Entering the third trimester

October 5, 2016October 5, 20166 Comments

PC Diary @27w2d

I am not quite there yet, but almost! The third timester is just down the road. How do I feel about this? Is there a word such as excitified? (excited-terrified)

Life is good. Pregnancy is obviously not a picnic, but I knew that would be the case! The second trimester has been good to me. I have had energy despite rarely being able to sleep longer than 3 hours at a time (somewhere between 2-5 times a night I get up to pee). Rocky moves around a lot, she is a big kicker and I love every single one she makes.

My weight hasn’t sky rocketed and so far I have gained a total of about 7.5lbs. Which is kind of strange looking at me and my growing bump I can’t understand why I am not much heavier. I am falling behind on the ‘ideal’ weight gain. At my last scan at 24 weeks Rocky was measuring in the 50 something percentile, so it wasn’t a concern then. Now I am hoping she hasn’t fallen behind. I am being very conscious over ensuring I am eating enough! that is what the doctor said is the most important thing. Below is my weight tracker. My weight gain (in blue) isn’t falling into the cone of ‘expected weight gain’ (the grey area) and hasn’t for a while. The good news is that I am steadily and slowly gaining weight.

At my last 24 week appointment my iron levels were too low (well this was expected because I told them already I was slightly anemic before getting pregnant!); so I am taking more iron, hopefully that will work because at my 28 week appointment next week I will be doing a complete anemia panel which will hopefully pinpoint more about the anemia. Yey please take some more of my blood!

Braxton hicks contractions have been plaguing me since about 16 weeks. I get a few every hour, but I am used to them now. Sometimes at work it can get a bit awkward if I am in the middle of a meeting and I am sitting down, I have to get up and move around to release the contraction otherwise it will hurt. It’s kind of funny sometimes watching and feeling my uterus go hard into weird position, sometimes off to one side…and then my belly softens after it the contraction released.

My only real ailment to have a little complaint about right now is that my lower back has been very sore (thankfully I have an amazing husband to massage it – we even looked at videos to make sure we were massaging it right!) and when I walk for more than 5 minutes something is clicking in my lower back/hips which causes a little bit of pain :-s But really, these are all liveable things at the moment.

In general I have no complaints, just happy to be making it into the third trimester with little issues so far. Whoop whoop!!! After next week, my OB appointments become more frequent – every 2 weeks :-s yikes, this pregnancy is getting real!

IVF Diary Vol III: 20-24 Apr 16

April 24, 2016April 24, 201610 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). 8DP5DT (8 days past 5 Day Transfer) PM Progesterone in Oil 1ml Intra-muscular injection, vivelle dot estrogen patches 0.1mg x2.

These injections do not get any easier!! Fortunately (for me) the past two evenings Chris has been doing the injecting part. Kudos to him. It doesn’t get any easier for him. He had a nervous laughing fit the other night after he pierced my skin and was starting to inject, and I was trying hard not to laugh at him (I didn’t want my muscles to tense up or to shake the needle around as it was inside me!!!). Nope, it doesn’t get easier.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil!

Any results? Apart from finding out I needed to be taking iron supplements, I wrote a post about that and had a brief ‘freak out’ moment of feeling like maybe I had a chance to improve my egg quality. But that was silly, and I realise that now. I did go out and buy some iron supplements. I bought it in liquid form because I find the majority of pills hard to stomach (there is something about the pill lining they use that makes me puke them back up). Basically the supplement tastes like I am swallowing a tablespoon of blood. BLEUGHHHHHHH.

What are my symptoms? Yesterday I struggled with my OHSS symptoms. We had a nice day out watching a parade and going to a festival that celebrates NATO. But it’s really the first time I have been out and about for a significant amount of time not sitting down. We then went to the shops and after about an hour my stomach was in pain. I just needed to sit! I was also incredibly thirsty all day, nothing could quench my thirst!!! Last night I got up to pee FIVE times!!!! I also found it hard to get in and out of bed each time because of my hugely bloated painful tummy. I am a little worried that my OHSS has done a U turn and rather than getting better is now getting worse. This could mean I am pregnant though because OHSS can get worse as my body starts to produce hCG after the embryo implants. It’s something I’ve been told to watch out for….If things don’t subside today then tomorrow is my last chance to go in for an ultrasound before I am supposed to be back in DC – I don’t want to be getting worse whilst I am away from home! I am going to take it easy today though, maybe I just over did it yesterday.

