Womb For Improvement

A Long Drawn Out Process

2012-01-27T22:28:00.000Z

We are on like Donkey Kong.

If Donkey Kong was a a self-injecting, egg producing woman rather than a barrel-throwing monkey.

Yesterday I took delivery of my drugs and had a scan to check there wasn't anything untoward happening womb-wise.

Today I started at full throttle with no less than three injections (no more either, to be fair, in fact it was exactly three). I quite like injections at the start of IVF. I have acres of fresh skin ready to be injected, so it isn't painful - unlike towards the end of a cycle when the injections into a rotund egg-filled, multi-stab wounded belly sting to fuck.

It also feels good to be doing something that might possibly result in a pregnancy. Although not for a long time...

This is how the next few months are panning out:

Growing eggs until around second week of Feb
Egg collection, make some embryos. So far so normal
Wait a couple of weeks
Get a period
Wait ANOTHER couple of weeks
Take some pills for two MORE weeks
Have ANOTHER period
Have a womb scrape
Wait two more weeks
Return whatever defrosted issue they have into my womb
By which time it'll be Easter.

I know good things are supposed to come to those who wait. But that's a bit bloody ridiculous. Innit?

Drugs Bust

2012-01-24T20:11:00.000Z

I use to be a naive innocent. Trusting and unquestioning of authority.

That was before I realised I was infertile and understood that even trained medical professionals can get things wrong.

I have just ordered my drugs for IVF round four. I say ordered, I got a call from the drugs company who told me what the clinic had prescribed and asked for my credit card details.

I have an awful lot of drugs kicking around from the last three rounds and the cash they were asking for was almost twice what I paid last time so I double checked what they were planning on sending me against my current stash.

They'd me ordered 2,550 mg of Gonal F. Last round I was given a measly 300mg – which means this time they were suggesting eight and a half times more. The additional dose was going to cost a cool £725 ($1,130USD) - probably because it comes in a fancy pen.

So I checked with my nurse who agreed it did seem rather a lot and reduced my prescription to 600mg – I am getting older maybe she thought my ovaries could still do with a bit more of a kick start.

As I was congratulating myself on my parsimony I also mentioned that I didn’t seem to have any growth hormone prescribed when I had been told I would need some. Yes, she replied, I’d certainly need some Zomacton (that was the name I couldn’t remember). Which comes at a price. I ended up paying £20 more than was originally quoted.

This round of drugs came to £1,361.50.

*gulp*

Money well spent.

... If it works

A Heart-Stopping Moment

2012-01-16T21:29:00.002Z

Before Christmas the husband and I each gave a vial of blood for chromosomal testing.

Whilst the husband and I have the full compliment of 46 chromosomes the issue may be that our, um, issue does not. This could, potentially be why I have experienced ‘recurrent implantation failure' (can you tell I’m loving having a different term to the ubiquitous ‘unexplained infertility’?).

I’ve been checking in with the nurses for my results at regular intervals always to be told they aren’t in yet.

Today, when I called the nurse checked my notes, and cheerfully announced they were in.

“We’ve got them both back” she confirmed “let me just check the results. Yours were normal.”

And then she paused, I’m not sure how long for. She was clearly scanning the notes for the husband's results but whilst waiting I had enough time to mentally rifle through my cohort of male friends and sort the potential sperm donors from the rest.

“And your husband’s were normal too.”

Which is a relief because I hadn't managed to find a suitable alternative.

Portentous

2012-01-12T20:34:00.000Z

I awoke on New Years day and before I was even properly conscious, or able to pull together a coherent thought, I was hit with an absolute certainty:

I knew I would never get pregnant and have a child.

Now I am a martyr to The Fear. The Fear being the day after a heavy boozing session I feel on edge and nervous, as though something terrible is about to happen. The night before my prophetic vision, as you’d expect had been a large boozy one, so it is no coincidence that I would awake with such a doom-laden prediction. Equally it is no coincidence that as a result I haven’t drunk alcohol since New Year’s Eve (or New Year’s Day if you want to get pernickety about bedtimes).

So what to do with the knowledge? Well, there are two mitigating factors.

1) I have the psychic ability of a dishwasher tablet. This has been amply demonstrated as at some point during every previous IUI or IVF I have had a strong suspicion it has worked.

Every.

Single.

Time.

I haven’t wanted to say anything out loud but you know when you JUST KNOW. (And then it doesn’t work and you know that you didn’t ‘just know’ and suddenly the negative pregnancy test feels overwhelmingly inevitable)?

2) Remember my new-aged hippy-inclined father-in-law? He told me during the holidays that I’d have a child. (This was shortly after he told me that he knew who he’d been in his last 38 lives). He even offered to tell me the sex of the child, I declined. He assured me “You will have a child at exactly the right time not too soon, or too late. But you will have one.”

So who to believe?

Well, I have absolutely no intention of acting on my gut feeling and giving up on reproductive intentions as a result of a hungover induced thought. And I very much look forward to being proved wrong.

Even if it means that I'll have to start listening to my father-in-law.

Tell me, have any of you had any psychic premonitions that have come true?

This'll Take A Second

2012-01-04T21:33:00.000Z

I told you, just before Christmas, that my Doctor was brilliant. I didn't tell you the whole story.

The day after my appointment – completely out of the blue, she did the unheard of. She called me, apropos of nothing, to say that she’d been having another look at my notes and decided that next time they’d split the eggs retrieved and let half fertilise normally and use ICSI (manually injecting a sperm into the egg) for the other half. This was because my fertilisation rates for round one and three were quite as high as they’d like (round one, 12 out of 20 fertilised; round two I had a brilliant 14 out of 18 and round three a very disappointing eight out of 18).

No one has ever been so wonderfully proactive on my behalf. But there remained a lingering doubt. This clinic has had three opportunities to impregnate me and failed on each occasion, I wondered whether it was time to move on regardless.

So in December I furtively booked another appointment with a specialist who seems to be the 'go-to' guy for Recurrent Implantation Failure (my current diagnosis - unexplained infertility was getting so passé). This dude tests everything and tries almost anything. So I wanted to know what he would recommend for us.

Luckily I had been warned to do my homework first, and cautioned that his manner didn’t extend to small talk. I had barely sat down in the chair when he asked me why I was there. I didn’t feel “Doh! Why do you think? Dipstick” was an appropriate answer, so started to outline my infertility history, and then the avalanche of questions began.

“What dose of Clexane did you take?”
“How thick was your womb lining on your first and second attempt?”
“How many eggs did they retrieve?”

These questions I felt pretty confident answering but he pretty soon pushed beyond my knowledge:

“What type of growth hormone did you take?” Is there more than one?
“Why did they put you on the long protocol?” Umm... I didn’t think to ask.

I was expected to have the answer to every question at my fingertips and to be fair I literally did because I had lugged with me all 166 pages of my health records, but try leafing through that when you are asked what drugs dosage you were on for IVF number two and them immediately after being questioned on whether you had a specific Chlamydia test in 2009.

It wasn’t a bad experience at all, and he was on the ball scribbling notes and double checking things. But I really felt the pressure and thought longingly of my original clinic who would, in theory, know the answers to these questions because they did the treatment. (Although to be fair I have had to remind my original clinic of a few salient points when they’ve misread/ misunderstood my notes in the past).

This doctor had quite a strong accent so when he began to tell us what he’d recommend and why, I felt pretty confident that I got about half of what he said. The husband meanwhile sat there nodding sagely every so often but he clearly had no idea what was being suggested. I saw him out of the corner of my eye looking bewildered but I daren’t catch his eye in case I got the giggles.

The Doctor wanted to do the following:

Womb lining tests and clear out. My clinic is also planning a complete womb scrape before the next round. So that covers that.

Chromosome testing. We sent off out bloods with our other clinic before Christmas for this and await the results as I type.

The Thyroid test he suggested was also done before Christmas. I got the result yesterday and my thyroid function is quite normal, so that can be crossed off the list.

The big ones, and ones he is famous for, are the immunology tests. These were quite complex; he rattled off a number of tests faster than I could write, and when I asked the receptionist – at the end of the session – to go through them with me she gave me the lab names (FGA 4, FGA 6) which meant even less. Eventually I managed to get them to email me a list of the tests with names that any normal person would understand, you know things like Natural Killer cells and Leukocyte Antibody detection.

What you don’t know what they are?

Losers.

The tests were:
Natural killer cells
TH1/TH2 cytokine ratio
Leukocyte Antibody detection (for both of us)
HLA Antibody DQ alpha Antigens (again we'd both have that)

Ok so I had help from the Fertility Friends encyclopedia of immunology telling me the what the tests were for and what the treatment options are. And frankly this post has gone on long enough already so if you want to know the details I urge you to go over and read - but be warned it is complex and mind blowing.

Suffice to say there was a lot to look through. Most of the tests center round whether the cells in my uterus or antibodies I produce are attacking any embryo's that have the audacity to try and implant.

Adding up the cost of just these tests came to over £1,500.

Ouchy.

However, the majority of the treatment suggestions are Intralipids.

Intralipids.

Intra - bloody - lipids.

My clinic has already said I can do this next time with them anyway, for a fee of just under £300.

So guess what my plan is?

Stay with my current clinic and make sure I get the do get the Intralipid treatment this time, but forget the actual tests.

However, I am really glad I got a second opinion. It has given me a lot to think about and much more confidence in my original clinic's plans.

Bang Goes That Attempt

2011-12-31T15:21:00.000Z

You may remember that after my ovulation and unauthorised DIY attempt at pregnancy I decided one of three different scenarios would play out.

All of these revolved around New Year's day when I would, or wouldn't be pregnant. Naturally I forgot to take into account my body's unorthodox approach to ovulation and periods. It should have come as no surprise that, rather than wait the conventional 14 days after ovulation to start my period it would slip in early with a Boxing day treat.

At least it meant I haven't spent the whole Christmas season wondering if my expanding belly is a result of over indulgence or incubation.

I alerted my clinic to my lack of pregnancy yesterday and was told that I could start the pre-IVF Primolut right then. The slight problem being that I was, at that point, hurtling across Scotland several hundred miles from my clinic and the drugs I needed. I also managed to treat my traveling companions to slightly too much information about my periods.
(Although at one point I had to stop one of the guys in the car from whistling whilst I was on my mobile, I think he was trying the nonchalent "I'm not listening" whistle but it really wasn't helping my understanding of scan timings).

The revised plan is to go to my clinic on Tuesday when I'm back in London for a quick scan to check the fluid in my womb, which they saw last time, has disappeared and then pick up the Primolut to start on day fourteen of this cycle, ready to start IVF at the end of January.

Naturally I've learned my lesson and we shall not be trying the home-made attempts this month as it would incur another delay. However, because we hadn't counted on my period starting so early it meant we have come away without the appropriate protection.

So I guess this year won't start with a bang.

Happy New Year everyone.

Merry Quizmas Everybody!

2011-12-23T09:24:00.002Z

Now in its fourth year Womb For Improvement Incorporated is delighted to bring you the ultimate Christmas gaming solution.

Does conversation flag around your Christmas dinner table? Seen Home Alone and Bad Santa once too often? Already memorized all of Trivial Pursuit? Want to humiliate your know-it all uncle?

Building on the success of Conceive or Concede, Conception Deception, and Barren Bingo this year’s must have game for infertiles everywhere is the perfect Quizmas Present.

An Infertile's Quizmas

Test your knowledge of infertility with this unbeatable present.

Try the Trainee Embryologist Round:

What is a Morula?
a) A South American carnivorus rodent
b) An early-stage embryo just prior to blastocyst
c) A tooth located in the back quadrant of the mouth
d) An Australian cocktail containing equal parts beer, gin and kangaroo milk

Includes ‘Grade that embryo’ picture questions.

Get all in a muddle with the acronym test:
What does HEFA stand for?
a) Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority
B) Heart of England Ferret Association
c) Human Factors Engineering Analysis
d) Not fair! This is a trick question for dyslexics.

Have fun with statistics and counting with the Maths questions:

If Lizzie has three IVFs and 56 eggs retrieved in 2011 but does not get pregnant, what can we determine will be the outcome of the next round?
a) Insanity
b) It is impossible to say
c) More eggs down the drain
d) Probably seven or eight babies

If Mary wants a baby born on the 12th day of the 12th month in 2012, when should she have sex?
a) 21 March 2012
b) 11/11/2011
c) Couldn't give a fuck we’re well beyond planning birth dates, conceiving any time will do nicely thank you
d) Sex? Who the hell gets pregnant through sex anyway?

This fun interactive, meducational quiz is the perfect ice-breaker for those wishing share their fertility journey with the rest of their family. And a chance for you to put all your knowledge gleaned whilst frantically googling into practice.

Buy the complete quiz for a special introductory offer of just £6,550 plus VAT*

* Well, a girl has to fund her fourth IVF somehow ... (otherwise there'll be more sponsored posts)

The best laid plans ... are generally screwed up by, well, screwing

2011-12-21T17:44:00.001Z

The plan was simple. I had a scan last week, there was no follicular activity so today another quick scan just to get an idea of how my womb lining develops during a non-medicated cycle then I start the primolut, get a period start IVF number four in the New Year.

No bother.

Except.

"Ummmmm" I said, looking at my feet rather than the Doctor, "I continued testing ovulation last week. And I, er ... sort of, got a positive ovulation test on Sunday, and we kind of had unprotected sex."

(Did you like the inclusion of the words 'kind of' implying that it was just something that happened organically rather than me standing over the husband, rousing the troops, as it were).

The Doctor's look transported me right back to childhood, it said 'she wasn't so much angry as disappointed'.

I've fucked up the plan.

Tsk.

One of three things could now happen:

1. I get pregnant, save myself a fortune on IVF and live out my life as "that woman" the one who got pregnant whilst waiting for IVF.

2. I don't get pregnant, I get my period on New Year's day. We start the primolut two weeks later, with no cheeky ovulation test / sex to scupper our plans this time round. At worst we've lost a month.

3. I don't get pregnant, I don't start my period. This has happened before when I've had a positive ovulation test, and frankly considering the doctor saw no sign of imminent ovulation on my ovaries last week I am pretty sceptical about the accuracy of the test, although a back up measure the ... ahem ... secretions of an egg-whitey nature did also point to ovulation. If I don't start my period I'll go back for a scan early in the New Year and start Primolut straight away to start a period - so it is just a two week delay.

I felt the need to explain and apologise to my Doctor for acting on the the ovulation test, but ladies, Sunday was the first time since August 2008 that I have had a positive ovulation test outside of IVF or IUI. And last week at my scan the doctor said my womb lining looked 'perfect'. How could I resist the chance to save myself almost seven grand in medical bills? Would any of you have done anything different?

So I guess I'm on my two week wait over Christmas and New Year.

The other problem is now I'm pretty sure that means we've used up our Christmas shag.

Elsewhere on the internet, on iVillage, I've shared infallible my tips for surviving Christmas as an infertile.

***
Update: Anonymous asked "Ok, please someone explain to me why having sex in between cycles would mess up the doctor's plans for the next IVF or lining testing. Thanks."

It doesn't always matter but because of my specific issue with tardy periods and thickened womb lining I need two weeks of progesterone to bring a period on, and I need that period before I start IVF. To take two weeks of the pill from mid-cycle to 'official period start date' I have to absolutely make sure I'm not pregnant, hence they have to now wait two weeks to ensure I am not pregnant before starting the progesterone.

Hope that helps. If not you're as confused as I am!

Wine Me!

2011-12-17T18:34:00.001Z

I get asked to do sponsored posts a lot and rarely agree because the product is of no interest to me, or relevance to you.

I’ve even been asked to review baby products.

*tumbleweed*

But this one piqued my interest. So please note the following disclaimer and we’ll get on with it.

This is a sponsored post for Stowell’s.

- - -

I give up alcohol on a regular basis. The AA’s 12 step programme has nothing on me, mine is a two step initiative -
1) Gear up for fertility treatment
2) Stop boozing

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. I may have lost the desire to get plastered and vomity of a Friday night but I miss the ritual of coming in from work and just having a glass of wine whilst I wind down, or sipping a glass, Floyd-style, whilst cooking. And fine dining just doesn’t feel quite right whilst virtuously sipping water.

So I was quite excited to hear Stowell’s had bought out a low alcohol wine - 5.5% alcohol as opposed to normal levels of 12-14ish percent. This could well be the drink I am looking for – at that level I think the odd glass during the IVF process, let alone in between treatments, is eminently allowable.

What is more it is low calorie - at 60 calories a glass it contains about 30% fewer calories than a typical glass. So even for those of us struggling with fertility treatment weight gain (and not the good kind that is concentrated mainly in the uterus) it is an allowable treat.

They do a white and a rosé. I got to try some so went for the rosé. It was very fruity, I sort of expected the flavours to be diminished (basically I expected it to taste like watered down wine) but not at all. I think it’d work really well super-chilled as a summer aperitif.

It certainly beats my ginless tonic (ingredients: tonic water, ice, lime, imagination).

For more info visit www.stowellslight.com

Information Overload

2011-12-14T22:53:00.000Z

The appointment today was a bit of a surprise.

I anticipated the normal routine: when I go in the doctor says "Ah hello... um" glance at the notes "er ... Elizabeth. Now you last IVF was" another glance at the notes "unsuccessful. You had two embryos transfered on day three"

At which point I intervene explain that no it was a five-day transfer, and then launch into my history because they clearly don't know me from Eve.

(Even the worst doctors can tell me from Adam.)

(I hope.)

But today's doctor, who I'd met before IVF number three, was properly on the ball.

She'd discussed 'my case' (I am a 'case' now) with another doctor and had Ideas, Plans and Suggestions. I took copious notes but I'm not sure I got everything because as well as being very nice she also (and I say this as a resolutely heterosexual woman) had the most enormous bazukas. I almost asked the husband when we left if he'd notice her boobs, and then I remembered who I was talking to and realised that me asking him the question was as obsolete as him asking me if I'd finished the chocolate.

So what are her suggestions? (That was rhetorical, I'm going to tell you).

Don't hang around, my womb lining needs to be controlled so they don't want to leave it to its own devices for too long. They want to treat it with progesterone for 14 days out of every 28 starting next week (more on that later).

Then much the same as before, grow me some eggs and harvest them for fertilisation.

The difference is what comes next. Regardless of how the womb lining looks they aren't going to put anything back in, they want to freeze what they get for a later date.

The following month will be womb-lining month. Start with another full-on scrape, check the results for any nasties. Then oestrogen pills and sniffers to get me to regrow an optimal womb lining.

Also, this time I'd get intralipids. Do you remember this was offered to me before? It never happened because when it was supposed to start they had decided my womb lining was too thin to proceed - that they changed their minds later was irrelevant, by then it was too late to start.

If all goes well, they defrost the embryos and put everything back in.

My worry is that there is a lot to go wrong. I'm particularly concerned about the idea of freezing my embryos - nothing I've produced so far has made it to frozen (admittedly I have always had two to put back in the womb so theoretically they could have been frozen). But I do worry about losing anything I have produced along the way.

The Doctor reassured me that they lose less than 10% of embryos when defrosting. She also recommended the husband and I both get karyotyping tests. This should pick up any abnormalities lurking in my eggs or the husband's junk. It could also explain why when I get 21 to 18 eggs each time I have egg collection, I have only ever ended up with two embryos.

In addition she suggests a cheeky thyroid test, more to rule it out as an issue than because she is concerned about it (I've passed this before).

The next thing to decide was when to start. The womb lining regrowth is a major concern. I am on day 19 of my cycle today so the doctor decided to scan me right then. Which is great, because I don't feel like I've had a proper appointment until I've been impaled.

The scan confirmed what my daily ovulation tests have been belligerently trying to tell me for the past two weeks. Ovulation just isn't happening, and if it hasn't happened now who knows when, or if, it will happen. This natural cycle isn't going to work so if I am going to start the progesterone there is no time like the present.

Except there is.

If I start now, I'll be ready to begin IVF straight after Christmas. At which point the clinic is closed for their annual deep clean.

Hence the plan to start the progesterone NEXT week, to start IVF mid-January.

As soon as I start the progesterone then I need to go back on contraception. But that is fine, prior to Paris the husband and I had been using the barrier method anyway. The barriers mainly being our moods and thermal, unsexy, pyjamas.

If any of you have kept up with that then give yourself a star and buy yourself a Doctorate from the internet.

So lots of plans and ideas.

The only question that remains is are we going to go with them or will we, as I was so sure we would yesterday, look elsewhere.

I've got until next week to decide.

IVF debrief

2011-12-13T20:06:00.001Z

Tomorrow I am finally going in for my IVF debrief at my clinic.

The one where I see the doctor and say:

"?!"

And the doctor replies:

"?" accompanied by a Gallic shrug.

I like to be prepared with my one page summary sheet detailing my conception woes. I usually compile a list of questions. I dredge the internet for the latest miracle cure and wonder, out-loud to the Doctor, why we can't try that.

After IVF number two I went through both of my IVFs comparing and contrasting (the joys of having a blog noting down everything). I offered my own interpretation as to why it didn't work.

