Heartbroken

It's all over. I started bleeding Friday afternoon, went home from work and did a test. Negative.

We are heartbroken.

6 days past transfer

Not much to say about Wednesday 25th except that I had a tiny, tiny bit of brown spotting on one occasion that I visited the loo. Almost so small an amount that I could have missed it. Of course, I have dangerously latched onto this sign as a sign of implantation, where sometimes, you can get a tiny bleed.

Please please don't let me get my hopes up if they are going to be dashed.

Come on Grub, dig in there. Get comfy. You will have a mummy who will read you stories, bake you cakes, throw you great birthday parties, and a daddy who will play football with you, make you laugh and teach you all about music. And both of us will love you forever. Please be real for us.

5 days past transfer

Tuesday 24th March was a strange day. I went back to work and that was ok, but in the afternoon I started to experience some very odd pains in my womb. They felt like someone was stabbing me with a knitting needle but from inside. I had probably about 6 episodes of this throughout the afternoon. I have never before felt anything like it - unlike period pain or IBS pain, it was much more localised, fleeting and sharp. I also felt really hot and flushed all day and my skin actually felt hot to the touch.

It's hard to dare to begin to think that this could be Grub implanting. Of course, the thought crosses my mind constantly, but you get the fear that you might jinx the whole thing even by entertaining the very possibility. This is the kind of internal conversation I am now having, constantly:

'What's that twinge? Is that Grub implanting?'

' No, maybe it was just a bit of wind, or it could be some side effects from the progesterone pessaries.'

'Yes, you're probably right'

'You can't be pregnant - you're not going to be that lucky and Grub was not even a blastocyst yet'

'How many more days before I can test?'

'At least another week'

'I can't take this any more'

'So test then'

'I'm too scared, I don't want to lose the fantasy of maybe being pregnant if it's negative'.

'What's that twinge?'

I am going slowly mad.

Days immediately following transfer

I felt very strange once Grub was on board. Like I was carrying something so very precious that it scared me. I took it easy on the sofa for 36 hours or so and then began pottering.

2 days after transfer (referred to hereafter as 2dp5dt which means 2 days past a 5 day transfer) I went out for lunch with my mum and sister. All afternoon I felt some pain in my left ovary (the one with the cyst) and a generally heavy and full feeling in my womb. I tried not to read too much into it.

3dp5dt was Mothering Sunday. Hmmmm. I had a rotten day. With everything going on I had forgotten to get my mum a present so H and I went to Marks and Spencers to get her something. In the shop I had a bit of a breakdown. I couldn't stop the tears. We had to grab a simple bunch of flowers and come home. I felt so depressed I could hardly lift my head up. I was utterly convinced it hadn't worked.

4dp5dt was an ok day. I pottered at home and made some tiaras. I felt more cheerful on the whole. I took H to the local hospital to have his wrist looked at again.

Transfer day - Grub made it!

We got the great news on the morning of Thursday 19th that our little Grub had made it through another night, and could be transferred back to his mummy today! What a huge relief.

Grub had not developed quite as quickly as they might have hoped: he was still classed as a morula, a picture of which can be seen above. A morula is a multi-celled embryo, the stage an embryo reaches before becoming a blastocyst. A blastocyst is an embryo whose cells have differentiated into two distinct types: those that will become the placenta, and those that will become the foetus itself. Usually, embryos are blastocysts by day 5 or 6, and when they reach this stage, they are about ready to attach themselves to the womb lining.

It was a bit worrying to hear this. Was Grub going to carry on developing? You can see from the post title that he did!

Embryo transfer was scheduled for 1.30. I had been instructed to be there at 1 with a full bladder. It's actually really hard to try to synchronise your bladder with a set time! I started drinking water before the 1 hour journey and by the time I got to the clinic I was full, but not unmanageably so. However, when at 1.20 they still hadn't come for me, my bladder was beginning to protest! I pleaded to go to 'let a bit out'!. Have you ever tried just letting a bit out when your bladder is screaming for release?! It's hard, let me tell you! The clinic were running late and I had to repeat this strange toilet trip three times!

