Gosh, I feel like all I have been doing of late is posting mega whinges when mostly I AM EXCITED!! I am really SO excited about going to Thailand and now it is really becoming a reality. I have a whole spreadsheet going, I have list upon list of all the things that need to be done between now and then. We have 12 weeks before we go to Thailand. I still haven’t booked the flights, I am going to do that tomorrow, though I have booked in to see the Melbourne fertility specialist and called for my blood test results. I called the clinic about the blood tests and I thought that the receptionist was just going to give me a message from the doctor but she just took my mobile number to call back – I hope that I am not being paranoid but I am hoping that it’s not bad news – surely not!!
Anyway, poor old JourneyMan is still sick and coughing, coughing, coughing but is now gradually getting better, thank goodness. I thought it was about time that I got back to the progressive story of our journey through IF. The last time I posted about this was about our third IVF cycle in which we had one egg retrieved and the cycle ended in a negative. I had trouble remembering that cycle moreso than any other cycle but I do know that we needed to have a break. The reasons were because I had seen an endocrinologist who had started me on DHEA (I didn’t tell my fertility specialist because he was against it) and I decided to do acupuncture to see if either of those things would help. We had three months between the third and fourth cycles and it was a pretty tough time. I had put on significant amounts of weight through all of the cycles, so my body was a complete mess.
I remember during this time I was doing a very restrictive dietary plan (no sugar, no wheat, no dairy, and regimented times and food types each day) as well as exercise plan in order to lose weight. I was on a walk with my Mum and I remember breaking down crying, just sobbing while I was walking - I felt like I couldn’t stop. My poor Mum didn’t know what to do to comfort me. I was crying and angry at the same time, very ‘poor me’. Most of the time I was swinging between this restrictive diet, breaking out and having undesirable foods and then feeling horrible about myself. I had broached the subject of adoption with JourneyMan and he wasn’t overly receptive to the idea and then the friend (who was married the month after JourneyMan and I) got pregnant and it was during this time that I felt the most beaten down. However, I am not a person that lets myself be beaten. We would have another cycle, it would be positive and I would be the one that was doing the beating, I was not going to give up on my dream that easily.
In the appointment with my fertility specialist prior to the fourth cycle, he had said to me that the only thing that would really make a difference to my outcome was to lose weight and he asked if I had thought about Lap Band surgery. At the time I was offended and horrified. I should have known though because my BMI was edging to the morbidly obese category and there was no sign of it stopping. In the month before the fourth cycle, I decided that if I was not pregnant, I would have the Lap Band surgery. My friend and I had researched it and attended some information sessions and I felt like I needed to lose weight so that I could at least feel I had done everything to have a baby so that I could move on to adoption if that was where we were going next.
It was during this time also that I had a melt down about my job and resigned. I ended up contracting back to them for 2-3 days a week continuing on with the big project that I was managing. I hoped this would reduce my stress level significantly. The other significant event of this time was that Journey Man and I went on a holiday to the beach and decided that when we got back we could get a dog and that is how the JourneyDog that is Woolly entered our lives. I am grateful for my two boys every day (Journey Man and Journey Dog), they have been my saviours! Journey Dog has a knack of knowing when I am upset and he comes and sits on my lap to comfort me – he has been an amazing edition to our lives.
The cycle was an antagonist cycle and had an extra injection from day 7 of the cycle to stop ovulation. This was a drug that was not covered by insurance or medicare and cost $80 a go so it ended up getting expensive. I started the cycle without hope – I just couldn’t get myself to hope for the positive result that I wanted so badly. I dreaded the first scan which had been the scene of so many disappointments in the past – happily though, I walked out knowing that there were 7 follies with 5 of reasonable size. This was a massively new record for me and the hope came roaring back. I felt like I would definitely have some eggs at pick up and hopefully some decent embryos. The hope took a bit of a dip after the fertilisation results came through – 2 only fertilised and a day 2 transfer was imminent. We had both embryos transferred and headed into the two week wait for the very second time. I was pretty buoyant though analysing every twinge and twitch in hopes of the positive result.
It was at this time that JourneyMan and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary (in fact it was the day that we went into hospital for the egg pick up and needle biopsy) and the following weekend we went up to the mountains to go tobogganing in the snow – JourneyMan had never seen snow in his life before. It was a lovely long weekend and after an anniversary dinner things looked even more promising when I felt so dizzy I thought I was going to faint getting out of the car – I thought I must be pregnant. The excruciating two week wait continued and the next Friday we were going out for dinner to celebrate my birthday and my Mum’s birthday which is the day after mine (my Mum’s mum’s birthday was also on the same day as my mum and if not for me coming early, there would have been 3 generations on the one day). It was on that night that AF decided to show her shitful face. I didn’t want to go out for dinner, I just didn’t want to see anyone but we ended up going. It was the night of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and after dinner we went around to my brother’s place to watch it. I was in a huge amount of pain from AF and my heart was hurting as well. It was all over once again.
This trip to IVF cycle 4 was not great fun (though I am finding doing this very cathartic), this was really the time that I started to realise that it just didn’t seem that my eggs were going to cut the mustard. Each time I have travelled back into the past though, I feel like I am letting go of some baggage that I have been carrying around and I am a bit lighter.
I want to thank Chelle, Jill, Andie, Summer, The Farmer’s Wife and all of you wonderful women who continue to take the time to read and comment – you are all so special. Chelle, I haven’t forgotten your comment asking why we chose to go to Thailand for the donor – I will most definitely answer this very soon as that is the next part of the story!
I just want to reiterate that I AM VERY excited about Thailand – very excited, my poor friends and family, I don’t want to talk about anything else!!
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