Balancing Work and Infertility Treatment

November 23, 201513 Comments

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.

The sugar monster

November 10, 2015November 10, 201513 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our menu for the week looks like this:

Breakfast:

Toasted oats cereal with banana and milk

Lunches:

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

Snacks:

carrots, celery, pistachios, wholewheat cracker bread with butter

Dinners:

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

Homemade Treats:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creeping thoughts

September 1, 20158 Comments

I have had some spotting everyday since Friday – just the teeniest amount here and there. Every time I go to the toilet I feel sick to my stomach as I wipe and check the tissue with apprehension. I hold my pee just so I delay having to see the blood. I can feel my stomach starting to bloat, with a feeling of emptiness.

My app tells me I am 5 weeks and 5 days pregnant today and huckleberry is the size of a chocolate chip. But is huckleberry in there? Perhaps huckleberry is no longer there, may be he never developed after implantation, or may be he is hanging on for us to see him once again on the ultrasound tomorrow…

Time is dragging and the fog creeps thick around us, we try to keep busy, but it’s impossible to hide our deepest thoughts. I know that tomorrow is going to be a good day, whatever happens we will have some of the answers to many of our questions.

This post may sound depressive, but I promise you I am not – just sad and anxious, and I think it is OK to be feeling like this right now, it would probably be a bit weird if I didn’t.

Trying not to cry at work is HARD

August 28, 2015August 28, 201526 Comments

On Tuesday, after my second beta test, I went home from work early so that I could receive the good or bad news in private. But my results had not ‘come back in time’, so not knowing when I would receive my results, I went into work on Wednesday. I was busy running around the office preparing for a one day workshop I was leading the next day when I received the phone call. You may know already that the news was ‘not good’. Receiving news like this whilst at work is difficult. My eyes were welling up when I dashed to the toilet quickly, passing one of my senior bosses and trying not to look him in the eye. I called Chris and had a good old cry – lucky there are not many women at my work to gate crash my pity parade. Chris said he would come to my work for a hug and he would be there in about 30 minutes. So I collected myself, and headed back to my desk. A colleague of mine who had promised to provide me some input to my project report for about 3 weeks decided to tell me he was not able to do it and he was going on leave the next day. Let’s just say, this was the wrong time to be telling me this. My attitude initially to him going on leave was….”and…..?????”. I had waited some time for his input and my report was already late. I said “No worries…..” in a very sarcastic and mean tone. Then my friend walked past us happy and bubbly….realised she had just interrupted something and asked if she should go, to which I nodded. Anyway, I was clearly in a grump.

After 40 minutes of being really pissy one minute, and on the verge of tears the next, Chris arrived at my work. We had a big hug and cry together in my work car park (parking lot). Chris stayed for a coffee, and we decided we would work from home for the rest of the day. I went back to my desk to finish off my preparations for the next day when my colleague (who I had been grumpy to) asked if everything was OK? So I told him about my phone call. I held back the tears as I said it, but said it was OK, I was going home for the afternoon, which he agreed I should do. I felt a little bit bad for my pissyness, but I know he understood that it wasn’t personal against him.

Thursday….I kept myself super busy at my workshop all day, I hardly stopped to think about anything else other than work. It was great!

Today, Friday, I had my third beta blood test. It didn’t start out great as my appointment was already eating into some ‘compulsory training’ time at work…and of course, the clinic had a waiting room FULL of patients. I was greeted by a nice enough nurse who I had never met before. I thought I had met them all!!!! In fact, it was very bizarre, I noticed that the receptionist was someone I had never met before, and all the other nurses I saw wondering around were all new. I wondered briefly if they had done ‘swap staff with another clinic’ day. V. weird. Anyway, the nurse who took my blood was pretty distracted by another nurse who was ‘in training’ (who at my last beta test, I blamed for my late result 🙂 ). They were gossiping, I did not appreciate a lack of attention when I was already upset with having to be there. Grrrr.

After I made into work this morning 40 minutes late, I sat in on about 1.5hrs of pointless training (I am actually already trained, and didn’t know they were going to be covering this same material). You can tell it was going to be a good day for me….not. The office was very quiet today, everyone was out on travel or on leave, which was probably a good thing, but I felt lonely. So I took myself off to a quiet empty meeting room and typed up notes from Thursday’s workshop to keep me busy…but it was slow going, my mind kept wondering to my results.