But this time it just doesn't seem worth it. I am out of ideas.

Last time they agreed to let me try intralipids. It didn't happen because of all the kerfuffle over my too thin womb lining, and by the time they decided to go ahead with the transfer I'd missed my intralipid window.

I half think I should be pissed off about this. But honestly, I doubt intralipids would have helped. It was a long shot anyway. So if the Doctor cites this as the miracle cure I'll be deeply skeptical.

In fact I really don't think there is much they can say that will keep my custom. I am a postage stamp away from sending my application (with fifty quid registration fee) to another clinic that comes highly recommended.

But I still want to go to this appointment, I believe it is known as "getting closure". Talking of overused expressions, over on iVillage I slip into hackneyed clichés as I try to process the result and the way forward.

Rebel With A Cause

2011-12-07T22:33:00.000Z

As a rule I do what I am told.

Despite knowing that the last IVF hadn't worked on the Friday I continued the arse-numbing* injections until the official test day on Monday. Even when I started my period on the Saturday I subjected myself to the injections from hell.

Because that is what I do. I follow medical advice.

Which is why this departure is so dramatic. I am not taking the Pill.

Long time readers will know that one possible cause of my inability to conceive is due to my womb lining growing in an erratic diseased manner. In betwixt IVFs I have been contraceptioned up to my eye-balls in order to stop any of the nasties growing back, it also has the unfortunate side effect of preventing any possible pregnancies.

As soon as I finished IVF numbers one and two I was back on the pill faster than a flower girl at Woodstock.

I haven't had my follow up appointment after this IVF yet, I was pretty lax about booking it because really who wants to sit in a room with a Doctor to be told that "you responded very well and it just seems to be bad luck that it didn't work this time, but hand over another seven grand and we'll try it again."

As a result no one has actually told me to restart the pill. But I know they would, I just haven't asked.

Which means for the first time in about two years I have the opportunity to ovulate by myself and, however slim the chance might be of actually conceiving this month it is still an hell of a lot higher than a month when I am on the pill.

So what have I done? Whipped out the ovulation tests, become an avid tester and, as I approach what should be the middle of my cycle, started casting amorous glances at the husband.

I think we all know it isn't going to work, but it is nice to have a hobby.

*The weren't really arse-numbing, quite the opposite. Arse-hurting would be more appropriate.

We'll Always Have Paris

2011-12-04T18:41:00.000Z

Can you guess where we went away to?

I'll rephrase that. If you hadn't read the title, d'ya think you would have guessed?

As a mini-break it was near perfect. Our hotel defined shabby Parisien chic.

The lift was chinzed to the max. I loved it.

In three days I think we packed in about 6 weeks worth of eating. Concentrating on the banned food:

Shellfish

Soufflés

Runny cheeses

And booze, booze, booze.

We did galleries, so much walking that the husband complained he hadn't realised he'd signed up for a trekking holiday, le shopping (mainly window shopping, or licking, lèche-vitrine), afternoon naps and ... ahem ... some totally spurious, and as we all know ineffective, bit of the other.

We even managed the obligatory trip to the Parisian flea market buying something that manages to be awesome, macabre, and a miracle we got through customs.

Now we're back to reality.

I start work again tomorrow after six weeks off, and I am shitting it!

Thank you, thank you, thank you

2011-11-30T07:55:00.000Z

I loved the swearing. The swears by the people who aren't comfortable with it. The ones by the people who were weened on it. The foreign languages. The concatenation of words. The video clips. And the sheer bile spewed out at the universe on my behalf.

We're going away for the last few days of my 'Get Pregnant with IVF' sabbatical. I know it'll include a lot of pregnant-unfriendly food, pâtés, soft cheeses and, knowing my French, some inadvertent offal orderage. There'll be booze, plenty of it, which no doubt means there will also me some mid-night weeping and ranting.

Must pack tissues.

We aren't ready to give up. I reckon I've got at least one more IVF in me. But I don't know when, or where. I'll have a follow up consultation at some point before Christmas, but my current clinic will have to offer some pretty radical solutions for me to try there again. Three strikes and you're out dudes. Saying that, they are very good - for other people - and I am currently trying to persuade the wombmate to give them a shot.

If you want to re-live my pregnancy testing again check out iVillage **spoiler alert** the result doesn't change.

I Tried and Tested

2011-11-28T10:09:00.000Z

I tested on Friday.

And Saturday.

On Sunday I gave it a rest (coincidently as the Good Book suggests).

This morning, official test day, I double checked.

Every test gave me the same answer.

Every test was negative.

Thank you all for rooting for me. For your words of encouragement and advice. But now there is nothing anyone can say to make me feel better. I know you are sorry for me, I know you really thought this time would be it. Me too.

You could maybe do one thing, leave me your favourite swear word in the comments, cause swearing is always funny and any comments that are too nice will make me cry again.

Happy Yanks-giving!

2011-11-24T13:12:00.002Z

Traditionally (so Wikipedia tells me) this is a time to be thankful for a good harvest.

And I am thankful.

Thankful that I had a great harvest of 18 eggs.

Thankful that 8 fertilised.

Thankful that I had two blastocysts to transfer.

But I still haven't tested, because - despite the traditions - I really don't want a turkey this Thanksgiving.

And I've had no symptoms.

You know how people complain that early pregnancy symptoms are similar to pre-menstrual stuff, so they don't know what the cramping / sore boobs/ and spotting means? Well, I don't have any of that.

So if I was symptom watching, I'd have to reach the conclusion that I am neither pregnant, nor about to start my period. That is impossible. One of those things is going to happen.

The only thing I have noticed in the last couple of days is a twinge of nausea, but having googled (the shite out of it) it is way too early to be morning sickness and is far more likely to be attributable to the Norprolac.

Talking of feeling nauseous. Please tell me, do you guys seriously cook sweet potatoes with marshmallows as traditional Thanksgiving fare? And do you eat it with the turkey or as a dessert?

The Testing Debate - again

2011-11-22T11:33:00.001Z

Every time I do IVF, or an IUI, I have the same debate with myself about when to test.

There are a few different schools of thought:

The Hairy Farmer Family approach entails a daily test from trigger shot to official test day. The trigger shot puts some hCG into your body so if you wee on a stick directly after the trigger you'll get a positive test, then as the days go by it gradually leaves your system and if it starts to reappear you know that the result is a genuine positive rather than remnents of the trigger. So you get the earliest result possible without the doubt of the trigger hanging over a positive.

Others, with a willpower crafted from the hardest substance known to women don't touch the tests, they wait for a medically sanctioned blood test and then a phone call to deliver the news.

I can't do either.

Never having been pregnant I an unable to face the idea of seeing my first positive test knowing that it is chemically induced and means nothing.

And on the other end of the spectrum my clinic won't give me a blood test unless I have proved its worth first with a positive pee stick before.

So when should I test? My clinic won't take any notice until a test 16 days after transfer. Which will be Monday the 28th. Ughhh.

The day-by-day breakdown tells me that a pregnancy should be detectable from 9 days after the transfer, and today I'm 10 days past. So it should be a no brainer, right? I may as well test now.

Wrong.

I've written before about reasons for not testing early. If, on the off chance, my hCG levels are lagging a negative now (which still has the potential to turn into a positive) would be soul destroying for no reason. There is, after all, a reason that my clinic wants me to wait for 16 days.

In the past I have also wanted to wait until the weekend before testing, I didn't want to go to work after getting either result. This time that isn't an issue.

The main thing that stopping me testing early this time is the drugs. As well as the brusing bum injections I am also taking a vicious little pill called Norprolac. You have to take it just before you go to bed because its side effects are grim so you need to sleep it off. I a couple of nights ago got up in the middle of the night sweating, dizzy, bright spots in front of my eyes and ended up having a little lie down on the bathroom floor. I've not done that since my last decent night out.

My concern is that if I get a negative pregnancy test result the enthusiasm with which I ingest these drugs will wain completely, and I am not sure I'll be able to continue with them. Which, should it be still a smidgen too early, might be absolutely the wrong thing to do.

The other reason is, of course, I do quite like being pregnant until proved otherwise.

***

Over on iVillage I give you an insight into how the wombmate and I try to give each other a little boost during cycles.

Mindful

2011-11-20T07:36:00.001Z

I went for my final ~~mesmerism~~ hypnosis session on Thursday.

When I started these sessions I didn't know what to expect. I knew that it wouldn't be like the stage acts when I'd be convinced that I was a chicken every time I heard the theme tune to Eastenders (well, I was 60% sure that wouldn't happen).

I went originally because I wanted to be more positive about this IVF - it's is a pretty miserable thing to go through if you have decided from the outset that it isn't going to work.

I suppose if you'd asked me what I expected I would have assumed that there would be a bit of mind programming going on. A sort of "When you hear the words IVF you are going to feel infused with joy and excitement." And "The sight of a speculum will make you weak at the knees".

It wasn't like that.

Instead it was more like teaching you deep relaxation techniques - and giving you something to think about whilst you are under. The hypnotherapist talks continually, giving you scenarios and expecting you to fill in the gaps. I went to a beach; a beautiful verdant garden (what could that be an analogy for?!); my mind's control room (turning the womb lining up to the max); an infinity pool.

I also learnt how to do self-hypnosis at home. For some of these sessions I used the same scenarios as those she'd suggested. But I mixed it up a bit. On the advice of a friend pregnant with IVF twins I have also been visualising what is going on in my womb.

This is how it breaks down:

5-Day Transfer

Days Past Transfer (DPT)	Embryo Development
One	The blastocyst begins to hatch out of its shell
Two	The blastocyst continues to hatch out of its shell and begins to attach itself to the uterus
Three	The blastocyst attaches deeper into the uterine lining, beginning implantation
Four	Implantation continues
Five	Implantation is complete, cells that will eventually become the placenta and fetus have begun to develop
Six	Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) starts to enter the blood stream
Seven	Fetal development continues and hCG continues to be secreted
Eight	Fetal development continues and hCG continues to be secreted
Nine	Levels of hCG are now high enough to detect a pregnancy

(Taken from NYU Fertility Center website.)

I've also been concentrating on the 'Stay' meditation to keep those embryos in their rightful place, which has an unfortunate side effect of making me break out into one of two songs: 'Stay' by Shakespear's Sister and that seminal 1994 Christmas number one, 'Stay Another Day' by East 17. (The latter song in particular starts to sound more and more profound everytime I sing it, who knew the words were so deeply embedded in my psyche?)

But I think it is working. I do feel very positive about this round. I've no symptoms or reason for feeling like that, and we'll see in eight days whether that confidence is misplaced or not.

So what can I conclude? Hypnosis helps with positivity and gives you terrible taste in music.

Injections: My Arse (this title is intended to be taken literally)

2011-11-16T10:52:00.002Z

Yesterday I re-met my nemesis.

Remember the case of the intramuscular injection and the wrong needle? Well it turned out that although I was using the wrong needle in terms of girth, I was using the right length of needle just a thicker one.

How do I know this? Because yesterday I had to restart the injections, and this time I was careful to talk - at length - with the nurse about which needle I was to use.

I needed to add Prontogest to my cocktail of drugs as yesterday's blood test (it never stops) showed my progesterone levels were low. I forgot to ask about the numbers, probably because I was so intent on getting the right needles.

So now I am going to share with you my patented* 'How To Get an Intra-Muscular Injection' instructions honed from minutes of internet research and condensed into these simple steps.

Find yourself an injector. I chose the husband but feel free to grab a passer-by from the street.
Prepare the needle yourself so that you can be confident that you have got rid of all the air bubbles and ARE USING THE CORRECT NEEDLE. I cannot stress this enough (yes you can. Ed) I use a 40mm x 0.8mm one.
Strip from the waist down and lie prostrate on the bed yelling at your injecting partner to turn off the telly (actually, strike my earlier point about using a passer-by) and come through and inject you.
The injection needs to be in the upper outside quarter of your buttock. To find this imagine a cross intersecting the center of one bum cheek. You got it?
Rather than lying flat on your front, lie on the side that isn't being injected and throw your injecting buttock leg forward so you are almost in the recovery position.
Wrap your pillow round your face and say "I don't want this, this is going to hurt. Help!"
Apparently wiggling the toes of the active buttock leg whilst the needle goes in helps with the pain. Whilst in a pillow-faced position, my legs half crossed and the husband straddling me I find it hard to work out which toes are moving so I wiggle both, whilst screaming "Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle" to distract myself from the pain.
Clean the injection area with an alcohol wipe.
Get your injection-partner to chatter constantly during the procedure. The husband favours a patronising patter along the lines of: "Its going in. You're doing really well. Wiggle, wiggle. Well done. You're brilliant. Wiggle, wiggle. Keep wiggling."
Once the needle is in the injector needs to pull the syringe back a bit to make sure there is no blood.
Then plunge all the liquid in.
Slowly withdraw the needle. Ensure that your partner does NOT continue to say things like "Well done, it is still coming out, keep wiggling" for a full 30 seconds after the needle has been removed. That is just nasty (I hope you're reading this Husband).
Wipe away any blood and feel rightly proud of yourself for getting through it.

So that is one down, I have to keep going until test day, longer if it is positive. I just hope it is worth it.

*it is not patented. Can you even patent an instruction?

Transfer day - through the medium of pictures...

2011-11-14T11:09:00.001Z

On Saturday* I went in for my embryo transfer - this is how the day evolved ...

Of a morning I like to sort out my pills for the day. The idea is that if the pot is empty by the time I go to bed I've not missed anything. Harder than you'd think. (Pictured: folic acid, selenium, rasberry leaf x 3, royal jelly, asprin, Prognova, Norprolac x 2).

Two hours before embryo transfer I popped one of these high into my ... well you can read. It is for pain relief. I particularly enjoyed the instruction to remove the wrapper first, luckily I read that before insertion so I didn't have to fish anything back out.

The clinic is a 15 minute walk away from my house. Anxious to ensure my bladder was full enough I didn't waste a moment of that walk, topping up my bladder the whole way.

Action drinking shot.

Waiting until I can get changed.

In gown with lucky socks* on. (*I have no idea whether they are lucky, this is their first outing so they are untested). Note how the gown is emblazoned with the word 'hospital use only' - bang goes my idea of nicking it and wearing it out on the town.

You really don't want to see what happened in the vagina stuffing room. Suffice to say my womb lining was declared fit at 9.2mm and they put two remaining blastocysts in. Unfortunately there is nothing left to freeze, but look at these beauties...

They are both graded a good, solid 6BC (6 = hatching, B is quality of inner cells which become the baby, C is the quality of the cells that become the placenta).

The ritual of the post transfer rest includes listening to comedy (based on reports clowns in the ward after embryo transfer are supposed to increase the chances of a pregnancy, and my clinic is just too tight to lay on that kind of entertainment - see here).

It might be a short walk, but we took a taxi home, ain't nothing gonna disturb my babies.

The rest of the day was mostly spent on the sofa with a dumb beast's head on my lap (NB. I'm referring to the dog as shown above, not the husband). And yeah, so I unbuttoned the top button, I don't want to restrict my uterus - there's 9.2mm of pure womb lining in there.

Finishing the night with a bit of fun: a suppository.

And an injection. Blurgh.

If you want the word-heavy version check out iVillage.

*I'm really sorry this took me a while to get up, I couldn't be bothered with sorting out all the pictures whilst doing some intensive resting, and I didn't think anyone would actually notice. But I've had a few emails asking whether everything is Ok - I didn't mean to worry anyone!

Half A Decade

2011-11-10T11:04:00.002Z

Today marks five years of ~~trying to conceive~~ being married.

Two years ago I made a decision that if I wasn’t pregnant by now then that’d be it. Half a decade was long enough to battle infertility, and I’d need to move on with my life.

So I’m sticking with my plan and, despite getting a call a moment ago from the embryologist telling me all 8 are still there (2 excellent, 6 good quality), I’ve cancelled my embryo transfer.

I’m joking.

Of course I haven’t, but it is a time to reflect on what next. Or should be if I wasn’t trying to focus on this attempt, I’m not going to think about whether to have another shot at IVF after this one because that would be making the assumption that this round isn’t going to work.

Instead tonight I’m going to put on a posh frock, and go out for a lovely meal with whatisname, you know, the husband. And as my future babies are snuggled up in a petri-dish I might even allow myself a glass of celebratory prosecco.

Just the one mind.

Eight is a number lucky in China*

2011-11-09T10:44:00.000Z

Day three and the embryologist has just called.

I expected a drop off in numbers, but there hasn't been one. All eight are still in the running!

We (I) have:
2 which are six cells in size
1 is seven
2 are eight celled
2 are ten
and one is getting ahead of itself at 11 cells

Quality wise: 2 are excellent, 6 are good.

This is the first time that all the fertilised eggs have been contenders at this stage. The tricky bit now is getting them to blastocyst, in the past two cycles this is where there has been a massive drop off in numbers, both times leaving me with just two options.

This time I want a couple for transfer and a couple more to freeze for my second (or third) baby. That's not too much to ask for is it?

Of course we all know that at almost any point in the process IVF can be called off. I'm hoping it doesn't happen to me, and over on iVillage I educate the masses!

* Thanks to Fi for reminding me of this.

Fertilisation Report: IVF #3

2011-11-07T18:03:00.000Z

The problem with getting an impressive haul of 18 eggs is that you hope for an equally impressive fertilisation report.

I got that last IVF when I had 18 eggs and 12 fertilised.

This IVF however the report isn't so dramatic:

Just eight fertilised

Of the remainder:

three were immature
two fertilised abnormally
five did nothing.

Despite the initial gut kick of hearing the numbers, I'm not too upset by this. Eight is still a pretty good number, the embryologist has still got something to play with.

He is going to see how far he can take them towards blastocyst and then, on the day appointed for transfer, I'll go in and have a scan to check whether my womb lining has thickened up enough for implantation.

It will be then, and only then, that they'll decide whether to go ahead with the transfer or try to freeze what they have.

Which is quite nerve-wracking.

Egg Collection: IVF #3

2011-11-06T20:34:00.000Z

Do you remember the first time I went for egg collection? There was a miserable old nurse that I had to contend with. However, I was heartened when I overheard her telling a colleague she was retiring in three weeks.

Sure enough I didn't see her subsequently.

Until today.

What a difference! She was funny, talkative, smiling. “I thought you were retiring” I asked (in a neutral tone). “I have, but I come back to work the occasional weekend.”

I don’t know what retirement has done to her, but I want some of that. She took twice as long to get through the pre-op questionnaire as normal because she kept stopping to chat.

“I love my job. And I understand what you’re going through. I have a son, but I always wanted a daughter. But I never could have one.” She confided.

A few minutes later as she sent the guy in the next door booth to the “Little boys room” she cackled “but I won’t be stopping in there with you.” (And it amused me to note the afore mentioned fellow took his own bag, presumably of grot, along with him to the producing room. That’s forethought for you.)

Egg collection was as blissful as ever. I do love a chemically induced sleep. This time I was lulled to sleep with some kind of hybrid soft rock / easy listening musak. These doctors know how to let their (neatly trimmed) hair down of a weekend. I swear I heard a rendition of “I Wanna Live In America” on the electric guitar at one point.

The moment I woke up I blurted out “How many eggs?” I don’t remember the answer, I don’t remember asking the question, but the husband assures me I did.

The answer, I discovered later, was 18. That doesn’t even include the four or five that they had to leave because they were too hard to get to. But with those numbers who needs the extra?

Womb-lining wise, however, things are once again up in the air. Today it still only measures 7.4mm - not increasing by the hoped 1mm a day. It is still too thin, which puts the transfer back in the balance.

This time I am not going to second guess what will happen. I’ll have another scan before they decide on a transfer or to freeze and we’ll take it from there.

In the meantime I am going to neck raspberry leaf, selenium, and brazil nuts in the hope it’ll plump up the womb lining in the nick of time.

What The Fuck?!!!

2011-11-04T19:39:00.000Z

Yes guys, three exclamation marks, and you know my rules.

On Tuesday my womb lining was 1mm - way too thin. The head of the clinic, an intimidating consultant, sat me down and said there was no point in trying to implant anything. Frozen embryo transfer at a later date was my only option.

But why am I telling you this? You know this. I know. Hell, my boss knows this because I emailed him to let him know I’d be back at work next week.

But … um … today. My lining is now 7mm thick. Ideally it should be 8mm or more on trigger day (for I am triggering tonight for egg collection on Sunday) but a dramatic improvement. So much so that my Doctor has done a U-turn and thinks that I can go ahead with the full IVF this cycle. No waiting for a frozen cycle.

I'm flabbergasted, but I'm trying not to get too excited, because who knows what Sunday will have in store for me.

And I've had to email my boss. Which was embarrassing.

Pollyanna Lives!

2011-11-03T22:01:00.001Z

There are two approaches I can take:

1) lie on the sofa, cry and feel sorry for myself

2) focus on the positives of freezing my embryos this time round.

