Happy hormones

Ok, now I’m nervous.  After me saying earlier I felt disconnected with this upcoming cycle, I now feel petrified and completely involved.  My clinic just phoned to say my hormone levels are fine so I am now officially amongst ivf#3.  My FSH was 11 which isn’t that great but as long as it’s under 15 it’s not a deal breaker. 

So now there’s no escaping it, this flare cycle is underway…. in about 2 weeks time (all going well) I will be having egg pick up! 

And the reason I’m so nervous is silly really.  All I can think of is that I don’t want to feel the heartache of a BFN again.  I don’t want to be someone who has three failed IVFs under their belt.  I know there are woman out there who have suffered higher numbers than me and so they may be reading this thinking three is nothing, but to me it’s everything.  I feel completely powerless.

All I can do is keep reminding myself that we are trying a different protocol and drugs this time round so with that comes a new glimmer of hope.  But then, Dr Egghunt said the same thing last time when he put me on a new protocol, so I’m not so naive anymore.  Hell, I know it’s all just an experiment really, no one really knows how this is going to turn out.  If we all had the answers then we’d all get pregnant on our first ivf and we wouldn’t have to waste emotions and money trying to find the perfect blend.

Right, with that negativity out of my system I’m going to go right now and blast some music very loud to get me ready for this ivf party of mine!  GonalF cocktail coming up!

PS – Is there anyone else out there who is about to start (or just started) an ivf cycle?    Its always nice to have a cycle buddy so please spread the word.

She’s here

Yes!  My mysterious AF has arrived, and even earlier than my clinic predicted.  So I just have one little hoop to jump through before we can officially start IVF#3…. a day 2 blood test tomorrow.  Hopefully all my obnoxiously misbehaved hormones will tow the line and be on their best behaviour tomorrow.   My FSH is the one that I’m a bit worried about as it’s always been borderline and because my cycle has been so mucked up recently I am holding my breath that it isn’t because of my rebel FSH hormone levels.

How natural is it for a IF’er to be looking forward to the next ‘problem’ rather than just going into a situation with blissful ignorance? Any suggestions on where on earth I can find my blissful ignorance?  I haven’t seen it for far too long and am scared it’s been smothered to death by bitter negativity.

On other news, I had my first acupuncture appointment on Tuesday.  I had such a terrible morning leading up to the appointment that I was a complete mess by the time I arrived (a day that starts with an argument is NOT a good one).  She took my pulse and said “Whoa, you are running on adrenaline only aren’t you?”  And I closed my eyes and forced the tears not to start again (had shed far to many of them for one day).  We spoke about my childhood problems with my kidneys and if you’ve had acupuncture will know that in traditional chinese medicine the kidneys are the main connection to fertility.  So she immediately thought there were a number of things she could try to get my kidneys and my uterus more friendly with each other.    She also asked me if there was a particular time of the day that I lack energy and when I replied with “around 5-7pm” she smiled knowingly.  This freaked me out a little and then she pulled out a diagram which shows that in traditional chinese medicine they believe that energy travels through the body at different times of the day and each organ has a specific time that it is most active.  Heres the spooky bit.. the time that the kidneys are most active is between 5-7pm, which in my acupuncturist’s mind, explains why this is a time of the day I always feel tired and indicates that my kidneys are a bit sluggish.  I won’t deny she had me intrigued but my knee jerk reaction is to be cautious of anything vaguely ’airy fairy’.  But the airy-fairy stuff aside, I loved the acupuncture session.  After the stressful day I had I found it difficult to relax to begin with, but by the end of the session I was in another world and really felt that ’something’ had happened.  Whatever it was, I walked out a better person and hopefully that is because my kidneys & ovaries are now good friends who will welcome the ivf drugs with open arms.  I really like the acupuncturist I chose, she has a lot of experience working with infertility & pregnancy and I didn’t have to explain the ins & outs of  ivf to her which was what I was dreading.  I hate having to go back to basics with explaining the ivf process to people, it’s just a big reminder that I know too much about a subject i’d rather be unaware of, so to have someone who already knew that stuff made me feel a bit more normal. 

