Shattered dreams

After doing a whole series of pregnancy tests last week in the lead up to my OTD, my period arrived on Friday (the day before I was due to test).

I feel devastated and, if I’m honest, really cross that I let myself get so hopeful that it would be our time this cycle. We both got swept away with the optimism of the nurses at the clinic when we had our embryo transfer done and I was convinced we’d be celebrating this week. What an idiot I am!

3 cycles done, 3 times getting to blastocyst stage (5dt) and 3 times failure. So what next? If I got my way then we would just keep going again and again and again as many times as we need until we get our family! My husband on the other hand is already talking about adoption. Whilst this isn’t something that am ruling out, I’m not ready to go down that road yet. I so desperately want us to experience a pregnancy together and welcome a newborn into our family.

We have 1 precious embryo on ice so at least we have a FET in the pipeline and we have decided that we will definitely do another fresh IVF cycle in the hope that it works or, at worst, gets us some more frozen embies to add to the one we already have. The thing that is whirling around my head though is why have our 3 cycles so far failed? What will be different on our 4th go? Each time we have treatment, everything seems to go well up until the point of a pregnancy test. I get a reasonable number of eggs, good fertilisation and embryo quality has improved with each cycle. For some reason though, implantation obviously doesn’t occur. And I want to know why the hell not?!!

So… I am doing what I do best, I’m looking for a way to fix this issue. After extensive ‘talks’ with Dr Google, I’m thinking that it would be a good idea to have immune testing to rule out anything there that might be stopping the embryos from implanting. I know that my fertility clinic doesn’t support this so I plan to go elsewhere (probably to Dr Gorgy in London). I imagine this could be an expensive process but if it saves us the heartache of wasted cycles in the long run then it has to be worth it.

I need to believe that there is a reason why IVF hasn’t worked for us yet and that it is something that can be fixed. I need to believe that we will get our happy ending eventually.

The glamourous side of IVF

I have never felt as sexy as I do now (said with a massive hint of sarcasm)!

My stomach is bloated so I look as if I’m 4 months pregnant (I wish!), twice a day I have to stick suppositories up my bum, I have wind, diarrhea, pains when I need a wee… I could go on…oh what joy!

I have also got a case of mild OHSS. The nurse did warn me after egg collection that I was at risk due to the number of eggs I produced but I thought I’d be ok. I had become more and more uncomfortable since egg collection and last night in particular, I was really struggling. I was in a lot of discomfort and found it difficult to sleep – my ovaries were throbbing constantly and I couldn’t lie on my sides without making it worse. Fortunately today I am feeling in less pain; I have drunk bucket loads today so I think that may have helped.

Now for a little catch up… today is day 3 after egg collection. Our 19 eggs turned into 13 embryos over Thursday night and when I got a call from the clinic this morning, all 13 were still developing with 11 of them looking good (6-8 cells). This means we are booked in for a 5 day transfer on Tuesday. So far so good. Although I am trying to stay positive, I am very aware that it is at this point that things seem to go wrong for us. In both of our previous cycles all of our embryos have reduced in quality between days 3 and 5. I am hoping and praying that this time things will be different and that the change of donor sperm will help keep things moving forward.

Today is also Mother’s day here in the UK. We’ve had a lovely day, with both our families. I really hope that next year, I will be one of the lucky Mummies out there that got spoilt rotten!

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!

Healing thoughts please!

Warning: This is a Crohn’s post and contains details that are not for the squeamish!

6 months ago my husband had his pan proctocolectomy. 6 months and he is still not healed from the operation!

Whilst the removal of the colon has made him feel a million times better than he was, he still suffers everyday with an deep, open perianal wound that constantly drains a mucus type discharge. More recently this has gotten worse and he has felt slightly under the weather so he had an MRI scan a couple of weeks ago. This showed that there was a collection in his pelvis that needed draining and his colorectal surgeon wanted to do this and have a proper look at what else is going on in there.

So today was the day of the op. After a lot of waiting around, my husband finally got operated on and we’ve been told that behind the original wound there was a large cavity which the surgeon has now opened up. This cavity had been constantly seeping the ‘collection’ into the wound and therefore preventing it from healing. The surgeon also believes that my husband’s Crohn’s is still around and, whilst he is not unwell, it is slowing down the healing from last year’s op. His suggestion is that my husband goes back onto medication such as Humiera.

