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 🙂

IVF Diary Vol III 15-20 Mar 16

March 20, 201613 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Ovulation Control Pill (OCP) Reclipsen 0.15MG-30MCG x 1 per day, Lupron 0.5mg (10 units) injection AM.

I started the Lupron injections on Thursday morning. Although the amount of liquid is tiny and the needle is small, I still freaked out about giving myself the injection. I tried to do it, but the needle bounced off my skin, so I asked Chris to do it so I could feel how hard it needs to e to pierce the skin. But on Friday, I did the injection myself! It didn’t hurt, I was just slightly hesitant and the needle went in slower than I expected. Saturday, the needle bumped off my skin again! I’m sure I will figure it out. Also, there is barely any blood after these injections so I don’t really need gauze and I can’t tell where I just did the injection which means I am finding it difficult to figure out where to put a plaster over it! I discovered putting a plaster over the injection site means that I don’t have to remember the next day where I just did my previous injection.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil. But – I did have a post op follow up appointment with my Doctor to go over my results from the hysteroscopy. I knew the biopsy results were good because they come through on my clinic’s app and I am sure she wouldn’t have had told me to start the Birth control pills if there was anything wrong. However, on the day of the appointment I started to get a bit nervous because I thought if everything was OK, why did she still need to see me? When I arrived the nurse asked where my husband was? At first I just joked with her “He’s working – I hope!!!”, but then it dawned on me….should he be here with me because it’s going to be bad news? I didn’t even think about bringing Chris along. The nurse did the usual vitals check and took me to the Doctor’s office to wait. As I was sitting in her office there was one pamphlet on her desk that stuck out – it was about uterine cancer. My heart started to beat faster!! My head was racing. Fortunately the doctor arrived quickly after I sat down. She cut straight to the chase and said everything looked just fine! Phew. She took a look at her computer and said that there was just one area of redness of my uterus she had seen on the camera that she thought might be inflammation, but the biopsy did not show any signs of inflammation. So all good! A very quick appointment, I was in and out in 5 minutes…it was just like being at a doctor’s office in the UK!!!!

What are my symptoms? I have two symptoms I want to talk about – my upset tummy and my hormones!

At my post op appointment I asked my doctor about my upset tummy. I told her my diarrhea has been playing up, maybe it’s just my Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) being bad or, is there any chance it could be something related to the hysteroscopy? The only thing that could cause diarrhea is the cytotec pills I took that ‘softens the cervix’ prior to the surgery. Maybe it caused a mis-balance of bacteria in my tummy, but it should go away soon. It wasn’t the most helpful advice I’ve received from a doctor…but as usual not knowing what causes my poorly tummy I am used to. So I decided to put into practice my knowledge of things to make diarreah go away. The first is to take some probiotics. After my appointment I went straight to the shops and looked for a probiotic yoghurt drink. Now in the UK, there are these little drinks that you can take daily – there are different brands like yakult and actimel, they are very common in the supermarket. But here in the US, I haven’t ever noticed before until now, they are not common! I tried looking for a US store that sells Yakult and it’s typical! The only place nearby is the Commissary! As a civilian, I am not allowed to shop at the Commissary!! (The Commissary is where the military can buy their groceries at a discount). Anyway…I did discover something similar in the organic section – Kefir. Kefir is a fermented milk drink with kefir grains in it. I wasn’t sure if this would aggravate my upset tummy or the probiotics would do its thing. There were also some juices with probiotics added, this to my mind didn’t seem the best for my tummy because real fruit juice can make things worse for me. Anyway either the Kefir has had a positive effect or my tummy is getting better on its own. The past few days I have returned to normal upset tummy (where I experience diarrhea about once a day rather than 4-6 times a day for the past two weeks!)

My hormones. I am going to do a separate post on this, but in a nutshell, the Lupron and Birth Control Pills are doing weird things to me. On Friday evening as I was getting ready to go to the ball (!!!) I was curling my hair and tried to pin it up how I like to. But for some reason it wasn’t working. My hair looked awful, I was getting frustrated at it…then I flipped out at my inability to make my hair look half decent. Like seriously got mad and threw stuff across the room. I looked in the mirror and I felt nothing, I looked back at myself and felt nothing. I didn’t feel sexy, I thought I looked hideous. Chris kept telling me my hair looked lovely down and I should leave it, but I just kept looking at myself and I felt like I was out of my body – I was in somebody else’s body. I felt…..nothing. It was weird. I didn’t like it! Could it be the Lupron doing this to me?