So hopefully i’ll be starting my injections tomorrow (please let my FSH be normal) and then it will be full steam ahead towards getting pregnant before Christmas.

 

A letter to my ovaries

Dear Ovaries

Please WAKE UP.  Have you not slept enough over the past 31 years?  Why are you being so lazy?  Please let my Aunt Flo come to visit as it seems like such a long time since I’ve seen her.  I know you probably think you are doing me a favour since I am normally cursing her appearance, but this time I’d actually be happy to see her. 

My latest blood test showed that AF’s visit should come in about 5-7 days so please ovaries, don’t delay her any longer as I wanna start injecting!  Remember how much fun you had previously when I started my shots?  Remember how big and swollen you got and how hard you worked to produce a good result?  Remember how you got to see yourself on the big screen when I went for my scans?  Well soon you’ll have to do that all over again, except this time please try even harder to create some really really good eggs, I know you tried your hardest the past 2 times, but the ones you produced weren’t quite up to scratch.  Don’t be too hard on yourself though, we all make mistakes and what is important is that you learn from those mistakes and make us a few perfect eggs this time.  The sooner you produce a golden egg then the sooner we can all get out of this IVF mess.

I really appreciate your co-operation.  Please feel free to respond to this letter with some kick ass period cramps!

xx

From Me.

Ovulation bleeding? … really?

I want to write an update on what is happening with my stupid menstrual cycle but I am mindful that I don’t want to be one of those blogs that describes in intricate detail the daily changes of my cervical mucus.  So i’ll try to keep it brief:

My blood test came back with a big fat question mark on it.  The clinic said my hormones are doing funny things.  I don’t know why i’m surprised as it’s not like my hormones have a track history of behaving themselves.  Nurse Big heart said it looked like I was surging so *maybe* it was ovulation bleeding?  Never even heard of that one.  I’ve heard and experienced every other single type of bleeding known to the IF woman but not this one.  I am having another blood test done on Thursday and hopefully it will show a change that may answer some questions.  Although in my experience, the more tests you get the more questions(rather than answers) arise.

And I have been hiding the teeny tiny feeling inside me that *maybe* my spotting was implantation bleeding.  I certainly haven’t said those words out loud and am disappointed that i’d let myself even slightly believe such a thing.  What the hell makes me think i’d get pregnant naturally now, after all these years?  It seems that no matter what crazy thing my hormones decide to do, and no matter how cryptic my menstrual cycle becomes, I can ALWAYS find a way to discover a sign that means I could be pregnant.  Nevermind the 690 signs that say the opposite thing!

I am getting my white knickers out and will be on constant knicker-watch for the arrival of AF.  I just want to get this IVF#3 party started already.

To those of you who are reading this who have had some tough times or crappy news lately, I’m really sorry for you.  I hope me moaning about such a trivial thing as a late period is not taken as diminishing your problems.  I think long and hard before posting because I don’t want to be a self-absorbed blogger, but it’s hard because infertility and self obsession almost go hand in hand.  You cannot be an infertile for so many years and not pick up some self obsessed traits.

P is for “Period” and “Progesterone”

Firstly here is a big hug for Simple.  Please give her one of your hugs too.  IF is too cruel the way it mocks us with the joy of a BFP, and then takes it away just as we are beginning to forgive our bodies for torturing us for this long.  I’m so sorry Simple, it really sucks.

I picked up my friends Burserelin & GonalF from my nurse yesterday (I’ll call her Nurse Big Heart from now on because she is the nicest person in the universe).  So now they sit in my fridge awaiting their time to make my ovaries shine.  Every time I opened the fridge this morning they were staring at me and it was like they were saying to me “hurry up and use us” and I had to tell them to be patient as we have to wait for my period to make an appearance.  So I’ve now put them in a plastic bag inside a big plastic container so they are hidden from my view and hopefully I won’t hear them talking to me every time I open the fridge now.