At 2pm my phone rang, I was surprised because the results weren’t due back til 3pm. It was the doctor who had done my egg retrieval and transfer calling with the bad news. He said my hCG levels were 395 (actually it turns out he was wrong, they were actually 345). My first response was wow it went up again, OK – I wasn’t expecting that! But he brought me back down to earth and said he did not believe this would be a normal pregnancy, he would expect an absolute minimum level of 800 by now, and I should stop taking my medications to prevent prolonging the pain (Emotional pain he meant), he did say that I could choose to stay on the meds if I wanted to be 110% sure, but he recommended to stop them. He also told me to arrange a follow up appointment with my doctor as soon as possible. And that was it. I actually did not cry, I was just confused. Sad, but confused. I stayed in my meeting room and focused on my task at hand, surprisingly I got a lot done in the next two hours.

It is so hard to not cry in front of work colleagues, but at the same time, being there has been a good thing when I needed to divert my mind’s wondering to sad things.

As I left work I received a phone call from my doctor, she started talking to me as if I did not know my results. However, she was far more informative about my results and what she wanted to do next. She told me that she agreed with the other doctor I should stop taking the medication, there is a very very small chance (about 1%) that this might be a viable pregnancy, but coming off the meds will not harm the developing foetus if in fact it is developing. By stopping the medication my body will be allowed to do what it probably would ordinarily have done and let me bleed. She wants to see me on Tuesday afternoon for an ultrasound and another beta test to be sure I do not have an ectopic pregnancy, although very unlikely, she wants to check. It is normal if I don’t start bleeding for another 4-5 days, but in the mean time if I get any sharp sudden pains or difficulty breathing to call her immediately. She also started talking about what we have in the freezer – we have just one blastocyst that was frozen on Day 5 stored away. They won’t do a transfer with just one frozen, so we would have to do another round of IVF. Can’t even think about that right now.

As soon as I got home I took off the estrogen patches from my stomach. It feels good to not have anything stuck there, and we don’t need to think about doing an injection either. I’m trying to think of the positives here!

Nurse Mummy to the Rescue

August 11, 2015August 11, 201511 Comments

It dawned on me over a week ago that when I go for my work trip & mini day break with mum up to DC tomorrow, I will not have my handy man (AKA hubby) with me to administer the progesterone in oil injection. Uhoh, I worried that I would not be able to do it on my own – have you seen the size of that needle? It’s 3 times the size of the one that is injected into my abdomen!! The first time I tried to inject myself was a complete failure, I froze to the spot. There was little chance of me administering this 1.5″ long needle myself – in my buttocks. I thought I was going to have to cut our trip short, until I realised that my mum could do it!!!

Now – my mum is a self admitted needle phobe. Fortunately, she is only a needle phobe from needles being administered to herself. She works in a school and has administered an epi-pen to a child before. The challenge to inject me with this ginormous needle still was not insurmountable. So we got mum into training ASAP. Once Chris had tried administering the injection on me once, he then started training my mum.

First night of training – observation. Mum observed Chris and he explained every step he took. Here is a simple 10 step programme.

Step 1: Prepare items: 1.5″ 22G needle, progesterone in oil, gauze, x2 alcohol swabs, sharps container, ice pack for numbing, heat pad for massaging afterwards.

Step 2: Dani lies face down on bed and Dani ices the buttock that will be injected (change from L-R buttock every day)
Step 4: Prepare medication: take lid off progesterone bottle, alcohol swab top, extract 1ml of progesterone using needle, check for air bubbles.
Step 5: Alcohol swab injection area on buttocks, Dani looks away :-s
Step 6: Breathe!!!
Step 7: Pull skin apart at injection site and hold down. Let Dani know you are going to stab her 3-2-1: stab!
Step 6: Pull back on needle slightly to check for blood, if air bubble is seen, all is good
Step 7: Inject progesterone
Step 8: Remove needle and place gauze on injection site & massage.
Step 9. Dani continues to massage injection site area with heat pad for about 10 minutes.
Step 10: Go have a cigarette to calm your nerves (mummy, not Dani!!!)

Second night of training – prepare medicine with Chris’s guidance, observe Chris injecting again. Practice injection using lemon and vegetable oil to get feel of how hard it needs to be ‘darted’ into the skin.

By the way – when life gives you lemons…..stab em with a needle and inject vegetable oil. Waaaaay more fun than making lemonade!!!

Third night of training – prepare medicine without Chris’s guidance (Chris observes), Chris injects again while observing. Continue practicing with lemon.

