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.

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!

Let me retract that!

I fear I may have spoken too soon in my last post. I have an awful feeling of panic that keeps coming over me this evening that I cant seem to shake off. It’s an actual physical feeling, a bit like butterflies in the tummy – a feeling of nerves and fear. What if IVF doesn’t work the next time round?

I think these nerves stem from two things. Firstly, we had our follow up appointment at the fertility clinic yesterday. A pretty pointless meeting if I’m honest, although one thing that we did learn is that all 9 of our embryos were still very good quality at day 3 (most of them an A and a couple B). Then on day 4 they all just seemed to slow right down in their development and by the time we had our embryo transfer on day 5 they were all poor quality. The consultant said that this may just be a one off or it may be something that happens because of my eggs. If that’s the case then it may happen again.

The second thing that is really playing on my mind is my husband. This last few days he’s been behaving really strange. We haven’t been getting along at all well as he’s been so angry and moody. I feel constantly on edge, like I’m just waiting for my next telling off for something! He says he’s just feeling fed up with being ill etc. Of course I understand this but at the same time, he’s the best he’s been since last summer and things seem to be moving in the right direction in terms of getting him fixed.

The thing that really bother me was a comment he made yesterday on the way home from the clinic. He said that it pisses him off that he’ll never be a dad. I know that it must be incredibly hard for him that we are having to use donor sperm and for him to lose that genetic connection to any children that we may have but that won’t make him any less a father. I thought (and really hoped) that he’d made peace with this decision to use a donor but now I’m worried that he hasn’t and won’t ever.

The donor sperm is just an ingredient to start the fertilisation process off. It’s contribution is actually quite minimal after that. I spent time reading up on embryo development last night, after finding out about ours all reducing in quality after day 3. As it turns out, once the egg is fertilised it’s pretty much down to the egg to get busy with developing the foetal structures. Not to mention the fact that it’s all then down to the woman (me!) to produce a placenta to keep the foetus alive and then house and grow the baby in my womb for 9 months! Ok ok, I know there’s a little more to it than that but that’s the basic crux of it. What I’m trying to get across is that, sperm is just a tiny part of the whole process – really really tiny if you put it in perspective of the length of the whole life of a person. Being a dad is the forever after bit – it happens from the day of the positive pregnancy test and lasts a life time. That’s what my husband will be.
I’m dealing with real situations of crappy parenting every day in my work. Providing some sperm does not make you a father. Trust me, I see proof of this everyday, sadly.

My husband will be an amazing daddy. He’s funny, smart and generous (to name but a few qualities) – all of which our children would become because of him. Also, we’ve deliberately picked a donor with the same key physical qualities of my husband so the sperm will be contributing the same eye/hair colour, height, weight genes etc that he would.

I’m so frightened that if the next round of IVF doesn’t work, my husband will want to call it quits. It’s expensive and I know that’s really stressing him out. It is me too but unfortunately the cost is just a means to an end and there’s nothing we can do about it. It may well mean a few years of having to be careful with our money but when it works, it will provide a lifetime of having a family – there’s no contest! The financial implications of IVF are crap and it’s utterly shit that the NHS only gave us one free go when we should really get three but what can we do!

I just want us to have a baby more than anything in the world. It physically hurts when I think about it not happening. I’m so impatient for it to happen. Please let it happen soon!

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!

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.

Snakes and Ladders? More like Snakes and Snakes!

It has taken me a few days to be able to write this. I think I needed some time before I committed my thoughts to our blog.

The worst happened on Tuesday. My husband had his SSR and they didn’t find any sperm. So that’s it, there’s no way that he will be able to biologically father a child. The only word that can describe our feelings on this is ‘devastated’. I am just so truly sad.

I love my husband so very very much. I have dreamed, since the day I first loved him, about the family we would have together. I wondered what our children would look like, what their personality would be like and the kind of adults they would grow up to be. It breaks my heart to know that we will never have a child with his genes. I feel like I am grieving the loss of the children we could have had together.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the end for our family. We live in a world where we have other options. The doctor, after telling us the bad news on Tuesday, said that we could move onto using donor sperm. Just like that – so simple! Except it isn’t. Both me and my husband need to get our heads around the idea and the implications of this. The rational part of my brain knows that any children that we have will only ever be ours, no matter how they come about. I know that it’s more than a bit of sperm that makes a person a dad but the idea still saddens me and it raises lots of questions. Namely, how will we both feel about a child that has been conceived using donor sperm? Will we be able to see past it? Will my husband be able to love the baby as his own? If we can’t do these things then we can’t go down this route.

Then I think about the journey we will go on. From choosing the donor together, to the fertility treatment, the positive pregnancy test, scans and birth. Going through these experiences will make it all so real that we are in this together. As the child grows, picking up our mannerisms, using us as role models for their own life, it will be clear that we are the parents, no one else – and how could we do anything but love this child that we have nurtured together!

So as sad as our news this week has been, it doesn’t signal the end. We are still at the beginning.

Showered with envy

I went to a friend’s baby shower this afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to one so, although I could have a good guess, I didn’t know entirely what to expect. In honesty, I mean what to expect in terms of how it would make me feel given our current situation on the baby front.

I’d like to say, just for the record, that I’m thrilled for my friend. Today was all about her and the exciting new chapter she is about to start in her life. But I’d be lying if I said that there isn’t a tiny streak of envy running through me.

When will it be my turn?