Needles…check

Drugs………..check

period……….nope, I don’t think so

I feel a little pressured with this upcoming IVF and it’s not because of the IVF cycle itself, it’s because I am bridesmaid for a friends wedding the week before Christmas so I have been busy trying to calculate the worse case scenario and hoping that all our IVF stuff will be out-of-the-way before The Wedding.  Of course I can sit here and plan my brains away but none of this helps as I have to wait for my period to arrive before I can get on with things anyway.  Normally I have longish cycles … about 37 days but apart from the length they are pretty regular.  So I was expecting my period in a week or so.  But a few days before I went to see Nurse Big Heart I started spotting,  just brown annoying spots but this has never happened to me before and I feel its way to early to be my period.  So what the truck is up with my cycle?  The bleeding has stopped now but … was that my period?  Did it come and go without me noticing?  Nurse Big Heart suggested I do a blood test straight away to check what my hormones are doing and that will give me an idea of whats going on and when to expect my real period.  I jumped at the chance and at the same time I partly felt like a crack addict who is addicted to blood tests instead of cocaine (by the way; blood tests are free in NZ so there is no financial consideration in this decision).  It seems like so long ago that I was told what my E2, P4, FSH, LH levels were doing that I’m getting withdrawals.  Anyway I am still waiting on the result and hoping it was just some random weird bleeding that is NOT going to stuff up my plans to have this IVF cycle done and dusted before Christmas.

PS – Can someone tell me the reason why some clinics use Progesterone pessaries and some use the Progesterone shots?  Whats the difference really?  I’ve only ever used the pessaries.

IVF #3 here we come!

So its official, we are going ahead with IVF#3 as soon as my faithful Aunt Flo turns up.  She’s bound to show up in a couple of weeks and then I will  be back to acting like a pin cushion all over again.  I feel strange about this cycle, it’s not excitement as that went out the window long ago, it’s more a realisation that this is just something we have to do.   We don’t have a choice, it’s just a fact of our lives that this is what we have to do in order to have a chance at getting pregnant properly.  A friend told me I’m brave to go through this a third time, but really was there any other choice?  How is doing IVF brave, isn’t it just sensible?  There is no choice.  The word choice infers that you have other options to choose from, but really we don’t.  I know I spoke about the miracle of natural pregnancy on this earlier post, but I’m not naive enough to think  that miracle would happen for us, it was just a little day-dream that ended up blurting itself out in a blog post.

Dr Egghunt has considered the anti miscarriage drugs that I asked him about and he’s skeptical that they are an option for me.  Everything came back clear on my recurrent m/c blood tests and so he can’t see a valid reason to put me on unneccessary drugs.  But obviously I’ve raised some questions with him as he wants to speak to me further about it when I see him for my scan once we start treatment.  He said they may decide to give me extra drugs as a preventative measure but if this was the case I wouldnt start any of them till after embryo transfer anyway, so we still have heaps of time.   I know it may seem illogical to Dr Egghunt but I just want to scoff any drug possible with this IVF as, honestly… how many more experimental tries does he think we have?  But like he said… “you wouldn’t cut your arm off if your foot was broken” so it’s important to focus on the actual problem, not make new ones.  Blah.  Why is he so sensible.

I’m seeing my favourite nurse on Friday to collect my first lot of drugs.  Things will definitely seem more real once I have my bag of needles by my side again.  

Awards Ceremony

   

21reena and Katery nominated me for the Spreader of Love blog award.  And Katery also nominated me for the Over the Top blog award  Wow! thanks! 

Thanks to 21Reena who, like me, is a newbie to blogging and she’s made my time here fab with her fresh & faithful comments.  She’s currently in the dreaded 2ww so pop over and say hi and wish her luck.  We all know how looonnnnggg those 2 weeks can feel.  If I was to compare 21Reena to anyone in my family i’d say she’s like a favourite niece as I just want to take her under my wing and look after her.  She’s newer than me to this TTC game and I always feel a bit protective of newbies as I just hope they don’t have to be on this road as long as me.  Hope she finds her sunshine real soon.

