#ivfaus

[makingbabyglowworm]

There's a baby in there!

8 July 2016 I've been a bit absent since my last post (sorry!), but I haven't really had too much to share since our 7 week ultrasound... Until this week! So, I went to my normal GP following our graduation from the fertility clinic. I got to share the happy news with her that "hey, you know how you wrote me that referral for the fertility clinic 13 months ago?! We're pregnant!". She was thrilled, which was lovely. And then she started asking questions about private/public health system and which obstetrician we wanted to see. Wow. I was so prepared with all the facts for the infertility side of my journey but at that point I felt completely unprepared for the pregnancy side of things. After some phone calls to our health provider about which obstetricians were covered in our insurance, and googling various forums, we decided on our ob and then called my doctor back to ask her to write a referral letter. Then we booked our appointment with the ob & had to wait. It was almost 5 long weeks of being treated like a "normal pregnant lady" with no appointments, bloods or check ups before we met with our ob this week. I was so used to being treated like an IVF science experiment; being poked, prodded and probed; I found the wait, and especially not having to "do" anything, excruciating! I'm currently just over 11 weeks pregnant and look like I've eaten a big burrito (so not very much of a bump at all). My symptoms have been heartburn, extreme fatigue, and all day nausea since 5.5 weeks. Thankfully it's been pretty easy to hide my pregnancy from the coworkers who don't know! Our ob did an ultrasound and we got to see Beecheese this week to reassure me that there was actually a baby in there 😀 There Beecheese was, swimming around, little heart beating. Everything is going well! Next week we have our first trimester screen and 12 week scan. I've been told the images will be amazing! I honestly feel like we've won the lotto. Before IVF I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that having a baby might have been off the agenda for us. And now I can't find enough words to explain how happy and lucky I feel. If this is a dream, I hope I never wake up!

[makingbabyglowworm]

6 March 2016

Stims day 5 ✔️💉 Got a bit ahead of myself yesterday and titled my last post day 5 (which has now been fixed). Maybe it was a combination of wishful thinking and being half asleep, but today is definitely day 5!

We cracked open a new vial of Puregon today. Each vial has enough units for 4 days. I’ve been given enough for 12 days worth of stims so fingers crossed I don’t need to go and collect some more later on.

Today’s Injection site was back below the belly button and I did notice that area is probably the more painful of all the options to inject so will be trying a new plan of attack to go on the outer areas of my tummy.

Last night I felt pretty good and it made me a bit worried. I was concerned the meds weren’t working anymore, but maybe my body is getting used to them? Fingers crossed they do still work. I’d hate to find out I had ovulated before egg collection and the meds were all wasted! I don’t go back in to the clinic for monitoring until Thursday which seems like a really long time to leave me injecting without checking my follies. Maybe I’m just being impatient!

Time to be real here: anyone who thinks that IVF is the easy option is sorely mistaken. It’s not just the money, or the meds, or the needles, or the time you invest. It’s the psychological impact. Daily I find myself flipping between being positive and telling myself it will work, to trying to keep realistic that my chances are only slightly more than a natural conception. I desperately want this to work, but I have to keep my hopes in check with the fact that there is a 60% chance it won’t. Add to that the self guilt and worry of administering meds wrong and looking for even the slightest side effects to make sure the meds are working and it’s no wonder it can be so taxing on a person's relationships during the cycle.