Back sometime before the last Ice Age, we’d made the decision that we were going to try to conceive with donor eggs. OK, maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but it was pre-pandemic, pre-accidental-natural-unexpected pregnancy, pre-totally-predictable miscarriage, and so as a result it does feel like aeons ago. Even if it was only just over a year ago. Because since then we found (or rather the agency found us) the Mary Poppins donor who wasn’t, and the Mary Poppins replacement that didn’t fill us with joy. And then two days after I’d had it confirmed that I’d definitely miscarried, the agency got in touch with a suggestion of someone else.
Continue readingTag Archives: fertility
I ran away…
I ran away in January. To a place that I didn’t associate with trying and not succeeding. Somewhere I drank wine and stopped worrying about whether I was eating enough vegetables. (I wasn’t.) Somewhere I stopped caring if food was packaged in plastic (it was), or whether the tomatoes were organic (they weren’t). Somewhere my life wasn’t measured out in blood tests and supplements and scans and injections. Where I rudely
Continue readingOh hello…
If you’re here because you read my piece in the Daily Mail today, hello! Thanks for coming to visit. If you’re here because you’ve been following and got notified that there was a new post, welcome back.
I hope you’ve all been having lovely summers. I have. I’ve mostly been living my life as if Continue reading
The white splodge…
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
The sixth cycle…
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
Last minute fucking about…
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
More fodder for the screenplay…
Part of the reason I started this blog was to record all the blackly comedic moments that this whole process involves. I mean given that I wasn’t telling most people I knew about what I was doing, I rather wanted to share the lolz with someone, even if just with random strangers on the internet. Otherwise all my Easter Egg jokes would’ve been wasted. Perhaps for the best.
Anyway, the emotional rollercoaster rumbles on and Continue reading
The result…
So I got the results of the ERA test… and they were normal. Basically my endometrium was receptive on the standard day. I’m not one of the 25 per cent of women who should have their embryo transferred before or after the standard day. And I don’t need to pay £1200 to have another test to narrow down the window of receptivity. Which should make me feel delighted. But weirdly left me feeling rather flat.
I guess I was hoping that this was going to give me The Answer. This was going to tell me Continue reading
A very expensive scratch…?
After the biopsy, I was talking to the nurse and I asked whether endometrial scratching was similar. (For those that don’t know — and really, why should you? I certainly didn’t until I embarked on this “journey” — said ironically, OBVS. Also said ironically — an endometrial scratch is a procedure that appears to have some validity in improving IVF outcomes. It is, as it sounds, deliberately scratching the endometrium, or womb lining, which seems to cause an inflammatory response that leads the body to produce various chemicals which may make the endometrium more receptive to an embryo.
Although confusingly it doesn’t help everyone, in fact Continue reading
A quick tot up…
I started writing about the biopsy that’s part of The Plan but then someone asked recently if I was going to give costs for all this and so I thought I’d do a quick one on that. If I’m honest, this was a post I’d been intending to do, but I think I’d rather put it off, not just because I didn’t want to horrify myself, but also because in my heart of hearts I wanted to do it at a point that seemed to mark a final point, like, I dunno, when I had a baby in my hands (mine rather than just anyone else’s) but it probably makes sense to give you an idea of what I’ve spent so far. Continue reading
Egged On 