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.

Call the POAS police!

Oh dear, impatience has got the better of us!

I am currently 5dp5dt and yesterday and today I been feeling a few twinges and mild cramps. I am desperately trying to stay positive and praying that this is our little embryos implanting but I’m nervous that it could be the first signs of my period coming.

It was totally ridiculous to think that doing a pregnancy test today would show anything other than a BFN. Not to mention the fact that the test I used expired in November last year and it was the middle of the afternoon so my urine was really diluted. We did the test anyway and lo and behold, nothing! I’m trying not to let it bother me as I know it was too early to test really but there’s still a part of me that is worried that this cycle might not have worked.

I’m going to leave it 2 days and test again on Tuesday morning and then again every morning until OTD. Please, please, please let us get the result we want this week.

Stage 1 complete…

I am officially down regulated… yay! I had my scan on Monday which showed that my uterus lining is thin and my ovaries are ‘quiet’ – just as they should be after 3 weeks of injecting Buserelin. There was a dark patch on the scan showing that there was some fluid in my uterus but the nurse wasn’t worried about this, saying that it was probably some remaining blood from my period. Sure enough later that day, I had some spotting so I guess it’s all gone now. I had this same thing on my first cycle so it didn’t concern me too much.

Tonight I started my second drug, Gonal F, on an initial dose of 262.5iu. I asked the nurse on Monday about why I was taking Gonal F instead of Menopur this time. She said that the clinic has gone back to using it for everyone, not just me. They feel it gives the same results as Menopur with less faff (they are pens rather than vials we have to mix ourself).

It does make me a little nervous that we are using a different stimulation drug this time round. What with changing the donor, not needing ICSI for this donor sperm and then using Gonal F, I worry that we are changing too many variables all at the same time and we won’t be able to properly evaluate the cycle if it fails. I know that sounds really pessimistic of me; hopefully it won’t fail and therefore won’t be an issue. I am trying to be positive, really I am, but I am also a realist. If it doesn’t work, I know that I am going to want to understand why and this will be tricky when there are a few things that are different in this cycle. Which one will I blame and want to fix?!

So, I have 10 days of injecting the Gonal F before I go in for my next scan to check on how busy my ovaries have been. Let’s hope the answer will be “very”!

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!

The witch got me!

It was our official test day (OTD) today and, although I already knew what the outcome would be, I still had a spark of optimism (aka desperate hope!) running through my veins. As it turns out, this was to be extinguished on waking this morning before I had even got to test – my period had arrived! I still tested, just for the hell of it, and surprise surprise it showed up negative.  So that’s it for this IVF cycle – it’s game over.

So I did what any girl does in times of such sorrow – I hit the shops. Thank god for mid-summer sales! My shopping spree would have been more helpful had it not been for the immense number of pregnant woman on the streets at the moment. It’s like they were all on a mission to flaunt their heaving baby-filled bellies at me, taunting me with the one thing I want the most! Bitches!

Generally though, I do think I’m taking the whole IVF failure thing quite well. Even my husband said to me this afternoon that it’s ok to have a cry if I need to. He’s worried that I have a meltdown brewing and that if I just let out my emotions now, I’ll feel much better. He’s probably right (annoyingly he often is) but I think I really am ok… ish. Of course I am totally gutted that this hasn’t worked for us but I so whole heartedly believe that we will have a family one day that I know it’s just a matter of brushing ourselves off and trying again.  There is the fear in the back of my mind that it keeps on failing and therefore puts us under massive financial strain as we try again and again but what other option is there? I simply cannot contemplate life with us not being parents. Whenever and however it comes about, come about it will. Of that I am certain and because of this, I can keep that meltdown at bay for a while longer.

(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.

Fast track to the 2ww

Once again, I’ve been a rubbish blogger. Rubbish in the sense that I simply haven’t blogged!

I seem to have got swept away with the trials and tribulations that IVF brings and become slightly hooked on infertility forums for support through this process. But I’m back with a promise to buck my ideas up and blog away to my heart’s content!

So, where are we now? Here’s a little time-line of events to help catch up:

Wed 16th May – Started injecting 150 Menopur every evening and reduced my Buserelin to 0.25 each morning.

Fri 25th May - Day 10 stims scan. Follicles in both ovaries, although not a huge amount at decent sizes. Menopur upped to 187.5

Mon 28th May – Day 13 stims scan. Growth seen but still told to only expect 4 or 5 follicles to be at the right size for giving mature eggs. Side effects wise, I’ve been really lucky. I haven’t really had any apart from some slight bloating towards the end of stimming.

