Ok ovaries, I hear you!

9 days into stimms and my ovaries are flipping killing me!

I never experienced this amount of discomfort on either of my other cycles and it started early, after about 5 days on the Gonal F. I have no idea if this is normal or not but I can’t help but feel a little anxious about what tomorrow’s scan will show. Yes, of course I’m hoping for lots of lovely follies but I’m nervous that what I’m feeling is mild OHSS.

I’m not normally a hypochondriac, it’s just that I feel so different this time, in terms of discomfort, that I’m letting my paranoia get the better of me! The first two cycles went like clockwork – except for the negative pregnancy tests at the end! I’m scared to death that something will go wrong with this cycle and it will have to be abandoned.

Hopefully tomorrow I will find out that it’s all nothing to be concerned about and we’re on track for egg collection sometime next week.

In other news, tomorrow is also D Day for my husband. He’ll officially be getting his redundancy notice in the morning, although he should be getting another month to source a job in the company before he has to leave. It’s going to be a rubbish day (and month probably) for him and I wish there was something that I could do to fix it but I’m sure he’ll soon be sorted with a brand spanking new job, ruling the roost again!

And so it begins…

So, here we go again…. let the fun commence!

This morning I did my first injection of Buserelin – day 1 of my down regulation drug. I have about 3 weeks on this one before going for a scan to check I’m ready to move onto stims. I’m pretty unfazed by injecting myself now so it went without drama. Having said that, as the weeks go by and my belly gets more bruised I do find I have to psych myself up before jabbing myself!

On another note (and completely different topic) I’m feeling incredibly frustrated and a little sad. Just over a week ago a came across a great blog. I spent a couple of days reading the archives and enjoyed the daily new posts. Last night I accidentally deleted the blog from the tabs on my iPad and for the life of me I can not remember the name of it! I’m such a fool for not following it, liking the posts or bookmarking the blog in my favourites. I was just silently stalking it and now I’m paying the price. I really wanted to the know the outcome of the appointment the blogger had today. Now I will never know! I have searched every possible phrase and topic I can think of but I just can’t find this damn blog! Oh poo!

Trouble on the horizon?

Life certainly likes to throw testing times at people doesn’t it! It’s obviously not enough that we’ve had 3 and a half years of poor health for my husband or the heartbreaking infertility journey that we’re still very much on. It now looks like my husband is about to be made redundant at work.

The thought absolutely fills me with dread but my husband seems quite laid back about it – I just don’t understand how he can be like that. I mean, I’m sure that he will get another job as he is a very intelligent man and brilliant at what he does but the current economic climate is not particularly healthy at the moment so the good jobs are few and far between. He will get another job, it’s just a question of when.

I am lucky enough to earn a reasonable salary in my job but I am far from being the household breadwinner! Without my husband’s income we will be in serious financial strife after a few months (less if his redundancy package is small).

So now we have something else to worry about and the timing couldn’t be worse. Stress and IVF treatment do not mix well.

I just snow this is the donor for us!

Greetings from a very snowy England!

This weekend has seen a huge amount of the white stuff land on our door step. Now this usually grinds the whole country to a stop but I have to give credit where it’s due – I think for once we were actually prepared for the snow. The roads have remained clear and life as we know it seems to be carrying on pretty much as normal. This isn’t all good news however – it means that there will be no ‘snow day’ for me tomorrow and I will have to drag myself to work! Grrr!

 

Seeing as it’s been 4 months since my husbands big op and his health is so much better, we thought it might be worth him having another sperm test to see if things have improved in that department. As it happens, it wasn’t meant to be. The results are in and there are still zero sperm in his sample.   I guess we were clutching at straws to think that he could go from nothing being found in an SSR to something being there now in an ordinary sample but it is still really disappointing. What did make me smile a little though was that my husband actually said that if there had been anything found he would have been slightly reluctant to go further with another SSR to try to get enough sperm to use for ICSI because it would have been so expensive. I know it may sound strange that him saying this made me smile but it’s actually the fact that he’s made peace with the fact that we need a donor that makes me happy.

Talking of donors, after we had our ‘commiserations appointment’ last month to discuss the failure of our last cycle, one of the things we discussed was changing our donor. The one we have used for the last 2 cycles requires ICSI which adds just over £1000 to the cost of the cycle. I always thought it was a bit odd using a donor that needed ICSI as surely this means that the sperm is not quite top-notch. The consultant agreed and said we should try a new one. Interestingly, when I called the unit to find out our options on other donors, the nurse I spoke to was adamant that our previous donor was fine and sounded irritated that the consultant had suggested it would be best to have one that doesn’t require ICSI! Anyway, she told me the options of the others available and there was only one that sounded ok. Here are the details of our new donor:

• Fair / medium skin
• Mid brown hair
• Green eyes
• 6ft tall
• 11 stone
• Career: Garden design / artistic
• Interests / hobbies: Sports, fishing
• Married

So, we now have this donor assigned to us and at least that means we are going to save a little bit of money on our next cycle. I just hope that our new donor brings us the result that we so desperately crave!