H and I got taken into the theatre prep area and got gowned up. This time he was allowed to come in with me. All the nurses came in to see how his cheek was looking now and marvelling at the balloon sticking out from behind his ear. Freak show! I was a little nervous.

When we got into the operating theatre there was a nice atmosphere and music on. They put a picture of Grub up in the big screen and we got to see our potential baby for the first time. It was pretty amazing. To think that this ball of life had come from a bit of me and bit of H was just awe-inspiring. The embryologist pointed out that Grub had developed a bit more from when she had examined him in the morning, and that he was beginning to show signs of turning into a blastocyst. This was very reassuring news.

The actual transfer itself was not very pleasant but ok really. My legs were put in stirrups, a sheet with a hole was put over my bits, my cervix was clamped and cleaned, and then a long catheter was passed through my cervix, while a nurse pressed on my bladder with an ultrasound sensor so the catheter could be seen passing into the womb. I could see the screen - very odd!

Then Grub was loaded up into the catheter and the consultant carefully placed him in the best bit of my womb. All done. I have from then on been what is officially known as PUPO . . .

Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise!

PGD results day (backtrack)

Ok - I'm sorry. I have some catching up to do!

The past week has been incredibly difficult to deal with and I developed the kind of mind-set where you just want to crawl into your own shell and not have any contact with the outside world. But I'll back track over what happened each day, mainly because I cannot face doing it all in one post.

So, back to Wednesday 18th March - the day we got the results of the PGD test on our embryos. It was a morning of hell. We had been told to expect the phone call from embryology at 10am, but we were both up from around 7am with nerves. We sat in bed talking and trying to distract our minds until the phone call came, sick with worry for 6 little clusters of cells that represented our future.

10am came and went. The phone remained silent. 10.30am came and went. Nothing. I was literally pressing my nails into my palms at this point with frustration. We couldn't even speak to each other at this point. It was agony. At 10.40am I could take no more and phoned the clinic, who apologised for the late call and said we'd be called very soon. More tense waiting. Then at 10.55am the phone rang.

Not brilliant news. Of our 6 embryos, all had survived the biopsy which was great, but there was only one which was definitely free of CF and ok to be used. There was one that was definitely affected, and then another two were giving weird results (apparently 3 copies of the gene!) and another two which seemed not to be developing very well.

So we were left with just one little embryo. I had named the six, Hugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub, after the six fireman in an old childhood TV Show 'Trumpton'. Now we just had to pin all of our hopes on Grub.

We were told to wait for another phone call the next day to let us know whether they could try to test the two with the strange results again. They would tell us the next day whether Grub had made it through the night and could be transferred back to me, or not.

Day 3 embryos - PGD day

So today was the day that our embryos underwent the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. H also had his operation on his cheekbone, so it was a stressful day all round.

H's dad took him to hospital and waited there all day with him as we had decided that it wasn't the best place for me to be while I'm trying to recover and relax before the embryo transfer. I felt really guilty though.

I've waited by the phone all day for news of my H and news of my embryos. The operation went ok, but H now has an internal 'balloon' holding up his smashed cheekbone, which hopefully will do the trick. H is home now and groggy from the painkillers and the ordeal. Poor, poor man. I love him dearly.

I heard nothing from the clinic all day and then at 4pm I could distract myself no longer and called them. Unbelieveably, more good news. All six embryos had continued to divide and grow and were now 5-7 cells each. All six of them had been biopsied. This means that the embryologist has taken one cell from each of them (see the picture on the right) to test for cystic fibrosis. All of the embryos survived this procedure, and the embryologist said that that was very encouraging. She said that they were all now classed as grade 2, which she said is absolutely fine.

We now have to wait for the next phone call tomorrow which will tell us how many of the embryos are affected with cystic fibrosis. Statistically it will be 1 in 4. Please let our embryos continue to grow strongly and let there be enough non-affected ones to transfer back to me.

Day 2 embryos

On Monday morning we had a call from embryology again to let us know how our embryos were looking today. We expected that some of them would have died by this stage. But we had the fantastic fantastic news that ALL of the 6 embryos had survived and divided.

