Has anyone ever said something to you along the lines of: “If you knew how much responsibility was involved in parenting you wouldn’t ache so much for a baby?” or worse, “Here, take my children then see if you still want a baby so much.”
People who say this to you most likely care for your well-being. It’s kind of like your bestie asking you just before you walk down the aisle – “are you absolutely sure you want to do this??”.
My Bridesmaids asking me: “Now are you sure you want marry this man?!?”
But what these people do not realise is that their message also comes across that we are ignorant.
If anything, I am more certain of my future responsibilities because I have had much more time to think about them. I am lucky in the sense that I have the time to prepare. Some women may only have 9 months to prepare for their future responsibilities.
I understand that I will never fully appreciate the responsibilities involved in parenting until I become a parent myself. But please, let me dream about it for now.
Yesterday Chris and I were talking about the ‘What-ifs’ of the future. We tend to find ourselves having these kind of conversations regularly. It’s difficult to plan anything when dealing with infertility. Not only because of things we can’t do ‘when we are pregnant…’ but, also what to do with our savings. We want to buy a house together, but it’s difficult to have these conversations with little knowledge of where our infertility journey is going to take us. For example, if we bought a house now, we might not be able to keep our options open to afford egg donation, surrogacy or adoption. So we hold off on making these big decisions for now.
We talked about what we would do if I am pregnant again and we face a similar scenario that we faced after our first round of IVF – slow rising hCG, nothing seen on the ultrasound (Pregnancy of Unknown Location), suspected ectopic pregnancy. Chris said that at least we would know what to expect! This is very true. But, I think I might do things differently. There is a small part of me that feels guilty for giving in and taking the methotrexate treatment. Part of me wonders – what if? What if I hadn’t taken the treatment. Would I have just prolonged the inevitable? Or would I be into my second trimester by now? I actually feel sick writing those words!
We made the decision to take the methotrexate treatment after 5 doctors from our clinic had suggested we should do that. Our doctor had spent 20 minutes meticulously looking for an ectopic pregnancy on the ultrasound, said she couldn’t see anything that looked like an ectopic, and concluded that I must have miscarried already (I had started bleeding two days before) and then effectively released me from monitoring. The next day she phoned to say she changed her mind. What made her change her mind? Did something not fall into place? Did another doctor tell her she was leaving herself exposed to liability for misdiagnosis? Did the other 4 doctors tell her she had made the wrong call? How did she make her decision? Did she review the evidence afterwards in a more objective manner?
It got me thinking – FIVE doctors told me I should take the methotrexate to terminate the {ectopic} pregnancy. That should be enough to qualify for my ‘second opinion’. But I never really thought about it until now, that organisational bias may have come into effect here. All these 5 doctors work together every day. They all make decisions on their own every day, but sometimes they ask each other’s opinion when making a decision or a diagnosis. Not only do doctors face their own personal biases but they face bias that becomes systemic in their clinical practices.
I am not a stranger to these biases – I teach methods and techniques to the military to help them overcome all kinds of biases when they make decisions.
There are many opportunities for a doctor to become biased in their own decision making or diagnosis, here are some of them:
Confirmation bias: The tendency to over emphasise data that supports an existing hypothesis rather than data that refutes that hypothesis.
Overconfidence Bias: Over-reliance on the opinions of the expert that can before (the attending or consult etc)
Availability Heuristic: this patient has whatever your last patient who looked like this has or whatever is commonly discussed
Premature closure/anchoring: the tendency to decide that the patient’s current problem is related to the first thing we diagnose rather than more than one issue.
Commission Bias: the tendency to need to do something rather than stand there.
Hassle Bias: the tendency to take course of action that is easiest or exposes the physician to the least amount of grief
Regret Bias: the tendency to take course of action due to guilt from a missed diagnosis
Commission Bias: the tendency toward action rather than inaction. An error arises when there is an appropriate committal to a particular course of action. It is more likely to occur in someone who is over-confidence, and reflects an urge to ‘do something’. It satisfies the obligation of beneficience in that harm can only be prevented by actively intervening. Commission bias may be augmented by team pressures or by the patient.