For now though, we have to continue with the daily dressing of my husband’s wound. We’ve become pros at this and have a proper little routine for getting the packing and dressing of the wound done. I’m a bit nervous about seeing it tomorrow as I’m expecting it to be much bigger and deeper after what the surgeon has done today but whatever it’s like we’ll deal with it – there’s no other option. The other thing that makes me nervous is that we’ve been told that the wound will need to be kept open so that it can drain and the way this is done is through ‘digitation’. This is basically sticking a finger up into the wound… eek!!

My husband is feeling really pessimistic about whether the wound will ever heal but I truly believe it will, eventually. I think it’s just a case of tweaking the meds and making sure there’s no where else for a collection to gather. It’s just an incredibly slow process and patience is not a trait that my husband is blessed with! I know that it’s not nice for him to have the wound but all I can think of is how bad things had got for him this time last year. Today may have set things back a little but it will get him back on track in the long run. I’m hopeful anyway, and I’m hoping my positivity will do for the both of us.

Minus one colon!

It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted anything. As usual, life has been getting in the way of my blogging and boy has it been a busy life since I last posted!

The most important thing that has happened is that my dear husband has been through major (and hopefully life altering) surgery. Over the summer, we enjoyed a relaxing 2 weeks in Spain and as soon as we returned back to Blighty, he was whisked into hospital to have a pan proctocolectomy. He also had his ileostomy re-sited and made permanent. Two amazing surgeons worked their magic – one to do the colorectal stuff and the other to do the plastic surgery to keep my husband’s bottom looking lovely. And a fine job they did too. He is now almost 6 weeks post op and doing amazingly well. The have been a couple of hiccups along the road to recovery, one being a lingering infection which is still draining itself now but is making progress everyday. In terms of my husbands crohns – he feels free of it… finally! The doctors are now actually saying that his blood results are showing that he may not have had crohns all along. It would appear that he has indeterminate colitis/crohns and they’re hoping that this op may well cure him forever. Whilst this would obviously be a dream come true it is difficult to believe at the moment. For now we just take things one day at a time and are enjoying the fact that he feels so much better than he has done in the last 3 years.

The other big development that is happening with us at the moment is that we are currently in the first phase of our second round of IVF (ICSI). I have been injecting the down regulating drug, Buserelin, since Saturday 15th Sept. I have one more week to go until my DR scan to see if I can start stimming. My husband says he’s feeling positive about this cycle, I have mixed feelings.

I plan to keep my blog up to date as I continue through this IVF cycle. So watch this space… and fingers crossed it has a happier ending than our first cycle!

The weekend has landed

A week ago today I found out that our first IVF attempt had failed. Ok, not officially as our OTD was on the Sunday but the early test that I had done on the Friday told me everything I needed to know. We weren’t pregnant.

I’ve had a week to mope and brood over the result. I’ve silently sulked, angrily argued with husband and grumpily googled all of the ‘what ifs’.None of this helped me feel any better but it was all necessary – part of my failure acceptance protocol. And I have accepted it, albeit reluctantly.

This weekend I plan to have a good weekend to shake off the sadness that has been this past week. We’re off to London tomorrow to celebrate my (belated) birthday and then I’m catching up with some of my girlfriends on Sunday. Spending quality time with my boy and then my girls is just what the doctor ordered. A weekend to recharge my happiness batteries.

I love weekends.
I love not having an alarm to wake me at the crack of dawn. I love lazy late breakfasts. I love being able to mooch into town and around the shops at my own pace. I love having the time to enjoy a nice long stroll with my dog. I love chilling on the sofa and catching up with tv that I’ve been saving on Sky+. I love going on weekend adventures with my husband. I love going over to spend time with my mum and sister to catch up on their week’s news.