How do I feel today? Chris and I had an evening of sharing our feelings about this IVF cycle. It got emotional. We realised we have both been bad at not sharing our feelings, we both made assumptions about things and came to wrong conclusions. We just didn’t talk enough about what was going to happen this cycle – the changes in my protocol and the uncertainty around dates of key things happening in the cycle like when the Egg Retrieval and transfer might be. Particularly with the transfer (Day 3 v Day 5). The difference being that this cycle came around quickly (we both felt unprepared for it), and my period started much earlier than I anticipated. Because I had been so busy with work, we just hadn’t been keeping the communication lines open…but we re-opened them – that’s good, but it took us a while to figure that out!

Any results? Other than my post op results being clear!

What’s next? I stop the Birth Control Pills next week and keep the Lupron injections going. I am off on travels to Europe next week so I have the added issue of figuring out what times to take my pills and injections! I made a mistake of taking my Birth Control Pills after my dinner, so now in Europe with them being 6 hours ahead at the moment, it means I would need to be taking them at 2AM! Doh! The Lupron injections won’t be so bad – I can take them at 1PM at lunch time. I may also have to give myself an injection on the plane as I fly transatlantic!!!! Double doh!

Weight. I still haven’t got on the scales yet!

Waist. NSTR.

Boobs. NSTR.

The Final Countdown!!!

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

A week of celebrating my loves

March 5, 2016March 5, 20169 Comments

This week has been chaotic, stressful, exhausting and emotional both in my personal and work life. It was like being on the triple loop-de-loop part of the roller coaster of infertility with a crowd of people squirting water into my face as I go round and round. Ughh I feel sick!! My roller coaster journey hasn’t stopped just yet, but it’s feeling a little gentler this weekend!

But amongst all that chaos there are three people in my life who are always there for me that I am celebrating this week – My husband, my mummy and my granny!

My husband.

Four years ago I married my best friend, my confidant and my very handsome lover, Chris. It was an amazing day! We celebrated our love and our commitment to each other with all our friends and family around us. The sun came out and we danced the night away to an epic Ceilidh band. I remember every minute of it, I hope I never forget second of it. Little did we know on that day what the next four years had in store for us! We had no clue we would be moving our lives to the USA and starting from scratch. We had no clue we would lose touch with some of our friends, and make some friendships even stronger despite the distance. We had no clue we would be making new friends. We had no clue we would struggle to grow our family. We had no clue we would miss these friends and family that surrounded us that special day. And through all of this, our love continues to grow stronger day by day in ways I never thought possible.

Thank you Chris for being so loving to me!

The cat who got the cream!

My mummy.

I have known and loved my mum longer than anybody else in the world. We have had our fair share of disagreements….OK….some of them might actually be arguments! But I can say that probably 95% of the time they were of my doing as a teenager I caused despair with my mother! We are also chalk and cheese in some other things in life and times, I have wondered sometimes how we are related, but I guess that is normal in every parent-child relationship! The important thing is, my mum always supported me in my differences and encouraged me to seek out the best and different opportunities in life – even when she didn’t really approve (I could tell those disapproving looks!). I don’t think I would be so happy and successful now without her support.

My mother has been through some very tough times in her life and has battled breast cancer – twice. She has also been through many ups and downs in her relationships with my fathers. Simply put, my mum is a fighter. The most important thing my mother has taught me as I grew up, probably unknowingly to her and maybe today she will only realise that I credit this to her, is problem solving skills – and not giving up on wicked problems. I learnt this skill from observation and understanding the effects of successfully solving a problem ….it was a nurtured skill, not given, not genetic. Often I’ve wondered how I ended up becoming an analyst, but it makes a lot of sense given what I have learned from my mum. And there is one other thing that I admire about my mother – and that is her care and dedication to many of her friends and her children at her job.

Thank you mummy for being you!!! Happy Mothers Day!!

My granny.

