I said NO…am I crazy?

September 6, 201517 Comments

The on-call doctor called me first thing this morning and apologised she had not called yesterday with my results (she did have them yesterday after all and gave no reason). She said my beta hCG levels have risen again and she wanted me to come in today to take the methotrexate shot. I asked her if she had spoken to my doctor (- no she hadn’t) because my doctor had said she would keep monitoring me up to 7 weeks for a visible confirmation of ectopic before administering the methotrexate. 7 weeks was her cut off point. The on-call doctor said it was ultimately my decision, but it would be against their recommendation not to take the methotrexate today. She also checked with the other senior doctor who was there with her, and he said it was OK for me to wait – despite it being against their recommendation. I said OK and asked when can I come in for another ultrasound, she said it was up to me. My doctor isn’t back in the office until after the holiday weekend, Tuesday. This is when my doctor said her cut off point was. So I told the on-call doctor that I will wait for my doctor to come back. I also asked what was my actual hCG level because she hadn’t told me up to then – it was 1300 (up from 1066 48 hours ago). That was a lot less than I expected. I have a feeling it’s tailing off. Here is my chart:

Normal hCG levels compared to my hCG levels (Note this is on a Log scale)

The on-call doctor told me to call her anytime I wanted to change my mind, and please look out for any pain. After I got off the phone, I panicked. Chris was still asleep in bed at the time of the phone call so I woke him and basically cried at him. He says he supports my decision, but wants me to take the methotrexate. Ultimately I feel like crap right now. I have had SO MANY unknowns from encounters with doctors and I am sick and tired of it:

When I was 18 I went to ER because I had a random massive vaginal bleed. They couldn’t tell me why.
When I was 19 I spent a year in and out of doctors trying to diagnose my abdominal pains. I was eventually diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), but there is no test to confirm this, it was their last thing in the box (I know I do have IBS, but really we don’t know why – and no one really knows what causes IBS). I could have endometriosis too, but IBS explains the pains too. They couldn’t tell me why.
When I was 20 I ended up in an ambulance being taken to ER because I passed out from abdominal pains. I freaked out a lot of people. They suspected that it was IBS related after eating 3 days of ration pack food in the field whilst on Army Exercise. But really – they couldn’t tell me why.
We can’t have a baby without medical intervention. We have unexplained infertility. They can’t tell me why.
I’m pregnant, but they can’t see anything on the ultrasound at 6W4D and hCG level of 1300. THEY CAN’T TELL ME WHY.

What is wrong with my body? It’s like I have a black box body of unknown-ness. Am I actually an alien??!

Honestly, I think I might be going crazy for not taking the methotrexate, but there is something that just doesn’t feel quite right about it. Why don’t I want to take this drug? Because I’m very afraid of the side effects and being put through this unnecessarily if the abnormal pregnancy is in fact just growing slowly in my uterus and not one of my tubes. Methotrexate can really mess with your gut, and my gut really is bad enough as it is. I am not even bothered by the fact that we have to wait 3 months before trying again – I will WELCOME this after everything we have experienced the last 2 weeks. Chris thinks I should take the shot so we can end this right now, mostly for the psychological pain, plus of course he is worried I will end up in hospital. Aghhh. This truly sucks.

Where’s Waldo??

September 3, 201514 Comments

“Where’s Waldo? – Do you know who Waldo is?”

My doctor asked me as she used the vaginal ultrasound to search my uterus and fallopian tubes for a potential sac. Today at my ultrasound appointment my doctor carefully searched as she discussed it with the more ‘junior’ doctor. The ‘junior’ doctor also had a go with ultrasound wand. But nothing was there – not even that black teeny dot from Tuesday was there anymore.

My hCG went up to 1066 from 686 (55% increase in 44 hrs). This is not the direction my beta levels should be heading in right now.

