything about the house we had been looking for…

A single family home (i.e. a detached house) with garden surrounding the house, back garden south facing
Beautiful hardwood floors (OK they needed a bit of love)
Three additional bonus reception rooms including a sun room, breakfast-diner and ‘play room’
A fourth bedroom (nursery!)
A double garage
A fireplace
Gas stove
Windows and light everywhere
A double height foyer
A ‘nook’ area over looking the foyer
A community pool, tennis courts, playing field and playground opposite our house.
The smallest house in a quiet, lovely family friendly neighbourhood, not far from any kind of amenity you could want in one place, at the edge of the city to escape into the countryside.

You probably think I am bragging….well I am a little bit! We simply love it. We are two lucky ducks and count our blessings.

We booked a day off work to sign the papers and get the keys to our dream home. After we signed the mountain load of papers, we said goodbye to our realtor and thanked everyone we were given the keys to our new house! Off we went to our new house….it was exciting! Our first home together that was all ours (except the whole mortgage debt thing, but you know what I mean).

Whoop whoop! All grown up now with our very own house!

We got to work right away in making all the home improvements we needed to complete before moving in. The next day we got a phone call from our realtor to say that we technically did not own the house yet and did not fully close because of an issue with the bank. Fortunately, our bank agreed to extend their offer because it was holiday weekend we had until after independence day to close again. Yup – we re-signed all those papers! In the meantime, we carried on fixing the house as we had booked all sorts of workers to get started on the house. We were a little bit unsure what would have happened if the house burned down or was struck by lightening because we didn’t own it, therefore we had no insurance. But, the settlement company or realtor didn’t seem to think it mattered much that we still were in the property.

We laughed and joked about re-signing, oh how we laughed! Afterwards, we celebrated again. Yey!!!! we own the house! Well so we thought….the next day Chris got the phone call saying we STILL didn’t close because the seller’s realtor had sent the documents to the wrong address. Because he messed up he agreed to pay the fee to lock us in to our mortgage interest rate again – a cool $770 – out of his own commission. Which ended up SAVING us $22 a month for thirty years because after BREXIT the mortgage rates went down. So it wasn’t so bad in the end.

This time we just laughed like insane people, because that is all that we could do! We resigned the paper work for a third time almost a week later than the original date. No phone calls….yey! we owned the house! Ummmm well kind of, the next week, we had to go and sign another document because the city had decided to change it’s policy for having actual original copies of a certain piece of paper before we could get the application for the deeds. But anyway….1.5 weeks later, we officially closed and owned the house!

In the mean time, we fixed the majority of the problems (well Chris did the handy work) and we painted 2.5 rooms ourselves before realising it would take us a month to finish the rest of the house and decided to pay a painter to do the rooms we needed to be done before the cats moved in! We also did a lot of packing and unpacking every evening after work. Then there was the unruly garden we needed to address ASAP before getting complaints from the neighbourhood housing association!

We tried to paint as much as we could, but in the end needed the hand of a professional painter!!!

Let’s just say that I am glad we didn’t do this thing when I was in my first trimester! It was exhausting as it was, I would not have been much use several weeks ago. We did not stop for two weeks. We had planned to do all this over a month, but because our rented house is a beach neighbourhood and we were cutting our contract early, the management company wanted us out of our house ASAP so they could re-rent it before the end of the summer. Turned out it was pretty easy to rent out and after a few viewings it was gone.

Finally, we moved into our dream house last weekend!

we said bye bye to our old house by the beach….

…but hello to our new house closer to the countryside!!!

We still have a lot of work to do around the house, and a few empty rooms that need furnishing, but we will get there. My mum is visiting next week so we will get her busy with some decorating and gardening 🙂

The whole move has been pretty stressful for our cats Sushi & Diesel, we have been slowly packing/unpacking for almost 2 months now. Sushi has shown us her distain for this process by frequently puking up hairballs in places like our beds, shoes, front door etc. We know this is her thing that shows she is stressed.

Are you done with this packing thing yet?