Thanks also to Katery who I’ve admired since day 1.  She always seems to have the right answers and knows just what to say.  And to use the same comparison as above, I think of her as a cool blog aunty (which is crazy because i’m probably older than her but this is not an age comparison) as she’s further down the journey than me and she’s so close to getting her baby that it makes me sooo excited!  And believe me, I don’t get excited about other people’s pregnancies often!  I can’t wait to hear the rest of her pregnancy journey and to ‘meet’ her little baby in a few months time.

Of course these awards have rules but I’m never one to play by the rules so bugger the 1 word response rule.  I’m sure you’ll understand! 

Spreader of Love Award

The rules for this award are simple. Click below to read them:

I LOVE YOU=8 letters which gives you 8 rules :

1-  Thank the person who nominated you for this award and write a little bit about why you love them.

2-  Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

3-  Link to the person who nominated you for this award.

4-  Nominate no more than 17 people (why 17?) who you love or you think could use some love.

5-  Write one word (you can only use a word once) about what you love about their blog.

6-  You cannot nominate someone who has already been nominated-the love has to spread to all.

7-  Post links to the 17 blogs you nominate.

8-  Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they’ve been nominated.

 

 

Over the Top blog award

Here are the rules:
1. You can only use one word!
2. Pass this along to 6 of your favorite bloggers.
3. Alert them that you have given them this award!
4. Have Fun!

The Survey
1. Where is your cell phone? in my bag
2. Your hair? Blonde (but not too dumb)
3. Your mother? big heart
4. Your father? bigger heart
5. Your favorite food? cheese, the bluer and stinkier the better!
6. Your dream last night? scary
7. Your favorite drink? changes daily
8. Your dream/goal? baby
9. What room are you in? office
10. Your hobby? I like old ladies hobbies like Sewing, reading, walking, baking
11. Your fear? Never getting ‘there’
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? waving my child off to school
13. Where were you last night? Asleep
14. Something that you aren’t? pregnant
15. Muffins? Cheese
16. Wish list item? baby
17. Where did you grow up? New Zealand
18. Last thing you did? Ate
19. What are you wearing?  nothing special
20. Your TV? Awesome and big
21. Your pets? The best cat ever
22. Friends? Too spread out
23. Your life? Organised chaos
24. Your mood? tired but hopeful
25. Missing someone? yes
26. Vehicle? A heap of crap that is so noisy we have nick named it “the tractor”
27. Something you’re not wearing? socks
28. Your favorite store? Material shops or any shop that sells perfume
29. Your favorite color? Red
30. When was the last time you laughed? earlier while looking at my halloween photos
31. Last time you cried? 31 October
32. Your best friend? steady and present
33. One place that I go to over and over? our fav thai restaurant
34. One person who e-mails me regularly? Andrea
35. Favorite place to eat? See #33

And the nominees for both awards are….. (I don’t think you’ve already been nominated by someone else but if you have then just consider yourselves doubley loved):

Derailed on the Baby track - Hugs to you, hope you come back to blogging soon, but till then look after yourself.

Hope Springs - she writes really really well! and i’m constantly nodding my head along while reading her posts

Sonja - Am so glad I stumbled upon her blog, I’m sending truckloads of good luck vibes for your current IVF!! Hoping for top grade eggies for you this time!

Romancing the Stone – because I LOVE this post of hers so much

Theres a baby at the end of this, right? - She’s almost in the 2ww and I’m hoping IVF#3 is the lucky one for her.

Simple -  I love her honest posts.  Sometimes I feel I ‘overthink’ my posts too much and Simple just has a way of writing so real and natural.  And plus she’s so close to beta day that who doesn’t need an award for that accomplishment?????

Come out from behind the infertility curtain

Hope Springs made this post which relates exactly to what I wanted to vent about today. 