Fourth night of training – prepare medicine. Inject with Chris’s guidance. (Success!!! Mum has a little lie down with me afterwards, she was nervous, but I hardly felt a thing!!)

Fifth night of training – on own administer everything without Chris’s guidance, Chris observes and only interrupts once to slightly change the grip on the needle. Mum is now fully Qualified!

D-Day: She did it!!!! Mum did this all on her own without any help from me at all. I am so grateful and proud of you Mum!

I tried practicing with the lemon against on my bottom to see if I could do it my self just in case – and it is possible on my left side, but very difficult on the right side, so despite my needle phobia I would probably still need help to inject on my right side.

After Mum qualified and passed her 5 night training plan, she told me that throughout this she has learned that the you can overcome anything for your children. Awwww. Thanks Mum, I love you lots and can’ thank you enough for overcoming your fear to help us out.

Facebook – the good, bad and ugly

August 8, 2015August 8, 201522 Comments

Hi, my name is Dani, and I have been a facebook addict for about ten years. I don’t want to give it up just yet, but we have been having a love-hate relationship recently. Let me explain the good, bad and ugly of facebook to you.

The GOOD.

On Thursday’s egg retrieval we did something very random and spontaneous. After Chris put his ‘egg packing uniform’ on, the nurse asked if we would like a photo of us together. After the nurse snapped a few of us posing together and left chuckling at us (in a nice way), I asked Chris to strike a pose for me in his beautiful attire. (I posted pictures of him posing yesterday) I laughed about putting it on facebook. He said, go on then! I wasn’t quite sure if he really meant it. I pointed out that people would ask why he was wearing it. How would you respond to that?

Chris has been quite adamant in the past that he does not want to post anything on facebook about our infertility, he doesn’t want to share it with the world, and I respect him for that. The only time I have posted something on facebook was when he gave me my first injection on Valentines day. The post was vague enough that only one or two people asked us questions about it. I also shared an article about infertility awareness week, I had only one question about that one.

So I sat there with the photo of the two of us in our surgery attire that the nurse had taken and pondered what to write along with it. I crafted something positive, short and to the point. And then I cried. I was about to chicken out of it, but then a thought popped into my head, what the heck – why should we have to hide this big life event? So I pressed ‘Post‘. 20 seconds later my phone vibrated, and again, and again, and again. I was nervous to look at it. What type of comments would I get? Would people just press like and be too afraid to comment? I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. Here is what I posted:

After the transfer procedure was completed, Chris then posted a picture of our embryos from his own facebook account “Apparently babies come from raspberries”:

Our first post received 232 likes and 73 comments wishing us love and luck. My phone did not stop buzzing all day yesterday. And then came the personal private messages. Statistically speaking, infertility is likely to affect about 20 couples out of this group of people. Of course friends we know who had gone through IVF contacted us either on facebook or privately to wish us luck and offer a hand/advice if ever needed, but then there was some of our friends who we discovered had been silent about their treatment for infertility who messaged us too. We had private messages of inspiration and warm wishes. We were astounded by this response and feel so much love filled in our hearts.

I cannot possibly feel negative for a while after all this support!!!

It is difficult going through infertility when a number of close friends and family are so physically far away. Facebook provides us with the ability to stay connected with them – sure there are other means to do this (Skype, whatsApp, Email etc), but it allows us to deal with the timezone differences and still feel connected. This to me makes facebook a GOOD commodity in helping us build friendships that help carry us through the bad times of infertility.

I can imagine some people reading this will be thinking we are crazy for posting what we did, but it wasn’t something that came naturally, rather it is something that has taken time to learn to be comfortable with. I started to take the stance of not hiding our infertility a few months ago, if moments came up in conversations I would talk about it (awkwardly), and now I feel a lot more comfortable talking about it than I used to, I don’t whisper at work anymore and I may even start a conversation about it. The underlying point is that it has taken time to become comfortable and not ashamed of what we are going through.

The BAD

By posting what we did before the embryo transfer, we have opened up our hearts to a much wider audience, and if things don’t go well for us it’s going to be hard to deal with so much condolence on our hands. We are now vulnerable. We are also vulnerable to comments and unwelcome advice that drive you mad when you are going through infertility. We can’t filter these comments out from facebook. We shouldn’t just de-friend someone because they made a hurtful comment that they didn’t realise they were making. But we can de-friend people who turn out to just not be real friends or purposefully spite us with hurtful comments, at least we can block them from that part of our lives. Fortunately, I have never experienced anything spiteful, malicious or hurtful regarding our infertility.