We were told that we had four 4-cell embryos and two 2-cell embryos and that 4 of the embryos were grade 2 quality and the other 2 were grade 1 quality, with 1 being the top grade.

Again, this seemed too good to be true. Every vibe we have is directed at these six little clusters of cells.

We were told to expect another phone call on Tuesday with a progress report and the news on how the PGD test had gone.

'How do you like your eggs?' 'Fertilised please'

On Sunday morning we got a call from embryology. Out of the 7 eggs collected, all of them were mature and 6 of them had fertilised!

We could not believe our luck - that was fantastic news and just what we needed after the trauma of the past couple of days.

The picture above is what they would have looked like at this stage. You can see the two nuclei at the centre of the cell - one of those would contain my DNA and the other H's. For the first time, we had created something that was part me, part him. It was an amazing feeling and incredibly emotional.

We were told that we would be called the next day when they would have expected any viable embryos to have divided into 2-4 cells. Cue another 24 hours of nail-biting and wishing hard.

Humpty Dumpty and egg collection

I haven't done a post for a good few days because it has really been a stressful few days and I haven't felt like blogging. But I need to post now before there is any more to say as I am getting behind with all the news.

On Friday 13th, the day before egg collection, my H had a nasty accident. He fell about 8 feet from a roof and broke his arm, smashed his cheekbone and badly bruised his ribs. I got a call at work about 3.30pm and rushed home. We spent the next 6 hours in different hospitals and didn't get home till 10pm. We were so worried that the IVF cycle would be cancelled as H may have been admitted to a ward, but thankfully, he was allowed to go home. Poor H - he was really in pain.

We managed to keep our 8.30am slot for egg collection and arrived at Nottingham at 8am. My mum kindly drove us. We were put into a little room and I had to change into a gown. After some preliminaries and forms, I was collected by the nurse and walked down into the theatre. I was quite surprised at the size of the room - it was huge. I hopped onto the bed and the anaesthetist began to try to get the IV into the back of my hand. It took two attempts as my veins are quite awkward. When he succeeded he said, 'here's a nice big gin and tonic' and I remember thinking that I felt a bit drunk, then that was it - out for the count. Although it was not a general anaesthetic, I remember nothing, felt nothing and was completely oblivious to anything going on.

The first thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room with a warm sensation on my abdomen. It was a heating pad they'd placed there. There was a nurse in the room and I asked her how many eggs they'd got. How many times must she have been asked that?! She told me '7 eggs' and I promptly started weeping. 7 was not enough! I expected more like 10 to give us a good chance of them fertilising, surviving to day 3 when they do the biopsy, then surviving to day 5 for the transfer back into me. 7 felt like a dangerous number.

They wheeled me back to our little room and H came in to see me. The consultant and the embryologist both came to explain how the procedure had gone. They were unconcerned about the 7 eggs and told me that they expected that the other 3 follicles would have yielded immature eggs which would have been useless anyway, had they managed to extract them. We were reassured a bit then. The stern nurse told me off for 'sulking about my 7 eggs' with a twinkle in her eye.

We were driven home and looked after so well by my mum. We went to bed hoping for good news in the morning.

Egg collection is scheduled

Sorry I didn't come back and update yesterday afternoon. The news was that the clinic wanted me to do another day of stims and come back this morning for another scan and blood test. I was pleased with that as I want some of the smaller follicles to catch up.

So, at the scan this morning, the womb lining was still the same, and the sonographer (different lady this morning) said it looked really good. My largest follicle is now 23mm and there are 10 follicles at good sizes. There are also 3 smaller ones at 11mm, 9mm and 9mm, which are borderline for being able to catch up in time. There are only 3 follicles on my left ovary (where that cyst is) and it's the right ovary that seems to be doing the lion's share of the work. All in all, it's the kind of response they expected from me, so that's good. It's not an amazing number of follicles, but it's not bad either. Pretty average crop!