Those of us battling this IF war know exactly how hard and all-consuming this process is.  We live and breathe it and are lucky if we have 2 consecutive minutes in a day where we do NOT think about it.  One of our biggest struggles is avoiding the out-of-place comments or misjudgments of friends and family (or even strangers).  We could write a book on the amount of times we have heard “just relax and it will happen” type comments. 

We all feel misunderstood and isolated by our infertility.   But how many of us take the time to educate those ignorant sods who make us feel that way?  Have you ever corrected someone when they said “you can borrow my husband” or have you just sat there and let yourself be dumped on like I have?

I recently had an experience with my mums friends (who are of the 65+ age) and they were all babbling about how the younger generation make getting pregnant complicated “there was never anything like IVF in my day and we did alright”. I sat there going red with fury but couldn’t say a word. So I guess my silence just fueled their fire as I SHOULD have put them in their place right then and there and I SHOULD have taken the opportunity to educate them but I didnt. Instead I was too scared to expose my infertility.  I felt so useless as I wanted to scream at them for being so insensitive but at the same time I couldnt let my shameful secret go public. 

How pathetic is that?  Why should I be embarrassed that I was given drugs when I was little that fried my ovaries?  Or similarly, why should you be scared to admit that your tubes are blocked or that your husband has MFI or that you have PCOS?  Why do those things  make us feel so inferior?

Shouldn’t we be proud that we have the guts to go through this gruelling infertility process? Shouldn’t we be proud of the medical advances that are assisting us in achieving an otherwise hopeless dream?

Of course it’s more complicated than that, and we all know that if I had put those old ladies in their place they probably still wouldn’t have understood.  They probably would just think I was delusional and that if I’d just go home  and have sex ‘properly’ and stop making things so difficult that I’d get pregnant.  And it makes sense that they think this way as how can I expect people to understand me when they grew up in an age where things were so simple that if you just ignored things they’d go away.  It makes sense to them that infertility is a ‘new’ thing as people probably got sent to the slaughter-house for being barren back in the old days so can you imagine anyone actually owning up to such a flaw?  So if these old ladies have never heard anyone speaking about infertility then how can they possibly know that it exists?

And lets face it, we think things are difficult for us infertile couples now days.  Imagine how  hard it was before the days of REs and IVF.  Imagine how hard it would have been to be ‘barren’ back then? 

So this is a thought process that has been implanted on people for generations, and it’s only going to get easier if we expose our flaws and slowly educate the ignorants that we are not making this up…. Infertility is real.

Bad eggs and IVF. . . what do do?

Hey, thank you all so much for your comments on my previous post.  I love reading them, it feels like i’m opening a Christmas present or something when I get a new comment…

I wanted to answer Sonja’s question about my egg/embryo quality issues. 

 Why did your RE have you do a 2-day transfer and a 3-day transfer? 

The answer is quite sadly: because thats all we had to work with.  I’m not a high responder so I never seem to get many eggs.  I have lots of follicles but that doesn’t seem to result in a high number of eggs.  So I have never had enough embryos to risk waiting till day 5.  My clinic is of the opinion that the best place for the embryo is the uterus.  Oh, I’d love to be able to have a blast transfer, I dream of that often cause Dr Egghunt (my RE) thinks if we could just get enough embryos to take them to blast then it would weed out the bad quality ones and leave us with the ones that should be good enough to go the distance.  Sadly that hasn’t been possible yet.   I know there are a lot of people who believe in day 3 transfers over day 5 ones as apparently there is some evidence to suggest that day 5 embies produce a higher percentage of boy babies, meaning that many girl embryos die in the lab because they don’t make it to day 5.  I don’t know the truth of this, and for me personally if I had the numbers i’d jump at the opportunity to go to day 5. 

Are you doing anything out of the ordinary to try and improve egg/embryo quality?

