IVF cycle #1 cd1

Hello Aunty Flo! Enjoy your 3 day stay because I'm hoping it's the last time I see you for a very long time :)

Ready to rock ;)

We had our FS appointment yesterday to sign our consent form for IVF. Dr P is so lovely. I'm really glad we have her as our FS. It seems crazy that we have been going to see her for 6 months now, and yet we have only managed 1 IUI in all that time. It's just the way things have panned out with all the little hick-ups long the way. So I'm glad to be at the point where we finally know exactly what we need to do and we're ready to do it. I just hope it works. I hope the follicles grow. I hope there is eggs in them. I hope the eggs are decent enough to fertilize and I hope the embryos are healthy enough to transfer and/or freeze. That's a lot of hoping and all just to get us to the point of transfer. I'm not game enough to think beyond that at this point. We just need to wait and see if we get some decent embryos. Less than a week till AF. This is going to be one very interesting and expensive cycle ...

Profiles are in and the winner is ...

Mr Fix-It :) Good with his hands and far shorter than Gigantor which is a relief! They only sent 4 profiles and this was the only one that seemed half decent. 2 had some pretty significant health issues in their family history and another was a moderate to heavy drinker 'on weekends'. Mr Fix-It only had minor health compliants so we figured he was a decent compromise :). To be honest, with such a limited selection, we've had to make health our only criteria. Of course it would be nice to have a donor with similar colouring to Scout and the girls, but not at the risk of a congenital deformity or schizophrenia. So ... Fix-it man it is :) At least we have a donor again, and we're good to go for the next cycle which is fast approaching.

I've been flat out at work lately and trying to squeeze alot in while I'm there. Thanks to a restructure, my work load has more than doubled over the past 3 months but my wage and caseload is still expected to stay the same. Work is not something I generally like to bring home but it has happened a few times over the past couple of weeks, and to make matters worse I've even been dreaming about work which is ridiculous. I woke up exhausted the other day and had to get up and go to work after I felt like I'd just done a full day there in my sleep!! Scout has also been working alot and has been sick so we are both glad it's finally the weekend and we can spend some time together.

Scout got her boat license this week so we are planning to head off to one of the nearby lakes to give our new tinny a run. Last night I dreamt that while we were launching the boat our car ended up in the drink as well and floated away! So now I'm feeling alittle apprehensive about the whole thing but I'm sure it will be just fine :) lol.

Next week we have an appointment with our FS to sign the IVF 'consent to treatment' form and then we'll just be waiting for AF and saving our butts off to pay for the cycle. It's a good thing the girls like rice cos I think that's all we'll be able to afford to eat in the not too distant future!

I have mixed feelings about the IVF cycle at this point. I'm looking forward to getting the ball rolling again but I'm also alittle worried about how my body will cope and whether it will even work, and what we'll do if it doesn't and what I'll tell my boss ... Yada yada yada. At this point I'm trying to push alot of that to the back of my mind and just focus on what I can control in the here and now. It's going to be an interesting month to say the least. I also got an invite yesterday to a friends hen's party which is going to be a winery tour around the region where we live. It's on the weekend after when I expect my ET will be and there's no way I can get out of it cos we live right in the middle of the wineries. So now I'm trying to figure out how the heck I'm suppose to attend a wine tasting event and get away with not drinking?! Anyway ... For the time being I've said I'll be going but I know it'll really depend on how I pull up after all the procedures. I have a sneaking suspicion I may have to come clean with my friend sooner rather than later about us TTC, but I'd really rather avoid that if I can.

Spoilt by our girls :)

While we were hoping for a nice sleep-in this morning unfortunately it wasn't to be. We had a rough night with our 4 year old spending the night in our room after she threw up twice. She has been unwell lately with a cold, then asthma and now this. But of course come morning she was fine again and all excited to give us the mother's day presents she'd made :)

You have to love the effort that school, kinder, cubs and day care put into getting our little one's to make their mums something special for today. We got two beaded bracelets each, two glasses with tea light candles in them wrapped up in specially made wrapping paper, a number of drawings, two cardboard photo frames with shell pasta glued around the outside and spray painted gold, and of course some extra special cards. How spoilt were we?! Was very cute :). And to top it off they served us a special breakfast in bed! (At their age that = CocoPops lol).

How cute is this card?!

This is my third mothers day with the girls. Even though I know I am a mum to them, and they see me as a mum, I still feel funny about getting spoilt like any other mum out there on mother's day. Like I'm an imposter or something. I know it is totally silly and given the relationship I have with the girls I should feel like a 'real' mum but I still have my moments when I feel like I'm only half a mum or something, if that makes sense, and I'm just waiting for someone to point it out. Anyway, despite my insecurities some days, today our girls did an awesome job of showing us just how much they love us as their mums and I felt very special indeed. They rock and I love them very much x

Of course mother's day was not just about us, it was also about our mums and their mums. My mum lives in Queensland so I don't get to see her often, but I called her to tell her I love her and miss her :). She wasn't doing much with her mother's day, just pottering around the house. I felt a little sad knowing that none of us live close enough to spend the day spoiling her and I know she would be thinking about us and about her mum/my nan who passed away some years ago now. I miss them both very much and I feel bad that it has been so long since I've spent a mother's day with her. Next year I will have to do something about that.