One or more of these biases may have played a part in my doctor’s decision making process for my diagnosis*.
In addition to the individual and organizational biases doctors face, there are also the established guidelines that doctors follow. Every clinic will develop its own guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of ectopic pregnancy, generally based off national best practice and research – my clinic is within a medical school so I like to think they are up to date on their practices. Guidelines will vary from clinic to clinic because they have the freedom to do so. However, in the UK, the NHS is very transparent about many of these national guidelines by publishing them on the internet, and so I know that if I was in the UK I probably would have been treated very differently to how I was treated by my clinic. In the UK I would have been sent home and told to keep taking home pregnancy tests until the date for next ultrasound scan or until I received a negative pregnancy test or if my situation changed to go to the hospital if I had developed any signs or symptoms of ectopic pregnancy.
I can’t help but wonder “what if”….I know the chances were slim that my pregnancy was going to be successful – the statistics told me that. But I have read about a very small number of cases of women having slow rising hCG level after IVF, with nothing seen on the ultrasound up to 9 weeks and delivering to full term healthy babies. There is a facebook group called “Misdiagnosed Ectopic Pregnancy Given Methotrexate”, and I have learned that research in this area is lacking, particularly for women going through IVF and women with retroverted/tipped uteruses.
I don’t regret my decision to listen to the advice of 5 doctors to take the methotrexate. But it does make me think about how difficult a doctor’s job is to make that decision, the biases they face on a daily basis when making those diagnosis decisions, and the overall lack of research in this area. I hope I never have to face this scenario ever again.
If you have found my blog because you are facing this situation, please feel free to contact me: dani@thegreatpuddingclubhunt.com because I wouldn’t wish this upon my worst enemy and will try to offer you a hand through it.
Have you heard Alessia Cara’s song ‘Here’? If you haven’t heard it yet, you probably haven’t switched on the radio in a while. You can check out her video below.
As Alessia’s song has been on the radio a lot recently, for some reason, every time I hear it I sing along with some different ‘Dani’s own’ lyrics. So I thought I’d treat you to my parody version….it reminds me of how I feel when I accidentally stray into online forums, in this case…. Trying to Conceive (TTC) forums.
———————–
I’m sorry if I seem uninterested
Or I’m not listenin’ or I’m indifferent
Truly, I ain’t got no business here
But since google took me here
I just came to check it but really
I would rather be on my blog all by myself not in this forum
With people who don’t even care about my well-being
I’m not a doctor, don’t ask, I don’t need your baby sprinkles
So you can go back, please enjoy your EW CM*
I’ll be here, somewhere in the corner under clouds of stupidity
With this girl who’s hollering with her B-F-P
Over this TTC advice I don’t listen to and I don’t wanna put my legs up over my head
So tell my IF sisters that I’ll be over here
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here oh oh oh
I ask myself what am I doing here?
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here
And I can’t wait till I can break up outta here
Excuse me if I seem a little unimpressed with this
An anti-social pessimist but usually I don’t mess with this
And I know you mean only the best and
Your intentions aren’t to bother me
But honestly I’d rather be
Somewhere with my blogger friends we can kick it and just write
About infertility with the struggle (like we usually do)
And we’ll discuss our big dreams
How we plan to take over the planet
So pardon my manners, I hope you’ll understand
That I’ll be here
Not there in the TTC forum with the girl
Who’s always asking questions like “Can I get Pregnant from a blow job?”
So tell them I’ll be here
Right next to the girl who’s complaining cause
She can’t figure out when her next fertile period will be
Oh God why am I here?
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here oh oh oh
I ask myself what am I doing here?