Today I am feeling positive. Not just about the IVF business and about trying again but also about my husband’s health. This is still an ongoing saga and something that he’s having to deal with everyday. But over the last few days there seems to be progress and a possible light at the end of the tunnel. He saw a kidney specialist earlier this week about all of the problems he’s been getting with reoccurring stones. He’s finally about to start meds to try and stop the uric acid building up in his body and therefore reduce his risk of stones, blockages etc. As for his Crohn’s, he has now got an appointment at St Marks in London with some top notch consultant to discuss next steps. We are both very hopeful that this guy will have the solution that will give my husband his life back, hopefully for a significant amount of time.

I feel like maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be ok for TeamWMeister. Eventually.

(un)Happy Birthday!

Argh…. I caved! Today is my birthday and when we woke up, my husband said we should do a pregnancy test (my OTD isn’t until Sunday). I was surprised as he had been really against us testing earlier but what the hell, it’s my birthday so maybe we’ll get some extra luck. Turns out that’s not the case! I got a big fat negative! 

I have never been so nervous as waiting for the results to show in that little window on the test. But there wasn’t even a tiny hint of a positive line – just this empty white space staring back at us, refusing to show any signs of hope.

I feel totally gutted but I don’t think the full force of the fact that this IVF cycle has failed has really hit me yet. In the back of my mind there is still a tiny part of me that is hoping and praying there may still be a chance. After all, the clinic must give us that OTD for a reason. If we could test earlier then they’d give us an earlier date surely? I have quite literally thought of every excuse as to why we might have got a BFN today and it not be true…. the test was an internet cheapy so clearly crap…. because our embryos were a reduced quality, they may have implanted later and therefore there isn’t enough HCG in my urine for the test to detect it yet…. it wasn’t my absolute first morning urine as I’d gotten up in the night for a wee….!! I’m clutching at straws but at the moment, I have to. The alternative is to face the reality that this hasn’t worked, we have to somehow find £5500+ for another go and that we have to wait months for this to be allowed to happen.

I’m hoping for a miracle.

Phase 1 complete (I think!)

For the last 21 days I have been injecting myself every morning with 0.5ml Buserelin in order to ‘down regulate’ myself. This morning I had my first scan at the fertility clinic to check that this first drug has done its job.

As I sat in the waiting room, I couldn’t help but try and guess the circumstances of the couples around me. Was this their first time, like me, or have they gone through this process several times? What stage in their treatment were they? How many have had success? It’s a funny place to be, sitting in a room surrounded with by people who are undoubtedly filled with the same mixture of anxiety and hope that I feel every day at the moment.

Once my name was called out, I was led to a long corridor which had a huge number of ‘scanning rooms’ along it. It made me feel like I was on an IVF conveyer belt! The nurse was very pleasent and, although having an internal scan isn’t the most delightful thing to have, she kept my dignity intact. She asked me a few questions about my period and any side effects that i’d had (none really – it would appear i’m one of the lucky ones) then she got her ‘wand’ out and started the scan. The idea of this scan is to check that my womb lining is thin and that my ovaries are ‘shut down’. Within a few seconds of it starting, the nurse had a confused look on her face. She asked me if I was still bleeding (I’m not). Apparently there is a collection of fluid in my uterus which shouldn’t be there. She said not to worry for now and then moved onto looking at my ovaries. There were several small follicles in each ovary but no dominant ones so that is good news and the nurse confirmed that I had down regulated. She disappeared off to chat to a consultant as I got dressed and when she came back she confirmed that there is nothing to worry about re. the fluid in my uterus. The consultant suspects it’s just a little remaining blood left over from my period and that it will disappear on its own. Let’s hope so!

I was given a lesson on injecting Menopur and have to start that tomorrow night on a dose of 150ui and I have to continue with my Buserelin injections in the mornings but reduce it to 0.25ml.

So that’s where we are folks. I’m pleased to be moving onto the next phase of treatment but a little nervous about the fluid in my uterus. Funnily enough, this afternoon I had a bit of spotting so am really hoping that the consultant was right and it was just some left over blood from my period.

Is there anyone else out there who has had a similar experience? What did it turn out to be for you? Any advice or personal expereinces from anyone else who has gone through IVF (or is going through it now), it would be great to hear from you.

This could really be happening!