1)  I think it’s quite hard to improve egg quality.  The clinics seem to be able to change your drugs to be able to make you produce more or less eggs but improving egg quality seems to be more of a mystery to them.  Dr Egghunt thinks that my poor egg quality could have been due to a lower LH/FSH level so next time he’s putting me on the Flare protocol which relies on a LH/FSH hormonal surge at the beginning of the cycle and this may give my eggs the kick-start they need to get into action. 

2)  He also said I should try to put on a bit more weight.  He told me that unfortunately those with big bums and hips tend to be more fertile.  Funnily enough he said “think Jennifer Lopez” and afterwards I thought “but didnt she have to go thru IVF to have her twins?”.  Anyway, the point is to get my BMI up a bit. 

3) Am going to try acupuncture this time, I’ve resisted previously as I don’t know how much I believe in alternative therapies, but even Dr Egghunt said that it may help as it is supposed to increase blood flow to the pelvic area.

4)  I take a high dose fish oil supplement.   Which some people think the Omega 3 content will improve egg quality.  Also - did you know that high dose fish oil is supposed to be just as good at alleviating depression as some anti-depressants?  And since this process can be really hard emotionally I decided to take them to see if they’d help.  And I really believe they have, I feel so much more mentally on to it, and I never got a sniff of a cold or flu in winter.

Thats it.  I know there are so many other things that other people do but you’ve just go to find what works for you I guess and this is my limit for now.  In the past I’ve seen Naturopaths and other alternative therapists who have driven me up the wall with unhinged ideas (I know, I know there are some great naturopaths out there, but mine were so so so crazy).  I was told by one naturopath to give up on the idea of IVF and instead my husband & I should abstain from having sex for as long as possible (for up to 6 months) so that the sperm could build up and super charge itself.  I almost slapped him at this suggestion…. to begin with our problem has NOTHING to do with sperm issues and anyone who has tried any IF treatment knows that abstaining for long periods is not a good thing.  So this has burnt my feelings for alternative therapists somewhat.  Do you blame me?

Anyway, as far as egg quality goes I think a big portion of it comes down to luck.  And I’m hoping that next IVF I’ll be lucky enough to have a golden egg in my bunch.

PS – Congratulations to Myndful, yay! a BFP.

The natural alternative…

Since my last post hubby egghunt & I have chatted and pretty much made up our minds to go ahead with another IVF as soon as we can.  There’s a few things we need to do before we can plan this for certain (1) my clinic needs to answer my questions re: the anti-misscarriage drugs – why is it taking them so long? and (2) we need to arrange cover at work for both of us as we we have to travel 5 hrs to our clinic so need about a week off during the IVF cycle, this won’t be easy as it is an extremely busy time of the year for us.

On another note; we’ve been trying to conceive for 4 years and much of that time was spent attempting to get pregnant the old-fashioned way.  Now days when I think about getting pregnant the idea of sex never actually enters my head, instead it’s turned into a complicated array of appointments, injections, scans & blood tests.  And isn’t it funny that this so-called complicated way to get pregnant actually seems normal to me now, it doesn’t seem that complicated at all.  In fact the idea of getting pregnant naturally seems more complex to me as I’m aware of every little thing that has to happen for a pregnancy to be achieved.  The mere fact that some people (ok, most people) get pregnant by having sex blows my mind as it really is quite a miracle. 

When I hear pregnancy announcements I automatically wonder how many IVF or IUI cycles the couple had to go through to get their baby and I’m generally a little surprised when I find out they didn’t have to go through any of that.  My mind seems to have forgotten the fact that for many people this is a very simple process of boy+girl+bed=baby.

I’m thinking these things because this morning I woke up and realised that theoretically I’m due to ovulate any day now.  So theoretically if we went back to basics and tried to conceive the natural way we may actually have a chance in the next few days.  I know the chances are almost zero but you still hear of people who out of the blue got a natural BFP and it just occurred to me today that theres no reason why we couldn’t be one of those couples.  I’m not sitting here with my head in the clouds thinking that this is what is going to happen, but i’m just saying it’s a little sliver of hope.

Nothing to lose by trying anyway is there?