Oh oh oh here oh oh oh here
And I can’t wait till we can break up outta here
Hours later reading all your bitchiness
Some girl’s talking bout baby dust
Well I ain’t got none
How did it ever come to this
I shoulda never come to this
So holla at me I’ll be on my wordpress when you’re done
I’m standoffish, don’t want what you’re advice
And I’m done talking
Awfully sad it had to be that way
So tell my bloggers don’t worry I’ll be back here
And I’m sitting on my laptop with my infertility in tow
I have been mostly open with my colleagues about the infertility treatment that we are facing. I told a small number about the three IUIs, but in preparation for IVF I decided I needed to tell a few more of my colleagues in my team. In fact, my team gave me a gift card for a nice restaurant as a I was about to take four days of sick leave for the Egg retrieval and embryo transfer for our first round of IVF. But it’s not something that everyone is comfortable initiating a conversation about it all with me. They don’t know where the line is, so I try to be open about it as much as possible and help them to feel comfortable asking me whatever questions they may have.
This ‘open’ approach has mostly worked in my favour; but that doesn’t mean it has been easy. It is coming up to almost a year of treatment and my boss has known about my appointments and treatment for the majority of that time. He has been accommodating, caring and supportive to my needs. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how supportive your peers and bosses are, there is the issue of the work that still needs to be done.
I feel unreliable, I feel flaky, I feel selfish and I hate not being flexible. I feel like the weak link in the team. I hate that it is almost impossible to plan long term projects and work travel – a key part of my job. I feel helpless, sometimes I feel useless. I try to compensate by being overly proactive in areas that don’t require long term planning; I try to over achieve on short term goals and tasks. But ultimately this impacts my career. I feel like I have taken a career break.
Juggling work with infertility treatment requires meticulous planning – and yet what are you told when it comes to IVF treatment? Always expect the unexpected. So planning for the unexpected becomes an overly stressful burden to your sanity.
For me, the first time we went through IVF it was a quiet time of year for us – August. Many of my colleagues were on their summer holidays, so all was good. This time around we are expecting to start stimulation in the New Year. Things start to get a whole lot busier at work at this time of year. I have already had to say no to travelling to Europe in January because it is likely my egg retrieval will be in that week. Not attending this meeting in Europe may impact my involvement in the project overall. Or simply just add another layer of stress even if I do pick it up afterwards from playing catch-up.
Then, there is the added problem of being physically at work; suffering from pain and tiredness as a result of the hormones and your body coping with the side effects of the drugs. I tried to hide the pain. I must have gone to the toilets about 25 times a day to hide. Sometimes I just spent 5 minutes sitting there taking a timeout. And it wasn’t just the physical pain, the emotional strain plays a part in all this too. Simply put, the infertility treatment has also affected my mental focus on doing a good job. For example, I was not satisfied with my output around the time of the IVF (I had a deliverable due just before the start of the IVF cycle – this was a terrible terrible idea!), although I know I am very self-critical and set high bars for myself – no one has actually complained about my work thus far. I just hope that is because what I delivered was satisfactory, and not because people were afraid to upset me!!!
I just hate this.
And I am lucky that I do not have to lie to my colleagues. I cannot imagine having that added pressure of guilt and keeping up with lies in addition to the stress of the treatment itself. Some people need to keep their treatment a secret either for job protection or it is within their nature to keep family life private.
So what have I learned? Second time around, I will schedule in a combination of annual leave and sick leave into my diary for the start of stimulation. Fortunately it’s a new year of leave, so I will be able to do this this time around. Who knows what would happen if we have to do IVF all over again after this round. But this time, I’m going to try to focus on the treatment rather than juggling it with work.
Maybe I’ll take up some knitting or do some oil painting to keep me occupied. I’m going to need to find something to keep my mind busy!!!
:-s
As for the long term impact on my career, well, I will just have to not worry too much about it just now. Maybe if we get to summer next year and still no pregnancy, how I feel about my career is going to really influence my decisions about what we do next.
Sorry, but being a mother is not the most important job in the world….
Ha! Got you thinking there with that provocative statement….well it certainly got me thinking when I read this opinion article from the Guardian. Catherine Deveny tells us that we should drop the slogan “Being a mother is the toughest job on the earth”.