I've had to wait a few hours for the clinic's call to tell me when they want me in for egg collection. It's Saturday morning at 8am! Bloody hell - this is actually going to happen now! Tonight at 8.30pm on the dot I have to take the 'trigger shot' which is two vials of Pregnyl, the drug that matures the eggs prior to collection. I also have to take my Buserelin at the normal time - this is to stop me from spontaneously ovulating.

I am not allowed any food after midnight on Friday night or liquid after 5.30am Saturday. Then H and I are to go to the clinic for 8am sharp, and I'll be taken to theatre for 8.30am. We should be ready to go home just before lunch.

I do feel a bit scared. I've never had any kind of anaesthetic before (well, apart from a local one in my mouth at the dentist) so I'm worrying about the unknown. I hope I don't feel anything. I hope I get a good crop of mature eggs. I hope H's sample is ok. So many things to hope for - every day brings a new worry.

If you're reading this, please keep your fingers crossed for me. I need some vibes directed at my follicles to finish ripening and grow big and healthy. Maybe one of them could become our future child.

First follicle scan - bit of a shock!

Well, back from my first follicle scan, and it's good news! They were quite surprised to see that lots of my follicles were reaching a good size, more on my right than my left ovary, but about 10 measurable ones altogether. Smallest is 9mm and the largest is 19.5mm. My womb lining is 'triple-lined' which I think is good, and is 8.5mm. They said I am very close and that the trigger would either be tonight or tomorrow night. Much much sooner than we were expecting as this is only day 8 of stims!! I just hope that these 10 will be mature enough, and maybe that a few more will join them, so I'd like to stim for one more day. But we'll see how my bloods come back later. So, egg collection either Friday or Saturday!! This is happening so quickly - I'm a tad scared now.

The clinic are going to call me later to let me know what to do (whether I need to do the injections for one more night or whether I'm ready to take the 'trigger shot' now). The trigger shot is the one that's stored in the fridge, and its job is to give the follicles a final ripening surge, so that they're mature when they're collected. I'm 'working from home' till about 11.30 then got to go in for a few meetings, so I bet I'll miss the clinic's call. I'm sitting here with a hot water bottle on my tummy in a bid to get the follicles even bigger!

So, all in all, I'm pleased but a bit scared! I just can't believe that we're nearly ready to go! I got a 'well done' from the nurse, who said 'you're very close' so I feel quite proud that my body is doing what it's been told to do! I would have preferred the number of follicles to be closer to 15, as the more there are, the more chance that we are left with some that are decent quality and CF-free, but maybe some more will develop between now and egg collection.

Will update later when I get the call from the clinic.

Day 7 of Stims - feeling some stirrings

Well we've made it to day 7 of the stimulating injections. Injection 6 is over and it's onto number 7 tonight - the last one before the follicle scan tomorrow.

I don't know whether it's my pain threshold lowering as we go on, but the injections do seem to be getting a bit more stingy. Maybe it's because I'm running out of places to jab now on my tummy. Still - could be worse, I guess.

I'm definitely feeling something going on in my womb/ovary area now. I feel kind of heavy in my womb, with a few dull twinges of pain from time to time. I actually feel bloated, butI don't look bloated, if you know what I mean?

Tomorrow morning is something that is making me anxious. What if they find only a few small follicles and think I'm not responding very well? As 25% of our embryos will statistically be affected with Cystic Fibrosis, we really need a good crop of eggs so that if some do fall by the wayside, we still have a decent number. Please, please let my body be behaving itself and producing lots of great quality eggs.

Maybe tomorrow they'll be able to give us an idea of when egg collection may be. We can then start counting down towards that. I'm guessing that it will be Monday or Tuesday next week, based on average cycles.

In the meantime, plenty of water, plenty of milk, and plenty of protein to get the eggs growing. Also hot water bottles on my tummy as often as I can to encourage egg development.

Hopefully my next post will bring some good news about the scan. . . .

Day 3 of stimming

So we've done three injections of the Menopur now and onto the 4th one tonight. H is getting the hang of mixing all the drugs up but I seem to have had a couple of duff needles, which won't pierce my skin. Either that or I'm developing a rhino hide. Maybe it's finally happened after all these months of well meaning acquaintances asking about when the stork will be paying us a visit!