Then when they arrived in the new house they hid for two days under the sofa in the corner and barely ate/drank a thing. It was worrisome. But they have now got used to their new environment.

Where are you taking me crazy lady human? Sushi started drooling and panting with fear moments after this photo 😦

It was almost three years ago that when we were looking at houses to rent we considered rooms for a nursery, and even a room for an au pair. But that room we thought would be full of baby stayed empty for our whole tenure. It was kind of sad saying good bye to that empty room , with memories of the number of times I thought that this time would be the time we would have to re-arrange the furniture to fit a nursery in, that never came to fruition…

….but I am excited now to know that whatever happens, the room we have designated in our new house as a nursery WILL be a nursery.

A new home, a new start on a new journey.

So that is my excuse for being absent from my blog. I think it passes as being a valid one??!

The secret: marriage, infertility and infidelity

July 10, 2016July 10, 201635 Comments

I have a secret. But it’s not my secret to tell. I didn’t want to know this secret, but somehow I have ended up the keeper of this secret. Let’s just say this world is way too small for my liking.

Let’s start with marriage and infertility. Infertility puts a huge strain on any couple’s relationship, whether you are married or not, it’s makes you question everything about you and the way your partner are together. And sometimes your relationship is questioned through no fault of its own. Infertility does that to you. It tests your relationship in many ways that other couples could never understand. The burden of infertility on each of the couple is heavy and yet we are expected to support each other throughout the grueling journey. And yet each of us infertiles will experience the impact on our relationships in different ways, whether it is positive or negative. Our journeys are different, our relationships are different. But what I am 99% sure of, is that what is common, is that infertility WILL strain your relationship to the point of almost breakage.

When I typed into Google…”Infertility effects….” the top search entries that came up were:

Infertility effects on marriage
Infertility effects on family
Infertility psychological effects
Infertility side effects

That’s pretty damming (because google is always right of course).

I will do a separate blog post one day about my internet research into infertility and marriage someday, but for now, let’s just say….research shows that infertility does impact our relationships. (No shit Sherlock!!!).

But what about infertility and infidelity? It may be argued from an evolutionary view that a failure to produce offspring may cause the failure of a monogamous relationship and increase the likelihood for infidelity to occur. Well, I couldn’t find any research on this theory at all, despite it sounding like a pretty sound theory. But I did find research on Zebra finches which are animals that are socially monogamous. A failure for mummy bird to successfully hatch her eggs made zero difference to their monogamous relationship. Daddy bird did not cheat on her,or vice versa, she didn’t go looking for another mate. And apparently there is no convincing evidence to suggest that this is the case in any other monogamous species either.

So, I really thought that may be infertility could increase the chance for infidelity to occur in a marriage. Turns out I am just paranoid.

For me, Chris and I have definitely had a few moments where we just could not understand each other, we thought may be we were on different paths, may be our marriage was in jeopardy. But despite the rockiness of our emotional and physical relationship, I have never been tempted to cheat. In fact any attention from another man was definitely unwanted. No matter the times we argued. I would not have it in my heart to cheat on him. I feel like our relationship has solidified in crazy ways I cannot explain unless you have lived it. My relationship with Chris is phenomenally strong, I never want that to go away.

I can understand however for some that infidelity may be an escape. An escape from all the problems we face in our struggles to conceive what many do so easily and readily.

And so back to my secret. I have a friend who is going through infertility who has cheated. And none of the three parties involved know that I know. I don’t want to know. But I do. I feel so so sad about this situation. There is never a worse time to cheat on your partner. But I also understand escapism and that some relationships do just simply fail under the weight of infertility. So it is my secret to keep and not to tell. But it kills me at the same time.

What would you do?

Survivor’s Guilt

June 24, 201620 Comments

I have a broad understanding of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) I’ve read a lot about it…so much so that even my Instagram advertises about PTSD charities on my feed (weird).

this advert about PTSD came up on my Instagram feed

There is one thing that I suffer from and that is Survivor’s Guilt. This is when someone believes they have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event when others did not. In my case I have double the effect. Why? Because I survived a horrifying terrorist attack and second, I survived infertility…all within weeks of each other.