I spent most of yesterday thoroughly exploring number 1. Unfortunately I can categorically confirm that it didn’t make me feel any better. (I also managed to contract my holiday cold – never have one at work, always get one when I stop – so I had an additional reason for wallowing in self-pity).

So what are the positives?

The officious Doctor who I spoke to on Tuesday tried to comfort me by telling me about a fertility clinic in Japan who apparently are very successful. They always use frozen embryos, never implanting a fresh one. Their reasoning is that embryos implant better in a womb that hasn’t just gone through a medicated cycle. So this might be a good thing.

Two previous cycles with fresh embryos haven’t worked. I wanted to try something different this time round. This is my opportunity.

My body has taken a battering this cycle. I am more bruised than I’ve ever been, and my follicle-filled ovaries are giving my stomach a distended look, and preventing my jeans from doing up. There is a certain amount of appeal in getting off the drugs rollercoaster for a while. (My clinic has me injecting and suppositing myself even after embryo transfer.)

This is the detritus from just one night's injections (a growth hormone, two injections to grow the follicles and one to stop the eggs being released):

As much as I was looking forward to (and enjoying) my six week break I was a little concerned that the unpaid nature of my sabbatical – coupled with one of my most expensive ventures to date (I’m referring to the IVF not the shoes I bought last week) - would wipe out all my savings and render me poverty stricken. However by going back to work after just two weeks my naturally parsimonious nature has been placated.

So plenty of reasons for being glad about the change of plan.

Am I glad? Not in the slightest, but fuck it - I don’t have a lot of choice.

Oh and remember the IVF predictor - did I ever tell you I wrote to the people who developed it? Their response to my email is over on iVillage.

I really can't think of a witty title for this post, but it isn't good news

2011-11-01T19:10:00.000Z

Infertility – it is the gift (or should that be Gamete Intrafallopian Transfer?) that keeps on giving.

Just when you think you know where you are, it comes and sideswipes you.

Turns out I needn’t have panicked about my follicles. They are growing nicely; I have 5 on one side and six on the other.

That is the good news.

The bad news, however, is that my womb lining has not been so co-operative. From being “lovely and thin” at the first scan it is now worryingly thin, having failed to plump up along with the follicles.

In fact the womb lining is so miserly and unwelcoming the doctors have decided that it isn’t worth trying to implant anything in there.

The plan now is to go ahead with egg retrieval (probably on Saturday) and try and make some embryos, then freeze what they can and hopefully they’ll have something to implant at a later date.

I’m miserable. I’d say I feel deflated but my aching ovaries are making me feel quite the opposite. (They really are pretty painful.)

I am worried. In the previous two cycles nothing was frozen. I am worried that this time it’ll be the same story.

There is a little bit more good news, I only had two people coming round last night Trick or Treating. The upshot is I have a big tin of chocolate in the house – I suspect I won’t still have it tomorrow.

And I may as well go back to work next week, so I won’t be in such dire financial straits.

Trick or Treat

2011-10-31T18:31:00.000Z

On Friday I went for the scan that was supposed to simply check that everything was ticking along nicely, that my ovaries were responding, and enable me to add yet another drug to my cocktail (Cetrocide). Instead, they steadfastly refused to acknowledge the presence of any of the ovulation inducers and were grumpily unresponsive.

As a result I was bought in for an unscheduled scan on Sunday morning to see whether they were going to be any more co-operative.

Taking their direction from the time of year my ovary decided to play a few tricks.

Try as she might the doctor couldn’t see my ovaries. She pushed, and prodded, and whirled the dildo-cam around inside me.

Eventually she gave up and decided to try another approach squirting the gel on my stomach and doing an ultra sound the 'normal' way. As she turned the monitor round so I could see, I couldn’t help but wish that one day I’d actually see a baby waving back at me. Instead I saw this:

Or something that looked very like it (for the uninitiated this is pretty much what an ultrasound of an ovary looks like, the ovary is the white bit with the black holes being follicles).

My ovaries have started to produce eggs. They are pretty small still, but five on each side, so an OK number for this stage in the process.

So I got my halloween treat, my next scan is Tuesday - hopefully they will have stopped hiding and continued to have grown by them. Then egg collection next weekend.

Mesmerising

2011-10-29T10:46:00.001+01:00

A friend of mine puts the success of her last IVF down, in no small part, to hypnotherapy, and with a beautiful baby girl born in August who am I to argue with her?

She sent me a CD which I diligently listened to before, and during, IVF number one and two. Obviously it didn’t work, but I wondered whether that was my fault. I don’t think I ever managed to listen to the whole CD without falling asleep – and whilst one could argue that my sub-conscious was still listening away and diligently making notes my dreams certainly didn’t reflect the visualisations of a welcoming womb that I was supposed to be imagining.

But I haven’t given up on it.

There is one major thing that is missing from this round of IVF:

Hope.

I just can’t picture it working, I am still doing all the normal IVF preparation but without the excitement of previous rounds. I feel like I have already decided this round won’t work, and regardless of whether you believe that will have any impact on the outcome it isn’t much fun to deal with.

So I decided some direct intervention was needed and I booked myself in for some hypnotherapy.

Even the cynical husband agreed it was a good thing for me to do. But I suspect he only wanted me to go because he relishes asking me about my mesmerist.

The ~~mesmerist~~ (bloody husband) hypnotherapist has clearly had a lot of experience with infertility. As she went through my history she didn’t have a problem with terms like blastocysts and endometrium and she asked the sort of questions that she should have asked. She was equally unperturbed by my tears, “Most people cry when they see me” she remarked cheerfully.

The hypnosis itself was totally non-invasive. No pocket watches were used and at no point did I feel out of control. This concerned me a bit, I wondered whether I was thinking too much – as she counted down from ten at the start to put me in a relaxed state she told me that with each number I would feel ten percent lighter and more relaxed. As it was, for the first few numbers I worried that I couldn’t determine whether I was 10% more relaxed or not, and began fretting that it wasn’t working.

When about halfway through I developed an itchy eye this was also a source of concern, surely I reasoned – whilst at the same time trying to picture myself on a beach – if I was truly ‘under’ my physical body would have no hold on me and I wouldn’t notice that I really, really wanted to rub my eye. (I did and afterwards she said that was the right thing to do, as it was distracting me from the visualisation.)

But something clearly worked. I felt wonderfully chilled out when I left and last night I practiced the visualisations again and had a great night sleep.

Am I now convinced that the next round is going to be the one? No, not yet. But I think it could be.

Besides if I was convinced now there’d be no reason to go back next week, would there?

Posh Drugs

2011-10-25T19:13:00.001+01:00

Rationally, I know it is probably because I am trying a different drug protocol for this IVF, but I can't help but suspect that it is because this time I have gone private.

Whatever the reason, my fertility drugs have just got way posher.

Today I had my first scan, to double check there were no cysts that might bring to a halt this round of IVF. There weren't.

I also had my one-to-one drugs tutorial.

I was quite blasé about this, I reckoned I could wield a syringe with an degree of expertise that would win a grudging respect from even the most hardened drug addict. But then I saw my new toy:

It is more like one of those multi-coloured biros I use to have as an 11 year old (when I'd painstakingly write every letter in a different colour - until I realised, even at that tender age, that life was too short).

This pen delivers Gonal F, the is dose determined by twisting the top to the correct setting, then I plunge and click. But it isn't all high tech. I am also starting Menopur which is delivered by the old fashioned, self-mixed syringe to the stomach. And I get to pop some pills - in this case Letrozole.

All this just to get me to ovulate on time and plentifully.

As a distraction, I'm very excited to announce that I have just started writing for iVillage. My first article it is a bit of an exposition piece, so there isn't much new in there for regular readers, but I'd love it if you had a look, and maybe even left a comment - just to make the new girl look popular ...

To read click here.

Updated: In response to Are You Kidding Me's comment. No, I'm not getting paid for this gig. I was so flattered to be asked that, even with no cash, I agreed. I know, I'm a push over.

It has started

2011-10-24T21:07:00.000+01:00

"It" in this context being:

My six week sabbatical.

and

My period.

In theory my sabbatical started at 5:30pm on Friday night. In practice when I left work at cowboy time (ten to ten) on Friday night I still hadn't finished. At a similar time on Sunday night when I emailed my boss the report I'd spent the weekend writing I thought it had begun. In practice I think it was started when I pressed send of the email to my colleague at 4.22 this morning. Don't worry, I hadn't been up all night but I awoke with a start and remembered one final thing I'd forgotten to arrange.

My period started, as predicted, on Saturday but after midday. So my official cycle day one was Sunday. Tomorrow morning (day three) I go for my scan and all being well start the injections.

One day in and everything seems to be going swimmingly, let's hope the same can be said for the husband's sperm.

Timing Is Everything

2011-10-18T21:11:00.000+01:00

I was going to say that the dates of my six week sabbatical couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it.

Then I remembered I had.

But I’d planned it fairly incompetently.

Firstly, I got the date of the last pill wrong by a week.

Secondly, I knew I was going to be on a new drugs protocol so I didn't really know how the new regime was likely to pan out.

So when I asked for, and was granted, six weeks unpaid leave starting on the 24th of October. I wasn’t entirely sure it would work.

On Friday, after my womb invasion, the nurse sat me down and went through the protocal.

I take my last pill tomorrow and go in for my first scan on the first day of my period (or, if I start on the weekend, on the Monday). Judging by every other time I’ve stopped the pill I should get my period on Saturday. So my schedule looks something like this (a more detailed breakdown here):

Week one:
Day one: Scan and start injections

End of week one & week two:
Regular scans and blood tests

End of week two:
Egg Collection

Week three:
Embryo Transfer

Week four:
Waiting

End of Week five:
Test

Week six:
A week to absorb the result - good or bad, probably go away somewhere. Before going back to work.

Obviously things can get screwed up at almost any stage but assuming it all goes well it is pretty damn perfect.

At what stage do you think things will go wrong?

Womb Biopsy

2011-10-15T17:53:00.001+01:00

I spoke to my Dad on the phone yesterday morning.

He knew I was going for an appointment but had lost track of what this one was for. He, unlike you, doesn't have access to this blog - for obvious reasons.

I explained it, as I have on here, as like sandpapering my womb to get the embryo to stick.

He chortled. "Now I understand, when you put it in engineering terms." For that was his profession. But then he got a bit ahead of himself. "I would have thought" he conjectured "that they would do it just before the put the embryo in." Clearly thinking approximately three weeks prior to the transfer was a bit premature. At this point I had to remind him that a) it was an analogy and b) he wasn't actually a fertility doctor.

The womb scrape itself was painful, more painful than I remember. I found myself wishing I'd bought a block of wood to bite down on. I contented myself instead by wrapping my hands in the modesty sheet and gripping it as the Doctor scraped around.

The pain is like intense period pain spasms, but when you are stirruped-up with a gentleman between your legs, making small talk, you can't double over in pain and call him a fucker.

Yesterday evening I'd confidently planned to go round to some friends for dinner, predicting that I'd feel no after-affects. I was wrong, but forced myself out anyway. What a glorious dinner guest I must have been grumbling in the corner about my womb spasming. The only time I managed to get animated all night was when I was trying to describe the pain, explaining to the men that they could never understand the pain a woman feels. They tried to counter this with a discussion of the agony of being kicked in the bollocks.

Well, that may be true. But I've never known a fertility Doctor to suggest a well-aimed gonad shot as a cure for male infertility. The worst the husband has had to suffer is an orgasm.

If It Ain't One Orifice Its The Other

2011-10-13T21:09:00.000+01:00

Today I went to hospital.

I prostrated myself before some medical practitioners and opened wide whilst a biopsy was performed. In doing so, hopefully, they have removed something that has been irksome for that last five years or so.

If you assume that this biopsy is the one from my uterus that I was promised 5-7 days before the end of the pill (I take my last one in six days), prior to IVF, well, you'd get 100 points for having such an excellent memory and minus 150 for being utterly wrong.

Instead I had a growth removed from my mouth. It has been there for years and is nothing other than a little flap of skin left over from a blocked saliva duct. I mentioned it to my dentist last time I went (I like to go to the dentist every six months - ensuring I never go more than half a year without telling someone I'm not pregnant) and just a few weeks later there I was bib-on, head back and just a little prick in my mouth.

For the anaesthetic.

Less than ten minutes later I was out, dribbling, and doing a pretty impressive impression of Lesley Ash/ Coutney Love/ A trout* (*encircle appropriate cultural reference as applicable). Whilst a little flap of my mouth skin wends its way to the lab for further scrutiny. (I'm sure it'll be fine, but these medical practitioners feel the need to check everything bit of flesh they cut off me just in case).

Tomorrow is biopsy number two, entrance on the downstairs level. The roughing up for my womb for better embryo stickage. Two biopsies in two days, don't be jealous - some of us are just born lucky.

Work Life balance

2011-10-05T20:46:00.000+01:00

I have never known work like it.

I am in work, at my desk at 7am, and don’t leave until 8 or 9pm

I know you’ve all worked longer hours. So have I, but not for so long. Weeks on end. I work weekends and when I am not working I am thinking about work.

Last night I awoke, with a start at about 3 in the morning. There was a bloke in bed next to me. I desperately tried to remember who he was. Then I recalled I was married, so it must be my husband. Right?

What was his name?

I ran through the names of the guys I worked with. None of them sounded quite right.

Eventually I had to wake my own husband and ask him his name. Genuinely.

When he told me such a wave of relief spread over me. Of course! That was right, got it. Phew.

Bear in mind I got together with him when I was 18, I turn 36 next year. I’ve been with him almost half my life.

That I literally, for a moment, in a sleep fuzz, couldn’t remember his name is indicative of how out of balance that work / life thing is at the moment.

Still the worst should be over come Saturday ...

Good To Go (Again)

2011-09-30T23:14:00.000+01:00

If you thought that all the preliminaries for IVF number three were sorted back in June when my doctor and I sat down and discussed it, then you were wrong.

As, to be fair, was I.

The protocol was decided.

The biopsy was clear.

I rang up the private clinic, where fully I expect to spend the majority of my 2011 earnings, to book in IVF and was told I had to have a preliminary appointment.

Despite this being the clinic where I have previously had two NHS funded rounds I am treated as a brand new “customer”. Right down to being given directions as to how to get there.

I also needed a new customer appointment and to bring along my passport. I had the appointment this morning with a new (to me) Doctor, and she was reassuringly thorough.

The plan hasn’t changed much. I am still going to try the Intralipid treatment. I discuss it here, but in summary, it might, possibly, help combat miscarriage bought on by one's body having an over-active immune system and seeing any embryo as a foreign body that needs to be destroyed rather than nurtured. In one sense therefore, I’m not an ideal candidate. I’ve never been pregnant, let alone miscarried. But there is a feeling (not proven by science) that it might help implantation.

We decided that it is highly unlikely to do any harm. It might even help. So on that basis we will give it a shot.

The next thing to agree on was timing. I had this sorted. As soon as I finish my next pill packet, mid-October. The Doctor, however, thought I might need a break from the pill for a cycle as I’ve been on it so long.

For a moment I was attracted to the thought of a month off contraception. This might be my chance to get that fairytale “pregnancy whilst waiting for IVF” and save myself a few thousand pounds at the same time.

But then we realised a cycle for me could be three months not your normal 28 days. So we shelved that idea.

Moving on, and using the Intralipid logic of "it won't do you any harm so give it a shot", she is going to get me to have another biopsy in two weeks. But it'll differ from my normal biopsy. (When did I become the sort of woman who has a normal type of biopsy?) They aren't interested in the cells, they just want to rough up my womb lining a bit, as it might (or might not) give an embryo just a little bit more to grab onto. I imagine it is kind of like when you use sandpaper on a bit of wood or metal before applying adhesive.

Having agreed all that there then lay just one hurdle between me and and October IVF.

Cysts on my ovaries.

The Doctor glanced at her watch. “If you don’t have a cyst now, and remain on the pill, you are unlikely to get a cyst before your next IVF.”

She considered me again.

“Come on.”

And she whisked me into a scan room, unceremoniously impaled me – I hadn’t even shaved my legs this morning it was that unexpected – and declared me cyst free.

I’m good to go.

Pretty In Pink

2011-09-26T09:00:00.001+01:00

Breast Cancer research and awareness is a cause close to my heart, and I am not talking about anatomical proximity. Some of you who have been reading a while might remember this post, about my Mum, who died of Breast Cancer when the wombmate and I were 15 and our big sister was 17.

She was 35 when she first found a lump, the same age I am now. Needless to say I check myself regularly, a task the husband is always enthusiastic to partake in.

She died in 1992 - almost twenty years later I can’t write that without crying.

Since then treatment has got better and better but with 130 new cases of breast cancer being diagnosed each DAY in the UK alone there is still a long way to go before the C-word is met with anything but dread.

The 28^th of October is Wear It Pink day. Whether it is a touch of pink on the or going the full Barbara Cartland, thousands of people across the UK will be getting dressed up and donating £2 each to The Breast Cancer Campaign for the privilege.

I won’t be.

For two reasons:

1) I don’t own any pink clothes – a serious oversight I know.

2) My office colleagues are notoriously difficult to persuade to join in - Red Nose Day, Jeans for Genes, Halloween all go unrecognised by our attire.

Instead I am going to tap their wallets in a different way. Chocolate brownies with pink icing at 50p a pop and pink meringues at 20p should extract a healthy sum for the campaign.

But you totally should Wear It Pink - and be part of the cure.

**This is a sponsored post, although proceeds are going straight back to the Breast Cancer Campaign**

http://www.wearitpink.co.uk

Impotent

2011-09-19T17:53:00.000+01:00

Sorry to disappoint if, from the title, you thought this post might be about another cause of infertility. It is not.

The wombmate, my twin, has just failed her second IVF. This year, between us, we’ve had four goes, 43 eggs retrieved, 7 embryos put back and none frozen.

Neither of us are any closer to achieving a pregnancy than we were nine months ago. There is no cumulative effect that will make the next round any more likely to work than either of the two (each) proceeding ones.

Obviously I was pretty upset when I found out it didn’t work for her. (I know - in tears at a pregnancy announcement, in tears at a non-pregnancy announcement – there really is no pleasing me.)

The husband tried to comfort me in a typically masculine way (and I’m not talking about suggesting giving him a blow job might make me feel better). He used logic. He cited examples of other people we know for whom IVF didn’t work the first, or second time but they went on to pregnancy.

It didn’t help.

With the wombmate I am equally as impotent. I feel like I, of all people, who understands what she is going through, should know the magic words of comfort. The unfortunate truth is that there aren’t any. There is no statistic that I can quote to the wombmate that will cheer her up and make her confident that it will, one day, work. There isn’t a magic number or formula that will guarantee results. The pair of us are just playing the numbers game in the hope that the next roll of the speculum will produce a positive result.

And so once again it is my turn to pick up the baton and continue our bizarre IVF relay. Running a race in which we have no idea where the finish line is, whether we’ll even both reach it or collapse, exhausted, before it is even in sight.

Numerically Challenged

2011-09-16T17:46:00.001+01:00

I was always the dumb one in my family.

Both my parents and sisters went to the best (or second best depending on your preference for light or dark blue) university in the country.

I didn't.

I have a vivid memory of fleeing from the dinner table in floods of tears because the four of them were sitting round working out the square footage of our walls and therefore the number of tins of paint that was needed. It was like an exam maths question was squatting at our dinning room table under the pretence of light conversation.

On car journeys we use to be set mental arithmetic challenges.

From a family of mathematicians, engineers and scientists I was the rogue arts person.

But, as a result, I always considered myself better than average when it comes with numbers, just not freakishly good like my family. It has given me a good grounding. When I am amongst 'normal' people I realise that I'm not as numerically challenged as I'd believed in my youth.

Or so I thought.

I've had to reassess this opinion of myself in light of the fact that I failed to calculate correctly how long six weeks was.

It turns out that I counted wrong. I will finish the pre-IVF pill packet not on the 26 of October, but the 17th. But I have already agreed the dates I am off work, starting on the 24 of October. Which is actually perfect as the first week of injections isn't that onerous and this way I should have a week or so break at the end of IVF, when I know the result, to either think about next steps or happily bask in a pregnant glow.

I know, I am an idiot.

But don't worry, I don't feel like the family dunce anymore. I mean one of my nephews can't even read and can barely string together a coherent sentance, and the other can only spell the simplest of words. I beat them.

Head Over Heart

2011-09-14T20:37:00.003+01:00

I'm quite an emotionally lead person. My decision-making process is based on gut-feelings rather than rational thought.

I usually get lucky - who'd have thought that the skint wastrel I hooked up with at University would turn out to be such a fine upstanding husband? (Unfortunately he ended up with (regular commenter) Granine but the other one I bagged isn't so bad either).

Again, when I did the non-sensible thing and I quit a job with nothing to go to I landed on my feet with a much better gig.

But, maybe I am finally maturing, because I have just made a decision that rationally I know is right even though every fibre of my emotional being is rebelling against it.

I've decided to wait until the end of October before having the next round of IVF rather than the start. I know there is only three weeks in it but even that seems like a long wait - I mean come on ladies you know how long a two week wait is.