My doctor helpfully told us today that her cut off is 7 weeks for a decision on whether to use methotrexate; in the mean time if my hCG continues to rise she will closely monitor me every 48 hours with ultrasound and beta blood tests until 7 weeks. Today I am 6 weeks 2 days pregnant, so only 5 days left for me to miscarry naturally. She is now more confident that when I return on Saturday they will see the growing empty sac now that my beta hCG is above 1000. The question remains – where will this empty sac be? We are still hoping it will be in the uterus and not the fallopian tube.

So I’m still on ectopic watch for now. I have no bleeding or spotting, the odd pain twinge here and there, today I woke up a bit more nauseous and I’m starting to pee a lot again, so my ‘pregnancy’ symptoms are now returning as my hCG levels continue to rise. But overall I feel physically well, a little bit mentally drained.

Today I took a sick day which was a good idea because I am not sure my brain could have coped with work today, instead I spent some time doing adult colouring in. Very therapeutic, but sometimes I can’t stop because I don’t like leaving things unfinished, and then it stops being therapeutic as I create a chore for myself!!!

Anyway, until Saturday…..we continue to wait.

Sad, but starting to feel mad

September 2, 201521 Comments

This afternoon I had my mobile (cell) phone with me on loud so I could hear the doctor ring with my results. I get a lot of notifications and pings every 5 minutes so I am sure my colleagues were getting annoyed with me. But anyway, I received three pings all at once, which I thought was odd, so I checked my email to find a notification from my clinic for a new appointment, with my doctor tomorrow morning (The three pings were from my email and app that tracks my appointments). Well isn’t that just nice? My eyes started to well up because I knew this had to be bad news – what a crappy way to find out? After 20 minutes of consoling myself, I finally received the call from my doctor. My hCG levels have continued to rise again to 686 (Tues) from 345 (Fri). Not good news. So my doctor starts talking more about this potentially being a tubal (ectopic) pregnancy…she didn’t really tell me anything new from yesterday, she stressed again that there is zero chance that I have a viable pregnancy (OK so I got that from yesterday when there was nothing on the ultrasound).

Tomorrow morning I will have another ultrasound to double check my uterus for a (non-viable) pregnancy and some blood tests to see if I am suitable candidate for the drug methotrexate. I have done a bit more research into this drug, and I really want the doctor to explain all tomorrow – I will be using my 3 point guide to help me feel better informed! The best guide I found is from the NHS:

“The use of methotrexate to treat pregnancy of unknown location and ectopic pregnancy” available here.

I have been having some random (but not sharp) short pains today, including pain on the left side. I have also not passed any blood today. The problem is with Irritable Bowel Syndrome for me is that stress causes pain, so I am having a hard time distinguishing between the two – I don’t feel stressed per se, but this rollercoaster surely can’t be good for my gut.

In the meantime I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s appointment as I move from feeling sad to feeling mad – mad that this feels really unfair and crappy. I’m taking bets on how many med students/doctors/fellows/nurses they can squeeze this time in the room for my ultrasound tomorrow…..I have a feeling there will be some interest 😐

Nothing….

September 1, 2015September 1, 201520 Comments

There was nothing there on the ultrasound screen, just my beautiful uterus – empty. There was the teeniest tiniest black spot that may have been the beginning of a sac, but it was so small my Doctor was not certain. She didn’t need to say anything for me to quickly realise that I was not one of the lucky 1%. My doctor checked my ovaries: my right one is still hyperstimulated from the IVF and I had some VERY big follicles/cysts (but this is normal for after IVF and of no concern, but may explain any pain I may have here), my left ovary too was swollen, but not as bad as my right one.

What does this mean? It was difficult for my doctor to say without knowing what my beta test results are. If my hCG levels are continuing to rise, it is likely that I have a tubal pregnancy (ectopic pregnancy – a pregnancy that grows outside of the uterus). If my hCG levels are falling, then it will be safe to assume that I have a chemical pregnancy* and the little black spot on the screen was indeed huckleberry.

My symptoms have been spotting dark brown blood since Friday, general abdominal pains all day Monday, my spotting surprisingly stopped today (Tuesday). I have had some pains specifically on my left side, although not overly sharp pains, and I pointed out to the doctor (doctors – there were 2 others in the room with her) where this was….yeh, about where my ovary/fallopian tubes are.