Yesterday was our consent consultation. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, especially now that we have the issue of needing to find a donor. As it turns out, it was a meeting of mixed emotions.

The nurse went straight in with lots of questions and then started throwing dates at us in terms of starting the IVF cycle. My husband and I were obviously a bit confused as we didn’t even have a donor so how could we be talking about a date to start when we don’t have sperm! It became apparent that the nurse was assuming we had accepted a donor that had been mentioned to me earlier in the week when I’d called the clinic to confirm we wanted to go ahead. Errr… wrong! How can we accept a donor when we have no idea how close a match it is to my husband?! Things got a bit heated, with my husband understandably getting irate with the nurse. This is, after all, a very emotive situation to be in and having someone make us feel like we’re just doing something regular like ordering a pizza rather than something as major as choosing the genetic material that will contribute to our future children, doesn’t really help!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it turns out that there are 2 donors that are soon to be available. One of which is no where near what we are looking for and the other a much closer match. After some ‘umming and ahhing’ (and with the realisation that the next available donor could be a minimum of 9 months away) we decided to go with the suggested donor.

So… here’s what we’ll be getting in our DNA order…!

6 years older than my husband (not an issue)
6ft (3in too tall)
11st (perfect)
Dark brown hair (perfect)
Brown eyes (happy with that – my husband has hazel/brown eyes)
Light / fair skin (perfect)
A university lecturer (hoping that means they’re brainy genes!)
Musical (well, who doesn’t like a bit of music!)

So all in all not a bad bunch of characteristics. The only one that bothered my husband was the height but on reflection decided that this didn’t matter. We accept that we have to be realistic – the chance of us finding a donor who ticks every single box 100% is slim to none. We both want a carbon copy of my husband’s genes but know that there’s only one of him so we just need to find a donor with as many similarities as possible. The key things for me were hair, eye and skin colour. All the rest could be so varied in a child anyway even if we were using my husband’s sperm – the world of genetics is such a complicated business. Hell, there are kids out there that look nothing like either of their biological parents anyway! And as for the career / hobbies bits – that stuff will come from me and my husband anyway in terms of the life experiences and encouragement we give our children. I’m sure our kids will be great mathematicians and have a golf handicap of just 5 by the time they’re 10 years old, thanks to by husband’s influence!

Once the donor part had been decided then the rest of yesterday’s consultation went smoothly. We signed a gazillion forms and then I had the lovely task of having a pelvic scan and practise egg transfer. Lovely! All of this went well though and we’ve been told that we’re good to go. I have to call the clinic when my next period arrives and then my IVF drugs will be sent to me…eek!

I can’t quite believe that’s it and that this is actually going to happen. Especially after all the set backs recently. I feel like maybe, just maybe, it’s time for us to start having some good luck. First, finding a donor who is near-as-damn-it perfect and next…. well who knows. But I hope that it looks something like 2 pink lines on a pregnancy test!

When will medicine catch up?

Crohn’s is crap. Fact!

Apologies for the bluntness but sometimes we just have to say it as it is.

As if there isn’t enough going on in our lives at the moment, my husband’s Crohn’s Disease is just relentless. You’d think that in a world where we can send people to the moon, carry out incredible transplant surgery and have the amazing technology that we do, that there would be something that could be done to stop my husband’s body from behaving so badly!

He has tried pretty much every Crohn’s drug going, including the so called wonder drugs ‘Biologics’ – both Remicade (Infliximab) and Humira (Adalimumab). We’re still waiting for Humira to work its magic but so far…. nada! Then there’s the fact that he’s got a split ileostomy. We assumed that having the infected part of his bowel bypassed and the use of a bag would eliminate the terrible ‘urgency’ that comes with Crohn’s but we were wrong there too. This god forsaken open wound that he has seems to have a mind of its own and the ‘urgency’ is still just as unpredictable and stressful for him as it was 8 months ago albeit slightly less frequent (6 times a day rather than 20)!

I just wish his Crohn’s Disease would let up. It is affecting every part of his life – his career, social life, fertility, sanity – the only thing I can promise him it will never ruin is his relationship with me. I might hate my husband’s Crohn’s but I love him with everything I am and no crappy Crohn’s is ever going to take that away!