My reasons for wanting to start on the fifth of October were:
1) It is sooner
2) If I got pregnant them my baby would be due on or around the 11 of July (my birthday is the 14th)
3) Did I mention it is sooner?

My reason for delaying for three weeks are:
1) It gives me more time at work to wrap things up after "The Summer of Hell"(TM) before my six week sabbatical
2) It gives work more time to work out how on earth they'll manage without me - I had to wait for my biopsy results before giving my boss dates so I have only just been able to ask for the specific time off (yes, as it happens, I do have quite a high opinion of myself)
3) By allowing myself more time to wrap things I will be more prepared and thus less stressed about leaving work
4) The husband, for whom October looks set to rival my summer in terms of work-load is more likely to be able to find time to nip out and spaff in a jar and hold my hand during medical procedures in early November than mid-October. And he is fairly important, dare I say crucial, to the process. (Unless, Granine, do you want to offer up your husband as an alternative, now that he has a proven track record? No? Hello? ...)

See. I'm becoming Spock-like in my decision making processes.

And I guess on the plus side it'll mean if it does work my birthday won't be over-shadowed by that of my kid!

Am I normal?

2011-09-11T12:39:00.000+01:00

I have a luxury. One that divides people. Responses that I have received upon admitting to this extravagance ranges from "Yeah, me too, life saver", undisguised envy, to self-righteous "I could never do that, besides I enjoy doing it myself," to utter disgust at my bourgeois indulgence.

But I genuinely think it has saved our marriage. The moment we started to indulge our arguments and resentments were cut by half.

My dears, ... deep breath ... once a week we have a cleaner come round.

I love it. When I come home from work on a Thursday night and open the door I marvel at how she does it. In two hours she achieves more that I can in a day. How does she make the cushions so plump? Does she iron the bed to make it so creaseless? And she folds the toilet paper end, like they do in hotels.

I've got a tear in my eye just thinking about it.

But it isn't without its downsides.

She tidy's the TV remotes away by putting them next to the TV. The one place in the house where they don't need to be. She unconsciously diminishes my husbands sexuality by popping his pink, purple and yellow socks away in my drawer.

And she piles.

My incomprehensible (to anyone else) filing system: To do pile, to file pile, to probably throw away pile, to do something with but not quite sure what pile, becomes one large stack. And she'll incorporate wild cards - the day's post, the magazine by my bed, wrapping paper.

Did any of you spot that?

THE DAY'S POST.

On Thursday I received a letter from my Doctor with the results of my biopsy.

Today, Sunday, I found the letter. Carefully piled, or possibly maliciously hidden.

I opened it.

It said my biopsy results were:

"Entirely normal and showed no evidence of the previously seen changes which is very reassuring".

I've not been so relieved to discover I was normal since the day I started my period.

I might have to sack the cleaner though...

Summer - not lovin'

2011-09-10T09:28:00.000+01:00

It is nothing personal, you understand, this lack of blogging. Rather it is indicative of the kind of summer I've had.

I've known for years that this summer was going to be work-heavy - big, big changes at work. Whilst I had hoped at some point to be cushioned from it by maternity leave, or at least part-time working, that hasn't happened and suddenly it is upon us. Whilst I can work as hard as the best of them what I am finding tough is how responsible I feel about everything. Which means even when I'm not working I'm waking up sweaty-palmed thinking about something that needs to be sorted, a question that needs to be asked, something that no one seems to have thought about.

And everyone is fraught. I've lost count of the number of people who have indignantly shouted at me that they haven't had a holiday this summer. Rather than respond with "Really? My summer holiday was two days off for an operation," I've had to sympathise and cajole them to still do what I want.

On the plus side there is an end in sight. The work and the stress hinges on the first week in October. After which things will have worked, or not, but at least the worst of it will be over.

It has to be.

The first week in October is also when I hope to start IVF round three. I say hope because I have yet to receive the biopsy results. The reason I want it to start then is because the start needs to coincide with the end of a pill packet so either I start on the 5 of October or 26th of October.

Workwise the latter would make more sense. However, I feel I've waited long enough so I'm gunning for the former.

I. Just. Need. My. Biopsy. Results.

I am painfully aware that this summer, as well as stealing my free time, has obliterated my sense of humour. I will endeavour to ensure the next post is a happier to remind you why you bother to read this drivel in the first place.

Just another day in the office

2011-09-04T17:47:00.000+01:00

Picture the scene: You’re working on a Saturday. It is ten to one. Your office shuts in ten minutes, and it is a beautiful day outside, you just need to make a couple of calls and you are free for the rest of the day.

I’m guessing that this was in the forefront on the embryologists mind when he called the wombmate yesterday. She is in the midst of her second round of IVF (you can read about her first attempt here and here).

On Friday she had nine eggs retrieved. Only three were mature. This morning she found out only two had fertilised. The embryologist rang her up and asked if she “wanted both the embryos put back in on Monday [day 3] or wait until they (hopefully) reach blastocyst stage on day five.” Her husband asked if they could have half an hour to think about it. They were told ‘No’ because they were about to close up.

Eventually they negotiated a reprieve and agreed to call back with a response on Sunday morning.

This might not seem like a big question to ask. But it is.

The wombmate has been consistently told by her clinic that her Health Authority only fund single embryo transfer for a woman of her age (35). They have stressed to her the negative health impact of twins on both the babies and mother.

Equally blastocyst transfer has been held up as the holy grail of IVF - the one thing that she should be aiming for.

To be fair I have no idea if the embryologist was keen to nip out into the sunshine. But I do know that he expected a quick, un-thought-through answer to a question that could have the longest-term of implications.

To him this was just another collection of eggs and a numbers game. “Not many fertilised = get them both in before either stop developing”.

To my sister this is a decision that she wants to think about, discuss with her husband, feel confident in.

In the end, she has decided, to go with a two-embryo transfer on Monday as suggested.

I think this is the right decision - I checked back to see how my embryos faired between day three and five. In round one I went down from 8 viable embryos (initially 12 fertilised) to just two on day five. During my second round on day three there were 13 embryos but again, by day five again only two were left. On both occasions two were put back in, and far from having to contend with twins I don’t have anything to show from either.

But she is disappointed at the way this was handled. And I’m not surprised. To the medical practitioners this might be just another day in the office, but to us it is, literally, about life or not decisions.

Speedy

2011-08-27T12:27:00.000+01:00

You'll know, oh loyal readers, that much as I love what the NHS does, it is the time waiting for it to do it, that frustrates the hell out of me.

So imagine my open-mouthed astonishment when, this morning, less than 48 hours after my operation I received the following letter. (I shall reproduce it in full):

I am writing to inform you that Elizabeth underwent an uncomplicated hysteroscopy and biopsy today in Day Surgery Unit. The endometrium appeared normal and samples have been sent. I will write with the results when they are available and liaise with the Reproductive Medicine Unit regarding her follow up.

How is that for brilliant service?

Obviously until the sample has been thoroughly microscoped for any cellular-level nasties I haven't quite got the all clear.

But it is looking encouraging.

And quick.

Convalescing

2011-08-26T11:03:00.000+01:00

Although technically I had an operation yesterday - in that I had a pre-op appointment and a general anaesthetic - it was certainly the easier end of operations. No scalpels, no stitches and not much in the way of after care.

They dived in, took all they could from inside my womb and pulled out, leaving nothing but a pair of disposable pants and sanitary towel in their wake.

There were only two difficulties. My name and my vein.

Name

To explain the name thing you need a tiny bit of back story. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovaries Syndrome way before I started trying to conceive or marry. I got hitched, I indicated to the world my total subjugation to the husband by relinquishing my maiden name and taking his. I changed my name with my passport, bank, mortgage, work, opticians, friends, I didn't get round to changing my name with the doctors. Then about a year after I got married, and realised conception wasn't quite as easy as point and shoot, I made a conscious decision not to change my name so that the doctor wouldn't lose my previous diagnosis.

All carried on happily for another three years. I had to remember to check-in for appointments and pick up prescriptions, under my maiden name, but other than that there wasn't a hitch.

When I started IVF in January of this year I had to present my passport. My passport was in my married name, so I also brought along my marriage license to join the gap in name. It was at this point things got confused. The IVF clinic (which is linked to, but separate, from the NHS unit) insisted on using my married name, the NHS stuck to my maiden. Whenever I presented myself for appointments I started schizophrenically referring to myself by both names.

At the pre-op appointment things got even more befuddled so the nurse decided to change my name on the NHS records to my married one. However, this didn't seep all the way down through the system, so by the time I got to the day patients check in things were a mess of comlications. I checked in in my married name, the name on my bed was my maiden name. The name on my wrist band was my maiden name, the name on my notes was my married name. People kept popping in and double checking who the hell I was. Today I will go to my GP with my marriage certificate to, once and for all, close that circle.

Oh, and after all that, they never found the old notes diagnosing me with PCOS afterall.

Vein
My hands are not my best features. They are riddled with blue veins. Not unlike Madonna's, although that is where our similarity ends. So I was surprised that the anaesthetist appeared to be having issues putting the a needle in my hand for the anaesthetic to seep in. He was using straps and whacking my veins with the enthusiasm of a hard-core heroine addict, but seemed to be really struggling. When the senior guy turned up it the cause became apparent - I was being practiced on my a junior guy. He'd been skimming the top of my vein rather than lunging the needle into the blood stream. Still we got there in the end.

Oh and have I mentioned how much I enjoy a general? Sweet, sweet oblivion. I could so have been an opium addict in a previous life.

Recovery has been fine. I was in a bit of pain last night but I'd been sent home from hospital with some hard core painkiller (which I must remember to hide from the husband, whose eyes lit up with he saw them).

Today I am mainly chilling out at home.

Crocheting a monkey.

As you do.

I should get the results of the biopsy in a couple of weeks.

Ready for my Operation

2011-08-23T19:20:00.000+01:00

You know when bloggers apologise for not blogging for ages and all you think is: “At least my reader hasn’t been so intimidatingly full for the last few days.”

Well.

That.

My news is that I had my pre-op last week. For someone of a generation who has been bought up to associate pre-ops with footballers having unfortunate run-ins with attractive, Adam’s apple (and plum) bearing, um, ladies. My pre-op was disappointingly unexotic.

It is basically filling out a questionnaire with help, a nurse ticks the boxes rather me. I confirmed I don’t have:
Diabetes
Angina
Deep veined thrombosis
Dentures
Fillings
Pace maker
Weight-problem
A bad reaction to anaesthetic
A recreational drug habit
A pregnancy …

Exactly the same questions that, I know from past experience, they will ask me at least twice on the morning of the operation itself. Still always best to weed out the weak and sickly in advance.

The most exciting bit was the MRSA test. This involves shoving two cotton-buds (Q-tips) up one nostril, swirling it round five times, then repeating the process for the second nostril, then popping the sticks in a little tube. You cannot help but look to see what has come out. In my case disappointingly little of the green stuff, and I wonder whether this isn’t just a sly way of working out who the coke takers are.

Then I gave some blood, because the hospital seems incapable of seeing me without taking a few vials. I like to think that rather than testing for anything that I am single-handedly keeping London’s stocks of A positive blood.

I should probably get a badge*.

The finale was going to see my consultant. The one who never replied to my emails about whether I was “on the list”. It wasn’t a proper (by which I mean wait 6 weeks or pay two hundred quid appointment) appointment, I dashed in to get a consent form signed.

“Next week!” he exclaimed upon seeing I had the appointment booked, “Well, that was quick” he continued happily. Bearing in mind this man is going to be helping create any future babies I have I decided not to take him to task on his slack responses, but just agreed and to get the bloody thing signed. More or less the same approach I adopted when marrying my now husband as we prepared to sign the marriage register.

So I am now ready for my operation on Thursday.

It will be under General Anaesthetic (which always sounds like an Asterix character to me) but just as a day-patient so it isn’t a big deal. Essentially they are going to dive into my uterus, and take out as much of my womb lining as they conceivably can, to allow me a fresh start to conceivably conceive. They’ll test what they’ve taken out to check that nothing seriously nasty is growing – that the cells that were pre-cancerous have started behaving themselves. Then, assuming I get the all clear, I'll go for IVF in October or November.

*Hancock’s Half hour reference. I don’t really think I should get a medal.**

(** I do really.)***

(*** Nothing fancy, but maybe with a bit of enamel on it.)

I've Got A Date

2011-08-16T21:43:00.000+01:00

After assurances from my Doctors secretary that I was "on the list" (yeah, no doubt sweetheart, I know what kind of list you are referring to, we have one of those in our office too) I heard nothing more about a possible appointment.

It has only been ten days since I knew that I hadn't been forgotten about. But it has felt like weeks. I was starting to get despondent again as I saw my window of opportunity for IVF in October/November being slammed down on my fingers.

I started to get desperate.

By desperate I mean emptying my piggy bank and working out the cost of going private for the biopsy plus the cost of the IVF minus a months wages when I take unpaid leave. Much as I like the colour red it isn't a pretty equation.

I'd taken K's advice and, just casually, asked my consultant's secretary if I could be on the waiting list for cancellations.

I got a call today. There has been a cancellation.

My biopsy is now scheduled for next week.

So now all I need is the biopsy to be all clear, IVF number three to happen, get a healthy embryo, freeze some spares, get pregnant, have a baby next summer, spend the summer breast-feeding whilst watching the Olympics, find a decent nursery, go back to work, have a frozen embryo transfer, get pregnant again, have baby number two, find a decent primary school, ensure both children have a happy and safe childhood and become nice, non-looting, teenagers.

Piece o' piss. I feel like I've done the hard work already*.

* I know, I know, I haven't. But give me a moment of triumph before the hard work starts again.

Back From A Wedding

2011-08-14T21:49:00.000+01:00

Weddings.

They bring out the best in people (gales of laughter worthy of a night at the Edinburgh fringe during the speeches, rather than the groans the joke would normally elicit) and the worst (hauling a drunk bloke off the bus driver at the end of the night because he wouldn’t just “drive ta fucking Dundee, ya prick”).

But more than anything they bring out the questions.

‘How ya’ doing’?”

“I huv ne seen yous since you were in at Uni. What’s bin happening?” How to compress 13 years into a pithy sentence? (Oh, and bonus points in you picked up on the Scottish accent – for we were in Fife).

And, inevitably, “So have yous got babies?’

I have no problem with that question - once they’d established I was still with the callow youth they went to school with it is an obvious one.

Luckily the answer is short, and not very sweet. “Nope.” And we move on.

Usually.

This one guy did not let it go. He was talking about his six year old son. I’m happy to talk about a six year old son - compared to the conversation we’d just been having about Flash verse HTML 5 this was light relief.

“So do you two have kids?”

“No.” we answered equivocally not hinting that there was any more to say on the matter.

“Are you thinking about it?’ He blundered on.

“Yes.” I managed to leave the word ‘constantly’ out of my response.

And as I floundered for a way to bring the topic back to the safe subject of computers he blathered on.

“You totally should. I mean you can spend a long time thinking about it. But it is seriously the best thing that has ever happened to me. And" (this was the killer blow), "it is just easy.”

“No it’s not” The husband and I squeaked simultaneously in a way that I thought would have flagged that this was a conversational cul-de-sac that he really didn’t want to go down.

But alas not, he barrelled on through, with the evangelical enthusiasm only a person the wrong side of five pints can truly muster.

“It is.” He asserted. “I know what you are thinking” and he went on to prove categorically that he didn’t have a fucking clue what we were thinking:

“That it isn’t the right time. But you should totally just do it.

Best.

Thing.

Ever.”

I suddenly felt the need to drag the husband up to dance.

To Girls’ Aloud.

But other than that it was a brilliant wedding. With lots of men in skirts.

I Didn't Predict A Riot

2011-08-09T19:34:00.000+01:00

It has been a bizarre few days in London.

Turn the TV on and you see a city under siege.

I can hardly believe I am seeing events happening in my own country. Riots not against oppressive regimes or even, really, police brutality. (Regardless of the spark, the rioters couldn't give a toss about Mark Duggan).

In my flat, however, it has been quieter than normal. No police sirens as they are busy elsewhere in the city and the noisy, but harmless, kids who hang out on the estate clearly found somewhere else they'd rather be last night.

Rather than getting a first-hand view of the riots we have been sensibly holed up in our flat, I banned the husband from going out to a gig tonight.

But, other than taking sensible precautions, we've carried on. And, at the risk of sounding over sentimental, I've been immensely proud of how the majority of London has reacted.

More people turned up to clear up the mess than made it. People are donating bedding and clothing to those made homeless. I can't turn on twitter without seeing a deluge of offers of help for those adversely affected by the riots.

At this point I should try and make some startling analogy between the riots and infertility. Unfortunately, I am not that clever.

I have, however, been appalled by the age of some of the rioters I've seen on TV. Kids, really, really, young kids out on the streets. I know there is absolutely no correlation between your ability to breed and your ability to parent. But it is times like this I really wish there was.

Talking of negligent parenting: my Dad hasn't bloody rung to check I'm OK.

Luckily, and I am deeply thankful for this, everyone I know has remained safe.

Stealth Infertility

2011-08-07T18:27:00.002+01:00

You know that special moment when, for a bit of escapism, you are watching a film or reading a book and you suddenly realise the author has slipped in an infertility story-line. It isn't a major part of the story, it certainly wasn't flagged by the trailer voiceover or the book jacket blurb.

The author probably thought it added depth and authenticity to a character.

But suddenly your distraction from your inability to breed, comes back and gives you a big old poke in the ribs.

Bastards.

Indulge me whilst I share my top five infertility blinders.

****WARNING!****

This list does include spoilers, but because the infertility isn't a main topic these revelations shouldn't ruin your enjoyment (in Notting Hill the script manages that all by itself):

The Time Travellers' Wife

One Day

Notting Hill

Hellboy Two

Up

Special mention: Ice Age - Not infertility exactly but I had no idea there was going to be a lost baby in it.

**Updated**

Couple's Retreat

The Moon's A Balloon

As you can see I have high-brow taste in books and flicks.

Have you guys come across any other instances of stealth infertility?

I'm On The List

2011-08-05T19:08:00.000+01:00

Finally my entreaties have produced a response.

I have emailed four different people, left messages (plural) on three different answer phones, and spoken to six different people - all of whom have denied any knowledge of my referral. Finally today I got an email response:

Dear Mrs [Surname]*

Thank you for your e-mail. Mr [Consultant] has placed you on the waiting
list for surgery. I will contact you soon to organise a date for you to
come in for your procedure.

With many thanks

[one of the consultant's three secretaries]

*I'm not quite sure why she emailed my mother-in-law either.

So I'm taking bets:

Poll Creator Progreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

This'll separate the optimists from the ~~realists~~ pessimists. (Still the good news is maybe I can now blog about something else for a change).

Going Round In Circles

2011-08-02T22:02:00.000+01:00

It is a reoccurring problem. There is a nasty growth which antibiotics can't fix. Eventually a medical practitioner had a look at 6pm on Friday evening, the diagnosis was that it needed to be operated on under sedation. Although it wasn't classed as an emergency, from diagnosis on Friday it took just four days for the the operation to take place today.

And that, my dears, is how long it took a Vet to operate on my mutt.

Unfortunately, my Doctor doesn't seem to be quite as efficient as my Vet.

I spent Friday doing more ringing round. I followed Wombattwo's advice and rang the hospital switchboard and asked to be put through to my consultant's secretary. The woman I spoke to had no record of my referral - she found my notes on her computer, but still nothing. She kept saying "It would be highly unusual for him to refer you." Yes, sweetheart, I am starting to get that impression.

Eventually she said she'd put me through to my consultant's secretary - which begs the question, who the hell was she?

The next woman I spoke to seemed much more helpful. She asked me to pop everything down in an email. So I did.

The email wasn't much different Thursday's blog post, except I used names and numbers and a bit of undignified begging.

Her response was simply - "I have forwarded your email to Mr [Consultant]".

This was the guy I had already emailed on the 21 of July and have yet to have a response from.

The Husband reckons I haven't fully exploited my over-active tear-ducts to their full potential and that I should go back to my local Doctor and, sobbing, ask her for a referral. My Wombmate reckons I should contact PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service). My mate reckons I should write to my Memeber of Parliament. And another friend advocates turning up at the hospital and talking to someone face to face - watch them deny me an appointment then.

I haven't decided what my next course of action is, but I'll give the consultant a couple more days to get back to me, because I am still clinging on to the fact my referral may have been made, I just haven't had the appointment letter through yet.

Who says infertility robs one of all their optimism?

Prince Philip Syndrome*

2011-07-31T19:07:00.001+01:00

Some friends of ours stayed this weekend, without their two kids to allow for some unfettered boozing and dancing time. It was lovely to see them. However, they do seem to have a knack of saying the wrong thing all the bloody time.

The know about our IVF and whatnot and I have trained them away from the "Just relax"-type comments. So I'm not talking about the normal sort of things that would have the folk at STFU Fertiles ranting away in green biro.