I did not know anyone personally who died in the Brussels terror attacks. But I saw people who were dead or dying being carried out on stretchers, left alone on the side of the road as I helplessly watched. At the time I wanted to help, but of course I couldn’t, I was (sensibly) being pushed further and further away from the airport. I have these images burned into my head of a man with his body broken, dusty, bloody, head with loose bandages wrapped around his head, face indistinguishable and arm hanging out, quietly moaning. All alone. But I was behind glass some 20 metres away watching this happen in front of my eyes as more as more people were stretchered out.

I get it. They have a system of triage, there were only so many first responders who were there in the first 20 minutes after the explosions. The cordon was set up to protect people. After all, there was a third bomb in there. We know tactics of terrorists are to create mass effect by targeting the first responders. But that boundary, the distance was so close, but so far. I heard people were saying – I’m a first aider…I’m a nurse…I can help. But they weren’t allowed to. I can’t get my head around those very short moments.

I feel guilty for surviving, for not being able to help. Sometimes my mind is heavy with these thoughts. This doesn’t outwardly appear to affect me overall. Well, I don’t think it does. But I do have some bad dreams (to be expected), not regularly, but perhaps it does affect my sleep. I wake up very early some days, I tend to put it down to my jet lag, but actually, it could be a symptom of PTSD. I don’t have problems falling asleep, and I’m not afraid to fall asleep, so I don’t feel like it is an issue.

Then there is my pregnancy. I am overjoyed we finally achieved our dream, we fought hard to get here! But along the way, I have made friends with some very lovely women who have struggled with infertility too. And the feelings I have are that of guilt. Guilt that I have left them behind. Similar to survivor’s guilt, and in some ways could be classified as such. Infertility is traumatic. I feel like I took the last life boat and rowed away from the desert island leaving you all behind in uncertain conditions. So some days I haven’t been able to open and read blog updates, Instagram is hard to scroll through.

For those of you who are reading this and now worrying about me (my mum probably!!!) It’s OK, I’m OK. I am sensitive to my levels of anxiety and sadness, and how that impacts my daily life…and I am OK. Writing this down is kind of a release to me, and re-reading my writing makes me see things more objectively. And that helps.

I found some words that are helpful (I think) on strategies to cope with survivor’s guilt:

“Rather than focus on the burden of guilt, remind yourself that you and your loved ones have been given a gift — the gift of your survival. Embrace your will to survive and fight the forces that challenge your way of being.”

Reading these words make me feel happy because deep down I know they are true, I just need to remind myself of this when I start to feel sad or guilty.

PC Diary: Heading out of the first trimester

June 21, 201622 Comments

The Pudding Club Diary @ 12w2d

I have been pretty bad at this – I have sooooo much running around in my head right now that I want to blog about but have been so darn tired or busy to type it out. I need some kind of Dictaphone equivalent to easily extract my thoughts from my head!

Another week on work travels – I am back in beautiful Bavaria, Germany as I write! My third transatlantic trip in my first trimester. And they are not kidding, travelling in the first trimester sucks a lot. However, this trip has so far been easier than the previous two, I’m starting to feel a little less nauseous now. Whoop whoop, can’t complain about that!!! (But don’t show me a salad leaf just yet!)

The beautiful view of Bavaria from my hotel room!

I was worried that I might not be able to fit into my work trousers this week whilst in Germany so I decided before I left to go and buy some new maternity work trousers – just in case (I had already popped a button on one pair of my trousers!) The elastic band trick doesn’t work with most of my work trousers because they have metal sliders rather than buttons. So off we went hunting for some cheap super stretchy clothes! I knew there was one dedicated maternity clothes store in town, but I had heard that some chains such as Target, Kohls and Old Navy did maternity clothes so I thought I’d try those stores first. But everything in those stores were too casual or too summery and so I ended up in the dedicated maternity store anyway.

In the maternity clothes store I bumped into a friend who I didn’t know was pregnant (but had suspected based off a group text message and putting 2+2 together) and so it was just confirmed by her simple being there! It was a really lovely surprise because she had been told by her doc years ago she may have problems conceiving, so I am really pleased for them because that wasn’t the case in the end!! Whoop whoop – screw you infertility!! AND we are both due within a week of each other! CRAZY!

