Monday, 17 August 2009
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
epu tomorrow
Cant's sleep. So nervous. My brain wont stop going over everything.
Egg collection is 8.30 tomorrow morning. We don't know if we will get to transfer this time - my progesterone was 7.8 on Monday (the day of my hcg trigger) which can mean that my hormones are out of wack and not suitable for transfer. My clinic said that 7 is fine but 8 is usually the cut off for doing a freeze-all cycle. Something about the higher progesterone level being an indicator that my body has already moved on to the next part of the cycle, and having lower success rates from it. But then I did some research and looked at a few journal articles on line, some say that there is a negative correlation between elevated p4 levels on the day of your trigger and pregnancy rates, but a lot of the studies show no difference, one study even said it could be a good thing in pcos patients! So I think we are going to go ahead with the transfer - even if the success rate is reduce to 20% - that is a 20% chance of being pregnant compared to a 0% chance in a freeze-all cycle.
But seriously - why couldnt this just go to plan!
Sorry my posts have been pretty shocking lately - spelling, grammar and content. My head keeps slipping back into a bad place and blogging hasnt been the highest of my priorites... I promise to get back to some sense of normality soon! Hopefully you won't have all disappeared on me!
PS - my bestie got 12 eggs at her egg collection on Monday and 10 fertilised today - yipee!!! Keep all your fingers and toes crossed for her as well!
Egg collection is 8.30 tomorrow morning. We don't know if we will get to transfer this time - my progesterone was 7.8 on Monday (the day of my hcg trigger) which can mean that my hormones are out of wack and not suitable for transfer. My clinic said that 7 is fine but 8 is usually the cut off for doing a freeze-all cycle. Something about the higher progesterone level being an indicator that my body has already moved on to the next part of the cycle, and having lower success rates from it. But then I did some research and looked at a few journal articles on line, some say that there is a negative correlation between elevated p4 levels on the day of your trigger and pregnancy rates, but a lot of the studies show no difference, one study even said it could be a good thing in pcos patients! So I think we are going to go ahead with the transfer - even if the success rate is reduce to 20% - that is a 20% chance of being pregnant compared to a 0% chance in a freeze-all cycle.
But seriously - why couldnt this just go to plan!
Sorry my posts have been pretty shocking lately - spelling, grammar and content. My head keeps slipping back into a bad place and blogging hasnt been the highest of my priorites... I promise to get back to some sense of normality soon! Hopefully you won't have all disappeared on me!
PS - my bestie got 12 eggs at her egg collection on Monday and 10 fertilised today - yipee!!! Keep all your fingers and toes crossed for her as well!
Monday, 10 August 2009
ready to pop
Looks like egg collection will be on Wednesday - as the title suggests, I'm feeling rather full up of eggs at the moment! As of today, my end lining is 10.2mm and I have 9 follicles bigger than 10 mm on my left side, and 16 on my right. I also have 10 follicles smaller than 10mm all up - so plenty of follies! My doctor doesnt usually do Wednesday's but he will be this week, so I will at least have a doctor that I know doing my procedure.
I am a little concerned though about ending up with OHSS again though. Last time I didn't get any symptoms until after my egg collection, but I am already starting to feel a little off colour from all the drugs and how full my ovaries are feeling. I NEED to have a transfer this time, it would kill me to do a freeze-all cycle again! I really want to do a fresh transfer to give us the best chance of success, so onto the protein shakes I go...
My best friend is going in for her egg collection today, can't wait to hear how she goes with it all. To be honest I'm a little concerned that she might end up with OHSS as well, just because I know she has a lot of follies too, and I know how much it hurts! Fingers crossed everything goes super well though.
I am a little concerned though about ending up with OHSS again though. Last time I didn't get any symptoms until after my egg collection, but I am already starting to feel a little off colour from all the drugs and how full my ovaries are feeling. I NEED to have a transfer this time, it would kill me to do a freeze-all cycle again! I really want to do a fresh transfer to give us the best chance of success, so onto the protein shakes I go...
My best friend is going in for her egg collection today, can't wait to hear how she goes with it all. To be honest I'm a little concerned that she might end up with OHSS as well, just because I know she has a lot of follies too, and I know how much it hurts! Fingers crossed everything goes super well though.
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
Fit freak
I am back on the fitness bandwagon - eating superhealthy and lots of exercise. I have really taken my dr's comments to heart and am going to work my butt off to lose this weight. I know I have every excuse under the sun for why I have put on weight, but in the end it doesn't make a difference because the weight is still there.
I had my scan and bloods today, there are 5 follicles bigger then 10mm, and 20 less than 10mm. Still on 225iu Gonal-F and have to go back into the clinic on Friday morning for another round of poking and prodding.
Murray has recovered really quickly from the TESA - he is just a little sore, no bruising or anything which is great news.
I had my scan and bloods today, there are 5 follicles bigger then 10mm, and 20 less than 10mm. Still on 225iu Gonal-F and have to go back into the clinic on Friday morning for another round of poking and prodding.