My "favourite" comments from the weekend were:

Her: "I suppose the good thing about you not having children is you can afford IVF. Childcare is so expensive ..."

*****

Him (picking up a hammer that was on a low shelf in our living room - I've no idea why it was there): "You can tell there aren't kids in this house!"

*****

Her: "The other Mums at [her 13 year old daughter's] school are just so middle aged." She had her first child very young, she is 36 now - at the absolute earliest, I will be 49 before I have a 13 year old daughter.

*****

There were other moments, things they said, that left me gaping a bit.

I don't mind, I am the Queen of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I know that they care deeply about the husband and I - we are joint god-parents to their son. So this hasn't lit a burning ember of hate and resentment.

And they did manage to redeem themselves:

Her: "I love your hair that colour, it really suits you."

*Prince Philip Syndrome: a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome where the sufferer, instead of making a universal outburst, directs an irrational and sometimes offensive (but seldom obscene) vocalisation to an individual during the course of normal conversation.

I Just Want An Answer

2011-07-28T22:50:00.000+01:00

On the 20th of June I felt fairly optimistic. The Doctor had ideas for my next IVF and there was just one hysteroscopy standing between me and my next shot at getting pregnant. But then nothing, no appointment and no copy of the referral letter (I had requested to be cc-d on all correspondence).

In my quest to discover whether I have been referred for a hysteroscopy I have (in no particular order):

Rung my old clinic at the NHS. But as I am not in their system they don't know if I have been referred.
Rung the number of the hysteroscopy clinic where, if I have been referred, I would have been referred to. But they don't reply to my voicemail messages.
Found another number for the hysteroscopy department and left a different answer phone message on a different phone. Again no response.
Emailed my consultant directly to see if he can let me know whether he has, as he said in his letter, referred me. But he hasn't answered.
Called the Consultant's secretary at the private clinic, who I paid £200 for an appointment with the same Doctor I saw on the NHS. She told me that he would have referred me in his capacity as an NHS consultant, not a private consultant, so she wouldn't have a record of the afore-mentioned referral.
As Wig suggested I've seen my local doctor (GP) but she (the Doctor, not Wig) has had no correspondence from the consultant since July 2010 so - even though I showed her the letter from the Consultant saying he would refer me - she can't refer me.
Got the husband to check with his work health insurance (which I am covered under) to see if I can get the hysteroscopy privately. But I can't as it for an on-going condition.
Investigated the cost of having a hysteroscopy privately (£1,375 to £2,130). I could afford it, but not as a precursor to IVF which is likely to cost in the region of £7,000.

I am now completely out of ideas as to where to try next.

The womb-mate, an NHS insider, suggests writing a complaint - but I am reluctant to lodge a complaint against someone who, at some point, will be elbow-deep in my bits.

I am fed up of how much time, and energy, and stress, and patience each step takes, particularly at the moment when work is also doing its best to add to my stress whilst using up my time, energy, patience.

Other than starting again and going back to each person / answer phone and asking the same question, I am at a loss as to what to do next. Anyone else got any bright ideas about what I can do next to try and find out whether I've been referred?

Runes, maybe?

To Dye For

2011-07-25T22:10:00.000+01:00

The other day I gave myself a rare treat.

After two years of dull, beige hair I allowed myself a hair dye. I'd sworn off them just in case the chemicals were tipping the toxic balance of my body into infertility.

Being on an IVF-hiatus, and being fed up of my nondescript locks, I weakened. However, this is only temporary - I am not about to embark on the regular dying schedule I'd kept up from 1991-2009, as soon as the IVF starts the bottle stops (in more ways than one). But equally I don't want to condemn myself to terrible regrowth.

How to explain this to the hairdresser?

"I'd like highlights but can you start them at different points in my hair? Because I might not dye my hair for a while and I don't want a stripe of dark roots."

I was that intelligible.

She gave me an odd look and just got on with it.

We stuck to safe subjects. I mentioned my dog, she told me her sister had a greyhound too.

"She got him because she failed IVF" the hairdresser confided.

"Me too!" I squeaked excitedly*. This is a lie - I got him because I'd been trying to get pregnant for over a year and was worried it would never happen. But by agreeing I was telling her, in shorthand, that I had also been through IVF.

And it meant I could tell her really what was going on.

I explained the reason I didn't know when I would next be able to dye my hair wasn't because I was too tight to pay for it, but because I didn't want to do it whilst I was undergoing IVF or was pregnant. (The jury is still out about whether dying your hair has any affect on your womb/ unborn baby - probably not - but if I get that far I won't be taking any chances).

We ended up talking through the whole IVF process. Most unlike me, usually I bury my nose in a book as soon as I sit in the chair and do my best to discourage any kind of small talk from the hair-dresser.

Naturally I can now never go back.

*Turns out you don't need a miscarriage to get the Obligatory Miscarriage Dog. (From Uterine Wars, bought to my attention by Nuts In May).

What are the chances?

2011-07-23T10:45:00.000+01:00

I found an online IVF success rate calculator this morning.

That was depressing way to start my weekend.

According to the calculator I have between a 19.1% and 20.3% chance of success for my next, third, IVF.

The chance varies slightly because I am still not sure what to answer for 'cause' (so I tried 'unknown', 'endometriosis' - I figure this is the closest to my fucked womb-lining - and 'irregular ovulation' - because, well, I do).

Just for shits and giggles of a Saturday morning I also did my back dated results for my previous attempts:

First IVF I had between a 27% and 29% chance of success.

By the time I had my second attempt it had dropped to 22.6%.

The problem I have with the calculator (apart from the pitiful chance it gives me) is that it bases its responses on just nine questions.

There are numerous factors that are not accounted for. It asks for your age, but not your AMH levels (which indicates the actual age of your eggs - whether you are headed for premature menopause or have the eggs of a woman ten years younger).

There are no questions about your lifestyle, if you smoke or whether you are overweight (a fairly obvious oversight I would have thought considering many NHS trusts won't let you do IVF with them until you've packed in the fags and have a BMI of less than 30).

And what about the other things we do to increase our chances of success? The waiting to transfer a blastocyst rather than a three day old embryo, using extra progesterone, adding blood thinners, resting for three days after embryo transfer, acupuncture, brazil nuts, pineapple, lucky socks, magic talismans?

Do these count for nothing?

If you are interested the predictor is here.

Squeak, Squeak

2011-07-21T19:15:00.000+01:00

I've gone all misty-eyed for the halcyon days of my last two IVFs.

Not for the injections, or bloatedness. Not because I miss my morning pessary (or afternoon pessary, or night-time bum-treat) or because I yearn to give just one more vial of blood for that much sought-after heroine-chic look.

What I miss having a named nurse.

Anyone who has read this blog for a while (and I am gratified that there are a fair few of you out there) might recall the traumas I have had in the past trying to speak to someone, anyone, at my hospital to work out what was going on.

Then I was given a name, a woman on the end of the phone who could answer my queries and knew who I was.

Now that I have used up my free-IVF tokens this support system isn't there. "Shouldn't be a problem" I hear you cry (metaphorically I haven't started hearing voices. Yet) "you are now in the private system surely each phone call tinkles like swiftly falling coins and is picked up faster than a dropped fifty pound note ."

That is certainly true, when I call the private clinic.

However, I am not trying to speak to the private clinic. Despite the NHS trying to alcohol-wipe their hands of me, I am clinging on like a particularly virulent bacteria.

I still need a hysteroscopy (womb scrape for the initiated) before my next IVF. Whilst this might well be a factor resulting in my infertility, treating it is bigger than infertility, therefore I still get this treatment and biopsies on the NHS.

I was told a month ago I would be referred for the hystroscopy. I am quite well aware that there is going to be a waiting list but I would have expected to have had some communication by now - even if it is for a date well into 2014.

I called my old reproductive unit, of course I'm not a patient there anymore so they couldn't really help. They gave me a number but when I call it, it is answered by an anonymous voice mail - not even telling me what department I am calling. Naturally my plaintive messages remain unresponded to.

So today I got back on my squeaky wheel and resubmitted my application for most persistent and annoying (im)patient of 2011. I emailed the head consultant. (Thank you NHS for making every email address a known formula of first name dot last name).

Well, it worked at Christmas so I am hoping for a repeat performance.

Comments Round Up: An Occasional Thing

2011-07-18T20:35:00.003+01:00

Can I say once more how much I love hearing from you all?

The plethora of birthday wishes and fist punches on my behalf for getting the time off work helped me get through the day I turned 35 - when, if the media are to be believed, my eggs were busy staging a Wako-style mass suicide.

But down to the business of responding:

Another Wait
Mick said in reference to this post:

Did only I notice the 'blow jobs' part?"

To be fair, he was the first, and it was a bit of a relief that someone noticed it as a joke. Obviously any blow jobs the husband gets are purely consensual (although I'm guessing here - I'm never around at the time).

The Letter
Thalia, wise woman that she is, offered a note of caution:

I'll be controversial and say of course they won't fire you for asking, but also that this was totally not the right option for me (of course it may be for you). I have a very full on, high stresss job, and I took 3 weeks off for my first cycle. It was dreadful. I sat at home twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the clinic to call. I obsessed about every little twinge and pull. And of course that cycle didn't work (and to be clear, I'm sure the leave neither made it fail nor made it more likely to succeed). So if you do take time off, do make sure you have some fun things planned for it - just being at home is likely to be not so great.

She is absolutely right. I was ridiculously bored during both my three day post-transfer when I sat on the sofa and became saturating with those daytime property programmes. I am therefore planning projects and disciplins to ensure that I don't waste six weeks. I might even draw up a colour-coded timetable - like I did for my GCSE revision.

And one of the most random recent comments, by Anonymous:

Liz, completely off the subject. Did your mom name you Elizabeth? If so was it after the queen? Dumb question, but inquiring United States minds what to know. Have a great weekend and positive thoughts on the answer to your letter.

Not a dumb question at all. Yes, I was named Elizabeth. Not as far as I am aware after the Queen.

The Decision

2011-07-14T13:39:00.001+01:00

Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday dear Lizzie (this is the only time anyone over the age of 3 is allowed to add an "ie" to the end of my name)
And Happy Birthday to the Wombmate too.

I have just met with my boss, hot on the heels of his meeting with his boss.

"I discussed your request" he said, "and of course..."

I waited with baited breath.

'Of course' what?

'Of course it is impossible to grant this request'?

'Of course if it was just up to me I'd say yes'?

'Of course you realise it would be completely inappropriate'?

But he didn't add anything else. and it slowly dawned on me that he just meant:

Can I have the time off?
"Of course!"

It isn't quite as straightforward as it seems. I still have to submit a formal request to Human Resources, and the pair of us need to carefully work out the best dates. But they've said yes and that isn't about to change.

It is unlikely to have a dramatic effect on the outcome. Recent studies have shown that stress during IVF doesn't have an impact.

But it will help me.

It will be easier to go through the whole process again knowing that I don't have to hope that I won't get summoned for an unscheduled blood test during an important meeting, or drag my aching ovaries from site to site when I'd rather be chilling on the sofa, or concentrating on the sales cycle when all I am interested in is my cycle.

Happy Birthday indeed!

Another Wait

2011-07-12T20:49:00.001+01:00

I handed The Letter to the boss last Thursday morning. My instinct was to shove it under his door at three minutes to home-time and run.

The husband, however, loves nothing more than to force me to do things I don't want to do in the belief that they are character forming. You know the sort of thing: phoning up for taxis, complaining in shops, going up tall buildings, blow jobs... He told me that I needed to hand the letter to my boss in person and explain why I was doing so.

Before I had even sat down and handed my boss the ominously sealed envelop I was gabbling away with an apology, practically retracting what I had written in my letter. "Well, I've asked for six weeks but, you know, if that is too long four weeks would be fine".

I was actually shaking. I have no idea why. I'm not in the slightest bit scared of my boss.

Eventually I calmed down enough to explain what I was asking for, and why.

This isn't a decision that can be made overnight, I knew that, so he asked if it was alright if I didn't get an answer until next week.

"Fine, fine" I acquiesced hastily. Only a week! Man, this is the first time during this whole infertility gubbins that I haven't had a minimum of a two week wait.

So now I'm waiting. I've checked his diary (like you wouldn't!) and he hasn't scheduled any extra-ordinary meetings with people who wield the power of unpaid leave. But he does have a meeting with his boss on Thursday. So I am kind of hoping that he will raise it then.

Which might mean I get an answer then.

Thursday also happens to be my 35th birthday. (Excuse me one moment *runs down corridor, screams, runs back, acts normal*).

On Thursday I have invited both my boss, and his boss, out for celebratory birthday drinks after work (along with other people - I'm not that much of a creep). So if they turn down my request that could make for a particularly frosty atmosphere in the pub. I hasten to add that I invited them before I decided to request the leave.

Now all I have to remember:

If they say "No," don't get drunk and abusive
If they say "Yes," don't get drunk and tell them I love them.

Life was much simpler when I was cycling and therefore not getting drunk.

IVF Lottery - What do you think?

2011-07-09T21:05:00.004+01:00

This week Britain's Moral Outrage (TM) has had but one focus - Murdoch, phone hacking and News Of the World. This means that other news that would normally have middle England spitting out their Chablis in disgust has gone almost unnoticed.

I say, almost, because their have been murmurings.

The source of this storm in a teacup is the news that an IVF lottery is due to be launched in the UK.

Before I go any further I would like to stress that I have not been asked to write about this, I have no affiliation with the charity that is running it and I am certainly not a shoe-in to win it.

Unfortunately.

The facts are: from the 30th of July you will be able to buy lottery tickets, priced at twenty quid (approx. 32 bucks) a pop, for a chance to win £25,000 worth of IVF (inclusive of hotel stay, travel, drugs, the works).

Most sensationalist journalists prefer to lead with the line: WIN A BABY!!! - they, and many people who comment on the article seem oblivious to the fact that IVF doesn't always work.

Now I love to be outraged as much as the next person but, frankly, I can't see why I should be.

As far as I can see the whole process of getting pregnant is already a lottery. One that approximately six in seven couples win lottery quite happily just by virtue of being fertile.

The rest of us, in the UK, then migrate onto the state sponsored lottery run by the National Health Centre. Depending on which Health Trust's area you live in your experiences can vary vastly.

Allow me to demonstrate:

My Trust offers two rounds of IVF for people who fulfill their criteria. I have had these two rounds. If I lived less than half a mile down the road I'd be in an area that, amazingly, funds three rounds of IVF. Where the womb mate lives they have just announced they are cutting their offer from two rounds to one. Thankfully the womb mate was referred just early enough to qualify for a second round. We are the lucky ones, there are several trusts who just fund one, or none, or have such incredibly restrictions eliminating many potential IVF-ers.

This lottery is based on ones postcode.

Because of this I really don't see a problem with a lottery to win IVF. It is no more of a lottery than everything else we've been put through to conceive.

Comments on the online articles I have seen about the IVF lottery have range from the articulate, reasoned: "OMG" and "WTF?!!!" to the bizarrely hysterical: "What if paedophiles win?"

Then there is the heart-felt concern that "This lottery is exploiting desperate women. They might spend hundreds or thousands of pounds hoping to win".

Yeah poor us. Although I have just spent £4 on a Euromillions ticket, my plan is to win that jackpot on Tuesday - getting £166 million or thereabouts - which, unless my calculations are wildly out, I reckon would enable me to afford a couple of rounds of IVF with spare change. A much more appealing option than 'just' wining one round of IVF.

I don't feel exploited. And I am not about to spend all my IVF savings on a ticket to win IVF. I might, however, bung twenty quid the lottery's way.

But I want to know what you think. You, calm, rational, intelligent women who actually understand what it is like to need fertility treatment. Feel free to disagree with me. I can tell the difference between a troll and a difference of opinion and I'd like to hear your take on it.

****
Edited. Further reading here:

You can read various articles about it here:

The Telegraph

The Independent

The Sun

Marie Claire

The Letter

2011-07-06T13:07:00.001+01:00

Every day this week I have said I'll do it. Every day this week I have chickened out.

The letter is written.

It sits patiently in my desk drawer waiting to be delivered to my boss.

It is clear, and slightly more formal than my normal missives.

It includes choice phrases like "seven and a half years of service", "exemplary sickness record", "endeavoured to ensure my work has not suffered", and my particular favourite "emotionally destabilising time."

It refers to the closest concession to my situation that I can find, after hours of trawling Human resources' website:

Discretionary Leave my be granted on medical or compassionate grounds or in the interests of ensuring the domestic life of the member of staff remains stable.

The letter requests 6 weeks unpaid leave for the duration of my next IVF. I have worked out when the least disruptive time would be for me to take this leave, it means waiting a bit longer than I'd hope for round three (until October / November) but, if it is granted it will be worth the wait.

I am quite scared.

I don't know why. The worst he can do is say no, the best is say yes, and there are various middle-ground concessions that would still make my life a little bit easier.

I am certainly not going to be sacked for asking.

Am I?

Take These 14 Simple Tests Before You Decide To Be Infertile

2011-07-03T11:01:00.002+01:00

I don't know if you've seen that meme kicking around: Follow these 14 simple tests before you decide to have children (I've linked to it, but please don't feel obliged to click through, it is an infuriating read for anyone who has made that decision and can't actually follow it through).

I was first alerted to it when someone emailed it to the Wombmate (my twin sister).

Emailed it to her on bottom of the email commiserating on the lack of success in her IVF.

I know!

Who could possibly think that was appropriate?

Anyway, it got us thinking. Here is our list:

Take These 14 Simple Tests Before You Decide* To Be Infertile

1. Supply all your female neighbours with pillows and get them to walk around with them under their jumpers and follow you on your commute to work. See how you feel about being surrounded by pregnant women.

2. A year in advance, pick three days a month when you will have sex. Do not check these dates against any other external events such as work travel or flu season. Ensure that you copulate on these days, and only these days, it will help if you also get very angry if you partner declares themselves to be not in the mood. Still insist on having sex, but do it grumpily.

3. Scour women's magazines for highly unlikely pregnancy stories (my personal favourite: Teenage girl with no vagina gets pregnant from blow job and stab wound). Stick the cuttings on the fridge to 'trump' people who call to tell you their latest urban myth story.

4. Make sure at least 50% of you female friends are pregnant or have children, and the other 45% are planning a family when you start fertility treatment. This will ensure a happy stream of birth and pregnancy announcements. Aim for two a month.

5. Have daily smear tests and keep the door open to maximise the number of strangers viewing your (formally known as) 'privates'.

6. Get a dice with faces entitled: tearful, sad, angry, irrational, loopy and over-optimistic. In preparation for unexplained mood swings resulting from medication, simply throw the die several times a day to determine how you are going to behave.

7. Do not buy new clothes for at least five years in anticipation of you soon becoming pregnant and therefore growing out of them. Soon all your clothes will be out of fashion, faded, misshapen, full of holes - or, hopefully, all four.

8. Provide all your relatives with wildly over optimistic 'data' on the likelihood of IVF working so they can keep your spirits up if you get a negative result.

9. Practice weeing on ovulation and pregnancy tests by using a q-tip/ cotton bud. But you knew this one anyway didn't you.

10. Once a month carry an onion round with you and every time you think you've stopped crying take another sniff to ensure a whole day of continuous weeping.

11. Get miserable in the company of your partner and when asked what is wrong say, "Nothing, I'm fine". After 15 minutes burst into tears and accuse them of not caring as much as you do about infertility. Do this on a daily basis.

12. Decide when you want to have a baby and sign up to a website that will email you weekly updates telling you how your baby should be developing in the womb - just to hammer home what you are missing out on. Remember, don't give in and unsubscribe or you'll lose nine months of fun!

13. Take to sticking pins in yourself every evening. Not that we encourage self-harming on this site, but you need to get your stomach / upper thighs ready for all those injections.

14. Reduce your going-out circle of friends to just single folk. As they couple-off and start to have families, look around for replacements. This gets increasingly hard. But don't worry, after (approx) 15 years your old friends will start to come back as their children no longer need babysitters.

Now you are ready to be Infertile.

*Like any of us actually made that decision, but I imagine many folk who found the kids one hilarious probably didn't so much decide to have children as slipped and fell on an erect penis.

Welcome if you are here from Creme de la Creme. For more best bits see this page.

Public Transport Makes Me Happy

2011-06-30T18:10:00.000+01:00

I had to share one of the most amusing pick up attempts EVER, with you guys.

Not, you'll be stunned to hear, someone trying to pick me up - now that I am teetering on 35 I have become invisible. I was merely a witness to this masterly display.

An attractive, toned woman got on a bus and sat down near me. She was shortly followed by a guy. Short dark hair, short generally. He wore a T-shirt tight enough to show muscles that could only have been obtained by careful gym sculpting.

He saw the girl. "You go to the same gym as me don't you?"

She shrugged.

"Yeah." He confirmed earnestly, "You do. I've definitely see you there."

Her monosyllabic response conveyed absolute disinterest. So he moved on, slipping into the seat behind her.

