A giant catchup

I'm back, and finally ready to blog. I've been feeling quite down and depressed and it's been hard to make myself type out how I feel, because there was so much negativity. But I am working hard to get past that and lots of positive things have been happening in my life lately which has certainly helped.

The first big thing was Murrays 30th birthday party which was two weeks ago. I put together a treasure hunt for his 30 (yes 30!) presents which he absolutely loved. We had around 50 people throughout the night partying hard, we put on all the alcohol and food, and our neighbours helped us put a marquee/sunshade out the back for additional room. It was such a great night, we had an absolute blast and Murray enjoyed himself which is the main thing.

We met with our new Fertility Specialist Mike Aitken a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure I've mentioned it before but I had always heard good things about Mike, I used him as my obstetrician, and throughout everything he was just compassionate and professional, and I can not speak highly enough of him. He works at my clinic also, so there was no drama in switching over for him for 'continuity of care'. As you know, we found out our baby was a little girl, and there was nothing genetically wrong with her which is a positive thing. Murray's tests came back "very poor" by the clinic standards - the DNA damage is pretty bad at 35% on the SCSA test, but even worse, his motility which has always been low at 5-8% (normal is above 50%) was 0% for his SA. Zero. As in, pretty shit. Mike didn't dwell on that too much though, I spotted on his note that he had written 'TESA?' next to the result, but that wasn't mentioned to us. Murray and I have spoken about it though and we are fine if that is what we need to do on the day.

Other than that he is happy for us to keep going with another IVF cycle, still on orgalutran, and starting me at 250iu which is what I wanted. He is very happy to listen to my suggestions and knows I have put a lot of research into all of this. The other thing I brought up with him is that, while I am happy to have a single fresh embryo transfer, if we get down to frozen embryo transfers, I want them to consider letting me do a double embryo transfer. While he wasn't too keen on the idea, he did say that I am educated enough to make the right decision and I was in the ballpark of their criteria for having two put back. All in all it was a really positive meeting.

So I am currently on the pill, on CD 23, and will probably come off the pill next week sometime to bring on my period. Then we are all systems go for our next egg collection, which I imagine will be around . It has been a year since I last had an egg collection, and I am a little apprehensive, mainly about the possibility of hyper-stimulating again. I have heard that if you stick to a high-protein diet, that it can help so I will definitely try to find out more about that.

Other news - we also went along to an adoption seminar, on both local adoption in WA, and intercountry adoption. Before the seminar I wasn't too keen on the idea, just because of all the beauracracy involved and I had heard a lot of horror stories about the system. I actually feel a lot better about the idea now that I have heard the information from the horses mouth so to speak. The inter-country adoption process is pretty arduous, but certain countries such as South Korea have a shorter waiting list and are accepting a lot more applicants recently. Also a lot more local children have become available for adoption recently, apparently as a result of international students accidently getting pregnant and giving the children up for adoption. Local adoption is done through a matching process rather than a waiting list, so you could end up with a child after 2 months or 10 years. Anyway, there are still a lot of issues that we need to work out, but the next step is to complete 3 education sessions on adoptive parenting, separation and attachment in adoption and intercountry adoption. After that we can submit an application to adopt. Such a long road, so much to think about but its another positive that we have right now.

Oh and of course we have just gotten back from our holiday! Four nights in Phuket Thailand, and four nights in Singapore were just what we needed. Unfortunately I wasn't 100% well throughout the trip, but on the whole we had a great time. We visited Phi Phi Island and Big Buddah in Phuket, then we went to the Singapore Derby, the Night Safari and Sentosa Island in Singapore. It was really nice to have time just with Murray and get away from Perth for a while.

On a sour note, things at work aren't great at the moment. The restructure has been communicated and I no longer have a position. Luckily enough, working for a semi-government organisation means they will help me find another role internally, within the company. To be honest it is a bit of a blessing in disguise as I have been in this branch for four years and have a personality clash with a few people in the branch, so this gives me the chance to start all over again in a new area.

I think I'm up to date with everything! Now for me to get up to date with you! Let me know what you have been up to!