Twisted

My transfer was set for 730am this morning.

Yesterday, the pain in my swollen stomach became very sharp. Sharp enough that I couldn't walk without limping and expelling anything through any orifice (sneezing, breathing, weeing...I'm sure you get the picture) was very uncomfortable. It's hard to know what to do as you expect a moderate level of pain through all of this, the common symptoms that they tell you to expect consist of (amongst others);

Nausea, constipation, shortness of breath, bloating, severe cramping, tiredness, dizziness as well as post operative pain......so at what point do you become concerned?

Anyway, I called the clinic and they seemed to think it was serious enough for me to leave work and head in for a check. It's hard to explain to your colleagues that you have to leave straight away with no explanation! This stuff is personal, I don't want everyone following every step. I don't want to have to share my pain and failures with too many people. Only those closest to us know about the IVF. I am afraid to tell people now as the times I have opened up, people have said the most stupid and hurtful things.

Upon examination Gyno developed a concerned look. I think she was more afraid of giving me more bad news than anything else. There are only so many tissues in her office. The verdict was that my ovary was swelling badly with a possibility of it twisting, losing blood supply. This would mean I would have to lose that ovary.

Why the fuck couldn't this bit just go smoothly, we were so close.

She said that I had to go straight home and lie down to reduce the chance of it twisting. I was to still go in at 730am this morning and she would decide then if we would go ahead with the transfer or cancel it and freeze my embryos. I cried loudly. She hugged me and apologised saying she just didn't want me to get sicker. If she did the transfer under the circumstances and I became pregnant I would end up in hospital for 3 months.

So, the pain continued all night and was still there when I went in for the transfer. Gyno decided not to go ahead today. I now have another wait of around 6 weeks until I can do another transfer from my frozen test tube babies. The good thing is that it will give my body and therefore the embryos the best chance of a pregnancy. This morning there were 2 great embryo's able to be frozen, the third was a little slower and they didn't have a smooch hope that it would pull through with it's siblings.

I am at home lying down on the couch trying to digest this new delay. I know it's for the best, it's still just so hard and I can't help but feel like I'm being punished again. I just wanted something to go right for us.

Some very good news just came in via a call from the scientists. All three of our little embryo's are able to be frozen, meaning I have three chances of getting pregnant without having to undergo surgery and the hormone injections again.

I'm already proud of them.

And Then There Were 3

Three Eggs. I nearly cried when the nurse told me. I wasn't hoping for 20 but somewhere around 10 would have been at least worth the effort. Why was I so upset with my number? These are the statistics the nurse gave me before my retrieval;

70% of the retrieved eggs will survive the first night

40% of these surviving eggs (now blastocysts) will make it to the next day and become embryos.

From there, you aren't given a % of success for the transfer process (the part where they pop the embryo into your uterus and hope for the best). As my gyno said "It's luck of the draw". Well, that's comforting!

I am no mathematician but when I awoke to the number 3 and a whole lot of pain, the likelihood of me becoming pregnant without having to go through the whole process again was not good. It also struck me that there was a strong underlying expectation that it wouldn't work the first time. The nurses all expected that I'd been in a few times, the surgical nurse even greeted me with "Hi, great to see you again". My surgery a few months ago had been at a different hospital...I'd never seen her before but being an IVF patient, she just assumed I'd been back a few times!

I didn't sleep last night despite the General Anaesthetic still in my system. I was wired worrying about my 3 little eggs, which by now were mixed with my husbands finest sperm.

Hopefully they all survived the night.

The scientist called with GOOD NEWS this morning! Can you believe it!? The three little ones all survived (in your face statistics) and done what they were supposed to do; form blastocysts.

Now, their job is to stay strong and keep on keeping on until my transfer on Friday. No pressure guys.

My job is to try and find clothing that will fit around my hugely swollen belly.

Harvest Day 26th May 2011

Finally, after so long and so much on the 16th of May we began.

I had been waiting so long to get to this point, but when I arrived I was terrified. Terrified of the emotional rollercoaster, the process, the pain. Mostly, we were afraid of what the injections would do to me.

I am happy to report that it didn't go too badly! I couldn't work for the 13 days during the injections as the rush of hormones though my body brought back the vertigo (one of the main migraine symptoms I get), also some days my speech was as slurred as my husband's is after a work "lunch", the memory loss came back which made it imperative that I wrote everything down on a chart I kept on the fridge. That teamed with some whopper headaches, HOWEVER it wasn't too bad - not as bad as it could have been!

Today was the first day in the past 11 that I haven't had to inject myself, which was a nice break. My last injection was the 'trigger' which I needed to administer at exactly 815pm last night. This meant excusing myself from Italian class. It was also State of Origin night, which made for much speculation about my departure! How do you explain this stuff!?

Tomorrow is my first ever egg collection day (commonly known as harvest day, a name which gives me a mental image of my gynecologist at a ho-down every time the term is used) a momentous day in the IVF process. Tomorrow, I find out if my body has behaved as it should from the 1 6 injections I've given myself and produced great looking, well sized eggs. I don't know how it's going to go, I don't even know what a good result is classified as. All I know is that my scans have shown I have around 7 decent sized follicles with who knows how many little eggs inside and my belly is bloated like I have just been to Sizzler.

Whilst I am under the knife, my husband's job is to produce a prize-winning 'sample'..that's right he has to spoof in a jar while I am having surgery.. Gee men have it tough right..

Fingers crossed. Ovaries at the ready...