He then made a phone call. I know some people are half-deaf and almost shout on the phone, and whilst others speak quietly, but there is always a discernible difference between someone just naturally talking loudly and someone speaking loudly and self-consciously, for the benefit of the people around him. There was no doubt this dude was doing the latter.

The snippets of conversation I overheard went something like this:

"Yeah, I'm flying out to start filming on Tuesday ... So I'll be in LA for the film on Wednesday ... I don't know exactly what yet... Yeah I mean helicopters, and cars and probably bikes. Because he always uses bikes. If you think of any of his films like, er, um, well, Top Gun had bikes.

"Well, I'm going to have to slim down a bit. So no chocolate for six weeks. I don't know how I am going to get through the next six weeks filming in LA without chocolate.

"Exactly, I mean it is a great job, I'll earn enough for the year in the next six weeks ...

"Alright, bye mate."

Having concluded his call he turned his attentions back to the aforementioned young lady.

"So what do you do?"

"I'm a barrister" she said in a way that conveyed law rather than coffee maker.

"I'm I stunt man" he needlessly informed her. "I'm going out to LA on Tuesday to work on a film with Tom Cruise..."

No shit.

The conversation flowed much easier after that. She didn't shoehorn in any mention of a 'special friend' and they seemed content to exchange tips on diet and exercise. As you do when you meet someone from the gym (I'm guessing here).

I got off the bus at the same time as the girl, who left with a cheery "see ya" to the guy and spring in her step.

Thing is, I've done what any ~~normal~~ ~~nosey~~ ~~inquisitive~~ of you would do.

And I can confirm that the bloke on the bus wasn't him, or him, not him, certainly not him.

And according to this story (and hundreds of others) the teeny tiny scientologist does his own stunts anyway (favourite line from the article: Generous Cruise also treated the whole group to burgers and fries).

I love the bus.

What The Wombmate Thinks

2011-06-28T21:11:00.000+01:00

A couple of you have been asking after the Wombmate. After her first IVF she has had to wait for a follow up appointment - which won't happen until the start of July. So at the moment she is in that particular purgatory that the NHS specialises in.

Here's a little post from her nevertheless:

How am I? The answer is not so good. In much the same way as Liz, I function well at work during the week but spend most weekends in a puddle of tears.

[Ed. Family gatherings are, as you can imagine, a barrel of laughs nowadays.]

Not being a natural blogger I look instead to my area of work to see if that can help. I'm a psychologist and although I don't directly work in the area of grief/bereavement counselling I know a few who do. One of them recently gave me a short paper on grief which I thought might be worth a post if any of you out there are feeling like WFI and me.

Psychologists like to create models of how people react to things: to my mind these are only really useful if they help us to understand ourselves and others and maybe suggest ways of coping. There are lots of models of grief. The older ones suggest that grief is a process of different stages where people feel, at different points: disbelief, sadness, guilt, anger etc. Although appealing these models don't really seem supported by experience, but they are useful in helping us understand that, at different times we can experience very different emotions, and that is completely normal. In fact, one of the psychologists I work with says she has seen so many different grief reactions over the years that her perception of what a normal reaction is encompasses just about anything.

A newer model of grief suggests that grief is a 'dual process', where part of the time grief is avoided and part of the time it is acknowledged. This model says that there are times when avoiding grief is helpful as well as times when it is detrimental to well-being. Like anything in life the trick is getting the balance.

So, if you have thrown yourself into work and are not allowing yourself time to process what you have been through, you may need take some time thinking about your experience to help you assimilate it. If your reaction has been to sit in a darkened room with several boxes of tissues and opt out of life then you need to give yourself a break from the grief and focus on some of the mundane things in life. Both are of course easier said than done and won't miraculously make you happy in the short-term. But at some point it will become easier - you're human and ultimately as such you have a fantastic ability to come to terms with the hand life has dealt you even if it doesn't feel possible now.

So what about you? Does this ring any bells or does it just sound like psychobabble?

For my part I have to say I feel much better. Thanks to being throughly rallied-round with emails, texts and invites to meet up with friends. And the amount of times the "Womb 'I hate phones more than anyone in living history' -Mate" has been calling me I am starting to think I'm on suicide watch.

If I'm Being Honest ...

2011-06-26T18:23:00.000+01:00

I sometimes worry that this blog is unrealistic, that it can give the impression that I find everything pretty easy - except for the occasional blip around a negative - but generally that I trot on cheerfully with treatments, plans, injections and drugs.

I use this blog as a form of therapy. If I know I'm going to blog about a topic I try and think about the humour in the situation. It helps me to work out how I am going to relate my latest appointment in a way that will explain what is still going on but still be entertaining, it keeps me sane.

I don't want to mislead you. I've realised, particularly in the last week, that I'm not fine.

I act normal. I look normal. I haven't lost my appetite (more's the pity).

I can go in to work and function really well (except maybe on Thursday afternoon when I burst into tears in the office). I can write posts about Doctors appointments and crack jokes. I can make optimistic plans about next steps.

But I'm not fine.

About a week after the initial adrenalin of a negative, in which I organised appointments and made lists, things didn't get better, they got worse. Maybe it is the progesterone come down, or just that I'd ground to a halt with my 'next steps'.

I'm struggling.

I blink up tears several times a day. Sometimes for no apparent reason. Sometimes because a pregnancy has been alluded to on twitter, or facebook, or the office, or a meeting, or a bloody property programme (I swear there has to be a study done showing number of pre-menopausal women on property programmes who get pregnant during the filming - it has to be a fertility charm, sign me up for Grand Designs). I've stopped wearing mascara because it spends more time running down my cheeks than lengthening my lashes.

I've thought about counseling. Although I'm not sure that is the answer, because what I am feeling is perfectly normal for people going through what I, what we, are going through. I can't be expected to feel normal all the time. I need to grieve for by 26 embryos that never made it.

But don't worry about me I know I will start to feel better soon, once I've let time do its thing.

I'm turning off comments for this post, because it isn't about me. I'm not writing this to elicit sympathy, or to get told how brave I am. I'm writing this because I don't want anyone else to think they are the only one not coping and that I find it easy. Or worse, I don't want anyone to see a friend struggling with infertility and think that it can't be that bad because Womb For Improvement seems to cope perfectly well.

Just What The Doctor Ordered

2011-06-23T17:32:00.001+01:00

So when you last left our intrepid hero (that'd be me, btw) I was at the doctors and had gone through the tests I thought should be performed - and was mostly rebuffed - now we rejoin the appointment to hear what the Doctor had to say:

The first thing he wants to do is another womb biopsy.

The most difficult thing about the appointment was hearing his assessment of my condition. It is serious, it is really serious.

In fact, the language he used was pretty sobering. (Not that I was drunk, you understand, as a rule I tend to avoid alcohol before Doctors appointments).

He said, and I quote:
"Someone up there is smiling on you."

This might seem a bizarre thing to say to someone cursed with infertility. However, he went on to explain; my first womb biopsy was terrible. He thinks I have had a very narrow escape from womb cancer. He was appalled at the amount of time it took from the first investigations to referral to a specialist (him) and a diagnosis.

He didn't mince his words. I will have to have a hysterectomy. After I have finished with fertility treatments, but pregnancy isn't the solution. The solution is full on removal. (Womboval? Does that work? No? As you were then).

For the rest of my life, until I have the hysterectomy I will either be having fertility treatment or be on the pill.

I had vague yearnings to try again naturally. I'd read about some alternative therapies with dramatic results.

No chance.

Not just the Doctor, but the husband made that clear. Turns out the husband can't be bothered to go through the whole courting process again to find a new wife, so he is insistent that I don't do anything that might risk my health. Either that, or he is worried alternative therapies might force him to drink ground up tiger penis, or worse have his taint pricked.

I sort of knew all this before, despite hoping that it might just go away. But the language the Doctor used, and his seriousness scared me. And was hard to hear.

So I get another womb biopsy - funded by the NHS as this is an ongoing, serious, medical condition.

Moving onto what he'd do differently next IVF. He said that next time - as well as giving me intralipids - he'd change my drug protocol.

The next IVF protocol will be Antagonist. Which is what the wombmate had. No I don't really get why either. He did explain, something to do with not wanting me to take Buserlein for the good of my womb-lining.

However, it will increase my risk of Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome.

Meh, you win some, you lose some.

The next thing he said, however, got me very excited. He gave me a glimmer of hope that I might be able to get another round of IVF on the NHS. Unfortunately, a bit more research, has proved that not to be the case.

I shall therefore be spending this IVF-hiatus ferreting down the back of sofas for loose change as I try to amass the £7,000 needed for the next cycle.

What Now, Doc?

2011-06-21T08:14:00.003+01:00

I'd like to say I went to the Doctor's yesterday with an open mind. That I would see what he had to say, and make my decision based on that.

As it happens I was already pretty convinced of my next moves. I had a list of tests I wanted and I assumed he wouldn't do then, I figured I'd gather up copies of my notes and move on without a backwards glance.

It turns out I was wrong.

The first thing I hadn't counted on was that I like my Doctor. This man has seen my vagina more regularly, and over a longer sustained period, than anyone other than my husband. I'm not a one night stand woman, this to me means real commitment.

So, it was nice to see him again.

The other thing was he didn't dismiss my list of test requests out of hand but gave me clear answers as to how useful he thought they were.

So this is his reaction to my list, and I shall prefix it with a massive disclaimer:

DO NOT BLINDLY BELIEVE THIS, WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN BELOW IS MY INTERPRETATION OF HIS LAYMAN-FRIENDLY ADVICE. HE MAY HAVE OVER SIMPLIFIED, I MAY HAVE MISINTERPRETED. HIS ADVICE RELATES TO MY UNIQUE CIRCUMSTANCES NOT YOURS. BY ALL MEANS ADD THESE NUGGETS TO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BUT IT IS NOT THE BE ALL AND END ALL.

Got it? Good.

I shall continue.

Immuology tests - Theses tests are wide and varied. You can test for Natural Killer cells, for Auto Immune issues, Cytokine ratio, Lymphocyte Antibody Detection, I could go on. The idea behind these tests is that as the embryo is growing in my womb my body might detect it as a foreign body and start attacking it, especially if I am allergic to my husband whose DNA makes up half of the embryo.

Some Doctor's dismiss this as a load of rubbish.

Mine didn't, however he did caution a couple of issues with these tests. What happens if immune issues are discovered? Treatment is, at best, controversial. One treatment is to take steroids during IVF and early pregnancy. This has been shown to increase the risk of a cleft pallet in children. Not a life threatening concern - obviously - but equally given the option not one you'd necessarily choose.

Another treatment is IVIg which, you can do your own research on, but my Doctor's concern is the long term effects of this treatment is not known.

Also one's body's immune system ebbs and flows, like when you get hay fever depending on what different pollens are in the air - if I had a test for that when it is particularly bad my blood count would be off the scale and allergens apparent. In mid-winter I wouldn't show anything. Given that the tests cost in the region of £800 for what might be an inconclusive result he didn't think it was worth doing.

The treatment he best favours for immune issues is Intralipid Infusions. The infusions are a mix of protein and fats and nutrients. The proteins are derived from egg whites. Essentially it sounds like I'll get an intravenous dose of mayonnaise (and apparently it is about as calorific). The infusion was first used in coma patients and the Doctors notice that it has anti-inflammatory properties. So it seems to help with um... inflammation caused by immune issues.

Anyway, the point is the treatment isn't very costly, the tests are. Therefore my Doctor said that if we do IVF again with him he'll just do the Intralipid treatment anyway.

Thrombophilias (MTHFR) - This aptly named motherfucker increases ones propensity to blood clots. It can be a factor in reoccurrent miscarriage. But a) I've never miscarried and b) as a default my clinic prescribed Fragmin for my last two IVFs which would have prevented this being an issue anyway.

DNA Fragmentation - I was pretty convinced this was the one. DNA fragmentation, in the sperm, doesn't show up on the main tests. Motility, quantity and direction all looks great, however it is only when the lads are scrutinised at DNA level that their flaws are truly revealed. This, I conjectured, might be why I get embryo's but they don't hang around to be frozen and don't implant. My Doctor was dismissive, he felt DNA fragmentation was again more likely to result in miscarriage than non-implantation. And, more convincingly, he said it was likely to be more of a problem with ICSI, when one sperm is chosen to be injected in the egg. In my case, with hundreds of thousands of the suckers swarming around my egg, he is a believer in fertilisation of the fittest - and thinks it is unlikely to be a factor.

That is the response to my tests enquiries, there's more but frankly this post has gone on far too long already and I am sure we all need a break.

Summary Sheet

2011-06-20T13:25:00.000+01:00

I am not, by nature, an organised person. If my friends get a birthday card within the correct month they can consider themselves lucky (the father's day card I bought remains stubbornly unposted), bills get piled not filed, and I am pretty sure I've lost track of at least one pension from previous jobs.

However, infertility has taught me the importance of notes. In fact the single most useful thing about this blog is I can go back and double check what treatments/drugs/periods I've had and when.

(Yes, yes, the second most useful thing has been meeting you lot. Honestly! Don't log off in a huff.)

Every appointment I go to I take with me reams of paper - letters from doctors with test results, lists of every procedure I can remember, and two copies of the all important summary sheet.

Whether they want it or not I give the doctor a copy of my summary sheet, and I keep a copy so that we can consult it together.

Ideally the summary (like any good CV) should be no longer than one sheet of paper, however I have now edged onto the second page with all the IUIs, IVFs and general fanny fiddling. And prominent, at the top of the page, is my ever increasing age (I tend to leave this off my CV, but in fertility terms it opens rather than closes doors as they note how swiftly I am advancing towards 35 and kamikaze eggs - six weeks to go).

Not all Doctors appreciate this. Many of them try to dismiss it.

I press it on them like an Aunty with a spare handkerchief. Usually it helps, it means when they are leafing through their file, which is currently rivaling the King James Bible for number of pages - if not literary prowess, they can work out chronologically where in their notes the information they want is likely to appear.

Yesterday I excelled myself, I prepared my own file - with dividers:

And I typed out my questions.

This won't actually help me get pregnant but hopefully it will make the appointment as fruitful as possible and, at £200 for a bit of face-to-face time, I intend to get my money's worth with as little faffing as possible.

I would strongly recommend anyone else, whether they are seeing a doctor for the first or umpteenth time, takes along their own summary sheet.

Right, lecture over. Wish me luck, actually forget luck; I just hope I get more than a sucking of teeth and shrugging of the shoulders when I ask what on earth I should do next.

Random Folk

2011-06-18T11:52:00.000+01:00

What do the following people have in common?

My flatmate from University
An ex-colleague
My ex-boyfriend's wife's boss
An Australian ex-pat living in London

Give up?

All of them have successfully got pregnant, through IVF, in London.

And all of them have been very generous with their advice and recommendations. I'm not going to go into detail about their advice, if anyone is going to get sued for libel here then it had better be me.

However, what this has done is given me lots of things to think about whilst I research a new clinic.

The clinic where I have been going so far, which combines private and NHS patients gets glowing reviews. And I am sure they are brilliant and doubtless have fantastic statistics. However, I also feel they have had their chance with me, and I'd rather take my eggs out of that particular basket and put them all in another.

If nothing else it will psychologically feel as though I am trying something different.

Those of you who commented on my last post that I was going for the next round of IVF pretty quickly, I'm not. I do want a break, I need a bit of time, if for no other reason than I need the bruises on my stomach to heal before I start creating a whole host of new ones.

However, that doesn't mean I can't do a spot of research in the meantime and start to formulate a plan.

Official Test Day

2011-06-15T12:56:00.000+01:00

Today was the official, hospital sanctioned test day. 16 days after transfer. The equivalent of 21 days after ovulation.

Of course there wasn't a fairytale ending. It was as untroubled by HCG as all the others. Negative.

I rang the hospital, the response was sympathetic but equated to: "You've had all the treatment the NHS will provide, you can have the next available appointment with the Doctor for a debrief but he isn't available now until August or September, alternative you could see him privately..."

For those of you who don't know my full background (and why the hell should you?), it isn't quite that simple. The NHS have been treating me for two conditions:

1) Infertility. It isn't life threatening. My treatment stops here. Which I think is fair enough, I am incredibly lucky to have had the amount of treatment I have had on the NHS - three IUIs and 2 IVFs is not to be sniffed at.

2) Endometrial Hyperplasia. This is a bit more tricky. This is when the womb lining grows thick and inhospitable and (in my case) was diseased with precancerous cells. The normal treatment for this condition is a hysterectomy, for blatantly obvious reasons I’m not so keen on this route.

I can't risk the hyperplasia growing back. Even if I decided to give up trying to conceive altogether I can't become drug free, as the moment I stop birth control the lining starts to grow back and there is a real risk of cancer.

So the Doctor has written out a prescription for birth control to start as soon as the post-IVF bleeding begins (it has been held off by all the progesterone I've taken to date). Not for me then the story of: "We had IVF, it didn't work, and then as soon as we gave up I got pregnant naturally."

I don’t want to wait 2 or 3 months, whilst taking the pill, for an appointment that will essentially say. “Sorry it didn’t work, do you want to pay £7,000 for IVF at my private practice?” Therefore I am paying to see the same Doctor during his non-NHS hours, and remarkably it just so happens that he has an available appointment on Monday. Who knew that cash could be so effective at opening doors?

Oh, Ok. Everyone.

So this weekend I shall mostly be compiling a shit-load of questions. Working out what tests I’ve had, and which I haven’t - because either they are too expensive for the NHS or considered a load of rubbish by my practitioners. I am not sure when we will start treatment again but in the meantime I am more than happy to give up some vials of blood for testing and I am sure that the husband will jump at the chance of another medically-sanctioned wank.

Hopefully this will give us a few more answers whilst we work out what we do next and when we’ll have the energy and emotional stamina for another ride on the IVF rollercoster.

I Tested

2011-06-11T10:46:00.001+01:00

It wasn't a lack of willpower that lead me to test on Friday morning, rather than the long-agonised over Saturday. (Although I double checked this morning too.)

I tested for self-preservation reasons.

As each day passed, with no blood, I became more and more convinced that the IVF had worked. I felt strange, new, sensations in my uterus areas. Not painful exactly, and not like period pains, I can only describe it as an occasional 'tweaking'.

I knew that if I waited too long I would convince myself it had worked and open myself up to a devastating fall.

However, it is difficult to imagine a result more crushing than yesterday's.

It was negative. As soon as I got the result it felt tediously inevitable. Of course it didn't work, why would it?

Then I cried.

A lot.

I can't explain to anyone who hasn't gone through this how it feels. So much hope, and anticipation. Knowing that cells that are a mix of you and your husband are growing, dividing, and are transfered into the one place where they should continue to thrive. And then they don't.

I have failed.

I can't, at this moment, ever imagine that I will succeed.

I know I say in my About page that I don't want this blog to be a catalogue of "it's not fair". But today indulge me. Today I just want to scream it, over and over.

I won't give up yet, I am not sure what the next step is. The husband and I need to regroup and rethink.

Then I am sure I'll be back with the sex gags.

Frozen Out

2011-06-09T08:16:00.000+01:00

I was uncharacteristically tardy about following up on what happened to my left-over embryos. The embryologist had told me, on the day of my transfer, that I had a few embryos just trailing the chosen ones. He was going to check on them the following day and let me know what I had to freeze.

He didn't call me.

I didn't call him.

I reasoned that in this case no news was bad news. Bad news that I didn't want to hear.

Towards the end of the week I reluctantly called a couple of times, leaving unreturned messages. I was transported back to a time when I was single and telling myself if that boy really wanted to speak to me he'd have called. His silence was more telling than an awkward phone call.

Eventually, yesterday I spoke to the embryologist. He confirmed what I had guessed. Only one of the remaining embryos had made it to blastocyst, and that one was too poor quality to freeze.

I have no frozen assets, nothing held on ice for future use.

Currently, being in the two week wait the news is upsetting but I keep telling myself that it might not matter. That I might have real, living embryo(s) here with me right now.

And then a tiny, unwelcome, voice whispers, "14 fertilised, and none were good enough quality to freeze, what makes you think that the two they chose to put back were good enough to grow into babies?"

And it is that fear - not willpower - which stops me testing too early.

Ignorance is bliss.

Comments Round Up: When To Test

2011-06-07T20:01:00.001+01:00

Thank you for all your tips and advice regarding when to test. I have read, digested, cogitated and come up with a plan.

For those of you use to IVF speak I am currently 8dp5dt and 13days past egg retrieval. For those of you that aren't, it has been 13 days since my eggs were wrenched from my ovaries, and eight days since my five-day-old embryos were welcomed back some way south of the bosom of our family.

GiGi warned me against a false positive as a result of the HCG shot based on advice here. My shot of 10,000 Iu was on the Monday before my egg collection. Which put me off testing until yesterday - a false positive must surely be more painful than a definitive result. (And it broke my heart to see she'd found this to her cost last year).

A couple of people told tales of testing too early to get a negative followed days later by a positive. MabelB tested 14 days after a retrieval but didn't get a positive until 17 days after. Which for me would be on Saturday. A ModernMedicineMiracle had a similar experience after her IUI, again waiting 17 days.

