almost there

I think there's maybe just one person out there who reads this blog, and she has just given me a gentle nudge to come and update, so journey2dfuture, this is for you! And for anyone else at any time in the future who might be clutching at the straws of fertility treatments, scouring the internet for just one success story which speaks to them and their situation.

We are doing great, me and baby boy. I am 36 weeks and 2 days pregnant, and have recently travelled back to my home country to await his arrival. I sleep badly and have horrible heartburn, but apart from that I feel wonderful and am enjoying every day of my ninth month. I am ridiculously proud of my bump, overwhelmingly grateful that everything is so normal now in my pregnancy, incredibly happy that Mic and I will be parents very soon, and a teeny bit daunted of course by the thought of it all. Will I really be able to handle the lack of sleep? I think that's my biggest concern. When I imagine parenting a newborn, I picture myself handling all the other stuff ok - breastfeeding, nappies, crying, bathing, bonding - but I just can't imagine never sleeping for more than 2 hours at a stretch for months on end. I keep telling myself that everyone does it and most people seem to cope just fine, and it does calm me down. I'll be fine, right?

Mic is arriving on 2nd January, so little one has to stay put until then. I am really hoping he comes a bit early rather than late though...Mic can't take unlimited time off work and if baby boy decides to arrive 2 weeks late, his daddy will barely be able to say hello to him before he has to head home. Maybe if things are still looking stable at my next appointment (27th), I'll suggest he postpones coming by another few days. Hmmm....

Meantime I am chilling out at my mother's place, bit by bit preparing everything. I have bought pretty much everything I need for baby, started washing his clothes, arranged the cord blood collection, read all the books in the world on newborn care, etc etc. I am really enjoying the fact that I won't be going back to work for at least a year, and can put all my energy into this precious person. I know how lucky I am to be able to do that - to have a husband that can manage it financially and to have a job that loves me so much that they will take me back whenever I decide the time is right.

Honestly, I probably won't post another update until baby boy is born, so I hope my next post will be as a tired, proud, new mom!

so far.....so good!

I have been a lousy blogger these days, but it feels like for me, it's for all the right reasons. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE when people update their blogs regularly, and I'm an avid fan of several. But for me, right now, it has become more important to connect, or rather re-connect, with the real world around me. My house is much cleaner, my kitchen is getting more use, my husband is getting more of my undivided attention, I am starting to see friends more often....call it nesting or whatever you want, but I am really enjoying my electronic cut-back at the moment and have no plans to up my internet hours any time soon!

As for my pregnancy, it is going beautifully now. I feel great most of the time (with the exception of around 5am - 7am when there is no chance that I will sleep and my legs get really uncomfortable) and mainly have loads of energy. Bump is getting reassuringly bigger (see my 25-week pic below), and finally, finally, at exactly 25 weeks, I felt my first real kick, and they have been regular ever since. I had been a bit defensive about it, because everyone kept asking me if he was kicking, and all I had been feeling was him kind of rolling around slowly. OB said it was normal because I have an anterior placenta. But still, it was a relief when I finally got to feel his little punches.

My last urine test /culture showed up a UTI, although I have had no symptoms, so I am on antibiotics right now to get rid of that. But I passed the 1-hour glucose test, and my weight gain has been almost zero over the last month, despite the fact that chick-pea has grown from 680g to over a kilo, which is good, I think, as I had put on about 3 kilos in the previous month.

And here's the belly shot :)

Update, finally!

So, a lot has happened since the last time I posted. We decided to have the amniocentesis in the end. We went for our appointment but were told after the ultrasound that it would be better to wait another week, so that there would be more cells in the amniotic fluid. Another week of stress...but it went smoothly the following week. I heard later from friends and relatives that they were really traumatized by having the amnio, but actually I didn't find it too bad. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the amnio went totally smoothly and the results were perfectly fine. And it confirmed that we're having a boy! We are so stoked!

We have since then decided where I will be giving birth (it's in my home country rather than the country we currently live in), sorted out my maternity leave (I'm taking a year off) and, well, I can't hide any more that I'm pregnant, so I'm completely open about it these days. We have not bought a single baby-related item yet, but I guess it will all get done eventually. I am feeling completely fine, apart from having terribly sore legs when I sleep and just feeling a bit whacked after fairly minimal exertion. Mainly I am just in awe of my belly growing, and Mic is too. The way he looks at me when I get undressed is priceless!

I think the most amazing thing is that I have just written a completely normal, uneventful pregnancy blog post!  I finally feel like a regular pregnant woman instead of a neurotic, frightened IVF veteran. I absolutely love it.

the post-ultrasound honeymoon

Every time I have an ultrasound and am reassured that baby is fine, growing perfectly and not missing any limbs, I have a sort of honeymoon period of utter relaxation and confidence which lasts about 5 or 6 days before I start worrying again. I spill the beans to a few more people, only to regret it when the honeymoon is over and wish that I hadn't told anyone, because what if everything goes wrong?

