A nutbag in the house and some questions answered!!

Holy crap, people – it is only 39 days till we leave for Thailand – hurrah!!

Okay – it’s confession time. A kind of IF madness has taken over me. Last Wednesday was 6 weeks until we go to Thailand and I have kicked up preparations a notch! I don’t know about you ladies but I am a research-a-holic and lately I have been researching a lot on implantation (cos I am hoping those 22 year old eggs in Thailand will do the trick). I am lucky with my work that I have access to medical journals so the information that I come across is usually pretty good. I do, of course, surf my ar$e off on Google to find out info. I thought I would share the madness of my routine at the moment.

In the morning I have an inner health plus tablet (bifidus and his mates) along with my herbal fertility tea (red clover, raspberry leaf, stinging nettle and ginger steeped overnight drunk cold – about 1 litre) – in the morning I also have a swig of flaxseed oil to make sure that I get my omega 3’s in. JourneyMan and I have been eating mainly whole foods for awhile (though sometimes we can’t resist some chips or chocolate or take away) – I have made some high fibre chicken soup for our lunches at the moment (JourneyMan has his for breakky) and I tend to add some natural fibre (psyllium husks) to many of the foods that we eat. I try as much as possible to buy organic food as well. As of this week, I have ditched my 1 coffee a day and am now caffeine free (still have a bit of a headache) and I am doing only the recommended 7 hours of exercise per week.

I am doing a tap class on Tuesdays, a boxing class on Thursdays (with JourneyMan – gosh we are a bit of a boxing mis-match!!) and am doing some running and gym sessions as well. I am trying to make sure that I get 8 hours sleep a night and every second night I do a castor oil pack (cloth covered with warmed castor oil wrapped around stomach, covered with plastic and with a hot water bottle over the top – sit still for an hour) – apparently castor oil has been used for centuries to heal specific areas of the body – especially reproductive issues. I also practice skin brushing most days and have a couple of Epsom salt baths per week (both for detoxification).

At night, JourneyMan and I have a whole slew of vitamin supplements that we take – he really hates the beetroot powder that he has for his blood pressure!! I am now on the pill as the cycle has started – yahoo!! Gosh, I haven’t been on the pill for 10 years – what a novelty!! We also do about a half an hour of yoga poses (that I have researched for fertility) each night and at night I listen to a fertility subliminal mp3 that I purchased. In addition, I am going to acupuncture (starting today) once a week and we have budgeted for some health treatments while we are in Bangkok (I have researched and found some lovely spas very close to where we are staying).

One other really big thing that I am doing is cleaning out our spare room – basically it is filled with a TV, the Nintendo WII, millions of books and all of my office material. I have made the big, big decision to get it ready for the baby. I am having trouble writing this because I hadn’t done this previously as I didn’t want to jinx any of the millions of cycles that we have done before. Certainly that has not made any difference so I am making room for the baby in the house. Today I have started to move out the junk and I am just about to go and have lunch with my Mum and while I am up there I am going to get some big storage boxes to put the books in. I have decided to just do a little bit each Friday to get it ready – I am going to try to make it like a ritual – a clearing of the space to allow the baby into our lives. We don’t have a big house (two bedroom unit) and it is very unorganized but it is definitely big enough for me, JourneyMan, JourneyDog and JourneyBabe. I feel better just even making this decision!!

Cripes – am I the most nuttiest of IF nutbags out there. Hmmm, sadly – I think so.

For the remaining part of this post, I am going to answer some questions that some commenters have left for me – so here goes:

Circus Princess asked – I am not sure why you need a donor. Is it your low number of eggs?

Hey CP (I am watching your 2WW very carefully and have my fingers crossed for you!!) – It is definitely because of the low number of eggs and if you look at the summary of my cycles, you will see that I have had a very poor response even though we tried all different protocols and were on the max meds allowed:

Cycle 1: Cancelled due to one large rogue follicle
Cycle 2: No eggs at pick up
Cycle 3: 1 egg at pick up, 1 low quality embryo, BFN
Cycle 4: 6 eggs at pick up, 2 embryos made it to day 2 and transferred, BFN
Cycle 5: Cancelled due to one large rogue follicle

After the 3rd cycle, my Fertility Specialist suggested donor eggs but I wasn’t ready to give up. After the 5th cycle, I did a lot of soul searching and realized that DE’s would be a good alternative.

Chelle asked – Why did you choose Thailand?

I researched Thailand, the United States, India and South Africa. One reason that we decided on Thailand was that the expat Aussie nurse that I came across who had had the treatment herself with this doctor gave me so much info and support and answered all of my millions of questions (the doctor has been fantastic - he comes back to me with answers always within 24hours and usually in a couple of hours). The main reason though is that it just felt right. JourneyMan and I had our honeymoon in Thailand (and had both been there separately before – we just love it, it is a gorgeous magical place) and even when we were looking at adoption, we hoped that we would get a child from Thailand. I know that sounds very airy fairy but honestly, it really just felt absolutely right.

K77 asked – Have you considered having the rudimentary horn (of my uterus) removed in order to curb the endo?

Yes, that was certainly one of the considerations that the doctor presented me with but he also advised that it would most likely weaken one wall of the uterus so I shouldn’t get it done if I am still planning to carry children. Certainly if we end up going to surrogacy or adoption, I would consider getting this operation done – gosh, the endo is a pain!!

Thanks for all of your questions everyone – I hope that you haven’t minded that this post is so long – gosh I have diarrhea of the keyboard sometimes.

Whoop, whoop – 39 days to go!!