If this is a chemical pregnancy then the doctor will prescribe me some medication (a vaginal pessary, I cannot remember the name of it) to help my body along with expelling the uterine pregnancy. If this medication doesn’t work, or my hCG levels come back higher with a likelihood of a tubal pregnancy, then I will be prescribed Methotrexate (an intramuscular injection – YEY another injection, of course!!!). I want to avoid taking this drug because it will mean we are not allowed to conceive for at least another 3 months because the chemical can stay in the body and harm a developing embryo. But at the same time, we don’t want to wait and see for too long because there is a chance my tube could rupture and I would lose a fallopian tube. I have read that even after being given the shot their tube still ruptured because it was left too late.

So I was asking you to hope with me that I didn’t bleed, but now I want to bleed….please, please body, just bleed!!! I think this will be one of those times when I cry tears of happiness when I start to bleed full flow! I know it will also be sad at the same time….choo choo, all aboard the emotional train wreck!!!

I mentioned that there were two other doctors in the room, one was ‘shadowing’, the other was a fellow (no not a chappie you silly Brits!!!). The fellow interjected and answered some of our questions, he was clearly very knowledgeable, but there was a lot of bouncing around between them. Chris was getting frustrated with the information we were receiving, they were talking to us as if we were medical professionals. It took 5 minutes of Chris’s continued questioning to get the doctors to say that despite the miscarriage being bad (and sad), what we were seeing was ‘normal’ or ‘common’. What they really needed to start out with was – don’t worry, there is nothing seriously wrong with you, chemical pregnancies happen frequently with IVF (because they are transferring 2 embryos). I think I had a bit more knowledge than Chris and didn’t feel quite as frustrated because I had googled a lot on miscarriage, chemical pregnancy, blighted ovum and have read forums/blogs etc. So my lesson here is to share more of my ‘google expert medical opinion’ knowledge with Chris before these types of appointments.

We also discussed my hCG levels (49, 110 and 345) and my doctor did admit that my first hCG result of 49 was borderline low- to non viable. So why, oh why, did the other doctor (who did my IUIs) seem so happy and chirpy on the phone, proceed to tell me my progesterone and estrogen levels were excellent but fail to tell me my hCG level. All it required was this: “Congratulations Ms Dani, you are pregnant, but your levels were a little lower than average, we would like to see you again in 5 days just to make sure you levels are doubling nicely. Your estrogen & progesterone levels are excellent, so this is a good thing.” Expectation management is not a bad thing.

So – we have one big question answered, I feel a relief, albeit a sad relief – there is no viable pregnancy. The next big question we wait for an answer is – is this a chemical pregnancy or a tubal pregnancy?

*A chemical pregnancy is a clinical term for a very early miscarriage. It happens before an ultrasound could even detect a heartbeat (before the 5th week of gestation). This occurs when an egg is fertilized but it does not implant on the uterine wall. Chemical pregnancies are actually quite common, occurring in 50 – 60% of first pregnancies. There are many possible causes of chemical pregnancy – inadequate uterine lining, low hormone levels, luteal phase defect, infection, or other unknown reasons. The most common assumption is that they are due to chromosomal problems in the developing foetus. This can result from poor sperm or egg quality, genetic abnormalities from either mother or father, or abnormal cell division of the foetus.

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!

I always say it’s never over ’til the fat lady sings….predicting a successful pregnancy outcome

August 26, 201518 Comments

I always say it’s never over ’til the fat lady sings. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see that fat lady getting ready to get on stage…I can also hear her warming up, running through a few scales too.

So, my suspicions were pretty much confirmed about why I didn’t get my results yesterday. My results were not good. And let me point out here that these are not my words, but the words of my nurse.

