You know that plan to wait until 10 weeks for a scan? Yeah well on the day I woke up and my boobs didn’t hurt like they did before, I caved. Despite finding forums full of women saying the exact same thing had happened to them and they’d had healthy babies, I became utterly convinced that I had had a silent, or missed, miscarriage, where the foetus stops growing but you don’t bleed. I spent the morning in tears, suddenly realising quite how much I wanted everything to be ok. Knowing B was right when he told me that getting upset when we didn’t know if there was anything to get upset about was counterproductive. Knowing he was also right when he said that if this doesn’t work out we’re not in any different place than we were in before, and yet still knowing that for all our backup plans, this was the plan I wanted to work.
Continue readingTag Archives: not pregnant
Silver linings…
If we’re looking for silver linings — which let’s be honest, we are, because otherwise it’s all one great big shitty grey cloud — phoning the clinic and telling them I was bleeding made them suggest I came in for an earlier blood test. So rather than spending the weekend knowing in my heart of hearts I wasn’t pregnant but having to wait for a blood test on the Monday to confirm it, I had the blood test on the Friday, Continue reading
The result….
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
All the lives I could have led…
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
What if I’ve fucked everything up…?
So last time I wrote about the fact that I was taking Microgynon to help get rid of the cysts on my ovaries, and the idea was that I’d stop taking it, have a period/withdrawal bleed a few days after that, go for a scan and start another cycle.
But I haven’t. I stopped taking Microgynon nearly a week ago having taken it for about 5 weeks back to back and although Continue reading
The little things that trip you up…
When you read about people doing IVF (and let’s be honest, you do, don’t you? Because you’re here, and I know I’m awesome and all that but I’m guessing this isn’t the ONLY IVF blog you’re reading) or see women having IVF depicted in the media — in books, films or TV programmes, there are these classic tropes aren’t there?
You know what I mean. The woman who grits her teeth when a friend announces a pregnancy. Or wells with tears when Continue reading
The Plan…
I rather feel like I’ve bigged up this Plan so I hope you’re not disappointed by it. Basically, The Plan came about when I went to see my consultant to have the post-unsuccessful IVF debrief — or the “what the fuck went wrong chat” as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it called on other blogs.
Anyway, I sat in front of my consultant and said, “So, we had one grade 1 embryo and it failed to implant. And I understand that there may be many reasons for this, but what can we do minimise the likelihood of these being reasons why the same thing doesn’t happen again?”
And that was when she told me about Continue reading
What are you crying about…?
Approximately four hours after I found out I wasn’t pregnant I went out for dinner with a few friends who were vaguely aware that I was planning to try to get pregnant but who didn’t know the specifics. So I sat down and there were all the “how are yous?” and I was all “fine” and they were all “just fine?” and then I was all floods of tears and snotty nose and “actually no not really I found out four hours ago that my first round of IVF didn’t work and of course it didn’t because when does it ever and obviously I’ll try again but it’s still a bit disappointing” — all before I’d even taken my coat off.
And they were awesome and didn’t tell me, like some people have, Continue reading
So it turns out I was right…
… in that I’m not pregnant.
It shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise – who gets pregnant on their first round of IVF with one embryo? Well obviously some people do but not me. And while the logical part of my brain had committed to at least three, maybe more, cycles, there was a sliver of me thinking, “It could be me, I could be one of the lucky ones…”
And now, I’m going to sound like a complete dick, but I’m going to say it anyway. I don’t really know how to fail at stuff. I’ve passed every exam Continue reading
You just know…
That’s what they say, isn’t it? About so many things. About whether you should be marrying that man. About whether that’s the right dress to get married in. About whether you’re pregnant.
When people have said that in the past about marriage, I’ve always (usually silently) disputed that. Always thought I never just know whether I’m putting the right clothes on in the morning, let alone whether I should be spending the rest of my life with one specific person. I don’t think you just know, I think you just hope. I think you Continue reading
Egged On 