Where are the answers?

Im thinking about God. I saw on one of the forums that someone posted saying that they are no longer pursuing ART as a means to have a baby. The woman who posted has low AMH, never done IVF and her doc wants her to try IVF asap before the AMH declines any further. She also mentioned that she prayed about becoming a mother and God sent someone to tell her that she will have a baby.

 

Now these thoughts have been floating around in my head since reading that. How do you come to the decision to stop treatment? Are you 100% happy about the decision and wait patiently until a baby arrives (or maybe not?). If you are making this decision you may also need to face the fact that you may never have a baby of your own. You see I read into things a lot more than face value and if a stranger told me that I will definitely have a baby Im not sure if I will take this as a message coming from God? There I said it. Well then how do I know that God is communicating to me? Good question, one I don’t know the answer to (part of the reason Im blogging about this – to get your views….)

 

What if God meant that she will have a baby but perhaps not naturally, perhaps through ART, donor eggs or even adoption? How can we be certain of the path laid out for us? I take my hat off to anyone who waits patiently for their miracle sent by God, without seeking the help of a fertility specialist. Should I be doing the same? Perhaps this is half the problem – that Im so impatient, perhaps this is a lesson for me to learn???? Maybe I should also give up spending thousands and just learn to be more patient? Will we be able to conceive naturally with PCOS and MFI – maybe but maybe not.

 

What if you still waiting patiently at 40? Does that mean God doesn’t want you to have children? Then the many stories in the Bible of God blessing the womb of many woman is just that a story? Lets face it there are many women in this world who have been unable to conceive AT ALL so what about them? What if at 40 you realise that God’s message was misinterpreted by you – that you should have pursued ART more vigorous to have that baby that He promised?

 

So what about that saying – God helps those that help themselves? I feel like Im being pulled in so many different directions with all my thoughts. Wish I knew the answer to this one.

“Personal Insight”

So I did one of those “personal insight” questionnaires for work. My manager wants to learn how to manage us (ja whatever).

 

The summary is as follows (taken straight from the report, except obviously whats written in blue):

 

Stress Tolerance

“Dee” recognizes that there is much room for improvement in handling stressful situations. Her attempts to deal with stress are usually associated with experiences of anxiety and nervousness (wouldn’t you be fucking anxious and nervous in an IVF 2ww). There is a marked need to develop better coping skills (ja, its called anti-depressants). The 15FQ+ indicates that “Dee” is currently experiencing extremely high levels of anxiety and has difficulty coping with emotionally grueling situations. (where is my AF/Please stay away/how many follies/whats my E2 level/sperm analysis results/AMH/FSH/waking up at 4:30am to be at VL for a scan to be back at work by 8:30am/Whos pregnant now/PCOS/varicocele/hydrocele/doctors/scans/blood tests/ZIFT/ICSI/when should I test/why the bloody hell am I so useless????? EMOTIONALLY GRUELING YOU SAY???????)

 

Impulse Control

“Dee” might experience occasional or frequent difficulties in resisting or delaying impulses, drives, and temptations to act (where’s the wine and ciggies – Ive had a bad day). There is a need for the recognition for better anger management as an important step toward improvement.

 

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS THAT COULD HINDER PERFORMANCE

 

·          May seem somewhat forceful and inattentive to the needs of others in achieving her objectives. Ja especially pregnant managers

·          May lack self-confidence and be prone to feelings of self-doubt. Will I ever be a mother? Why me?

·          May be seen as tense, forceful and somewhat confrontational. I fucking hate my ovaries

·          At times she may need to work hard to control feelings of irritation or annoyance. Fertile people sitting next to me tend to do this to me.

·          Believing there is one right way to do everything, she may be disinclined to compromise her standards. Damn straight bitch.

·          May tend to have difficulty in maintaining her composure under pressure. Ie Garden Services incident

·          May have difficulty delegating work to others, tending to take on too much herself. Type A personality – Time Urgent Perfectionist DELUXE

·          May at times need to work hard to control feelings of anger or resentment. Why the fuck aren’t I pregnant?

