I know we all try to manage our own expectations but I think it was the point when I was writing about embryo grading that I convinced myself that I wasn’t pregnant. It just seemed so hugely, utterly improbable when I was writing it down in black and white. And I know the odds mean nothing if you’re the one it happens to but still…
I’d already decided that I was going to do a home pregnancy test before the blood test. Continue reading
I’m sure it can’t just be me that thinks like this, but I do so often think about the lives I could have been living if luck or decisions had gone another way. If the morning after pill hadn’t worked when I was 19… If I’d gone on to marry S… If I’d got pregnant with my first IVF cycle – all these parallel lives that I’m not living, but so nearly did.
And I’ve never had such an acute sense of that as I do right now. Because (and I said this wasn’t going to be a dating blog, and it’s not, but this is kind of relevant to all the pregnancy stuff) I’ve met someone. Continue reading
Or, as anyone who’s ever had to wait to find out if they’re pregnant will know: the best way to basically stop time. Two weeks? TWO WEEKS? It’s bloody interminable. And they say the best thing to do is distract yourself. So I did. I went skiing.
I know, I know, but chill the fuck out. I didn’t do anything hardcore, but this was a trip that had been in the diary for months. It was a group trip for a friend’s birthday that was going to include a load of kids and non-skiers and so I knew I could pootle around. I looked into all the advice — eat as you would if you were pregnant, avoid saunas, hot tubs, lifting heavy stuff, and anything that’s going to count as hardcore exercise. Continue reading
I was so much more emotional about the embryo transfer than I expected to be. I guess it’s because it’s a whole year since the last one and when I think what I’ve been through in that year, and how hopeful and optimistic and excited I was this time last year, it’s hard not to feel that even getting to this point is a culmination of so many things, and yet that there is so much further to go.
I didn’t know the consultant or the nurse, but they were both so lovely, as I lay on a bed with my legs in stirrups and tears pouring down my face. Continue reading
So Saturday eventually rolled around and with it another egg retrieval procedure. My sixth. I’m almost blasé about them now. I kind of love the sedation (although after the last time I made sure to let the anaesthetist know that it would be just good manners to make sure I stayed sedated until after all digits and instruments had been removed from every orifice.)
It was a natural cycle and, despite my late night Cetrotide, it didn’t seem to interfere with the Ovitrelle, because they managed to retrieve one good-looking egg, which of course is cause for celebration because one is better than none. But in this game nothing is really cause for celebration. Or everything is. Because there are so many hurdles. And you have to clear all of them, in succession, to get to where you want to be. Continue reading
So I came back from my holiday, went for a scan, and then later in the week there was a whole load of last minute fucking about that made me wonder — yet again — how on earth anyone who doesn’t work for themselves does this.
The call at about 4pm on a Thursday went something like this:
“So your bloods suggest that you might be near ovulating so can you do an ovulation test and then call us back with the results? If you are, you’ll have to have the egg collection tomorrow and we’ll have to work out what time you do the Ovitrelle tonight, and if you’re not then it will be on Saturday and if it’s on Saturday you’ll have to stay up until quarter to 1 tonight and do the Ovitrelle injection, but you also need to do the Cetrotide injection when you get home tonight, oh and start taking the Indomethacin straight away but don’t take it on an empty stomach. Anyway, just call us back when you’ve done the ovulation test.” Continue reading
I was going to do the next cycle right after Christmas, buoyed by the success of the frozen blastocyst. But then… but then… but then I talked to a consultant, and we talked about whether — if I got another blastocyst from this cycle — to do a fresh transfer or to freeze. And there seemed no real reason NOT to do a fresh transfer. But then… but then the timings meant I’d be going straight from a fresh transfer into a two week skiing holiday, the first few days of which would have been with people who like to ski hard, fast and would have found it more than a little odd if I suddenly didn’t. Continue reading
Ooops, just found this in my drafts, it’s only about 6 weeks too late – sorry….
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Sorry John Lennon for poorly appropriating your lyrics, but it kind of seemed appropriate, another year over, a new one just begun and all that. And this time last year, I was learning more than I ever imagined there was to know about sperm banks. As far as I was concerned, I’d made the decision that I was going to defrost those eggs and try to get pregnant on my own.
I saw 2017 as the year that was going to resolve a question that had been preoccupying my subconscious (and my conscious for that matter) for a long period of time: The Kid Thing. I even wrote… Continue reading
Egged On 