Fortunately we do live close to Scout's mum, so after gifts and breakfast in bed and calling my mum, we headed off for lunch at the golf club with Scout's mum and her family. We had lovely food and drink and generally quality family time together. It was great and we rolled out of there feeling like we could not possibly fit another thing in, so much so that we are skipping dinner tonight. It was a awesome day and I feel very blessed to have such a wonderful family to spend it with.

Scout with her mum and the girls :)

After demolishing the food ...

Two very spoilt mums :)

To top things off ... I almost forgot! Scout got an extra special present this mother's day. A little tinny (AKA the red rocket) to go fishing in :). A little extravagant considering we are about to spend a mint on IVF but she deserves this and it really was a bargain courtesy of eBay! She has been so excited, she's spent the last 4 days studying up for her boat license :) The test is tomorrow so I hope she passes cos I wanna go fishing next weekend!

Back to the donor drawing board

This morning we had our pre IVF appointments. I still can't believe they got us in so quickly. We went to the Box Hill clinic which we haven't been to before. It was different but the staff were just as nice and professional as the city clinic. Our first appointment was with the nurse to go through our treatment plan and all the drugs I'll be on. We'll be doing an antagonist cycle which I'm very happy about as it'll take the same amount of time to complete as a regular cycle. I was worried we'd have to do a down regulation cycle or something long and involved like that but thankfully that's not the case. Yay! On top of that the nurse seemed to think we should be able to start this cycle since I'm only on day 2! How good is that?! At first I was a little freaked mostly because I knew it would mean doing some quick juggling of money to make it happen, but the fact that we could get away without having to miss a cycle was awesome! The only problem was we needed to get an IVF treatment consent form signed with our FS which we hadn't done so our nurse contacted her receptionist to see if we could do the paperwork without a face to face consult. While we were waiting to hear back about that we had the financial appointment, essentially to confirm that this is going to cost a bomb and to get all our payment, private health insurance and medicare arrangements in place. At the end we saw the counsellor and thankfully it was a different one from last time. She was great :) Very direct and easy to talk to. We went through more paperwork regarding embryo storage etc and that's when we hit a speed bump. Our donor. Apparently they have a shortage of IUI donors at present with only two currently available and ours is one of them. They won't let us take him over to IVF because they have a number of IVF donors available and they need to keep him as an IUI donor. So we have to chose a new one. We kind of had a hunch that this might happen but it was still a bit disappointing. It's a bit of a process when you mentally commit to a donor and considering the choices are limited, we felt pretty lucky that we managed to find someone we liked in the first place. So now we have to start again, which potentially means we may end up having to settle for someone we might not like as much and I really don't want to feel like I'm just settling when I'm picking a donor. On top of that, the donor nurse who manages the profiles is snowed under after being away on annual leave so the earliest she can send us any profiles to choose from is 1-4 weeks! That means this cycle is definately out. We can't start a cycle not knowing if we will or won't have a donor when we get to the day of trigger! Especially not when we're paying through the nose for it.

So after all that we are back to waiting this cycle out. I am ok with this as I had originally thought that would be the case, I just thought it would be for different reasons. I never considered that we might be without a donor. And the thought of having to pick a new one is not thrilling me. They only ever offer up a few profiles to choose from at any one time, so what happens if all the ones they send us are crap?! I know deep down that whoever we end up with will be the right one regardless, so I shouldn't worry about it too much. It's just a pretty important part of the recipe to be missing right now don't you think?! Anyway, fingers crossed these profiles come out sooner rather than later and that one of them is exactly what we're after :) This process has been pretty unpredictable so far, so I am just going to have to go with the flow and see what happens at this point. As long as we have a donor by the end of this month, I'll be happy. In the meantime it's back to vitamins, exercise and eating healthy :)

Moving right along ...

Yesterday morning was my last test. My temp had dropped a bit so I was expecting the BFN that came. I was sad and disappointed having to wake Scout up to tell her. Even though AF hadn't arrived, I knew it was over and I needed to let go of any hope for the cycle. Scout gave me a big hug and of course that just made me start to cry. I honestly didn't think I would be that upset after only our first try but I was. That first test with the faint line really got my hopes up and I think that made the BFNs that followed a little harder to swallow. We knew the IUI was a long shot but I guess we were both still hoping we might beat the odds. Anyway, this morning my temp dropped again and by morning tea I was spotting. I actually felt ok about seeing it. I'd already accepted the outcome yesterday so it was more a sign of finally being able to move on, which I really needed.

I have to say, this whole waiting and testing experience has been far worse than I expected. I think I've actually developed an aversion to POAS. I thought it would be all about the excitement and hope of seeing that second line but instead it ended up being more about the dread and fear of not seeing it. I have no idea how so many women out there go through this experience month after month and still function. Anyway, the minute I saw spotting this morning I decided I wasn't even going bother waiting for full flow. I just rang the clinic, told them my period had arrived and asked to be booked in for pre IVF appointments. I barely even registered the commiserations offered by the nurse at the time, I just wanted to focus on the next cycle. At first she told me the earliest appointment at my clinic was 28th May! I was unimpressed to say the least. That would mean missing 2 whole cycles before even starting down regulation. So essentially 3 cycles out! I was not up for that. Fortunately she was very understanding and wanted to help, so she rang around and found us appointments at a sister clinic for this Thursday! How good is that?! We will be able to do our nursing, finance and counseling appointments all back to back at this clinic and they will clear us to start IVF back at our usual clinic next cycle. I am so relieved. It's nice to feel like we're moving forward again instead of just marking time :). It will still be a long month but I am looking forward to getting my head back on track and thinking about something other than whether I might be pregnant or not!