Shattered

My blood test is scheduled for Monday but I caved today and did a home pregnancy test.  It was negative.  Although I suspected it, it's still heartbreaking.  What's wrong with me?

Expectations

So I had my embryo transfer yesterday. There's good news and bad. Not all of the seven embryos made it to day five. That's the bad news. The good news is two of them did. I had both transferred. They were at early blastocyst stage and weren't brilliant, but good quality. I spent all day (well almost all day) yesterday and today lying on the couch hoping those two embryos were getting comfortable and implanting themselves in my lining. I’ve also had two acupuncture sessions to help to guide them along. Now all I can do is wait.


I’m currently having pregnyl injections for luteal phase support. This is the only difference between the drugs I’ve had in previous cycles and this one. Normally I’ve used a progesterone gel which is applied directly into the cervix and has awful side effects. I asked my doctor to prescribe something else this time and I’ve ended up with the pregnyl. The problem with pregnyl is that it makes your body feel like its pregnant so you experience pregnancy symptoms even on the day of transfer. Luckily I’m well aware of this so I’m not going to allow myself to get too excited by things like sore breasts and nausea (why would any sane person get excited by those things?!). I’m not sure if it’s related to the pregnyl but I’ve also had severe pain in my lower abdomen on my right side. This can be normal because the pregnyl makes the ovaries work to produce progesterone as opposed to administering the progesterone gel. But I don’t have an ovary on my right side. I rang my clinic and they couldn’t explain it but said to come in if it gets unbearable. It’s subsided now so I’m not too worried but it kept me up for most of the night.


I guess there’s not much else to report. I now have to endure the next 12 days waiting to have the blood test. The worst part of this wait is that I normally analyse every little thing that my body is doing and then consult Dr Google to see if it’s related to pregnancy. This time I’m going to avoid that and blame every little twinge and symptom on the pregnyl. Although it’s very possible that this could be the cycle that works, I don’t want to allow myself to be excited. Quite the opposite. I’m trying to convince myself to expect the worst. This is my third embryo transfer; two of my cycles yielded no eggs and in the two other cycles that I made it to transfer, my period arrived before my test day. No test required. The pain was devastating. I had expectations then. I like to think that this time I don’t have any expectations so the pain of failure won’t be so bad. I suspect I’m kidding myself.

Lucky 7

Well last Tuesday, having returned from a wonderful weekend interstate with my family, I had my first scan and blood test of this, my fifth IVF cycle. We (my fertility nurse, my husband and I) were all shocked and excited to see my ovary packed to the brim with follicles. We could see five, possibly six follicles. There was a cyst in my ovary prior to starting the cycle so we thought the sixth follicle was more than likely that cyst. Anyway, I got my blood results back later in the day and my oestrogen level was 5300! This is huge considering my level on my previous cycle only got up to 612. So we were all expecting a good amount of eggs at the retrieval.


So Friday comes and I check into my local hospital to have the retrieval. I can’t tell you how the actual retrieval went because I was asleep but when I woke up, I was absolutely amazed to see the number seven written on my hand! My doctor was over within seconds of me waking to confirm that the number was in fact seven; she thought I might think it was a one. So my husband gets taken away to deliver his goods and then we return home to await the call on Saturday letting us know about fertilisation rates.


At 8am Saturday morning, I got the call. I could tell it was good news because my nurse was so full of excitement that she couldn’t get her “hello” out quick enough. She told me that all seven of our eggs had fertilised successfully. It’s quite rare for 100% fertilisation rate so my husband now thinks he has super sperm. He’s joking about having to wear reinforced underwear to prevent accidental impregnation of women he might get too close to in the street.


So today is day three post egg pick-up. Or 3dpo in IVF speak; meaning 3 days post ovulation. And today, four of our embryos are “exactly where they should be with minimal fragmentation” and three are “a bit iffy”. I asked what “iffy” means and apparently it means that they’re still dividing but at a slower rate than expected. I have however, been assured that they can sometimes catch up and even overtake so I shouldn’t worry. I’m also told the fragmentation on the other four is not to be worried about because fragmentation is normal and minimal is great. So at the moment, although I’ve been reassured that all is well, I can’t help but worry. I was on such a high all weekend because of the great egg-haul on Friday. Now I’m feeling hopeful but a bit scared.


Embryo transfer (put it back into the uterus) often occurs on day three but if the embryos can hold out until day five, the pregnancy success rates are higher. This gives the embryo cells a chance to divide to the blastocyst stage. I’m booked in for a day five transfer. So it’ll be this Wednesday.  Wish me luck.