Well Catherine, apparently you would be going against the opinion of 92% of mothers. According to a survey by ‘Parents Magazine’, 92% of mothers agree that being a mother is the toughest job on earth. The other 8% must be rocket scientists and coalminers (well at least according to @JillFilipovic.) And don’t forget the journalists at The Guardian.
Why does Catherine tell us we should quit the slogan? Because she believes it encourages mothers to stay socially and financially hobbled, it alienates fathers and discourages other significant relationships between children and adults. Hmmmm, I’d never thought of it like that before.
When you really think about it, she is right. In her article she explores what a mother actually is in this context, and argues that the slogan delegitimises the relationship fathers, friends, grandparents, and carers have with children. And what about those single dads out there?
“If being a mother were a job there’d be a selection process, pay, holidays, a superior to report to, performance assessments, Friday drinks, and you could resign from your job and get another one because you didn’t like the people you were working with. It’s not a vocation either – being a mother is a relationship.”
(That’s my favourite part of the argument!)
But is she getting a bit het up about it all? It’s just a saying, a phrase. Surely it doesn’t cause any harm? Who actually cares?
Well, when you evaluate it at deeper level it contributes to building up the idea that nothing a woman can achieve in life matters more than having babies.
My dear Friends, I am not saying that being a mother (in whatever guise) or even going through motherhood, isn’t tough, it is. I have seen it and it isn’t pretty. I’m looking forward to the challenge AND reward of being a mother someday. But I’m not going to kill myself over this infertility, I’m not going to dig myself into a hole of physical pain and emotional suffering. At some point in the future we may have to make a choice of being childless and I don’t want to feel like I have failed. Chris said this to me in the car yesterday after my HSG test. “It’s not giving up, it’s not failure – it’s a decision”. This slogan “Being a mother is the most important job in the world” will make me feel like I failed and will perpetuate a hole of sadness and depression in me, and I don’t want that. And I also don’t want that for anyone of my friends and family, child-free, now and in the future (or anyone else in the world for a matter of fact). My feelings are pretty much in alignment with Catherine…
“If you are using motherhood to assert that you care more about humanity than the next person, if you’re using it as a shorthand to imply that you are a more compassionate and hard-working person than the women and men standing around you, then feel free to get over yourself.”
I am not going to pretend to be brave here. I am actually a little bit nervous about tomorrow’s HSG procedure.
The Hysterosalpingogram – AKA the HSG – is an x-ray procedure to check whether the fallopian tubes are open or blocked, and if the uterus is normal. Iodine dye is inserted into the uterus to allow a contrast to be seen on the x-ray. It allows the doctor to see on the free flow of the fallopian tubes and any abnormal lining of the uterus. The procedure is relatively quick -about 5 minutes. But for me it really was painful. I took 800mg of Ibuprofen an hour before the procedure as instructed – it still hurt.
For my first test I was naive and had no clue it might be painful, so I wasn’t nervous. But now, knowing what I know now! I AM anxious! The crappy thing is that Chris isn’t allowed in with me, there is nothing more I would like than for him to hold my hand whilst the dye is injected and I feel that burning cramping sensation run through my body.
When I called the clinic to make my appointment the receptionist who now recognises my voice (OK so I bet they don’t have that many Brits as patients) asked me why I hadn’t had an HSG already. I pointed out I had one in January but I had to have another one after the possible ectopic pregnancy thing and how much I was dreading it. She was very sweet and apologised, her tone also changed to be more somber for the rest of the call. Bless, it was nice that she sounded to care. It must be a hard job working in a fertility clinic – it must be a bit bi-polar with so many highs and lows everyday.
Perhaps I will do some meditation to help me relax a little before hand :-s
On the positive side about this – once we have the results of this test we can go ahead and hopefully firm up plans for IVF round 2.
My HSG X-ray with my retroverted uterus (it’s hard to see because it’s hiding behind the catheter)
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!