My gran is the second person in my life I have known the longest after my mum (my mum wins because I hung around inside her for 9 months before meeting the rest of the world :-p). My gran is one of the most humble and selfless ladies I have ever known in my life. My gran has taught me the values and standards I try to live by in life and how to be considerate for other people. I think this is why today I find it so hard to fathom why other people can be so mean and horrible to other human beings (i.e. trolls). But there is something else that I think my gran might not realise she has taught me to be in life… that is fearless. My gran IS fearless. My gran is not afraid to try new things or think of things in a different light. I am pretty sure every time I speak to my gran she has been doing something different, something new – it probably seems like nothing to her – but to me that is amazing. Gran is coming to visit us in a few months time and I am soooo excited that we can share our USA experiences with her! My granny and papa looked after me and my brothers regularly as we grew up and their unconditional love has always been my safe place that I think about when I use calming techniques.

Although my gran isn’t my mother, she is my mummy’s mother and so on this Mother’s day I want to thank you granny for everything you do!!!!

IVF Diary Vol II: 15th Jan 16

January 16, 2016January 16, 20167 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Gonal-F 300 iu & Menopur 150 iu. Chris really is great at this injection thing. I prepared the Gonal-F whilst Chris prepared the menopur. We both read the instructions to remind us how to mix everything up, but like riding a bike, it was easy this time around. Chris was a little bit nervous, but he needn’t have been, he did a great job. I even looked down at the needle as he was injecting it – I am still not good at watching the needle break the skin though :-s. The menopur did burn a bit as it went in, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I remember it to be.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil.

What are my symptoms? Period started right on cue yesterday morning! Hot flashes and a bit of dizziness a couple of hours after my 2 first injections of this cycle.

How do I feel today? A little bit annoyed that my plans to have a more relaxing stim period and 2WW are falling to pieces. Some short turn around-high impact work may fall on my plate next week. I would have to forgo some of my steadfast principles for quality work and accept that in this case a 40% solution can only be delivered in the time lines given. I have stuck to my guns though to some extent – where I was going to be taking the whole week off work, I am now only taking Monday and Friday off. Tuesday and Thursday I will be working from home, Wednesday I’ll be in the office. As we talked about this potential work, I started to feel sick to my stomach. I started thinking back to last time around when I was trying to get my project finished and how stressed I was feeling about balancing the IVF process and work. I let down my quality levels then – no one noticed (of course I noticed), in fact I got lots of praise for that piece of work. Last week when a senior boss praised this work in front of the whole division I sat there quietly proud, but felt a bit sad that I had accomplished that with little help during a shitty time of IVF, followed by the whole ectopic pregnancy thing and ultimately miscarriage. My boss has been great by not dumping everything on me right now, he quite easily could have done, but he didn’t so I appreciate that, but I can’t quite help thinking about how IVF is holding me back from doing my absolute best. I don’t think my colleagues around me think like that (fortunately they are all smart, intelligent people who know me), it is just myself I am fighting with these thoughts.

All that being said, I’ll talk about something positive. We decided to go out for dinner at our local restaurant to celebrate surviving and nailing those first two injections. Chris deserved his beer! As we were finishing our meal the power went out in some of the building. There was a storm that evening so it must have knocked the power out. I said don’t worry, we are on a different power grid to our neighbours over the road (the block our restaurant was on) and last time their power went out, ours stayed on. As we walked back, we realised that our grid was out and our neighbours’ over the road was on! Typical. Fortunately we are well prepared for such events (for hurricanes and other storms etc), and carried on with the power of candles 🙂 It was a little bit romantic…I snuggled up in bed preparing for the power to be out all night and the temperature to dip.

Power outage = Candle lit bedroom!! Fortunately we have quite a few candelabras left over from our wedding table decorations still 😉

But then came the hot flashes! I needn’t have worried about keeping warm, it seemed the drugs were doing a great job of that for me!!

Any results? Estradiol <20 (as it should be, the same as IVF 1). Progesterone <.2 (as it should be, the same as IVF 1). FSH 3.21 miU/ml (IVF 1 was 9.29, in 2014 it was 6.8) LH 0.771 miU/ml (IVF 1 was 3.48, in 2014 it was 4.9). My LH level came up as red in my results…this means it was out of the ‘normal’ range, it is very low. But not by much. So I looked into it. Although lower FSH is good, low LH is not good…apparently calculating the FSH-LH ratio and knowing the LH levels are good predictors of IVF outcome. Let’s just say that I read several scientific reports, plugged in my numbers and the stats aren’t good. But, the good news is that I don’t care! Why? Because women with this kind of level and ratio still got pregnant. And I am going to be one of those women in 4 weeks time 🙂 In your face science!!! **

What’s next? The same injections Sat, Sun, then monitoring appointment on Monday morning.