Me, Me, Me

I started this blog so that I have somewhere to vent I suppose.  I'm not writing to anyone in particular and I don't intend to tell anyone about this blog.  Except for my wonderful husband of course because I don't like to hide stuff from him and he's going through this too so it's probably only fair he gets to see (or read) how I'm dealing with it.  I won't tell my friends or family because I'll probably say things about them here that I don't really want them to see.  Nothing nasty, mostly just ramblings about the irrational thoughts that I have.  And I seem to be having an awful lot of irrational thoughts lately.  I've noticed that I've become quite self interested.  I'm always thinking about what's going on with me. 
I like to think that I'm typically not a selfish person but I've noticed that over the last couple of weeks - since heading into cycle #5 - my thoughts all seem to be about me.  For example, my sister-in-law (who is one of my oldest serving best friends who just happened to fall in love with and marry my brother) has just come through her very first ivf cycle and her first ever two-week-wait with a positive result.  Of course I'm very happy for her and my brother.  It's excellent for them.  And believe me, they deserve something good to happen for them after the shit they've had to endure for the last 8 years.  But I find myself continually thinking about me.  I'm consumed now by thoughts of why not me, what am I doing wrong, is this karma for something I've done in a past life, what can I do differently next time to make this work, it's so unfair, when is it my turn???????  Worst of all, I can't help the stupid irrational feeling that my Dad is going to love me less now because my sister-in-law is giving him his first grandchild and I've failed him.  He's been asking me to give him grandkids for years.  So strong are these feelings that I've been avoiding his calls.  And he's probably only ringing to find out how my scan and bloods went yesterday.  My irrationality is telling me that all he's going to talk about is how happy he is about my sister-in-law's pregnancy and forget to ask about me.  Stupid really because I know how much my Dad loves me and I know that he'd be hanging to find out about my results.  I find it very bizarre that I know that I'm being irrational and yet I can't seem to get past these feelings.  If there are any psycologists out there reading this - please explain???
I'm feeling suprisingly stable right now but throughout the entire day (yes, today's been a bad one) I've been on the verge of tears.  I'm normally quite strong emotionally so I like to think that these sudden leaps between crying and laughing are all entirely due to the ivf drugs.  But I just don't know anymore.  I've been doing this for what feels like forever and I'm starting to forget what the real me is like.

Skip to another subject that's not depressing... I bought a gorgeous new dress today!!  My cousin is getting married next weekend so I thought a new dress was in order.  Here's a picture of it I found on the web. 

I bought shoes the other week and hoped that I'd be able to find a dress to go with them and I've done it.  I am aware that it's normally easier to buy the dress first and then find shoes to match but I saw the shoes and couldn't bare to leave the shop without them.  And they were on special.  Need I say more?

Palm Reading

This afternoon I thought I'd talk a bit about my experience with IVF so far.  I don't plan on my blog being in any particular order.  I'm not going to write my infertility story from the start to now.  Instead I plan to just write snippets of information here and there about the goings on in my world of infertility and what I've been through so far.  Hopefully these snippets will tell my story even if it is in some mixed-up, all-over-the-place order.
I've named this post Palm Reading for a reason.  Don't worry, I'm not at the point yet where I'm so desperate to hear some good news that I consult with some head-scarf wearing hippie grandmother who peers at my palms and tells me she sees me having three beautiful children.  I'm talking about the type of palm reading you do when you wake up from the anaesthetic they give you during the egg retrieval.  For those non infertility speaking people out there, the egg retrieval (or egg pick-up) is a procedure performed under anaesthetic whereby the doctors insert some large needleish type object into the follicles in your ovaries (or ovary in my case) to suck out the eggs which have been developing.  They do this transvaginally while you sleep blissfully unaware of the crowd of people watching your ovaries on an ultrasound screen like its the latest blockbuster.  Anyway, back to the palm reading.  After they've retrieved all of the eggs in there, they write the number they've retrieved on your palm so that when you wake up, you can find out instantly how many eggs they've retrieved.
In my four IVF cycles to date I've woken up to the following palm readings: 1, blank, blank, 3.  In that order.  Blank means zero.  I'm what they call a poor responder.  My friend Endometriosis has done this to me.  She filled my right ovary with cysts to the point that the doctor had to remove the whole ovary when I was just 23!  She also started moving in on my left ovary but luckily my lovely doctor fights her off with drugs and surgery every time she tries to set up camp.  Unfortunately during these counter attacks by my doctor, some innocent victims lose their lives.  My little eggs.  I am now left with a number of eggs similar to that of a 55 year old woman.  I'm 30.
I'm still optimistic though.  I still have my days (like yesterday) when I think there is no hope and I'm all bitter and negative.  Today is a better day though.  I had a blood test and scan this morning.  I'm good to start the stimulating drugs for my 5th cycle tomorrow.  I have 6 very small follicles in my remaining ovary just waiting to be stimulated.  Here's hoping my next palm reading is 6.

An Introduction

Hi, I'm Ivy F Inmate but you can call me Ivy.  I've decided to start this blog so I can share with the world the story of my life as it is today.  A lot of people, particularly my doctors and nurses, like to tell me that I'm on a journey.  Doesn't that sound nice.  The actual definition of journey from the free online dictionary (which we all know is now more reliable than the Oxford Dictionary) is:

a. The act of traveling from one place to another; a trip.
b. A distance to be traveled or the time required for a trip: a 2,000-mile journey to the Pacific; the three-day journey home.

This in no way describes what I am on.  I would love to be going on a 2,000 mile journey to the Pacific.  Partly because that would mean that I'm somewhere far from home (as the pacific is much closer than 2,000 miles from me) and partly because it constructs images (for me anyway) of being a passanger on some luxury cruiseliner sipping martini's by the pool.  Anyway like I said, that definition does not describe the "journey" I am on.

I am on the "infertility journey".  That doesn't sound nearly as nice does it.  That's why I've named my blog Infertility Conviction.  That's what it's more like.  A prison sentence.  It's not about sunning yourself on the deck of a luxury cruiseliner.  It's about stabbing yourself daily with syringes.  It's about blood tests every three days.  It's about internal ultrasounds.  It's about crazy hormonal mood swings.  It's about crying in a heap on the floor when Aunt Flow arrives the day before the test.  It's about not wanting to see your best friends becuase they're pregnant and it hurts too much.  It's not a journey.

So that's me.  An IVF Inmate.  Welcome to my blog.