My hCG levels last Weds were 49 – just a bit lower about where they should be, but were not overly worrisome…

My results from Tues this week, however, were 126. They went up!!!! But those of you who are familiar with hCG levels and where they should be by now will know this is not a great number. hCG levels should double every 2 to 3 days. What does this mean? Well my doctor wants me to keep taking my progesterone and estrogen, just in case – there is always a small chance this pregnancy is still viable!! But I have to go in for another beta test on Friday to double check that this pregnancy is, in fact, over.

I can safely say I am no longer feeling cautiously optimistic….I am feeling pessimistic as hell and sad. If you would like to hold onto hope for us, I gratefully take your strength and thank you for helping to hold us up, but quite frankly when the nurse tells you it is not good, it’s not good. I understand she is preparing us for the worst.

BUT!!!!! I decided to do a bit of research on what all this really means, what are MY chances? You know I had to do it, as one of my colleagues told me today – GTS! (Google That S#*% !!!). OK, I’m going to get a bit technical here….hang in there if you have in interest in hCG levels (the beautiful pregnancy hormone!!)….

I found a very useful study* that looked at the predictive values of hCG levels for a viable pregnancy 13 days after a 3 day Embryo Transfer (I took my first beta test 14 days after my 3 day Embryo transfer). My result of 49, according to their model, gives me the following chances of outcome: 45% successful singleton pregnancy, 31% miscarriage, 13% bio-chemical pregnancy, 9% ectopic pregnancy, 3% successful multiples pregnancy. Well I am glad they didn’t tell me what my hCG levels were last week!

According to these researchers’ analysis, they decided that the cut-off level for predicting a viable pregnancy was an hCG level is 76 IU/I (80% sensitivity)….although this is considerably higher than some other researchers have reported (for example other studies have found the cut off at a similar sensitivity to be: 42 mIU/ml (Qasim et al., 1996); 55 IU/l (Bjercke et al., 1999); and 50 IU/l (Sugantha et al., 2000)).

Wow guys, 76 seems to be a whole lot higher than the others….so do they have credibility in their research? Well from what I can ‘statistically understand’ and in understanding their research design, it looks solid; their sample size is excellent, some of the best I have seen in articles about artificial reproductive technologies….but I am not a medical professional, so I am totally relying on my knowledge of stats and may be there is something ‘medically awry’ that I cannot see.

If I use any of these models, and consider my hCG level of 49 from last week, these researchers would have told me my chances of a viable pregnancy were always going to be low.

However, there was one interesting point that came out from this study that caught my eye:

In subjects with unexplained infertility, ICSI may result in lower than expected HCG levels (Gold et al., 2000)….The explanation for this was not clear. Although the early embryo cleavage is delayed in ICSI-derived embryos and the fragmentation of embryos is increased the implantation potential is comparable with IVF-derived embryos.

Even though my numbers have not multiplied nicely….in the back of my mind I am holding onto this slither of hope….holding on that we are the ones in that 5% extreme quantile who defy the norm, and it is because we are unexplained and our embryo was ‘ICSI-ed‘ that my hCG numbers are much lower.

Until Friday…………. :-s

*Pokkeus, P., Hiilesmaa, V. & Tiitinen, A. (2002) Serum HCG 12 days after embryo transfer in predicting pregnancy outcome. Human Reproduction 17(7):1901-1905. Available at: http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/7/1901.full

How to get the most out of your doctor

August 23, 2015August 23, 201512 Comments

It took me about 24hrs after it was confirmed that I am pregnant to realise I do not know how to be pregnant. This might seem very weird considering we have been talking about this moment for more than two years now. Once we started trying to conceive I just of buried my head in the sand. I didn’t want to jinx our chances by buying a book about it, and I started to avoid all pregnancy related websites and apps after 6 months of failing to succeed in our quest to make a baby. I know the basics, like smoking is a big no-no, drugs are dangerous, avoid raw meat and reduce caffeine, but really, that is the limits of my knowledge. So yesterday we went to the book store and bought two books on pregnancy. One was the standard text book “Great expectations: Your all in one resource for pregnancy”, and the second was “Expecting Better”, beautifully demonstrated in this picture by Sushi:

Sushi, my book keeper

This second book interested me because I have always wondered whether Japanese women stop eating sushi, or French women stop eating brie when they are pregnant. Really? I don’t think so. I hope that this book will enlighten me to what the conventional wisdom really means. But when I started reading the first chapter I didn’t need to go much further with it to be completely satisfied with my purchase. Why? Well the author, Emily Oster, is not so different from me, she was not happy with what her doctor was telling her. I realised that my experience with my fertility clinic’s doctors and the feeling I had that there was a poor lack of communication. All of this was because I was not asking the right questions. I didn’t know I needed to ask them. And this is silly because all along I had the key questions in the back of my mind…I use them everyday at work!!!