Murray has recovered really quickly from the TESA - he is just a little sore, no bruising or anything which is great news.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
black & blue
My tummy is black and blue (and purple and yellow!) from all of the gonal-f injections. They don't hurt too much but they are leaving ridiculous marks all over my stomach! But I guess I can't complain - Murray had his TESA today, which wasn't the most pleasant thing to watch! I stroked his head and kept him calm while the procedure happened - watching a 2 inch needle being injected into your husbands testes is not a good idea! But Murray was incredibly brave and we got a few straws of sperm. I should get an update tomorrow of exactly how good the sperm was. Murray got quite clammy during the procedure and felt like he wanted to throw up, but he made it through, and is only a little bit sore now - no bruising or anything!
I am day 8 today, and have another blood test and scan tomorrow morning at the clinic. At my scan on Monday nothing was happening to my follicles so I am hoping they bounce into action and have grown tomorrow. My doctor pulled me aside today after Murray's procedure to tell me that he (and the nurses) had noticed that I had put on weight and that I really need to control that and try and lose some of it. He said that he wasn't going to stop treatment or make a big deal out of it, but I really needed to make an effort to lose some. I'm actually a little upset about it all - not that he made that comment, because he is well within his rights to, and I know that I need to lose weight as well. It's just that I have been trying so damn hard! The day of my transfer, when we fell pregnant with Vanilla, I weighed 103 kg which is a good weight for me, and I feel quite healthy with it. I stacked on the weight after the transfer and early preg because I wasnt allowed to exercise at all and ate everything I wanted. But even after we lost Vanilla, I have been piling on the kilos. I have been back at the gym, at least three days a week and with a personal training additionally, yet I am still putting on weight! I just don't understand it. I am currently at 108.5kg, so I have put on 5 1/2 kilos in just over three months. IT IS RIDICULOUS!!!!!! So I am going to put a seriously crazy effort into trying to keep my weight under control before my egg collection, and hopefully lose a couple of kilos in the meantime.
Anyway, thats enough babble for one night, I am utterly exhausted so off to bed I go.
I am day 8 today, and have another blood test and scan tomorrow morning at the clinic. At my scan on Monday nothing was happening to my follicles so I am hoping they bounce into action and have grown tomorrow. My doctor pulled me aside today after Murray's procedure to tell me that he (and the nurses) had noticed that I had put on weight and that I really need to control that and try and lose some of it. He said that he wasn't going to stop treatment or make a big deal out of it, but I really needed to make an effort to lose some. I'm actually a little upset about it all - not that he made that comment, because he is well within his rights to, and I know that I need to lose weight as well. It's just that I have been trying so damn hard! The day of my transfer, when we fell pregnant with Vanilla, I weighed 103 kg which is a good weight for me, and I feel quite healthy with it. I stacked on the weight after the transfer and early preg because I wasnt allowed to exercise at all and ate everything I wanted. But even after we lost Vanilla, I have been piling on the kilos. I have been back at the gym, at least three days a week and with a personal training additionally, yet I am still putting on weight! I just don't understand it. I am currently at 108.5kg, so I have put on 5 1/2 kilos in just over three months. IT IS RIDICULOUS!!!!!! So I am going to put a seriously crazy effort into trying to keep my weight under control before my egg collection, and hopefully lose a couple of kilos in the meantime.
Anyway, thats enough babble for one night, I am utterly exhausted so off to bed I go.
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Cycle 9
Onto cycle 9 we go. I am on day 2 today and had my bloodtest and scan today. I start on 225iu of gonal-f tomorrow and go back in next Monday for another scan/bt. Also Murray will definitely be having TESA done, where they go directly into the testes to extract the sperm. I don't know a lot about it but I guess that will be my next topic of research for the next week! He is having the procedure done next Tuesday, in advance of our egg collection, and they will then freeze the sperm. The clinic believe that if they get the sperm from the testes, it might not have as much dna damage done to it, and also it may be more motile sperm. Fingers crossed they are right!
Would love to hear from anyone whose partner has been through TESA, and can let me know how it went?
Would love to hear from anyone whose partner has been through TESA, and can let me know how it went?
Sunday, 19 July 2009
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!
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!
Friday, 17 July 2009
Our holiday in pictures.
More news to come shortly, for now some pictures from our holiday in Thailand and Singapore.
Monday, 6 July 2009
On holiday
I promise I do have a positive post coming soon, lots of things have been happening - Murray's 30th birthday, our first adoption seminar, and our latest IVF appointment. But that will have to wait as we are off on holiday tomorrow, spending four night in Phuket Thailand, and then another 4 nights in Singapore. Really looking forward to being able to unwind and spend some time with Murray.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
My little girl
We found out yesterday that our baby Vanilla was a little girl. My heart is crushed, my beautiful baby girl that I was meant to have, is gone. I didn't prepare myself for knowing, I didn't know that we would be told. But it was offered to us and I said yes, tell me. And now it hurts so much. My heart aches for my little girl. My perfect little girl had nothing wrong with her, no chromosonal problems, nothing at all. It was my uterus or something else about me that stopped her living. It's my fault. Something I did, or that my body did, stopped my baby from growing. The guilt is horrible.
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