Anyway, back to the clothes buying…I went a bit overboard and finally thought what the hell, as I am here I might as well buy it. My reluctance to buy any maternity clothes was based on a fear of losing Rocky. I overcame that reluctance, and it felt really good to be finally in acceptance of this pregnancy.

A nice little haul of maternity clothes 🙂

And so with this acceptance it was time to do my first bump picture. I know that I don’t look pregnant to the casual passer by. I look like I ate a lot of pies! But seeing the bump for real in this photo – I couldn’t believe it, there are definitely outward signs now of a little baby growing in there!

Week 12 bump picture

When I saw the doctor at 10 weeks she said to stick with the gentle exercise, like walking and swimming, but for the first time in months I felt capable of doing a bit more exercise. So I got out the DVDs a friend from work gave to me and did a bit of a prenatal workout. I did one of the routines with Chris. It is a 20 minute partner exercise where your partner provides resistance and balance support…it was actually really fun! However, I ached like hell for two days afterwards. Not a good idea to start an exercise routine the day you fly for 8 hours on a plane! My poor back did not like me one bit. Ahh well, it’s all good for you Rocky!

The prenatal workout DVDs I was given!!

Finally, something that I found a little bit insensitive, and also kind of amusing in some weird typical way that is infertility…my bump app told me that obviously we had sex to conceive our baby, otherwise I wouldn’t be pregnant, DUH, – well actually, this is OBVIOUSLY NOT the case with us! I wish that it had been the case…instead we had almost 17 other people involved in the conception of our IVF baby!

“You obviously made love before pregnancy (hence the pregnancy)” It’s not always obvious you silly app!!!

Not forgetting Huckleberry

June 12, 201612 Comments

Speaking of not forgetting….this week my app ‘Glow’ I use(d) to track my periods told me that my period was due in 2 days! Well that was a strange thing to say because I had marked “I am pregnant” on the app. So I decided to open it up and see what was going on. Glow was telling me I am pregnant still, so I am not sure why it was telling me my period as due. Anyway, it came up with a big advert saying download our ‘Nurture’ app, a follow on app to glow for pregnant women. So I thought, well why not give it a go. I had already used it once before when I was pregnant after IVF cycle 1 and so downloaded it off my cloud. Once it installed I opened it up and this is what I was faced with…

huck

Are you kidding me???? Oh it was a stab in the gut. Yesterday I was 44 days overdue and Huckleberry was the size of a slightly bigger pumpkin at 46 weeks old!

I haven’t forgotten you Huckleberry. I promise you I never have. But this was just too much. I deleted the app straight away as I couldn’t deal with trying to figure out how to reset it.

A little thought

June 12, 2016June 12, 20165 Comments

Before I get into this post I just wanted to say….

I received so much love from you all on my last post I can’t thank you enough for your kind words. Donald Trump might stupidly say that “He knows words. He knows all the words.” (Please, please America don’t let him be your next president) But actually you guys have all the words and know how to say them just right -for the whole time I have been blogging here on the GPCH your words have meant that I have managed to get through this journey without going insane. Thank you so, so much XX

OK here is my little thought….

Someday we will probably show our child their first ever photo. Chris and I have joked that it would be the best photo for a wedding speech.

But here Rocky is…with his sister or brother that never made it. This is just heart wrenching and would probably be a bit uncomfortable for some people who twig that we only had one child. So perhaps we won’t ever show this photo at their wedding, but I will definitely want to show it to them at some point in their life.

I’m not going to lie, I have struggled a little bit with the fact that one of our embabies didn’t make it. It’s been even harder as there are several ladies in my local support group who recently also went through IVF just after me, all of them have found out they are having twins. And a few ladies on Instagram who went through their IVF cycles the same time as me also found out they are having twins (two are even having identical twins!).