Happy birthday blog!

Wow…. it has been a whole year since I started this blog – and what a year it has been!

I read through all of my posts the other night. It’s so interesting reading back and seeing what was going on at that time and my reactions to it. I really do think its quite therapeutic to record your thoughts and feelings. I guess that’s why so many people do blogging.

So, happy birthday to my blog! Here’s to many more years of ‘Views from The Kiln’.

2013…. could 13 be lucky for us?

Hello my poor neglected blog… how have you been? I won’t bother with the excuses for my absence because I have none – other than laziness! Sorry.

Right, first things first, a quick catch up:

* IVF#2 = BFN     We had 7 eggs collected on 24th Oct. 5 fertilised and were still going strong on day 3 so we had a 5 day transfer on 29th Oct. I was a good girl this time and didn’t test early but my good behaviour was not rewarded. On the morning of our OTD (9th Nov) I woke up to find my period had started and surprise surprise the test was negative. We both took it much harder this time and it has taken a long while for the black cloud to lift.

* I’m going to be an auntie! My brother announced that he and his wife are expecting. This has been a double edged sword, however. I am obviously thrilled for him and my sister-in-law but I can’t help but feel a tinge of sadness that it isn’t me and my husband. It’s particularly difficult because the baby is due around the time that ours would have been if the last IVF cycle had worked.

* Christmas greetings and a NYE in style! We had a fabulous xmas, spent with my brother, sister-in-law, dad and grand parents. Lots of fun, food and drink was had by all (except my SIL of course!). NYE was spent in London, just me and the hubby. It was a great evening and an opportunity to see the fun, happy side of my husband come out to play – something that had been stolen by Crohn’s the previous 2 NYEs. It truly is great to have him back and able to go out and enjoy himself again. Long may it continue! My new year resolutions this year are: get pregnant/have a baby (of course this had to be on the list!), restore the affection that has dwindled in our relationship since the start of the whole Crohn’s drama, take more photographs, exercise at least 4 times a week, eat healthier, and grow nice finger nails. I’ll keep an update of my progress on these in this blog!

And that brings us to now. I guess I should add one more thing to my list of new year resolutions… blog more regularly. I will certainly try, that I can promise.

So… 2013… what will it bring? I like the start of a new year. It is a bit like a fresh start, a clean slate to do the things we perhaps couldn’t or didn’t do before but wanted to. Everyone is full of hope that the new year will bring them luck and a chance to realise their aspirations in some shape or form. The hard part, however,  is keeping that initial positivity and motivation going. As we go through January and get back onto the treadmill of normal life and back to work, it is so easy to get swamped and lose focus.

For me though, there is still one thing that I am whole heartedly focussed on and no amount of January blues will change that. IVF cycle # 3 is just around the corner – I start the first drug in 3 weeks. I am clinging onto the hope that the new year will bring a new beginning for TeamWMeister.

Sunny yet sad

This pretty much sums up my day.

The sun has been shining all day today. This shouldn’t be a strange thing for the middle of June but, for a British summer, it’s something of a rarity. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sunshine and have been very grateful to have it blazing through my windows all day but unfortunately it hasn’t been able to shake the grey cloud that is my mood.

Today I simply feel fed up. That is all.

I’m ready for my telling off!

It’s official, I’m a rubbish blogger. It has been soooo long since I’ve written – there is absolutely no excuse. Yes, I’ve been busy, but I still should have written some blogs. So this means that there’s loads I have to get down on here as lots has happened since my last blog post. Here we go…

5th – 16th April – We were on holiday (Las Vegas, LA & San Francisco). One word… AMAZING!
Whilst we were away though I got a call from the fertility clinic saying that the donor that we had been matched with could no longer be used. There was some problem with the sperm and it hadn’t passed the tests after it came out of quarantine. But alas, all was not lost – there was another donor that we could use and one that actually is a better match than the previous one! It’s a stroke of luck that we have managed to get another one straight away as it could have delayed our treatment.

The details of this new donor are:

• Height = 5’10″ (perfect)
• Weight = 10 and a half stone (ok)
• Hair = dark brown (perfect)
• Eyes = hazel (prefect)
• Career = a research scientist (interesting)
• Interests = sport and music (perfect)
• Other = is a qualified stone mason (not a DIY dunce then!)

My period came on 5th so I let them know and was told the drugs would be sent to me when we got back from holiday. As for my husband, we were so lucky with his crohn’s. He was quite bad before the holiday but fortunately whilst we were away, he was reasonably well – at least enough to not let it spoil his trip.

