6 days to go!

So test date is the 19th August, actually Im meant to test on the 20th but I have work stuff that I have to do on the 20th so Ive moved it forward a day. By then I will be 13dp3dt and that should give us a good idea of what is brewing.

Ive been OK, trying to stay positive every hour of every day is not exactly easy, yesterday was case in point – I spent my lunch break in a BALL of tears. Today Im OK. I dunno what I feel actually, if I look for symptoms then Im just over-analysing everything. For my ZIFT cycle I was so certain something was happening because I felt SO incredibly sick but then afterwards I felt like a real fool coz my RE said it was nerves that made me feel yuk. Probably true. The mind is powerful but can you actually imagine symptoms?

So Im ticking off the days and just keeping the faith 🙂 But shoo this 2ww is not for the fainthearted, its a real mindfuck…

3 Back with Mommy

Each time I do this I realise how stressful the wait between ER and ET is. With my not-so hot eggs it was a tiny bit more difficult as I was always expecting a poor fert report. So with DE I thought I would get away with slightly less nerves – um why the hell did I ever think that? I misleadingly thought that having better quality eggs automatically means that the fert report is better but infact its not.

Yesterday was particularly bad. At my clinic you need to arrive around 8am to hear whether ET will be that day or not, which means you need to travel all the way to the clinic in a ball of nerves and then wait around whilst the docs scan the patients and then only do you get seen. Yesterday there were 4 patients ahead of me (incl one with hyperstim)which meant by the time I actually got to see my doc I was a ball of weeping woman. The stress and anxiety you go through waiting to hear is really really bad.

Dr V showed us the embies and I was just so damned relieved to see that we still had 4 ongoing, I just burst out crying but not in a nice way, like bawling, heaving, face distorted, tears running like a river crying. I cried for about 10 minutes whilst my husband and doc just stared. And you know Im glad I did for 2 reasons – 1. It was brimming on the surface for days and it was good to have a release and 2. I am always 100% in control, I HATE showing emotion. Even when we got the news of our m/c I was fine until we were alone. So in a way Im glad my doc saw this as Im sure sometimes he thinks Im aloof or have a heart of stone. Finally he could actually see for himself how hard this is.

Anyway we had 3 good looking embies (one GORGEOUS 8 cell), the last one was slightly fragmented (although nothing like I can produce). We actually compared the images of my 3rd cycle with these and you cant even compare. My DE cells were perfectly round and symmetrical whereas mine look like a splat with lots of fragmentation. Only thing I was slightly concerned about was the fact that the shells looked thick, if not thicker than mine. APPARENTLY at some conference in Amsterdam it was discussed that egg shells infact get thick due to the solvents/feed that the embies sit in during the 3 days they are outside the body. Apparently all embies in future are going to have assisted hatching at my clinic because they see that this has better results and by-passes the thicker shells.

So we transferred all 3 embies and now we wait…

An interesting thing is that Dr V told me that for a DE cycle they specifically dont stim the donors like they do the patients. Its a low and slow stim, aiming for between 8 – 12 good quality eggs. The object of the excerise is to get around 2-3 good quality embies and to get the patient pregnant on a fresh cycle, they think that freezing is just an additional nice-to-have if it happens but dont stim essentially to get any frozens – very unlike the USA where the donor is stimmed quite hard and you often get around 20+ eggs and tons of frozens. He said that stimming a donor hard may cause abnormalities in the eggs and of course you run the risk of your donor over-stimming which is not want they want. It just doesnt really help us coz without any frozens you need to try all over again, incl PAYING all over again. But anyways lets believe that I wont be trying again and that this is really IT!

10 Eggies!!!

YAY!!! So ER was today, we got 10 eggies which I am super relieved about. We ICSI’ed all of them and now we wait.

Got a message from my donor that almost made me cry, basically she said that she is thinking of us, sending us love and praying for a good result. After not knowing a thing about this cycle and wondering how/what/why/when etc I was quite relieved to hear that everything went ok. My lining is at 9.3mm and I started prog supps today (wonderful things arent they?).

Now I cant wait to see how the babies are doing tomorrow (I will be close by as Im having the Intralipid drip again). For now I am happy and cant wait to have my babies on board with me! SHOOO!!

Chugging along

Alls well, cycle is chugging along to that all important transfer date! No info yet on donor just that she is doing really well and Dr V is happy with her progress. I feel pretty calm about the whole thing, Ive actually decided that no information is better than knowing and agonising over details. I did ask my co-ordinator how many eggs I can expect and she told me that its irrelevant and actually it is. As long as we can transfer two good quality embies then Im good to go. Hope this zen-like feeling continues.

Confession time…

So I need to make a confession….

We have chosen a donor!! It was pretty tough but we finally settled on someone. I didnt want to say anything until all her tests had been done and she was given the go-ahead. So on Friday I heard that all the bloods have been done and pshyc session (to make sure that she really wants to do this). Apparently she has already started on the pill, now we just need my AF to arrive so I can start on the pill. Only problem being that AF was here on the 2nd May which means it may be a while until I see her again. If its taking too long we might look at Provera but hopefully she comes in the next few weeks. Which means that we are looking at a mid-July cycle, can you believe it?? I cant. I am terrified, scared, excited, nervous, anxious all rolled into one. Flip it, I dont know if I want the time to hurry up or slow down.

So there you have it, I confessed!!