(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)
It was almost 3 years ago that I handed in my security pass and said goodbye to my office of 7 years. I actually shed a little tear on my way out. I was about to leave a job that I really loved. But a new world was calling us – we were about to move to the United State of America!
My initial contract for working overseas was 3 years, and now that we have been living here in the US for almost 3 years I have been offered an indefinite contract. So we signed another year’s lease on our house…and unless something crazy happens, e.g. World War 3, we will be here in Virginia for another year.
I’m both excited and sad. I’m excited because we get some time to do more travelling and keep working at the infertility treatment. But I am sad because I miss my friends and family.
There also the more material British things that I kind of miss too…..
I miss Greggs (the bakers). I miss their iced buns and even the sausage rolls. People of America, your corn dogs suck in comparison. Why have you yet to discover the sausage roll? Someone at the New York times has realised the error of their ways and yesterday wrote an article about them. There was a bit of interest on twitter. But I am not sure it was enough to start a sausage roll revolution.
Will the sausage roll gain as much traction as craft beer has? I hope so if I am going to stay here for any longer….
Christmas is coming and mince pies are top of my wish list this year. What’s a mince pie I hear you ask? They are beautifully crumbly pastry pies filled with juicy, spiced raisins, sultanas and dried fruits typically eaten around Christmas time. They can be served hot or cold, eaten on their own or with Brandy butter or cream. To be served with hot mulled wine. Mmmmmm, I’m just salivating at the thought of them.
Lastly, I am also getting a bit bored of having the same conversations over and over again! Sometimes I fake an American accent just so no one notices I am British and asks all the same questions. This video shows the struggles…for real.
By the way, if you are an American and like British culture, the BBC American has a webpage called Anglophenia that might interest you: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/
We hear this word used in everyday life – abortion. We can all formulate an idea of what abortion is….someone choosing to end the life of their baby. But this isn’t a wholly accurate or fair description and is certainly not what medical professionals use the word ‘abortion’ for.
According to Wikipedia, the term ‘abortion’ can be defined as:
“The ending of a pregnancy by removing a fetus or embryo from the womb before it can survive on its own.”
The unintentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus before the 24th week of gestation is called a ‘spontaneous abortion’. This is the clinical term that is used by medical practitioners in their notes to describe what most lay people would understand to be ‘miscarriage’.
The intentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus is called an induced abortion. Reasons for intentionally inducing abortion are either therapeutic or elective:
Therapeutic abortion is performed to save the life of the pregnant woman; prevent harm to the woman’s physical or mental health; where indications are that the child will have a significantly increased chance of premature morbidity or mortality or otherwise disabled.
Elective abortion is voluntary when it is performed at the request of the woman for non-medical reasons.
And then there are the methods of abortion, including medical abortion and surgical abortion: Medical abortion (sometimes also called chemical abortion) is induced by drugs or pharmaceuticals. Where as surgical abortion includes procedures such as vacuum aspiration, Dilation and Curettage (D&C), Dilation & Evacuation (D&E) and hysterotomy.
The use of methotrexate to terminate my pregnancy of unknown location or ‘ectopic’ pregnancy is described as a medical abortion and can also be described as therapeutic abortion. Clinically, I did not miscarry. Although I am sure I had started the process of miscarrying before I took the methotrexate, and would consider it to be a spontaneous abortion – or – miscarriage – or – early pregnancy loss. However you want to ice it, in my medical notes it will be described using the word abortion.
For those who are not aware that this is actually a clinical term it can come as quite a shock to see those words on their medical records. For example, here is a link to a news article: “Mom to be shocked when miscarriage called ‘abortion’ in medical records” that shows how easy it is mis-perceive the term abortion.
But definitions of abortion vary across and within countries as well as among different institutions. Language used to refer to abortion often also reflects societal and political opinions and not only scientific knowledge. Popular use of the word abortion implies a deliberate pregnancy termination, whereas a miscarriage is used to refer to spontaneous fetal loss when the fetus is not viable (i.e. not yet unable to survive independently outside the womb).