Anyway I am now in that happy honeymoon place, as I had an OB appointment and u/s yesterday (15 weeks), and yes, everything is looking great. Ok, the placenta is still too close to the cervix, but doc said it's minor and I really shouldn't worry about it. It's not worse than before, so I'll take it. I can't even describe what it does for my peace of mind when I see the little mite stretching, waving and practice chewing, and it makes me so grateful to be living in this century with all its technological possibilities.

The other thing I haven't written about yet is our NT scan and bloods. The NT ultrasound looked perfect, measurements showed very low risk and the nasal bone was seen, etc. But when I got my blood results back they combined to give me a 1:60 risk of Downs syndrome, which is considered high risk. At my age it should be around 1:230. So the question is, what to do now? This is a very tricky one, and I know a lot of people have strong positions on this, but here goes. We haven't made any absolute decision, but I think that if we had a definite diagnosis of Downs, we would probably terminate. I'm not even going to get into the whole discussion of why or why not here, and I hope people will not ask me to. But basically, we have had two completely opposite pieces of advice from our health care professionals about what we should do.  Our RE, who ordered the tests in the first place, advises us to go ahead and have an amniocentesis. Our OB, on the other hand, does not trust the blood test results, says they give a lot of false positives, and says if you compare the supposed risk of Downs (1:60) to the risk of losing the baby in the amnio (1:50 or 2 %), the risk of losing the baby is greater, so he would not recommend the amnio. It's a good point. So, do we risk having a baby with Downs that we would otherwise have terminated, or do we risk losing a potentially perfectly healthy baby in the amnio? I think what we have decided to do is to do the triple test, which should give us a slightly more accurate measure of the probability, and based on that decide whether to do the amnio or not. So the triple test will be in a week, and my present honeymoon period will surely be well and truly over by then.

As for the gender of the baby, the OB gave us a 99% prediction yesterday. But I'm going to make you wait until I know for sure!

Scaring mama....part 2

So, since the scary bleeding from week 5 - week 6, my pregnancy has been completely unremarkable and sweetly uneventful. I have been lucky to have plenty of scans, including one at 11 weeks and my NT scan at 12 weeks. So far I don't think I have gone more than 2 weeks without a scan, which has been very reassuring. I have had lots of great nausea and my belly even seems to be growing already, although whether that's true baby bump or pregnancy bloating is hard to tell.

So I was quite unprepared for waking up this morning (12w6d) with stabbing pains in my abdomen, and then, lo and behold, blood. I was actually quite calm in the circumstance, but Mic was literally going round in circles with panic. He called my OB (yes! I have one of those now!) who said to come in for an emergency ultrasound a couple of hours later. By the time I got there the bleeding had lightened to spotting and the pain had subsided quite a lot, so I was quite hopeful, but still super nervous.

Anyway, all is well with the baby, nothing wrong there. My placenta is in slightly the wrong position and has a small tear in it, hence the bleeding. And, as usual, there's absolutely nothing I can do to make it better. Rest won't help, the same thing might well happen again, and it's not dangerous. That's what I've been told, so I'm going to choose to believe it!

The only thing I can do is stay on those pesky progesterone suppositories, and if the bleeding happens again and is prolonged, he'll put me back on PIO. And - the silver lining - my next appointment is in 2 weeks, so once again, the agonizing wait between ultrasounds has been blessedly cut short.

Hopefully the next time I post an update it will be completely absent of any drama and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to tell you if the little troublemaker in there is male or female!

telling at ten weeks

We decided that if everything was fine at our 10 week ultrasound, we would tell Mic's mother and brothers and sisters. Thankfully the scan looked perfect - chick pea was upside down but little hands could be seen waving about and there was plenty of movement, as well as measuring on track. I had a really rough week at 9 weeks with nausea and extreme exhaustion, so it was a huge relief when at 10 weeks it seemed to ease up and I felt a bit more human. So yes, we took our little u/s picture and showed it to MIL. It took her a while to figure out what it was - I guess they didn't have any of that technology in her day - but she was SO happy. Of course she attributed it to us praying more and all kinds of divine intervention, but I don't begrudge her that!

So we have now told both our families and a very few close friends. I'm waiting till 12 weeks to tell my boss, and as for everyone else, there will be no announcements! They'll just have to figure it out when my belly pops. Speaking of which...I have always had a little belly anyway, but could always suck it in to nothing. Now it seems it's here to stay and although it's not any bigger than it was yet, pulling it in just doesn't work any more! I'm already using the rubber band around the button trick on my trousers, and the new bra I bought at 7 weeks is already needing replaced. I still get tired very quickly, but at least I don't have 2-hour naps at 11am any more, lol.