The other thing about facebook that is just plain BAD are the pregnancy announcements and baby photos that plaster your newsfeed. For some people suffering from infertility, this should probably be in the UGLY section. But I actually don’t mind pregnancy announcements, especially if they are close friends. I do get a little bit tetchy when ultrasound photos are incessant, but you know what I can do? I can edit the facebook options so that I don’t see their posts unless I want to or choose to go to their facebook page when I am feeling good to see what they have been up to.

The UGLY

For me, the ugliest thing about facebook are those targeted ADVERTS. Pregnancy, baby clothes, mom sites, nappies….aghhhhhhhhhh JUST GO AWAY!!!! I can cope with a pregnancy announcement any day over this crap. You know what also gets my goat? THE WORST. Targeted adverts about infertility. Clearly I browse infertility websites, so why does any infertility website think it is OK to use targeted advertising about infertility to appear on my facebook feed? Do their marketing people know anything about infertility?????????? Do people with cancer get adverts about cancer? Do they want to see adverts about cancer, just as they have gone in to remission? I guess it is an individual’s perspective about whether this type of advertising is useful or not. For me, this is just UGLY.

I wonder a lot about the algorithms facebook use to determine if an ad should be placed on my page. They use data from your profile, such as location, age, gender, interests, connections, relationship status, languages, education and workplaces. That is all pretty basic information. However, there is more personal information that facebook uses such as your listed likes and interests, pages you like, apps you use and other timeline content that you have provided. I decided to see what kind of information advertisers need to provide to facebook, and it is indeed seemingly innocent. Here is what I found:

Creating a facebook advert: infertility is an interest that can be directly targeted to a user

The interest “infertility” is possible to target an audience to, these are people who have liked content relating to terms such as PCOS infertility (audience 246,280), unexplained infertility (205, 540) or male factor infertility (31,960) or even resolve (22,850). ( By the way, I found the potential audience numbers really interesting – note how low male factor infertility is? )

Fortunately, I was educated a couple of days ago how to stop this from happening on your facebook page. Nara from the Zero to Zygote blog recently posted how to stop adverts (in fact any type of advert) that you do not like appearing on your facebook feed. You can check out her handy guide here. I am so grateful to her for this post, as soon as I read it I immediately went ahead and clicked on a stupid pregnancy ad I have been receiving over the last few days and changed my setting to block ads like that.

The second question is whether facebook uses data other than what is found on your profile and your actions on facebook, for example when you visit infertility blogs, forums and IVF clinic pages? The answer is yes, like many other websites, cookies and trackers are used to directly target the ads you see on your facebook page. Some people may call this spying, marketers would call this targeting. You may think that you can just turn off cookies and trackers in your browser, it’s easy to do, but facebook will not let you use certain features if you do this. However, you can limit it by following the instructions here: http://gizmodo.com/how-to-stop-facebook-from-sharing-your-browsing-history-1589918083.

Hopefully, for me now, the UGLY has just gotten a whole brand new makeover (thanks Nara!!!), the BAD has been put on the naughty step for a time out, and facebook has become more of the GOOD that I originally signed up for (thanks Chris!!).

Do you have any good, bad or ugly stories about infertility and facebook to share?

Needles vs Skin: Place your bets now …

July 29, 20157 Comments

Some of you may have read my previous post about skin – it’s tougher than you think. In it I described the first night of injections for our IVF and I think you’ll agree it was a huge success…

…ok, perhaps not so much of a huge success, the drugs ending up inside Dani is a success but the number of attempts to get the needle through the skin left some room for improvement.

Day 1 re-cap: Injections – 2 : Holes in skin 5. Not a strong performance, some rookie errors leaving me someway off par

Day 2 summary: Injections – 2 : Holes in skin – 2 … nailed it! The success rate could be attributed to a greater degree of confidence after achieving such success on day 1, or it could be that I launched the hypodermic towards Dani’s stomach with so much force that it almost went in up to my elbow. I feel like I’m getting the hang of this drug administration stuff, there wasn’t any need for me to have a lie down this time, no wooziness and no tears for either of us. I feel that I’m on the way to reclaiming my manliness

Day 3 summary: Injections 2 : Holes in skin 3 – oh dear. A slight backward step here, the first attempt bounced, yes really, it bounced off her stomach, but worry not, I got it on the rebound. The double shot made me a little nervous on the second injection but afterwards Dani patted me on the head whilst saying ‘well done’ so I know it went well. I also wonder if she thinks I am a dog, It gives me something to ponder as she scratches behind my ears ….