Weight. Work stress = nom nom nom bads. But I did do the mixed martial arts P90x3 routine and pushed myself hard, so I don’t feel so bad.

Waist. NSTR

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 Still NONE. Let’s see if the sun comes out this weekend!

Fun Activity to keep Dani from going insane. IT’S FRIIIIIIIIDAYYYYYYY!! I need say no more. Surprise date night.

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

** Reserve right to have science egg in my face later

I’m not going to leave you

January 11, 201626 Comments

Yes, it’s true, I have said to Chris on several occasions in the past that I worry that he might leave me if I can’t provide us with a baby. It’s quite a ridiculous thing to think about, I know. I haven’t felt like this though for a long time, but I have felt in the past. Perhaps when I was lot less insecure with myself and our relationship. I can genuinely say now that I am not worried that he would leave me because we can’t have a child.

After everything we have been through together, I doubt he wants to run off with someone else to give it a go 🙂 I am just kidding. But what I really mean, is that I have seen with my own eyes and felt in my own heart how far and how much Chris is willing to put into this baby to make it happen – it has strengthened our relationship in ways I can not explain how.

Naturally, Chris gets offended by the very thought that I would believe he might leave me if I couldn’t bear a child. He tell’s me:

“I’m not going to leave you, silly”

And I don’t blame him that he might be quietly offended. I think in some ways it is like I just questioned his love for me. I never meant for it to be interpreted like that, I just never understood why he would want to stay with me when he could find happiness elsewhere. I can see now how much it must have hurt for me to utter these words to him “I’m afraid you might leave me”.

I truly do not feel like that today. I have come a long way since I first worried about this. I know Chris will be there with me, no matter what. I am lucky to have discovered this now, I don’t need to worry. But the funny thing is Chris worries that I still worry. It’s worrying, all this unnecessary worrying.

Despite my own past insecurities, there is something that never goes away on this infertility journey; it’s those very tough days when your relationship with your partner is pushed to the extreme limits. Just when you thought it was safe, the cork pops. The feelings explode. You don’t know where they came from. Our resiliency is tested to the max. That happened this weekend.

I know we will bounce back stronger, with a better understanding of each other’s buttons and mind matter. It’s just hard to pull myself back up sometimes and Chris is no different. We normally use each other’s strength to help one or the other back up, but what happens when you both fall down? I don’t want to wait for help from someone else, we need some self rescue.

….do you have any ideas? How can we get ourselves out of this funk? How do you get yourselves out of the blues and into the sunshine, together again?

The big question – What if we can’t have children?

March 30, 20158 Comments

As we were about to head to bed for the evening, Chris quietly asked “What if we can’t have children?”. This is a question we have discussed before – several years ago in fact. It’s the kind of question you ask just after your boyfriend/fiancee asks you to marry him. It’s one of those BIG questions. And we had much time to talk about it back then. Chris proposed to me just 1/2 hr into our 4 day hike in the remote Italian mountains, the Dolomites. Of course I said yes when he asked me to marry him (If I had said no it would have been a rather awkward four days in the mountains 😉 ), but this left four days of ‘just us’ to talk about ‘the big things in life’, to double check that we were in fact right for each other. Well probably more of me doing the double checking, after all, he had been planning to propose to me for months, he had all that time to think about it. We concluded that love conquers all, you couldn’t really argue with that logic. Oh so naive?

This time around, Chris asked the question with a genuine sadness in his eye. With a little bit of wine in me, my eyes welled up instantly and hit some kind of nerve. Because yes, love does conquer all, but it hurts to think that this could be a reality in the not so distant future. I have thought about it a bit, but I haven’t really looked into it in depth. We discussed potential future options of donor eggs. donor sperm, gestational surrogacy, adoption and being ‘child free’. These discussions were brief and emotionally fuelled, with neither of us having much understanding about any of them. We concluded that we do not both agree on each of these options, we have our differences of opinions, however we recognised that these feelings are likely to change dependent on our situation and once we have done more research together. We did agree on one thing – that we would use all of our savings if we had to, but we would not get into debt.

The discussion was brief, we were tired and emotional, it was not the best time to ask this BIG question. But it is a question we need to be prepared to think about more if round 3 of IUI does not work. This doesn’t mean we are not hopeful about round 3, far from it, it’s just something we might want to start smarting up about. Education certainly never hurt anyone.