In my job I help leaders make decisions every day…I do this by presenting the evidence, the facts – for and against a decision – I do some analysis on the data that supports the decision, I try to be unbiased and objective in my analysis, and then I present a recommendation to the leader on the best course of action. The leader doesn’t always go with my recommendation, but I have presented them with the facts and figures to make their own mind up. Sometimes I feel a bit hurt, but then I remember, I am not the one taking the risk. So when it comes to our healthcare and doctors, WE are the decision makers. We need to be presented with the arguments for and against, and be told what the supporting evidence is. WE are unique in many different ways and the decisions we make will be unique, blanket guidelines are not always appropriate for everyone.

I think a good example of this is when we were told we should do ‘ICSI’ because of our unexplained infertility. We didn’t ask the questions: What are the pros of ICSI? What are the cons of ICSI? What are the improved success rates with people like us? (i.e. what’s the supporting evidence/data?) We were not armed to make a decision, we just went with what the doctor said, and in the back of my mind I felt like I had not been given a chance to make a decision. I did actually do a lot of this research myself, but it would have been better if my doctor would have told me – after all I am not the medical professional, I just have the fortunate ability to interpret statistics from studies and experiments. So although I was finally happy with the decision to do ICSI after my research, something inside me was niggling about our doctor’s communication.

Another example is when it came to our embryo transfer. We were told that it is the standard practice at the clinic to transfer 2 embryos on day 3, unless there were over 6 fertilised embryos then maybe we would be a candidate for waiting to Day 5 to transfer 2 blastocysts. We did not ask the questions: what are the pros of us waiting to Day 5? What are the cons of us waiting to Day 5? What are our personal chance of success with 4 fertilised embryos compared to if we had had 6? (i.e. what’s the supporting evidence/data?). Again, I did a lot of this research myself.

I could go on with other opportunities throughout our infertility treatment where I could have asked these three simple questions that would have revealed the knowledge I needed to feel like I was in control of making a decision. We rely on doctors to make the decisions for us…and most of the time I am happy with that fact, but there were times that I felt like we should hold that responsibility for a decision. When it comes to my pregnancy I want to be able to ask these questions to my doctors and nurses so I can take the responsibility for making some of the big decisions such as prenatal testing or birthing plans.

Emily Oster suggests reading the book “Our medical mind: How to decide what is right for you” by Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband. I think I might try it, and I’ll let you know how it goes. Has anyone read this one?

In the meantime my friends, next time you are in a consult with your doctor, remember these three simple questions to help you make the best decision, for you, and get the most out of your doctor….

What are the pros (for me)?
What are the cons (for me)?
What is the evidence/what are the chances (for me in particular)?

IVF DIARY VOL I: 18-20 Aug 2015

August 20, 2015August 20, 201514 Comments

Medication(s) administered and dosage(s). Progesterone 1ml, vivelle dot estrogen patches 0.1mg x2.

Medical procedures undertaken. Beta pregnancy test.

How do I feel today? I have written a separate post about this today as I felt that my feelings should be captured in their own space. To sum that post up…I’m cautiously optimistic.

What are my symptoms? Sharp pains, sore back and I can feel the nausea coming.

How does Chris feel today? He too is cautiously optimistic too and has an occasional outburst of tears welling up. I love how he shares his feelings with me openly and honestly.