Most of your clinics aren't as harsh as mine making me wait 16 days post transfer (Which takes me to Wednesday 15 June):

The case for today as a test day came from NursLouisa. She said she got a blood test a week after transfer of a six-day blastocyst, adding an extra day (as my embryos were five days old) makes today my equivalent - but remember blood tests are more sensitive than peesticks.
Waiting and Wishing's clinic tests fourteen days after egg collection, which would be tomorrow for me.
Reinforcing tomorrow as a test day, The Cat Lady was told by her Doctor to test nine days after a five-day embryo was implanted.
Slackie O reckons that her clinic suggests a slightly more conservative blood test 15 days after egg collection - that'll be Thursday.
Guinevere made the good point that 15 days past egg collection equates with 15 days past ovulation which, based on the fact that my period comes 14 days after ovulation 15 days is officially one day late. And for me, Thursday.

It seems I could really test any time from now with a reasonable expectation of a fairly good idea of whether it'd worked or not. In fact, I was sorely tempted to test this morning - it is the husband's birthday and I had romantic visions of skipping back into the bedroom pee-stick held aloft proclaiming a special birthday surprise. Then I had an alternative vision of spending his birthday lunch crying into my scallops. So I shelved that idea.

I have decided to stick to my guns, in consultation with the husband we agreed that I will test on Saturday. This seems like a good solution - late enough to give me a result I can feel confident in. I'll still have Saturday and Sunday to digest the result, before facing work. And I can carry out my week off plans without fear of having to cancel because I just want to escape under a duvet.

I just hope that nothing scary happens between now and then to drive me to the peestick.

Behold The Disc Of Power

2011-06-05T22:40:00.000+01:00

I knew they wouldn't let me down.

I saw my mother-in-law today. Remember when I told them about our forthcoming IVF, how I rubbed my hands with glee at what new age nonsense would be thrust my way. And then nothing...

Well, today I was given something else to rub in my hands. A disc:

It was made by their healer, Roger. The dimensions of the disc are calculated using sacred geometry (I am not making this up, they might be, but I'm not).

I am to hold the disc in my left hand for twenty minutes at a time and that should do the trick. Like, THE trick.

This unassuming thing is all that stands between me and a successful pregnancy.

Yes. As it happens, I am deeply skeptical. But do you know what? I'll give it a go.

Can't do any harm.

Can it?

Harnessing The Power Of The Two Week Wait

2011-06-03T18:50:00.000+01:00

Anyone who has tried to get pregnant from more than about two months will know the worse bit about trying is the waiting between sex/IUI/embryo transfer (delete as applicable), and finding out whether it worked.

I would go further.

I would say the worse bit of the two week wait is the final week of the aforementioned.

This is the point when all the happy fluffy thoughts of "we did everything we could" gets swiftly replaced by darker thoughts of "this is shit, it clearly hasn't worked." Admittedly the darker side is usually (in my unsuccessful case) enhanced by a hefty dose of PMT.

The final week of the wait drags like a cricket test match. It is endless.

For this reason I have booked next week off work. If it is going to go slowly I might as well feel like I get an extra long holiday out of it.

I know what you are thinking - that I must be some kind of genius, and you wouldn't be far wrong. Except for the fact that, like so many of the best laid plans of mice and womb for improvement, I have slightly screwed up. The coasting and the fact that they still waited to do a five day transfer meant that actually, officially, my wait doesn't end until a week on Wednesday (the 15 of June). I return to work on Monday the 13th.

That is, of course, if I am good and wait the full sixteen days after the five day transfer before testing - as I have been told to.

Question: What do you think the likelihood of that happening is?

Clue: The answer sounds like "snow dance"

Question 2: When do you reckon it is safe to test to get a pretty conclusive answer? 13 days after transfer should be Ok, right?

(Although this might all be academic as, if I follow the same pattern as last time, I reckon I should start bleeding round about next Thursday or Friday).

Drugged Up To The Eyeballs

2011-06-01T20:07:00.000+01:00

Despite any contra-indications you might pick up on from this blog; I'm not dumb.

Nevertheless, I find the whole post-IVF medication quite complex. Far from being left to my own devices the clinic have prescribed me a plethora of medication to help my body welcome its much-longed for resident(s).

In the morning and evening I have to take a Cyclogest pessary. Straight up where the sun don't shine. Cyclogest is progesterone - a hormone I was prescribed even more of last time when I started to bleed. Progesterone is a hormone that your body produces during pregnancy, initially - for the first 8 weeks - by one's ovary and subsequently by the placenta. My clinic believes that by topping up my body's supply it will encourage the pregnancy to start/ stick around.

Three times a day (morning, noon and night) I take a pill called Progynova. This is usually prescribed to women going through the menopause. It releases oestrogen and the idea is that it helps the womb lining thicken - plumping it up to be a comfortable home for my embryos.

I also have a daily dose of aspirin. When I was at school we use to refer to aspirin as "The Pill" because it seemed to be prescribed by the school nurse for everything. True to form it they have thrown it into the mix again. The idea for this one is that it relaxes the blood vessels slightly allowing the blood to pump to areas where otherwise it might not reach, or my womb at least.

Not content with letting up on the injections, I still have to submit my stomach to a nightly jabbing. I give myself a Fragmin injection. This couples well with the asprin, it is a blood thinning agent ensuring it can slip through those relaxed blood vessels.

Finally, of course, there is the vitamins and folic acid. Complete with gurning pregnant woman on the packet.

Whilst IVF and the success of it, is constantly on my mind, I seem to have a bit of a blank when it comes to taking my various medications. I remember taking one pill, but did I take the other one too? Or was that yesterday?

So I have devised a series of reminders. My phone rings an alarm at the appropriate times for various drugs. I have a calendar in my kitchen with each different dose and drug written up and I dutifully tick them off as I ingest the appropriate one.

It isn't a flawless solution - yesterday, when all I did was sit on my ass recovering with nothing more taxing to think about than whether to snack on pineapple or (chocolate) brazil nuts - I completely forgot one of the Progynovas.

I had yet another blood test today to check that the various levels are as they should be. I am kind of hoping that they are going to tell me everything is progressing nicely and I can reduce my daily intake. If, for no other reason, than there really isn't room on my calendar to list any more drugs.

Womb For Two?

2011-05-30T18:41:00.000+01:00

The embryologist delivered the good news. In the four hours since he had last checked, one of my morula's had transformed into a blastocyst. The other was still lagging behind a little. Regardless though, he decided to put both the front runners back in to my womb.

There are three more pre-morulas kicking about. He is going to check them again tomorrow, and hopefully freeze some survivors.

Before the transfer the nurse wanted to check that my bladder was full to the point of bursting. I was hustled into theatre and, on the second go, deemed ready. At this point last IVF the nurse had scurried off to get the husband.

This time she didn't.

A different embryologist introduced herself, and Doctor.

No one made a move to get the husband.

The doctor appeared. I was manoeuvered into the stirrups, my arse hanging off the edge of the bed and modesty towel removed.

Any moment now they'll nip and get him, I reassured myself.

I was tipped back, ankles higher than my head.

They weren't going to get him.

I fought my natural British abhorrence of complaining, or even asking, and requested, if it was at all possible, whether my husband could maybe join us.

Without covering me up, and with my flange facing the door, they fetched him. And what a charming sight that must have been as he strolled in.

As I was speculummed open the pain was excruciating, alleviated only by my grasping little fingers trying to inflict an equivalent amount of pain on the husband's hand. The Doctor, master of the understatement that he is, observed that it might be quite tender because of the thrush. You know when guys will boast that their appendages will make a girl's eyes water? Believe me, that is not a good thing.

The whole process took ten minutes, it would be wrong to say they were the longest ten of my life - I had to sit through the Man United / Barcelona game the other night - but certainly time didn't fly by.

Now I am chilling on the sofa hoping that these two little'uns will bed in.

I've been so touched by the comments here, texts and emails I've received wishing me luck. But if I were to choose a favourite it'd be the phone call from a friend's son. Not long after she texted me he rang up and we had a lovely little chat. He burbled away excitedly and I mostly just listened unable to get a word in edgeways. Later his Mum texted to say that I was the first recipient of a self-initiated phone call from her one year old boy. Which has to be an auspicious sign.

Cover me, they're going in

2011-05-30T11:15:00.000+01:00

The embroyolgist called at 9am on the dot.

As soon as I hung up I realised there were about 50 more questions that I should have asked, but I got a few answers.

Let's start with the disappointing news. I don't have any blastocysts, which you'd expect on day five. I do however have two Morulas. These are at the stage just before they turn into blastocysts, usually at day four.

So I go in today at 1:15pm for the transfer.

Questions I forgot to ask:
Are they putting one or two back in?
What about the other 11 embryos?
Any chance of getting some to freeze this time round?
Can you promise me it will work this time?

I did mention that I had thrush. (Ladies, it is horrendous and is showing no signs of abating.) I might as well have told him I had stubbed my toe he was so uninterested. But I persisted.

"I just wanted to ensure that this wasn't going to be a problem or cause the transfer to be cancelled."

His response was straight from the IVF 1.0.1 source book.

"Your embryos go into your uterus so it will be fine."

Who the fuck knew?!

Although he did go on to address my concerns and assure me that the area would be cleaned* more throughly that usual to ensure no infection is carried into my inner sanctum**.

The thought of my most tenderest of parts being hoiked open at lunch time today is causing an involuntary leg cross, but needs must and compared to labour I am sure it'll be a breeze.

*My pride forces me to point out what I am sure you all already know. Thrush is not a sign of uncleanliness, in fact it is often exacerbated by over cleaning which upsets the ph balance in ones bits.

** The husband has just winced at my honesty. I'll be frank, I could happily have written this (and the last) post without mention of my unwelcome downstairs visitor. However, I hope someone else, like me, who frantically googles "thrush between egg collection and transfer" will find this and be reassured that a) she is not alone b) Canesten cream is fine to use (I wouldn't use the suppositories but my Doctor was fine with the cream) and c) the transfer won't be cancelled. In which case, my work here is done.

A Bird In The Bush

2011-05-28T11:20:00.000+01:00

After a couple of weeks of being regularly impaled by a variety of KY jelly-enhanced medical instruments my vagina is rebelling.

I have a touch of thrush (which sounds a little like a prime time TV show - I might pitch it).

In addition my stomach is still doing a pretty good impression of a pregnant one. In fact I was asked yesterday, by someone at work, if I was pregnant. (Which isn't quite as bad as it sounds as I told her before I was having IVF though wasn't specific about where I was in the process.) But worse than the size is the pain, it is seriously uncomfortable - taut, stretched, aching. All things I would happily put up with if there was anything in there worth hanging on to.

At the moment there is nothing in there, but not for much longer.

My little ones are all doing pretty good. Do you want the numbers?

No?

Tough.

So I started off with 14. At the moment the embryologist is looking for embryos between 8 and 6 cells big.

Six are 8 cells (five of which are top quality and one is a mere good)
Three are 7 cells (one top quality, one good quality and one average)
Four are six cells (three top and one good)

Those of you who can count will realise there is just one unaccounted for, it is one day behind the others.

This is amazing news. Last time at this stage I only had eight looking likely - now I've got thirteen potentials in there.

In fact the embryologist is so confident that he isn't going to disturb my little ones tomorrow but will check in on them on Monday and, all being well, get me in for the transfer on Monday.

Which gives me two more days to liberally smear myself with Canesten and hope the bird flies the nest.

Still growing

2011-05-27T20:19:00.001+01:00

After an inauspicious false start things in the petri dish seem to be going quite well.

All fourteen embryos are developing. Two at a faster rate than the others, although if - like me - you thought that might be a good thing then you are wrong. Apparently /the early growth spurters often have something wrong with them. But we still have 12 strong contenders. So there is a football (soccer!) team plus a sub on the benches.

My clinic does like to mix things up a bit and so, as nothing managed to implant last time, they are going to try assisted hatching this time. Depending on which website you stumble upon this is either the answer to my prayers or a complete waste of time.

The theory is that the little blighters get caught up in the outer layer of the cells so can't break out and latch on to the womb lining. By cracking the shell the embryologist is giving them a fighting chance.

As they all seem to be developing well they are going to be given a bit longer to give the embryologist a chance to identify the most likely candidate for pulling through the next nine months and longer. So we are looking at a Monday or Tuesday for the transfer.

But I await my daily phone call from the embryologist, I have my bag packed and am ready to go and spread my legs at a moment's notice.

*** Updated to Add ***

amiracle4us - makes a good point that is usually done on day 2 / 3 embryos not older. They are going to do it tomorrow but, it transpires, they don't need to put an assisted hatched in the womb straight away. Hence I can wait a few more days after the shell has been cracked.

Fertilisation Report: IVF #2

2011-05-26T12:41:00.000+01:00

The embryologist was supposed to call before 2pm today.

He called at 9:30am. Thereby preventing me spending the whole morning compulsively checking my phone and occasionally ringing it from my the landline to double check that it was actually working (and then getting paranoid that my call coincided with the embryologist trying to get
through).

If this made me love him a little bit, then what he had to say made me love him even more.

Out of the 18 eggs retrieved 14 have fertilised!

I am ridiculously pleased.

As a comparison, last time from 19 eggs, 12 fertilised - and that seemed like a high proportion at the time.

It is still early days.

You may remember that last time 10 eggs dropped out of the picture leaving just two left to implant and none to freeze. Also my Doctor has, repeatedly, warned that the "coasting" whilst I waited for my oestrogen to drop can impact the quality of the eggs.

The embroylogist said it was too early to comment on quality - or a date for the transfer - he'll call me tomorrow with some more answers.

But this is about as good of a start as I could hope to get.

I'm getting eggcited now.

Egg-cited.

Geddit?!

Hullo?

Three years ago

2011-05-25T17:33:00.000+01:00

Three years ago today I wrote my first post (there are a couple that I wrote later but post-dated so appear on the site earlier).

Three years ago I didn't think I was infertile. I thought that, after a year and a half of trying, we were "having problems" and I was probably overreacting.

Three years ago I knew just one other woman having IVF, today she is a couple of weeks off her due date and now I know all of you lot (well, the ones that comment anyway), my twin sister and one of my closest friends.

Three years ago if you'd told me that, today, I'd have just had 18 eggs retrieved for IVF I would have:
a) googled egg retrieval to work out what on earth you were on about
b) tried to work out if 18 was a good number - it is I'm very happy with that
c) hoped that this would be for our second child.

I'd like to say that infertility has made me a better, more compassionate, nicer person, whose relationship has been strengthened by our trials. It hasn't. (Luckily I was already perfect.)

In many ways I feel exactly the same as before; I live in the same place, work in the same place, have come no closer to pregnancy and have watched from the sidelines as friends upon friends get pregnant and have first, second, even third babies. Meanwhile I feel like in the last three years I have just been treading water.

But, hopefully, tomorrow's fertilisation report will bring good news and in eight or nine months I'll be treading in breaking waters.

Trigger Happy

2011-05-23T18:57:00.000+01:00

I've just got the call. I trigger tonight for egg collection on Wednesday.

It is such a relief, I've spent most of the day convinced that the whole thing was going to be cancelled.

Although, I am still feeling less than confident about this round. I had a scan today and was talking to the Doctor. He cautioned me that having coasted for so long waiting for my oestrogen levels to drop that it was highly likely my egg quality wouldn't be great.

"Next time" he said "they'll probably give you a lower dose to start with."

A bit later he said, "It'll be great if we can get some to freeze, so you don't have to start from the beginning again."

Later still: "So next time, you'll be going private not NHS ..."

I really like this Doctor, but it would have been nice to feel he had a bit more faith in it working THIS time.

Holding pattern

2011-05-22T12:54:00.001+01:00

Whilst, as I mentioned in my last post, my follicles are at a very similar stage to this time last IVF the scheduled has changed. I will not be getting my eggs collected on Monday, I have to wait for my Oestrogen levels to drop.

I've thought of an analogy to explain this, bear with me, I am either a genius or imbecile for this one.

Picture a bunch of balloons, like the ones in Up.

The Menopur is like the helium that fills them to the right size. These, naturally represent my follicles. I haven't taken any Menopur since Tuesday, and my follicles are nice and plump.

The Buserelin that I have been taking is like a big net over the ballons, tethering them down and preventing them going anywhere. I am continuing to take this.

My oestrogen is like the wind - at the moment it is blowing a gale. Not the kind of weather you want to release a bunch of balloons in.

If I am given the trigger (the equivalent of the cutting away the netting tethering my balloons down) whilst my oestrogen is high and rising there is a high risk of Ovarian Hyper Stimulation disorder, which is a bad thing.

So the Doctors are waiting before they adminster the trigger (that cuts away the buserlein net) and collect up all my eggs.

I am continuing to have my daily blood tests as they wait until my oestrogen levels become more stable.

However, they can't keep me like this for ever. Like balloons that get a bit old and wrinkly after they have been hanging around for too long (seriously, this is the analogy that keeps giving!) my egg quality will start to deteriorate the longer they are hanging around. If my oestrogen persists in rising there is a chance the whole IVF will be cancelled, but equally if there is a sudden and dramatic drop off in oestrogen it will also have to be cancelled. There is a fine balancing act going on at the moment to catch me just at the right time.

I guess it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, I am getting increasingly nervous about whether this is going to go ahead at all.

**Update**

The Doctor just called. The good news is my oestrogen levels are starting to drop, (down to 21,000, yesterday it was 29,000 and the preceding two days 26,000 and 25,000 respectively). I've got another scan and blood test tomorrow and we are now aiming for the trigger tomorrow night and egg collection on Wednesday.

Now for something a little bit different

2011-05-20T22:07:00.000+01:00

I was a bit disappointed when I was given my protocol for this IVF. It was exactly the same as last time, starting with the same drugs, taking the same dose.

Considering the last IVF hadn't worked the fact that everything was the same convinced me that the outcome wouldn't change either.

My body, however, has had different ideas. The way it has responded to the drugs has been completely different. Last time, like this, I started with two vials of Menopur a day. The daily blood test results caused them to tweak it a bit down to one and a half up to two again.

This time I started with the same dose but clearly over responded. Quite apart from muffin-top Tuesday I keep getting hauled in to the hospital for unscheduled scans (I've had one every day this week and, frankly, I don't know if I'll ever walk the same again). On Wednesday I was told to lay off the Menopur - and haven't restarted it.

Last time I was prescribed a growth hormone to help those follicles, this time they are doing fine by themselves.

Today's scan showed 20 follicles of between 12 and 20mm. Which, if they come through, will be a pretty impressive haul. Not dissimilar to last time but they feel a little less hot-housed.

I can't help but hope this is a good sign for the rest of the procedure.

Going Belly Up

2011-05-17T20:56:00.000+01:00

Last night I suddenly noticed just how swollen my stomach looked. Distended to the point of starvation victim (or five months pregnant).

It was a bit disconcerting not just because of its enormous size but it was hard - like a basketball (I'm guessing here, I only ever played netball but always thinking of the foreigners who read this blog I like to use references you Yanks understand!). I poked and prodded it a bit, and showed the husband.

He was more concerned than me - the Doctor cautioned last time that swelling might be a symptom of Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, this he remembered - so he made me promise to ask the nurse about it when I went in to hospital today. I did, and other than a nonchalant shrug and asking me whether I was drinking plenty of liquids (I am, I'm drinking water like it is gin and I'm my Grandmother), she wasn't bothered.

However, last night the husband was unaware that the nurse would be so unconcerned, so he googled it. How can I properly emphasise the momentosity (momentality? momentousness?) of this action?

I'm going to have to repeat it.

Twice.

My husband googled an IVF symptom.

My. HusBand. Goo. Gled. An. I. V. F. symp. tom.

In many ways I consider us an atypical couple in terms of our roles in the home. He does the majority of the cooking, buys the most shoes and spend more on clothes than me.

I have DIY responsibilities.

But there is one role that is mine, and mine alone. I am the one that googles the shit out of infertility - endlessly. He waits for me to explain things in words of no more than two syllables and listens to what the doctor tells him.

But last night the husband went on to use words I never thought I would hear him say, "I read
on this IVF message board..."

Once the smelling salts had bought me round, he continued:

"... that quite a few women say they got more bloated on their second IVF than their first."

IVF-ers out there - was this the case for you?

A little post-script:

At one point last night when I thought the husband was safely in the next room watching telly I was sitting on the bed minding my own business just idly resting my hand on my tummy. He came into the room, "You secretly quite like it don't you? You're pretending your pregnant" he accused.

Ladies, I am afraid I was, and I can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that if I do get pregnant I will totally turn into that woman.

I will be a stomach-stroker.

Adventures in Acupuncture

2011-05-16T21:58:00.000+01:00

Today I had a scan to check whether the follicles are doing anything, and I can confirm that they are indeed. It is remarkably similar to last time.

On the left there are four follicles, two are 13mm, one at 9mm and the fourth is 7mm. My right ovaries is only slightly lagging with three follicles, two at 11mm and one at 9mm.