Feeling very blessed and lucky to be here. After 8 IVFs and a very scary start to this pregnancy, I didn't dare dream that we would ever be in this position. I'm still looking for an OB to see locally but should have my first appointment by the end of this week and start thinking about NT screening etc. I had better get a move on!

"If I can do it, anyone can?"

I'm 8w3d today and had another ultrasound this morning. Baby is looking great and was jumping up and down at a rate of knots! I also heard the heartbeat for the first time. RE assures me that everything looks perfect, and I am just to keep taking the progesterone and estrogen for another 4 weeks, and go back for another appointment in 2 - 3 weeks. I am finally starting to have some confidence that this baby is here to stay, and finally enjoying my pregnancy like I promised at the beginning!

When I started this blog, it was in the hope that one day, I would be able to offer hope and encouragement to others who have had multiple IVF failures. And it would be tempting at this point to write a post to all of those people, saying "don't give up! If I can finally have success, anyone can!" But I now believe that that would be too simplistic, too unrealistic, and even a little disrespectful to some people. It is true that I have found real solace and huge hope from reading and hearing stories of other women who have gone through endless treatments and have eventually got pregnant and given birth, and I still hope that my blog will be a source of all these things to women who find themselves in similar circumstances. However, today I want to focus on those criteria that are game changers, and that lead many people down different roads.

1. Desire
Let's face it, if you are going to put your body and your pocket through endless strain, you have to have a really really strong desire to be pregnant. Many women are motivated more by motherhood than pregnancy itself and are ready to look at other options quite quickly. Some do IVF at the request of their partner and are not really convinced that it's what they want to do; others put a limit on how many times they will do IVF from the very beginning. And there are hundreds of other reasons why doing multiple IVFs is just not for everyone. I have huge respect for all those difficult decisions that people are faced with every day.

2. Money
If you don't have a good supply of money or pretty exceptional insurance (I only know one country where people have free access to an unlimited number of IVFs for their first 2 children), multiple IVFs are simply impossible. I will never cease to be grateful for the fact that we could afford this, and although we literally could have built a house with the money we have spent so far on IVF and other treatments, we really did not suffer hugely. I don't have the figures, but I would guess that the vast majority of people with infertility in the world simply cannot afford what we did.

3. Resilience
If you have the desire and the money, and have decided to go for the long haul, you also need to be emotionally tough as nails in order to deal with the constant disappointments. Although resilience can (maybe) be learned to a certain extent later in life, my feeling is that it's about 90% genetics and childhood upbringing, and therefore not under our control to a large extent. Don't get me wrong, there were times when we wondered how we would get out of bed and face the world again after another BFN, but I think we are both really blessed in that we bounce back pretty quickly. For some people, the strain would be too much to handle, and I think that is perfectly normal and an excellent reason to say "enough".

4. Medical hope
If we had been told by several doctors that we should think about other options because IVF wasn't likely to work for us with our own eggs/sperm, we would definitely have gone down another road a long time ago. We're optimistic but not crazy. Doctors, although I don't believe them blindly, do have a lot of influence over the decisions we take, and rightly so. After our 6th IVF, I asked our RE if it was him and his wife in our situation, would he carry on trying? When he said yes, he would, it gave us a pretty big boost in confidence to go on.

5.  Lady Luck
Some people get pregnant after 8 tries, some after 10, some after 17, and some....some never do. We were so aware every time we did IVF that this might never happen for us and we might end up broke and with nothing to show for it. So the phrase "if I can do it, anyone can", just isn't accurate.


I am lucky enough to belong to an online forum of women who have been supporting each other through infertility for the last 2 years. In that group, we have people who have been successful on their first or second IVF attempt; one who had a disastrous IVF which was converted to an IUI, which worked; one who had 2 failed IVFs and was just about to use donor eggs for her 3rd attempt when she fell pregnant naturally; several who have used donor sperm, donor eggs or donor embryos; one who is pursuing motherhood through a gestational carrier after several IVF failures and miscarriages; one who is waiting for an adoption placement after 4 IVFs; two who adopted first, then had their second child through IVF; one who had her first child through IVF and has been trying for 2 years to have her second; and yes, there are also those who simply stopped appearing on the board. Did they succeed in IVF? Did they choose to live child free? Did they find another road to go down? We'll probably never know. Each one has gone through a deeply emotional and personal journey to get to where they are, and anyone contemplating IVF will have to go through their own unique and often difficult journey. I wish each and every one happiness, whatever that looks like, and if happiness is not possible, the equanimity to live with the cards they are dealt.