Any results? Maybe I should have put this one higher up. Yes – I am pregnant according to my beta test. I don’t know my hCG levels yet, my phone is playing up so I can’t access them at the moment. But I know that the doctor is not concerned about them. Yey 🙂

What’s next? Second Beta test scheduled for Tuesday next week.

Weight. Holding at a reasonable level.

Waist. Getting smaller!! But not for long, hopefully.

Boobs. Getting bigger!!

Hours of Sunshine 🙂 I got some last holiday sun yesterday as it was my mum’s last day in Virginia, so we headed to the beach for some dolphin watching.

This concludes Vol 1 of my IVF diary and this will be my last ‘diary entry’ (Of course I am blogging still – duh!!). It has been a roller coaster of emotions, I have learned a lot. I will share my ‘lessons learned’ of this cycle later this week. But overall, it’s not a bad note to end on 🙂

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

What is cautiously optimistic?

August 20, 2015August 20, 201549 Comments

What do people mean when they say they are cautiously optimistic? According to the Macmillan dictionary it is defined as:

Hopeful about something, but recognising the problems involved.

I think to describes nicely how I have felt about trying to conceive since we decided to make the leap towards becoming parents.

I also like this image – they say a picture paints a thousand words. Sometimes it has felt like there is a storm out there and our umbrella is going to be whipped away, but most of the time it is just like this picture.

Cautious optimism represented by an image

But for me – this picture paints accurately what cautious optimism looks like for me right now…

Two pink lines

Yes, my dear friends, this is my blue sky approaching! I took a pregnancy test the night before my beta blood test. I was very spontaneous about it. Chris came home from work, he sat down and said “So…injection or test first?”. He threw me off guard because I had been so good at not thinking about using a home pregnancy test, it was just a surprise he said it so nonchalantly. I laughed nervously and exclaimed…”No! Don’t be silly you have to wait!”. And to that, I decided spontaneously to dash upstairs and pee on the one first response home pregnancy test I had left in a drawer. It took seconds for that second pink line to appear, it appeared before I even had a chance to put it down on the work surface. Well that was not what I was expecting! So I left it next to the sharps box for Chris to see when he would start preparing my injection for the evening. I dashed back downstairs (it had only been 2 minutes) Chris had no clue what I had just done. And so we started the ritual of the progesterone injection. We went upstairs with everything needed and I lay down on the bed as if preparing myself for the injection….when Chris shouted out from the bathroom – “hey there is a pregnancy test here??” in a very confused manner. After a second or two of blank face, he almost cried, hugged and kissed me. We talked about how it was not guaranteed and we will find out the next day if this was for real or not. So we decided not to tell my poor mum who was downstairs at the time – oblivious to what was going on!!!

The next morning, my mum and I went to the clinic for my beta blood test. The nurse asked me if I had taken a test yet…I looked at her and smiled…and the nurse said ‘yey!!!’. I was busted – mum had overheard the nurse ask….so I had to tell her what had happened the night before!

And so I waited for the phone call from my doctor. When I saw the number pop up on my phone I took a big breathe. It was actually not my doctor but one of the other doctors who had been doing my ultrasounds. I answered and she said “So….do you feel pregnant?” (What a weird way to start a phone call!!!) I said “maaaaaaybe…..” nervously wondering if this was a cruel joke! And she said “Yes! Yes you are pregnant!!! Your numbers are great…..you need to keep taking the progesterone and estrogen…we probably want to see you again next week for another test….blah blah blah” (-is all I heard after that!) So that was that.

We are pregnant!

Can I put my umbrella away yet? Of course not. Some people may read this and think I am ungrateful or maybe even conceited, but they probably are people who do not understand what infertility can do to the mind. I’m not sure at what point in this process I will take ‘Congratulations’ with a smile. Please understand that I appreciate your kind thoughts and sentiment, I know you are really excited for us….just don’t worry if I don’t respond with an excited smile. Getting a positive pregnancy result after IVF is an awesome step in the right direction, I feel so lucky that we have got this far, but I can’t get excited about having a baby just yet.

I am cautiously optimistic about this exciting step…I’m just hoping it isn’t a false summit.