Last time at this stage I had six follicles at around 10 or 11mm, and I ended up with 21 follicles in the end.

So the scan wasn't the exciting bit.

The exciting bit was the acupuncture session I had.

I have been going to the same acupuncturist for a while now, today he bought in the big guns, his tutor, for a second opinion.

I have been expecting a rather ephemeral woman, envisaging beads, floating garments and probably hennaed hair.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Nora was reassuringly practical and with a no nonsense air about her. She felt my pulses and prescribed a few different points to be needled.

The first set of pins were to bring my spirit into line with my mind and body, apparently they were out of kilter, She looked deep into my eye to check things were aligning and eventually she pronounced herself satisfied. I am intrigued to know what she saw in my eyes - I do have particularly large pupils so I imagine she had a clear view of my soul through their windows.

The humdinger though, was the procedure to ensure my core channels weren't blocked. If I hadn't read on May's blog about this particular procedure I would have fled from the room at this point.

I got a needling in the 'taint. For those who don't know, the 'taint is so called because it 'taint one thing and 'taint the other - it is the bit in between your legs that isn't a hole.

Going by the 'no pain, no gain' principle I reckon this must have done the trick because it certainly gave me a kick up the arse. That jab was completed with a corresponding needle in my chin. The next needle nestled between my butt cheeks at the end of my coccyx, and was topped off by one in my upper gum, under my top lip (not, you'll be relieve to hear, the same pin).

I left with all blockages clear and my pulses nice and rounded and assured that "there was nothing to stop this treatment working."

I don't know if it was the relief at leaving with my perineum, if not my dignity, intact but, as I walked out onto the street I felt more optimistic about this IVF than I have since I found out I needed it.

Just Call Me Spock

2011-05-12T19:04:00.000+01:00

It has been a real source of comfort this IVF to know that I am completely unaffected by all the hormones that are pumping round my body.

When, for example, at 11pm the other night I suddenly decided that I had to get to grips with a new room booking system at work I was secure in the knowledge that this was entirely rational behaviour.

I was just as secure at one minute past eleven when I was a blubbering wreck. Curled up in the foetal position and rocking slightly saying "I can't do this, I can't do my job, I can't, I can't, I can't". I was confident that I was analysing my situation in a clear, calculated way that was driven by facts not emotions or hormones.

By ten past eleven I was composing a letter of resignation.

And then the husband sent me to bed.

The following day, and a quick call to the room booking team later, suddenly things didn't seem quite so bleak. However, I remain confident that my melt down had absolutely nothing to do with the drugs. I mean this is normal behaviour, isn't it?

Likewise when, as I sent an email to IT thanking them for their help, my eyes filled with tears. As they would for anyone in my situation.

It feels good to be driven by reason rather than hormones.

Top and Tailed

2011-05-09T21:02:00.000+01:00

I've had a day of orifice inspections.

First thing today I went to the dentist. I confirmed, for the ninth time since starting trying to conceive, that I was not pregnant. (One very early blog post, here, was about that very same subject - then it was only the third appointment.)

You will be delighted to know that my pearly whites received a clean bill of health. See, you American readers, not all Brits have bad teeth. We are of course all related to the Queen, say "Gosh" a lot and are usually dressed in a sharp Harris tweed suit but the teeth thing? I spit on that national stereotype.

Post-dentist it was a matter of a brisk cycle ride across Zone One, when I was only sworn at by one cabbie, and again I found myself reclining on a medical couch and parting my lips for a thorough inspection. This time of the downstairs variety.

My womb lining is lovely and thin (a phrase that, after the kerfuffle I've had with my womb lining over the years, never fails to fill me with delight). And with just minimal prodding of my stomach to move my bowel (the low-fibre thing didn't work), I was declared cyst free.

Which means, my little amigos, the IVF is going ahead. I've scans booked for next week and the tentative date for egg collection is two weeks today.

Junk in my trunk

2011-05-08T22:50:00.000+01:00

So much of the preparation for IVF seems to be about virtuous self-denial. No booze, caffeine and not much in the way of fun. But if it is for the good of our ovaries then so be it.

However, I have found a chink in the armour. A loop hole that has allowed me to indulge my lack of will power and do something that all and sundry agree is 'bad'. My pre-scan information includes the following bit of advice:

"You will need to avoid high fibre foods for 3 days before the scan."

It then goes on to tell me to avoid fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grain and pulses. But allows me to eat a whole host of processed food.

This has been a problem in the past. I eat pretty healthily. Spinach is one of my favourite vegetables, I am a sucker for a bean stew, and eat wholegrain toast for breakfast. All of which keeps me regular and healthy (I haven't had a day off sick for over a year - I book time off for my Doctors appointments). In the past I have been berated by various scanners who can't find my ovaries because of the ... um ... gaseous obstructions. They press and pummel my abdomen and grumble about hiding ovaries and how much roughage I must ingest.

So today I had a McDonalds for lunch. The first for years (it wasn't as good as I remembered).

Nice to put a bit of junk in my trunk. (As in junk food in the trunk of my body, not a reference to my big ass as a result of the aforementioned.)

Just a tingle

2011-05-06T19:15:00.000+01:00

This time last IVF I had written four posts on the subject.

The post about starting IVF
The post about my first injection
The post when I took my last contraceptive pill
The post about starting my period

Honestly, the shit you guys have to put up with/ read.

Echoing my lack of enthusiasm for this IVF I've written nowt, 'til now. But, so far, I have:

Quietly updated my 'What the IVF' timeline
Finished the pill
Waxed myself to within an inch of my pubes (It still amuses me to rush into the sitting room, pull my trousers and pants down and shout "Hitler Impression!" at my poor, long-suffering husband - although I do manage to restrain myself when in company. See, I know how to keep the sexy in a relationship ...)
Restarted the injections - And I know what you are all itching to type, because everyone that I have told that I have started injecting myself has sniggered "Did you use the right needles?" Yes, I fucking did. Honestly! 59 injections last IVF. 59 - and just four were with the wrong sized needles. But what is it you all remember?
Started my period
Got booked in for the check-there-aren't-any-cysts scan on Monday.

Actually, now I'm starting to get just a tingle of excitement again ...

Cath Kidston On Desert Island Discs

2011-05-04T18:13:00.001+01:00

At the risk of this blog turning into a low rent version of Hello! with all the celebrity content of late, indulge me with one final splurge.

Cath Kidston is to the early Twenty-First Century, what Laura Ashley was the the end of the Twentieth. She is all about the homewares, selling everything from cowboy wallpaper (how I long for it to adorn an accent wall on my nursery, whilst at the same time teaching my children to respect indigenous inhabitants) to heart-breakingly sweet baby paraphernalia.

Last week Cath was on Desert Island Discs, you can listen again here if you are in the UK, however if you are not, what she said about not having children really moved me (to tears, goddamit) so I've gone to the trouble of transcribing that section of the interview (although it is more powerful if you can listen to it).

This is a woman who has done what Mariella and Grace champion. She has built up a fifty million pound international business, and I bet long haul flights hold no fear for her ...

The Interview

Cath:
My step-daughter's 18. I've been lucky enough to know her since she was a year old. So not having children, I am very, very fortunate to have a step child

Kirsty:
So you youself have never given birth although you've been very active in Jess' life. I have read, and I am not sure if it is right, that the reason you didn't have children was to do with being diagnosed with cancer. Were the two connected?

Cath:
It's true. I had breast cancer in my mid-30s and it turns out there is something like 8 or 9 women in my family that have had breast cancer. Huge amount. But people never use to talk about it in the old days. Actually a lot of them survived it, we don't have the aggressive gene that you read about and I was very lucky that it was found very early on, and so I didn't even have to have chemotherapy.

But I had a choice afterwards. We could have had children. At the time I was advised not to because of the risks, to have children quite soon afterwards was deemed to have quite a high risk.

And we didn't take that risk.

Then afterwards when we went to see a specialist, who I'd see for regular check ups, he said 'Oh what a pity you didn't have children, of course it reduces the risk.'

So it is very difficult and, you know, really hard decisions. But, I never imagined I wouldn't have children.

So it is very hard if I think about it. But I would never, I am sure, have had my business if I'd bought up children. In a way my business has been a bit like a replacement child. I've had to do that, to fill that gap. And it has served me in that way.

And if you'd said to me now, 'What would you have rather done?' I'd of course as a woman, I think, say I have rather had children. I don't know the experience of what I'm missing out on (luckily), and anybody I talk to who's had children say they wouldn't exchange it for anything.

I believe them.

But I think I've been able to fill that gap by running a business and having this sort of, in a sense, it is an extended family within the business

Kirsty:
Cath, I think that is almost breathtakingly honest of you, what you've just said. And I think it is very rare to hear a woman say that ... to say that, you know, that they have managed to forge ahead in order to replace the thing that they didn't have.

Cath:
Well, I think it is true. It is very primative, isn't it underneath? We think we are very sophisticated and off buying all these kind of fine things and doing this and that, but at the end of the day we're animals. I think.

Comments Round Up

2011-05-02T20:14:00.001+01:00

I love getting comments, but they are also a source of great guilt to me, (another thing I blame my Catholic up bringing on). I used to reply to every comment, but the way that Blogspot works, allowing me to write a response only at the end of everyone's comments rather than slipping in answers after pertinent observations (like Wordpress), makes it unwieldy.

That, plus the fact that many comments don't require a separate response. It starts to make personal responses tricky.

Also, who actually comes back to check a response to their comment? I know I very rarely do elsewhere.

But some comments deserve a response. Some are hilarious, touching, personal or ask a specific question. And it is these ones that I feel most guilty about.

So, for a trial period I am going to do a weekly round up of the best comments from the previous week.

Let's see how this works.

A Distinct Lack Of Willpower

Most of you seemed to advocate a 'light touch' approach to self-deprivation, which I very much like the sound of.

Adele, who is now 15 weeks pregnant (after IUI converted from IVF), reassured me with this nugget of wisdom:

I think carrying on with life might even be a very positive thing. My doctor expressly told me NOT to give up moderate drinking in the months before IVF. I think he thought that there was no point (i.e, he didn't see it having that much of an influence on the outcome). I also think he said it so that I could hold onto bits and pieces of my sanity.

This last cycle happened right after New Year's. I got on the wagon the day I started injecting. Seems like he was onto something.

Chon and TeamBabyCEO asked what the deal with the pineapple is. It essentially seems to be a bit of an unsubstantiated myth. Pineapple core contains bromelain and, if you google it, the idea that bromelain improves implantation chances is all over the net. But I haven't managed to find a single scientific study to back this up.

There But For the Grace ...

Well, Grace Dent didn't comment. But you lot did.

Kylie was given a theory which was new to me (I can't link to Kylie's blog as it is set to private):

My mother's theory (posited at a point when she was trying to tell me it was ok if no kids occur) was that at some point the biological clock just stops ringing its alarm bells, and the overwhelming desire for a baby reduces. Apparently this is the line my childless aunt has given to her.

Honestly I think if someone gave me this advice now I'd be inclined to hurt them in their baby making area, but maybe it is true. I'll let you know in 10 to 15 years ...

Picking Up The Baton

I love you all for extending your sympathy to the Wombmate. It is tough, and still is. I saw her yesterday and she is alright, but the failure is still raw. She too blogs, but rather than using blogging as a way to over-analyse her barrenness her blog is much sweeter.

Anyway, Anonymous' comment made me laugh (perhaps unintentionally):

Sorry, not sure if any could be as lucky as Kate. Who could manage in 28/29 years to bag herself Prince William (Oh Wills!!!), become everyone's little sweetheart, have such cute dimples/smile and that slender perfect shape. Nope, sorry to say she'll probably pop out twin boy heirs within a year. Because apparently Kate has the luck the of gods on her side, haha.

Sorry, I just don't see the attraction to Wills, and twin boy heirs would be a nightmare for succession!

A Rock And A Hard Place

There was one stand out comment on this post from Fragmented Hopes:

I was on a website where some bloke was saying he thought she was pregnant due to "a bulge in her dress." I can only think that he has some sort of eye problem, as there was no room for anything in that dress, corsetry and pregnancy do not mix, and if she had a bulge then what hope is there for the rest of us?!

Oh, and those of you saying Kate is naturally slim anyway. She is, but she still managed to shrink further between the engagement announcement and wedding.

A Rock and A Hard Place

2011-05-01T21:03:00.000+01:00

Despite erring on the side of the republicans I cannot resist a good wedding.

And Friday was a good wedding.

You may remember back when the engagement was announced, I was all over it, predicting a royal pregnancy as soon as the balcony kiss was performed. (For that is, apparently, how Princesses get pregnant.)

Every girl wants to look best on her wedding day. I chose to upholster myself in tight elastic, thigh to breast, underwear to give myself a Jessica Rabbit silhouette rather than forego cakes and salty snacks. Kate had clearly gone down the self-denial route to achieve her figure (though she must be kicking herself that she didn't encourage her sister to chub up a bit so that her limelight wasn't stolen).

But now poor Kate has well and truly dieted herself into a corner. The moment she puts on an ounce the media are going to be at fever pitch speculating a pregnancy, more than they currently do with Kate Moss, Jennifer Aniston and Katie Perry combined. Having shrunk herself to a tiny lollipop size she won't be able to returned to her normal weight without the nation becoming baby-belly obsessed.

However, if she maintains her scrawny pre-wedding physic I can't imaginer her ovulating let along producing the future monarch.

I believe this is known as being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Still if the hard place is in William's pants they will at least be heading in the right direction ...

Picking Up The Baton

2011-04-30T07:56:00.001+01:00

Today I start my injections for my second IVF, taking the baton of this IVF relay from my twin sister with barely a fumble.

She found out on Thursday her first IVF didn't work either. She, like me, didn't manage to have any embryos left to freeze.

This should have been the end of an epic journey for both of us. Instead, we feel as close to the start as ever.

I'm starting this IVF with none of the hope I had last time.

I'm gutted for my wombmate and for myself.

But the race is still on. The question is: will we both ever finish it?

And, if we do, will we beat Princess Catherine to the finish line?

There but for the Grace...

2011-04-27T20:35:00.000+01:00

The latest issue of Marie Claire magazine opens, as usual, with a column from Grace Dent. Her columns always make me laugh, she is funny, acerbic and irreverent. (All that I aspire to)

This month the column was about the joys of children. Specifically, the joys of children that you can return to their parents whilst you knock back another glass of chilled white.

All well and good.

But what particularly struck me was this sentence:

"After years spent trying for a baby, and many appointments involving bleak phrases such as ‘Nurse, bring the vice and the blue dye’ and ‘This might hurt for four days’, I decided that perhaps life would be fine without my own children."

She went on to highlight the benefits of her choice. Benefits that were virtually parroting Mariella's column (which, if you haven't read May's response, go and do so now) "I can live in a house with white interiors full of easily-smashable objects. I don’t need to take a break from the career I’ve worked on for two decades. I can go on long-haul holidays..."

Grace's justification did not annoy me like Mariella's because she is practicing what she preaches, unlike Frostrup with her two children who had the audacity to expound on the joys of childlessness, Grace really is living the ... er ... dream.

A couple of years ago I gave myself until November 2011 before was going to take my feet out of the stirrups and get off the baby-making horse. The reasons were relatively arbitrary - by that point we'd have tried for 5 years and I figured I would have had the best of both NHS and private treatment which would inform my decision about whether there was any point in continuing to beat a dead womb.

I figure at this rate I've got two more IVFs in me. The NHS funded one for which I start injecting myself on Saturday and then, if that fails, another private one (the joys of spending five years as an infertile is that you have plenty of time to save up a packet for a self-funded IVF, not so many of those long-haul flights though).

At the moment I am not feeling spectacularly positive about the next cycle - for no reason other than I've already failed once. And four and a half years, without even the sniff of a chemical pregnancy, tends to dampen ones spirit somewhat.

So back to my original point. How does one go from being filled up to your uterus with blue dye to perfect contentment in a life where children arrive for a few hours, use your DVD player as a toaster and go home chock-full of sugar to wreak havoc elsewhere.

I'm not having a go, I genuinely want to know.

I might just tweet her, and ask.

A Distinct Lack of Willpower

2011-04-25T21:51:00.000+01:00

Last IVF my behaviour was exemplary.

I gave up drinking a couple of months before jab day.

I stopped drinking regular tea a good year before hand (and never touched coffee anyway).

Acupuncture was a regular occurrence.

And I was going to the gym, if not as often as I'd have liked, then at least once a week.

This time. Not so much.

I had a cup of tea just after the last IVF failed. Now I mix and match between a 'proper cuppa' and the poor substitute of Rooibus. I reckon I'm currently on three cups of the hard stuff a day.

Last weekend when I said I'd stopped drinking booze until the next IVF, I really meant it. Really. In fact the day I made that decision I seem to remember repeating the phrase "Never again, never ever again" quite a few times. But that was followed by a shitty 12 hour work day (needed a beer), a work event where there was the lethal combination of free booze and disgruntled folk having a go (two glasses of rosé), and that rarest of occurrences a sunny, four-day, bank holiday weekend (sherry, white wine spritzer and some more beer).

The thing is, if I really thought any lifestyle changes would make a difference I would be back on that wagon faster than anyone who has read Charlie Sheen's twitter feed.

But, after being so 'good' last time and it coming to nought I just can't quite muster the same enthusiasm this time round.

But I'm trying. I've booked my first acupuncture appointment since the last IVF, for this Wednesday. And, come Saturday, when I begin injecting myself again I absolutely will stop the booze. (The instructions with the meds are clear, do not mix with alcohol, and I am a sucker for following instructions - thank goodness I've never been put in a war crimes situation).

But the rest of it: gym, caffeine, pineapple ... Meh.

I just can't see the point in martyring myself through another IVF.

It didn't make a difference last time, will carrying on with life really make the difference this time?

IT'S A CARD!

2011-04-23T18:26:00.000+01:00

I've said on here before that, whilst finding out a friend is pregnant can be incredibly tough, by the time they have the baby I have had six to eight months to get use to the idea and am delighted (and relieved) when I hear the baby has been delivered safely and the mother and child are doing well.

I have a few superstitions. I don't buy a congratulations card or gift until I've had that text (and it always is a text - usually at some ungodly hour).

But because I can't plan ahead I am then thrown into a panic.

I scurry round the shops looking for the perfect card. The card that says "Awesome! I hope you aren't too ripped, and fingers crossed you've got a sleeper."

Unfortunately this is where Hallmark and I differ. I have yet to find that card.

For the past two weeks I have wandered in and out of card shops and I reckon that I now have a pretty intimate knowledge of all the new baby cards on offer in central London. I've blogged about this before, here, however on this occasion because my friend has a daughter of reading age no sweary cards were allowed.

The thing that annoys me most about these cards is all they seem to do is state the obvious:

IT'S A GIRL!

You imagine the Mother opening it thinking "er .. yeah ... I know. I told you that in the text I sent you at 5.24am when she was born"

Or simply:

NEW BABY!!

Like the parents are going to open the card slap their foreheads and say "Oh shit, that's what the funny crying noise is."

And the imagery.

Like you'd give your Dad who is into Golf a card with a bunch of golf clubs on the front, or your sister who likes shoes a card in the shape of a stiletto the designers have clearly thought. "Hmmm ... what do babies like?"

But rather than getting cards with a pair of milk-filled boobs on the front, or a satisfyingly full nappy they go for babies booties, a rattle or pram.

It got me thinking there really should be a range of cards for IVF babies. These kind of slogans I'm thinking of:

Better late than never

Or:

Worth every penny ... but that's the college fund spent

Or simply:

A Miracle of Science

And for twins:

Two for the price of one!

Awesome! The spare came through too

Come on, you are a creative bunch, any other ideas?

(And if you are reading this tirade thinking the whole post is just an elaborate way to subtly apologise to my mate for taking two weeks to send a card, well, then, you'd be quite right.

Soz Wig, the card's in the post. )

2012

2011-04-20T18:21:00.001+01:00

With a mere year and a bit to go Britain is gripped with Olympic fever. And when I say gripped I mean it is being gently pawed at by the limp, sweaty hand of commercialism.

The deadline to register for tickets is in a week's time so we have had to look ahead to next year and try to work out what athletic endeavours are worthy of our time, attention and money.

The process for getting tickets is bizarre.

First the husband and I spent ages procrastinating. Trying to agree on what we wanted and when.

Then we panicked realising that we were running out of time, although whatever we do now we won't get to see the fruits of our labours until well into 2012.

To book tickets we have to choose what you want and actually put down some cash*. But there are no guarantees that, whatever we choose, we'll end up with any tickets.

We have to play the numbers game. If we just choose just one event we might get lucky and get the tickets. But far better to hedge our bets and choose several ~~embryos~~ events and hope to end up with at least one. Of course if we get everything that we bid for we'll end up with way more than we wanted, and it will be an awful lot more expensive than anticipated.

This process reminds me of something, I just can't quite put my finger on it.

*Although to be fair, this is only taken if you have been successful in getting the tickets.