I know that having twins is not easy, but I can’t help but mourn the loss of Rocky’s brother or sister and ask myself – why? Sometimes I even get jealous of these lovely ladies and I know that is a terrible feeling to have because I am SOOOOOOOO lucky to have one wonderful baby inside me right now.

Infertility is complicated. I read an article that Resolve published an advertised recently on their facebook. Reading it helped me put into perspective these kinds of feelings I have. I hope you find it interesting too…

Read here: “Healing the Wound of Infertility”

PC Diary: My first OB appointment

June 8, 201635 Comments

The Pudding Club Diary @ 10w2d

I have been living in the moment for the past week. Helped by my wonderful family visiting me all the way from the UK (my mum, gran, aunt and uncle). I took a week of leave and we showed them the wonderful sights, sounds and tastes of Virginia! Well…local Virginia at least. This has definitely been one good way to keep in the present. But not long after they departed I started to begin to worry about my upcoming Obstetrician appointment and scan. I hadn’t really been feeling the symptoms I had previously – tiredness and nausea mostly. But then Sunday & Monday came and I felt queasy all day and absolutely shattered. The yawning was incessant!! So that put me back in my place and I was less worried….but then this morning as I drove to the doctors I started thinking what if there was no heartbeat? What if it was way behind? Just before we headed into the ultrasound, there was a couple crying. My heart felt for them, I shed a little tear. I reminisced to our ectopic pregnancy, waiting to collect the methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy in the Children’s hospital, crying. I worried some more for us.

We were called back to the ultrasound room and I was excited when the technician didn’t ask me to strip from the waist down. I was getting a transabdominal ultrasound this time! Woohoo!!!! My ovaries are still super enlarged and it got a bit uncomfortable for a moment. But that didn’t matter because there was our little rocky, literally waving at us and wriggling! We saw the profile of Rocky’s teeny tiny hands and feet. We didn’t get to hear the heartbeat, but it was doing a strong 166BPM. Rocky measured spot on 10w2d. We were given our souvenir printouts and I was moving onto the next part of the appointment.

As this was my first time at this OBGYN I had the most thorough exam, medical history and tests done in my life. Probably more than all our infertility testing!!!

I had EIGHT vials of blood drawn for various tests including a few extra for toxoplasmosis (because we have cats) and for my iron levels. Yey. Should have just donated my blood whilst I was at it! I also had a pap smear, a breast exam and a very thorough pelvic exam. My poor tummy went through it all today, it’s a bit sore now 😦

I was given a big information booklet which also included a description of all the prenatal screening tests we may want to have and how much each one cost (helpfully along with the insurance code so I could phone my insurance and check for coverage).

We also talked about a few things that they will check for because Rocky is an IVF baby. We will see a Perinatologist (someone who specialises in fetal medicine) at the hospital to check the baby’s heart at around 5 1/2 mths (fetal echocardiagram). We will also not be allowed to go beyond 41 weeks – her explanation wasn’t particularly compelling, but I’ll go with the flow! She said that as we have an IVF baby they don’t like to get into complications so would induce before then….???!!!

In other exciting news I took my last progesterone suppository last night and removed the estrogen patches this morning…I am now drug free! A first for quite some time. Whoop whoop!

Today Chris told me his favourite part of the day was when I was looking at our ultrasound photos and I smiled and excitedly said to him…”It had little cute tiny feet!”. He said it’s been a long, long time since he has seen me this happy and it was lovely.

And he was right, it was all very lovely too.

Living in the moment

May 28, 201613 Comments

I should be living in the moment, but I am not. I think about the past, I think about the future. First let me say that I am very grateful that we have this chance, that I am finally pregnant. I know there are many women who want to be in my position. I have been where you are. But it is not easy, so bear with me whilst I explain.

The past should stay in the past, but I can’t help but question why we went through everything that we did to make our baby rocky (I wonder why anyone should have to go through that, and for some even more). We still don’t know the cause of our infertility, and this is difficult for me to deal with. Why did it work this time? Out of 25 embryos we made, 1 decided to implant itself in the correct place. 1 survived. 1 made it. But why didn’t the other 24 make it? Just because I am pregnant, doesn’t mean I have closure on my infertility, why my body doesn’t want to do what it is meant to do. I was on the edge of losing hope of any medical resolution. We treated the symptoms, but we didn’t treat the cause. We are still unexplained.