Day 4 summary: Injections 2 : Holes in skin 2. A strong performance, regaining a little of the lost ground from the day 3 slips. Manliness may have taken another backward step as I did get a bit nervous on the second injection

Day 5 summary (today): New injection day, 1 in the morning and 2 in the evening, a 50% increase in number of jabs per day and a greater opportunity for the stats to go against me. Being a new drug day we thought we’d try a new position, Dani leaning up against the counter and me kneeling in front of her, this gives me more room to wield the needle and get a good swing with my arm :o) (What it really gives us is a bit more light to see by, the truth isn’t very exciting, sorry)

Final result Injections – 3 : holes in skin – 3, another stellar performance by Dani, she took the needles like a pro. The morning jab went OK but the drugs seem to burn after they’re inside her and that didn’t give a good start for the evening drugs as there was some nervousness about the pain from the Menopur., Fortunately the kneeling seems to make it steadier when I draw the needle out so less pain from the injections and only discomfort from the drugs. There was no real need to lie down this time but we did it anyway as it’s just a nice thing to do.

So the running stats to date:

Injections 11
Holes in skin 15

Not the best of records, and although it pains me to say it, I have to recognise that I’ll never close the gap. The only way to close the gap is to give two injections in the same hole, not something we will be attempting at any point (pun intended – thank you!). The 4 hole difference in my stats will forever be there, a record of my ineptitude and an indicator that a career as a nurse might not be a good option for me. The best I can hope for is that Dani forgives me for being so rubbish with the needles and that the gap between # injections and # holes doesn’t widen any further.

5 days to go. Would anyone care to bet what the final stats will be … ?

IVF DIARY VOL I: 28 JULY 2015

July 29, 20152 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). 3 injections: (AM) Cetrotide 0.25mg, (PM) Gonal-F 300iu and Menopur 75iu.

Cetrotide – is this evil in disguise? Maybe. The injection did not hurt going in, I could barely feel it compared to the other two injections, but my goodness it stung afterwards. It was like a wasp had crawled into my stomach and couldn’t get out.

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil.

How do I feel today? Having used half of my menopur medication stockpile I am kind of excited by this this fact!!

Tuesday night is games night in our household. This evening we learned that we should perhaps never play games ever again whilst on these drugs. Chris beat me at risk – well I conceded after 10 minutes of play. Then he beat me at cribbage. Seriously Chris, you were supposed to let me win at least one game :_-( Oh and I also scared the cat out of his skin when I jokingly screamed at Chris after I lost at risk “I’M HORMONAL – YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BEAT ME” (perhaps the neighbours think I am mad now too). I have also lost my voice from shouting; it serves me right really!!!!

What are my symptoms? OH TODAY HAS SUCKED. After the cetrotide injection, I got into work and immediately wanted to go home and curl up in bed. My colleagues were telling me to go home when they saw me. However, I still have this project to finish, so I made myself a hot water bottle and managed to make it through the morning. The pain was from the injections, I felt like I had done 1000 sit ups, my muscles ached, and my skin was sensitive to touch – when my work pass touched my stomach I winced. I thought I was going to have to go home at lunch, but suddenly my stomach felt a whole lot better after 1pm so I stayed and felt quite chirpy for the rest of the afternoon.

How does Chris feel today? He is going to write his own blog post tonight. Bless him, he still gets nervous with the injections.

Any results? NA.

What’s next? Tomorrow I have another monitoring appointment. We are half way through the stimulation part of the IVF cycle now! (Hopefully). I am not looking forward to the next cetrotide injection in the morning 😦

My mum is flying in from the UK tomorrow to stay for three weeks so I will be picking her up from the airport!

Weight. Apparently I weigh less than yesterday….not sure how that is possible when I look down at my stomach.

Waist. Oh my waist is still a little pot bellied bloated.

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 Only 1/2hr of sunshine whilst I tidied up the garden this evening.

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

IVF DIARY VOL I: 22 – 24 JULY 2015

July 25, 2015July 25, 20155 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). 2 injections: Gonal-F 300 iu and Menopur 75 iu

Medical procedures undertaken. Baseline ultrasound and blood test.

How do I feel today? I think every emotion under the sun has run through me!