23rd April – I went in hospital for a sinus op. Not a particularly pleasant experience but not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

25th April – I started injecting the first drug (Buserelin). I can’t quite believe that I’ve finally started treatment. I was quite excited about the prospect of sticking myself with a needle!!

And that takes us up to today. That was a whistle stop tour of the last few weeks but at least it’s all down on here now and I promise to write regularly from now on. I really want to keep a record of our IVF journey (and everything else that goes on).

Bye for now!

Space hopping

So today my friend calls me to say that her boyfriend has asked her to move out of their house. Apparently he needs ‘space’. He has assured her that this isn’t The End – they are still together just not living together for the time being, just while he gathers his thoughts and gets that much-needed ‘space’.

I can’t help but think about how wonderful it would be if life was really that easy. If, when the going gets tough, we could simply state that we need a little ‘space’ and all of the so-called problems in our life would move out for a while. Hell, maybe we could evict them for good!

With this in mind, I am going to request that my husband and I have a little space from our tenant that is Crohn’s Disease. I feel that it has over stayed its welcome and, quite frankly, is crowding us. We would like some time (space) to enjoy being us. We don’t need anything fancy, just us. And while I mention it, I hope I don’t seem greedy in asking for Crohn’s friend, Infertility, to take a hike too.

Thanks very much. I look forward to our new-found space together.

Sometimes we just need to wallow

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted, sorry. Life has just passed me by a little bit recently. For some reason I seem to have fallen into a bit of an emotional slump. I am severely lacking in motivation for, well, pretty much anything at the moment. I’m not entirely sure why this is – a combination of all sorts I’m sure.

One of my major downfalls is my impatience. I am one of those people who once I’ve made my mind up about something, I want it yesterday. This personality trait isn’t particularly conducive to IVF. Everything is a waiting game and it’s a game i really don’t want to play. I decided a long time ago that I was ready for a family. My husband, thankfully, felt the same so we were good to go. Except that nature/fate/health *delete as appropriate*  had different ideas. I know that there are millions of people who are in the same boat as us, having to enter the stressful world of assisted conception and sadly there are many who have bigger problems than us both in fertility and health wise. This doesn’t make our issues seem any less hard though. It just seems to be one thing after another that goes wrong or jeopardises the start of our IVF cycle. I feel like I’m running a marathon and someone keeps moving the finish line further and further away.  It’s mentally exhausting.

Next week, my husband has his SSR (surgical sperm removal). I’m trying very hard not to contemplate the negative outcomes of this. They simply have to find healthy sperm. That is all.

Today I had the results from a CT scan I had a couple of weeks ago. I suffer from reoccurring headaches and sinus problems and it turns out I have a deviated septum and a conchal bullosa (whatever that is!!) and I need an operation to fix it. As soon as the consultant said it, my first thought was “Will this push back our IVF treatment?”. I now have something else to stress about! Providing the SSR next week is a success, I am banking on us being able to start our cycle towards the end of April. My sinus operation is booked for 23rd April. Argghhh!!! The down regulating drugs that I will have to take initially for the IVF are in the form of a nasal spray and there’s no way I’ll be able to take them straight after having my operation. So…. I’m wondering if I can down regulate using injections instead. I know this can be done but I will need to see if my fertility clinic allow it. If they don’t then that will put our treatment back yet another month.    Is there anyone who’s reading this who has done the injections rather than the nasal spray? If so I’d love to hear about your experiences – how did you find doing all of those injections? It’s certainly not something I relish the thought of but if it means one less month of running this marathon then I will.

This post feels like it’s bordering on a whine fest. Apologies for that. I’m just finding life, and the hurdles in our way, very wearing.

My husband’s health, whilst he is loads better than he was a couple of months ago, is still very up and down. This is stressful for him and my impatience is starting to rise its evil head. Impatient, not with my husband (although he probably feels like it is at times, poor guy), but with his illness. It is always there. Even on a ‘good day’. I want him to be better now. Not soon, NOW. Hmmm… patience is a virtue.

Then on the other side of my ‘patience fence’, IVF is dominating practically my every waking thought and we haven’t even started the treatment yet! What the hell will I be like then?! I’m hoping that it will actually be a bit easier because at least then something is actually happening. Maybe then the finish line will find a spot it likes and I will see it in the distance. Who knows… I might even reach it!

Ok, rant over. I’ve decided I’m going to give myself a little while longer to wallow in the emotional rut I find myself in at the moment and then I will force myself to snap out of it. It’s not helpful and makes me feel worse but I just need to feel sorry for myself for a bit. But for now, I’m quite simply fed up. Fed up of waiting for things to look brighter.

I’m thinking that March can be a fresh start for my positivity. Watch this space!

Thanks for listening.