And all of this is in the past…right? But then there is the future on my mind. What if this baby dies inside me? What if this baby is still born? What if all this medical intervention has created a baby that cannot survive, that never had a chance or is severely damaged in some way? What if we go through all this and get to the end with nothing in our arms, nothing to put to bed and kiss every night, but left with a heart of love, broken into a million pieces.

The future is still an infertile one for me. I do not have confidence that we figured out how to resolve our infertility. I believe what has happened was a result of simply try, try again and we got lucky. Luck was on our side? This is really hard to deal with because, I may never be this lucky again.

It is hard at times to live in the present right now. I mostly do, but the past and the future sneak into my mind occasionally. When I catch myself doing this, I remember the things I have learned in yoga and meditation. I bring myself back to the present.

The pudding club

May 22, 201636 Comments

It’s been almost a week since I was on here…that’s not like me. I have been hiding from the world a little bit. It’s been a really hard week to get through. My first scan looming over my head. Would there be a baby? Would there be a heartbeat? I’ve had lots of lovely messages wishing me luck – but all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep, avoid polite conversation, time to fly.

Thursday morning I felt numb to the world. Fortunately I was busy at work so the afternoon appointment came around quickly. Chris met me at the clinic, he was already there in the waiting room, patiently waiting for me. I felt sick to my stomach. This was it! We didn’t have to wait long before we were called back. The nurse took my vitals (weight and blood pressure), then we went into the ultrasound room together. I sat up on the bed and before I had to time to wonder more about the possibilities my doctor walked in. I don’t really remember what she said to me, but like I had been all week I’d had enough with the small talk.

As soon as the ultrasound wand was in me we could see my extremely hyper stimulated ovaries….I had many huge follicles still – like two times the size of the ones I am used to seeing during stimulation phase. My doctor exclaimed my ‘hyper’ situation, and I said, yes, I have been feeling them 😦 And then she found a sac, zoomed in and there was a little blob on the screen! I was holding my breath as she found the heart beat – and there it was 144 beats per minute (BPM). I just cried. She measured the size of it and it was measuring 2 days behind at 7 weeks 2 days, I was technically 7 weeks 4 days, but she said that was close enough!

As I sobbed, Chris asked what happens next and my Doctor said we now graduate to my OBGYN! Oh…I don’t have one since we moved to the US and went straight from our family doctor to the fertility clinic. Then Chris said we need to find one near our new house…to which I corrected him and he said – “no, we got the house today!” I couldn’t believe it, he was telling me right there that we got the house we wanted and he had the call from our realtor an hour or so before the appointment. Cue even more tears from me and excited happy doctors & nurse in the room. What a day for good big news. I hugged my doctor and nurse and thanked them with tears running down my face! It was surreal as I walked out into the waiting room with my face red from tears, I am sure people couldn’t tell if it was good or bad news I just received!! And that was it…we left our clinic realising we wouldn’t be back too soon.

Finally I’m in the pudding club – for real! I’ve been in a bit of shock, but I am embracing the pregnancy now. I believe it is happening. This is our time. We have even agreed to give the blob a nickname – Rocky – our little fighter. It also looked a bit rock like on the scan 😉

I realised I needed to find an OBGYN quick that works with the hospital we wanted to give birth at, so I did my research and made my first pre-natal appointment in the ‘normal’ world. My first appointment and next scan will be at 10w2d – a little later than they like, but it was the earliest they could fit me in. I’ve also been allowed to switch to progesterone oral capsules (but taken transvaginally) – these little things cost over $380 for 1 month’s worth! Completely different to the progesterone in oil which cost only about $90!!! But I am sure it will be worth it so I don’t have to inject myself whilst travelling again (I’m off to Turkey tomorrow – not looking forward to this trip at all).

This week has been such an emotional roller coaster – and yet on the face of it, it has been easy…we have no complications. Just when we thought this was the end…