Wed 30th May – Day 15 stims scan. Similar growth rate to before and expectation for maybe 5 eggs. Egg collection booked in for Friday. Told to do one more night of stims and the trigger shot of Ovitrelle at 2am Thurs morning! It turned out that I didn’t have enough Menopur to do another injection so the clinic told me not to bother – this stressed me out as surely there was a reason for wanting me to do an extra dose! Panicking now that it will affect the number of eggs we get.

Fri 1st June – Egg collection at 1pm. The sedation was amazing and I was out like a light. When I came round we were told they had got 11 eggs! Amazing! Now was the wait to see how many were mature and got jiggy in the lab that night. They were going to be injected (ICSI) as the donor sperm required this after thawing. Later that afternoon, the pain from the procedure really kicked in and the drugs I’d been given made me really sick. Fortunately it passed after a few hours and I was able to relax for the rest of the evening.

Sat 2nd June – We are told that 9 out of the 11 eggs had fertilized and that they would be going for either a 3 or 5 day transfer, depending on how they develop. Wow! We’re feeling really pleased with how it’s gone so far.

Mon 4th June – The clinic called to say that 8 embryos are still developing well (1 doesn’t quite meet criteria) so we will be having a 5 day transfer on Wednesday.

Wed 6th June – 10am is our embryo transfer. We had to wait a while before being seen and I had been told to go with a full bladder so by the time we got in the room, I was about to burst! The embryologist came to speak to us and said that there were 2 embryos that had made it to blastocyst stage but they were reduced quality (she gave them a CC grading). She suggested we have both transferred to give us a better chance of one of them sticking. We knew that this meant our chances of success were low as they would normally be very against someone of my age having more than one put back. She then went on to say that there are only 4 other embryos remaining but they were not yet at blastocyst stage and they would leave them overnight to see if they continued to develop but for us to be prepared that we might not have any to freeze.  So the transfer went ahead. I desperately stared at the monitor to see if I could see our precious little embryos enter my uterus but I didn’t see a thing. My husband said he saw a flash of fluid so at least one of us did. We are given a pregnancy test, instructions for the next few days and an official test date of Sunday 17th June (Father’s Day ironically!) We go home feeling very deflated. I struggle to stay positive and try to prepare myself for this treatment cycle to end with a negative result.

Thurs 7th June – The clinic called to say our other 4 embryos did make it to blasts in the end but were not good enough quality to freeze.

And so, here we are. I am now in what is called the 2 week wait (2ww). Although for us it is actually 11 days. This, however, doesn’t make it any less torturous. I have googled every possible thing related to the success or failure of “reduced quality” blasts and it would appear that we may have a chance this could work for us but it is slim. I am trying so very hard to stay positive and my husband is trying to be realistic – I think he’s dreading how I will react if we get a negative on Sunday. Only time will tell, I guess.

For now, we wait. And hope.

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!

What a difference a few days make!

I can’t deny that it’s been a stressful week with a roller coaster of emotions but I feel like the dark cloud is lifting and things are looking a little brighter.

Ok, so this isn’t how things should have worked out but my darling husband has been amazing. After the initial shock of being told that we had no sperm to work with, he took a few days to himself to reflect on what this meant. At first when I tried to talk to him about our situation he said that he wasn’t sure how he felt but he couldn’t be sure that he could love a child that wasn’t biologically his – through donor sperm or adoption. I can’t deny, this scared the crap out of me! I love my husband, more than anything in the world, but the thought of never having a family is something that would be too devastating for me to cope with I think. As much as this upset me i knew that i had to give my husband the time that he obviously needed to absorb the news of no sperm and make his own decisions about how he wanted to move forward, if at all.

Meanwhile, I did what I do best… I took to my iPad and googled ‘donor sperm’ to the point of exhaustion! I swear to god, there is nothing I do not know about using a sperm donor, in fact infertility in general, thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web!!

Over the weekend, we started to discuss everything together and consider the prospect of using donor sperm. My husband had been thinking about the possibility of it for a while apparently as he had suspected we might find ourselves in this situation. That’s not to say it wasn’t a very sad shock to have the reality confirmed. After time together we came to the decision to go for it with the donor sperm. My husband says that he wants us to have a family together and at least this way the baby would be genetically ‘half of us’. I am so proud of my husband for being strong enough to accept this, it must be incredibly difficult for him. If possible it has made me love him even more.

We had our counselling session at the clinic this afternoon which I felt went well and was helpful. It was great hearing my husband share his thoughts on it all to a complete stranger (he’s not normally one to open up) although i’m not sure he enjoyed it – he’s not into the ‘airy fairy counselling stuff’! So the next step is a phone call to confirm we want to proceed and then our consent consultation next week. After that, who knows!

I am feeling more hopeful that we may get our dream of a family one day. Fingers crossed.