Still a bit worried about this nagging left ovary. Sometimes the ache spreads round to my lower back. I wish it wasn't there in the first place, and then it would be easier to tell when I start to get the twinges from the follicles developing. I think I do feel a touch bloated though, a bit heavier in the lower abdomen. But it's so hard to know whether I'm imagining that. I need to keep drinking lots of water today. It's easy when I'm at work as the bottle is on my desk all day and I can get through 2 litres by the end of the day, but today is Saturday, and I need to make sure I don't forget.

4 more injections until first follicle scan. I'm still feeling positive but getting a bit more nervous now that we're getting close to the real action of IVF.

Downregulation scan day

Today H and I went to the clinic to get my downregulation scan, blood test, and the training for the Menopur injections.

Back to the scan etc later. I want to talk about the injection lesson first. This lesson was to show us how to mix the Menopur drugs which will do the job of stimulating lots of egg follicles to ripen. It's much more involved than the simple Buserelin injections. Basically, H has to put a big mixing needle on the syringe and draw up some water from a ampoule. He then has to squirt this water into a vial containing the Menopur powder, and draw it back up into the syringe. This process has to be repeated so that all four vials of Menopur powder are dissolved and in the syringe. He then has to pop on a smaller needle so that I can inject it into my tummy. As well as this Menopur injection, I have to continue to have the Buserelin injection, so I have to have one needle in each side of my tummy, each evening. Never mind, it's not the injections that have been bothering me - it's the side effects from the Buserelin. Yesterday I felt absolutely awful. It felt like my head was in a vice all day, and the hot flushes have also started. Hopefully, the addition of the Menopur will make me feel better as my oestrogen levels rise.

Back to the scan . . . .
I have been worrying a bit about this scan as the pain I'm getting in my left ovary has not gone away and I convinced myself that it was a cyst that would scuper the treatment cycle.

So when I had the ultrasound, I was not surprised when they told me that they could see something on my left ovary. It seems I have a 'collapsed follicle', which is basically what last month's ovulated egg sprang from and which has now filled with blood. The sonographer said that it would be like a deflating balloon, all shrivelled, and that it measured 21 mm!! But the good news was that my womb lining was 3mm (they like it to be 4mm and under). So I was told everything should be ok, but they had to wait until this afternoon when they would ring me with the results of my blood test to see if I have indeed 'downregged'.

Cue an anxious few hours, and frustration when I missed the call and then couldn't get hold of the nurses when I rang back. But we got the go ahead!! We start the stimming tonight! I did ask the nurse for reassurance on the cyst-thing, as I was worried it may prevent so many eggs from developing or maybe be in the way when it came to collection time. But she reassured me quite firmly that it would not make a difference.

We're back in a week today for the first stimming scan, which will be day 8 of the Menopur. I'm going to do everything possible from now until then to get these eggs to grow. I've asked my mum to get me a tub of Whey Protein shake as I've read that my eggs needs lots of protein to grow. I'm going to try to visualise them all growing in there, like peas in a pod.

Please let this work. I want to be a mum so much.

Spring seems to have sprung

First of March. It has been a lovely mild and sunny day today - all Spring-like and hopeful. The shops are full of Easter eggs as if I didn't need another reminder of the importance of eggs in our lives at the moment! H and I took our new car out to the Peak District and stopped in Ashbourne for Sunday lunch. We came across a lovely little pub that was doing a carvery, so we both tucked into Roast Beef and Yorkshire Puddings. It was delicious. Then we drove on to Dovedale and had a great walk (about 4/5 miles) along the River Dove in the sunshine. We've spent the evening on the sofa feeling nicely tired and happy.

Not long now till my first scan - just two more injections. Injection 11 has been done tonight and the sharps bin is really starting to fill up. I've been having a few pulling pains in the area of my left ovary. I'm not sure what they could be, as there should be no activity going on down there at the moment. I really hope it's not a cyst or something. My period is nearly over - that was a short one!

I want to update you on the School Reunion I went to last night, but right now my legs are telling me to go to bed, so that will have to be a post for another day . . .