Paul Freeling and Linda Gask* explain the problem well:
“As children many of us learnt the old rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”. As we grew older we discovered that the adage was untrue. For most of us whose profession involved interacting with other people it became obvious that clumsy or inapposite use of language could cause pain. An attempt to avoid such pain has provoked…to suggest that distress in women who have miscarried would be reduced if changes were made in the language used by professional carers…the word “abortion” should be avoided because the lay public interprets it as applying to a termination of pregnancy.”
And then there is the grey space in between all of this. This is where in the US definitions and clinical descriptions are all important for insurance companies.
I recently read about a lady who fell right in between this grey space….
At a 13 week scan several doctors told her that her baby had a heartbeat, but the organs were not inside its body, the hands and feet are curled, one limb was missing, the neck was not right. Overall, the baby was unlikely to survive and should be removed as soon as possible before it could cause serious health issues. By definition, in Ohio, this situation was considered by the insurance company as an optional abortion because there was still a heartbeat, therefore, they would not cover the cost of the $10000 operation at the hospital. Planned Parenthood would be able to perform the surgery at a cost of $800.
This blog post is not about pro-life or pro-choice. It is merely a brief peek into the complexities of the use and definition of the term ‘abortion’.
For me personally, the insurance company did not initially cover the cost of my methotrexate treatment because it was being used as an abortion drug. Eventually we managed to claim the cost back directly via our European insurance provider.
I don’t have a solution to propose, I just know that abortion – whether it is spontaneous, elective, optional, surgical, medical – is a confusing grey mess of an area in the US.
* Freeling, P. & Gask, L., Changing terminology is no substitute for good consultations skills BMJ 1998; 317 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.317.7165.1028 (Published 17 October 1998)
We met for our follow-up appointment with our doctor yesterday. There were no surprises. Which is a good thing! So the plan of attack is a fresh round of IVF…get a couple more embryos frozen:
Schedule a Hysterosalpingogram (HSG – if you would like a refresher what this procedure entails, check out my post from last time here) – I will do this as soon as I start my period (who knows when that will be!!!). It is very unlikely that my fallopian tubes will be blocked, but she wants to be sure. Fair enough. However, I am NOT looking forward to this test. Last time I was completely naive to the potential pain ahead for this particular procedure, now that I know exactly how much it can hurt I’m a wee bit nervous!
Plan to start Birth Control Pills to regulate my cycle in December with an egg retrieval date for early January 16. There is a period of 3 weeks that the embryology lab is closed over the Christmas period. Seriously – how unlucky am I?? Last time my cycle was delayed because the embryology lab was being refurbished. Oh well – I guess everyone needs a holiday.
There is a potential chance we could start Birth Control Pills in November, and do a retrieval before Christmas, but I think it will be close to my 3 month period of ‘no baby making’ because of the methotrexate shot I had affecting fetus development. I have been researching this, and I would be willing to go ahead a week or two earlier because doctors are overly cautious with this 3 month time stamp. As long as I keep taking my folic acid I should have no problems. However, this is something to be discussed once we have a better idea of a) when my period is likely to be and b) assuming my HSG test is all clear!!!
There will be no change to my protocol, perhaps a slight increase in some of the medication dosages to mature more of my eggs. As a reminder from our first round we had 9 eggs retrieved, 6 of these eggs were mature, 4 of these eggs were successfully fertilised by ICSI, 2 good 8 cell embryos were transferred on day 3, and 1 of the 2 embryos made it to Day 5 blastocyst and was frozen. Our doctor mentioned that she would consider waiting to Day 5 for the transfer this time around, especially as our frozen one is Day 5 – she wants them to be the same. We like this plan!
This gives me some time to concentrate on work for a little while, get my body healthy and start growing some strong eggs! What is amazing is what the horrrorscopes says for me next week…
I was already planning on going back on my sugar free, healthy diet next week! Freaky! Sooooo….which old friend should I Skype on Sunday next week and wants to reveal a long-held secret to me??!!!?!
The Great Pudding Club Hunt 