How do I feel today? It has been really hard not to pee on a stick the past few days. Especially yesterday with my symptoms developing as they were I just felt like I might see a positive! And so now I have my expectations set high, I’m terrified to be wrong and see a blank white space on that pregnancy test. So I haven’t done it. I looked back and compared my symptoms from cycle 1 (BFP – positive) to cycle 2 (BFN – negative) and actually I seemed to have experienced similar symptoms in both cycles. I guess it is that damn progesterone and estrogen making me feel like this!

Chris told me that if this cycle fails he wants to wait several months before transferring our final frozen embryo. Which I understand why he feels like that. But I feel differently about it. I said we should have this conversation later and not now. I need to be positive, I need to be hopeful right now, I want this to work so so much I can’t even think beyond this. Last cycle I was OK with thinking about the future and what’s next because I knew we could always give IVF another try. This time for me is different. I know there isn’t a next IVF. I know this to me is all or nothing.

What’s next? Friday is test time – in between all that I have a work trip to DC to occupy me and keep me busy! This does mean I will be doing more injections on my own 😦 and Chris will be on his own in the house alone this week when perhaps we really need each other right now.

The Final Countdown!!!

*Notes. I take First Response Reproductive Health multi vitamin gummies (pre-natal), 5mg Melatonin at bed time and CoQ10 200mg gummies, and Pur-absorb iron supplements daily. NSTR = Nothing Significant To Report.

Mega Communication FAIL

April 21, 201621 Comments

I am upset at myself….Chris told me it doesn’t matter, but I can’t help but feel like an idiot about it.

2 months ago I went to my normal physician and had my annual workplace medical (a requirement from my work). Usually my physician calls when she gets my results and says everything looks good!! This year she didn’t call me…but I could see my test results online and everything looked OK to me so I just forgot about it.

Roll forward to this evening and I log into my health portal to check some test results after a fellow blogger asked me about my AMH levels. As I was looking I noticed that my physician had added a note to my most recent work place medical test results that said: “Your labs look good. You are only slightly anemic. Just take an over the counter iron supplement if you can. Good luck!” (She added good luck because I told her about our upcoming IVF cycle). So all this time….I could have been taking an iron supplement and I haven’t. I already take prenatals that has extra iron in it so what would my results have been if I hadn’t been taking this? Ugghhhhh. I’m annoyed because I wonder if this could have made a difference to our embryos?

My doctor in the UK prescribed me folic acid supplements. A quick google search and all of this and being slightly anemic is likely to be related to my Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I wonder….is it about time I go and get all things associated with my bowels checked out again after the IVF?

I can’t help but feel frustrated that I didn’t see this message from my physician earlier! But at least I have seen it now and that is the important thing (thank you Leslie for prompting me to log into my account!!! I’d never have seen the message for probably another 10 months!!).

Period after HSG and miscarriage

December 2, 20153 Comments

If you are not into reading about periods and period blood you should stop reading this now and come back tomorrow when I will be talking about less gross things in life 🙂

This is my first period since my recent Hysterosalpingogram – HSG – test. This is also (probably) my second period since my miscarriage. And it’s a weird one!! It is on schedule – for which I am truly grateful for (isn’t it funny how we celebrate the little wins on this journey!!). But this period is weird so far. The pains are different, I cannot explain what is different about them, they don’t hurt so much, but the pain ‘rumbles’ inside me rather than the typical’radiating’ and ‘sharp’ pains I get from my normal period. The blood is a heavy watery-pinky-mucusy mix. Normally I get dark brown or red, thick and clotty blood.

So I got onto my friend google (like you do in a situation when weird stuff happens to your body). I extensively searched for possible causes and whether this is normal or something I should call the nurse about. My biggest concern is that my uterus lining won’t be up to scratch in preparation for our next round of IVF.

The best and corroborated explanation for this unexpected weirdness is that it may be an indicator of anemia or low iron stores and/or unbalanced diet/suffer from poor digestion. Both of these things are plausible in my case, but can be easily resolved with some supplements.

I was worried it could be associated with the HSG procedure or the miscarriage, but it seems to not be the case. So nothing to worry about or to call the nurse about specifically, but I will mention it when I speak to her next.

Crisis averted, thank you google! Now….pass me the liver and spinach 🙂