We knew we had to deal with the financials today, but wasn’t sure what to expect so I turned up with cheque book and credit card in hand!!! Well it was all much quicker than anticipated, my insurance company has provided a letter promising to pay everything….yes everything including the ICSI! (well, everything except for the 10% co-pay of course). I signed something saying that I would be responsible for the $14,000 bill if my insurance decided not to cover it for any reason. So in the end, we didn’t need to pay anything upfront and we expect to see a bill of our $1,400 co-pay in 1-2 months time. That’s great because it gives us more time to save some more and helps me feel a little more relaxed about things.

Chris surprised me with a big Zippy hug after he had stabbed me with the needles this evening. Hiding in Zippy’s mouth was a bar of cadbury’s chocolate! Awww it was a nice perk me up. Of course I only had 3 squares as my weekly treat!

Zippy!!! What’s in your mouth?

What are my symptoms? Just period pains. I am actually quite surprised how heavy my period is considering I had only a 14 day cycle!

How does Chris feel today? Chris is currently writing his own separate post today about his experience this evening after he stabbed me…4 times…..with 2 needles. You are going to want to read this! Let’s just say there were some comedic moments.

Any results? The way I get all my results is rather handy. I call a secure answer phone service after 4pm the day of my monitoring appointment and the nurse leaves a message with all instructions for dosages and the date/time of my next appointment. I can call the nurse any time I like if I have questions. I like it this way because I won’t have to worry about missing a call. I actually didn’t get any info about my blood test results today. But I do have an app on my phone that tracks all my results, but it updates late in the evening, so I will be a bit behind in reporting blood test results. My ultrasound went well – my ovaries are ‘quiet’ as the doctor explained as she wants them to be. I have several follicles between 5-6mm in size in each ovary ready to be stimulated. For my next diary entry I’m going to figure out a nice visual way to track my follicle growth and numbers over time.

What’s next? My next monitoring appointment is Monday morning, until then I keep going with the 2 injections a day of gonal-f 300 iu and menopur 75 iu.

Weight. NSTR.

Waist. NSTR

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 We decided to get to the doctor’s nice and early this morning so we wouldn’t get caught in rush hour traffic, so we had breakfast outside starbucks, playing crib and basking in the glorious sunshine.

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

IVF DIARY VOL I: 10 – 16 JULY 2015

July 17, 2015July 17, 20153 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Ovulation Control Pill (OCP) Reclipsen 0.15MG-30MCG x 1

Medical procedures undertaken. Nil

How do I feel today? Fed up of spotting! I haven’t felt ‘hormonal’ the last week like I thought potentially the birth control pills might do. Overall feeling not too bad.

What are my symptoms? The first few days after I started the birth control pills I got a bit bloated and a bit constipated…which for someone with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (The diarrhea type) one would think it would make a nice change from going to poo three times a day! Fortunately, things have got back to normal in that arena. My boobs are a little tender and have stayed the same size since my period started (a bit bigger). Then there is the extra bleeding also, my period lasted a couple of days longer than my normal 2-3 days…and I have been spotting since then, so wearing a panty liner is a must right now.

How does Chris feel today? Chris is still very busy at work at the moment 😦 He is trying to get as much done in prep for the when we start ‘stimming’ (aka injecting the drugs) so he can focus on us. (Aww bless him, he’s a sweetie) We did have that big discussion about how many embryos to transfer and what our decision will be. It made for an interesting dinner table conversation! We weighed up the pros and cons, but he did say that ultimately he would stick with whatever I decided because it is my body and health that would be at risk. So we haven’t completely ruled out transferring two just yet.

Any results? NA

What’s next? Just four more days of birth control pills. I’m looking forward to not hearing my ‘alien’ alarm on my phone that reminds me to take them at the same time every day.

Weight. Funny story and probably too much information – Now, I have been weighing myself as soon as I wake up to make it a fair comparison. One morning, after weighing myself I went downstairs, started to prepare breakfast when I realised I needed to go to the toilet (at last hooray!!). And as I mentioned earlier, having been constipated for a while, I did an enormous poo….so much so that in the interest of science, afterwards, I dashed back upstairs to weigh myself again. Can you believe it? I weighed EXACTLY the same 127.2lbs….and I got on and off I three times to be sure it wasn’t stuck. So now I just don’t trust those scales!!

Waist. NSTR

Boobs. NSTR

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 Seriously, still not enough….the weather has not been great recently, but last night whilst I played softball I soaked up the evening sun and it was glorious. I hope this weekend brings us some better weather!

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