 

 

Inofolic

Hi gals,

Ive had such an excellent response to my post on Inofolic, within a couple of hours Joni and Robz had both sent me info on it. Robz even ordered it for me through her pharmacy – thank you dear friend. For those that would like to know Inofolic can be ordered through Dischem at a cost of R290 for 30 sachets. DONT go to the vitamin counter because they just give you blank stares, you need to go through the dispensary AND a portion of it goes through medical aid – whoo hoo!

Now what is the hype all about? I found an article on the net regarding PCOS and ICSI cycles. A doctor in Italy I think it was has done controlled randomised studies to determine that giving IVF?ICSI patients myo-inositol combined with folic acid (Inofolic) resulted in better quality eggs and better pregnancy rates. I have copied the abstract from the paper below:

Myo-inositol may improve oocyte quality in intracytoplasmic sperm injection cycles. A prospective, controlled, randomized trial.

Papaleo E, Unfer V, Baillargeon JP, Fusi F, Occhi F, De Santis L.

IVF unit, Gynecologic-Obstetric Department, Istituto di Ricovera e Cura a Carattere Scientifico, San Raffaele Hospital, Vita-Salute University, Milan, Italy.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of myo-inositol on oocyte quality in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients undergoing intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles. DESIGN: A prospective, controlled, randomized trial. SETTING: Assisted reproduction centers. PATIENT(S): Sixty infertile PCO patients undergoing ovulation induction for ICSI. INTERVENTION(S): All participants underwent standard long protocol. Starting on the day of GnRH administration, 30 participants received myo-inositol combined with folic acid (Inofolic) 2 g twice a day and 30 control women received folic acid alone, administrated continuously. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Primary end points were number of morphologically mature oocytes retrieved, embryo quality, and pregnancy and implantation rates. Secondary end points were total number of days of FSH stimulation, total dose of gonadotropin administered, E(2) level on the day of hCG administration, fertilization rate per number of retrieved oocytes, embryo cleavage rate, live birth and miscarriage rates, cancellation rate, and incidence of moderate or severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. RESULT(S): Total r-FSH units (1,958 +/- 695 vs. 2,383 +/- 578) and number of days of stimulation (11.4 +/- 0.9 vs. 12.4 +/- 1.4) were significantly reduced in the myo-inositol group. Furthermore, peak E(2) levels (2,232 +/- 510 vs. 2,713 +/- 595 pg/mL) at hCG administration were significantly lower in patients receiving myo-inositol. The mean number of oocytes retrieved did not differ in the two groups, whereas in the group cotreated with myo-inositol the mean number of germinal vesicles and degenerated oocytes was significantly reduced (1.0 +/- 0.9 vs. 1.6 +/- 1.0), with a trend for increased percentage of oocytes in metaphase II (0.82 +/- 0.11% vs. 0.75 +/- 0.15%). CONCLUSION(S): These data show that in patients with PCOS, treatment with myo-inositol and folic acid, but not folic acid alone, reduces germinal vesicles and degenerated oocytes at ovum pick-up without compromising total number of retrieved oocytes. This approach, reducing E(2) levels at hGC administration, could be adopted to decrease the risk of hyperstimulation in such patients.

For our last IVF we used inositol only but Dr V wants me to try the Inofolic for the next cycle, so I will start when I start on my next pack of BCP’s. Dr V attended a conference in Spain this year and apparently listened to this doctor present his paper on Inofolic. I cant say whether it did make a difference last cycle but I’m basically willing to try anything at this stage.

To M Im so incredibly sorry to hear about your BFN, please take care of yourself. It is just so incredibly sad.

Decisions, decisions

 

AF arrived today. Kind of out of the blue. But Im used to that. Why is it that the sight of blood makes your mood nose dive? I spoke to J at lunch today about our future plans. I’ll be going onto the pill as from tomorrow. Will then start Lucrin in December, looks like it might be around the day I would have been due with the little one we lost, which is fitting I guess. Start stims late December and onto IVF/ICSI/ZIFT. This will probably be our last cycle with VL, hopefully our last cycle ever.

 

For the next 3 months it will be getting back to healthy eating, cutting down on the alcohol and saying goodbye to my Marlboros. Smoking isn’t really an issue, Im not really a heavy smoker to start with and just with this last BFN it has been getting a bit heavier. The issue is really getting my mind around the whole “starting again”, how many more fucking times will we have to “start again”? Just thinking of the last BFN made the tears well up. Can we do this again? Im so terrified.