What I need to do now

For the last few months I have been really slack.

I used the fact that I was doing IVF as an excuse to not exercise like I was supposed to and then used the mild OHSS as an excuse to not exercise cos hell who the frick exercises when you feel so shitty anyway and then the whole negative happened and I just could not motivate myself to get my ass off the couch and away from the wine and the chocolate and crisps.

BUT no more!  I need to pull finger and get my ass back to the gym.  I need to get my running shoes back on and I need to stop with the crap food.

Time to get motivated again.

I miss my bed…

A while back I mentioned that we were re-doing our stairs at home.  Well building work started in earnest at the begining of this last week and let’s just say it’s not been pretty…

Our house went from being a home to a building site and dust now covers EVERYTHING like a veil and the worst thing about it is that it does not make any sense at all to clean it up cos well by the end of each new day there is a new layer of dust hovering in the air just waiting to settle over all our wordly goods.  Even in the places that we thought woudl be safe, the dust she is there!

At this point in time we have no stairs leading up to our bedroom either and after squatting in our own spare room, sleeping on a double bed I can safely state that “I miss my bed”.  When one has become accustomed to sleeping in a queen size bed, going back to a double bed is no mean feat.  I mean the duvet is like half the size and Cliff is a nasty duvet stealer.  His feet just about hang off the edge of the bed too which lets in the cooler air and that is no good at all.

Other than my bed, I miss the shower.  I’m one of those girls who washes her hair everday (I know the whole let your natural oils flow but I.just.cannot.have.greasy.hair.  It drives me completely batty!) and now that I have to wash my hair everyday in the BATH, Oh.My.Word!  Four words for this mission accomplished daily – Pain.In.The.Ass!!

And the cherry on the top is this – we have had to knock out some tiles to level the area where the old staircase used to be and guess what – NO tile place in the whole of bloody Joburg can supply us with the same tiles.  Lovely. Now we’ve had to be creative in our solution to this issue and are having to spend WAY more money than expected by putting in parcade wooden flooring in our lounge and dining room so that our builder can carefully pull up some tiles from this area to cover the gaping hole in our entrance.

We have been taking daily photo’s of the progress and I will do a pictorial onc the work is finally all done so that you can see the transformation from home to buidlers site to home (hopefully) again.  Work is expected to be complete and house thoroughly cleaned by next weekend.  And I *know* you’re all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting with bated breath (this also helps combat the inhalation of dust) to see them.

Letting your hair down

Often after a failed treatment (ok after each and every big treatment I’ve had fail) I decide that it’s time for us to let our hair down, to chill and get wild and remember that before we were trying to have a baby we were just people who loved each other and had fun with each other.  Time to remember that there is more to our relationship than just trying to procreate.

So it worked out just fine and dandy that my cousin’s wedding fell within a week of our failed fresh IVF # 2.  The wedding was held in the middle of the bush at a place called Bundu Lodge and when we arrived there on Friday, I was stressing for the bride and groom – it was POURING with rain… And they did not have a back up plan for the outside in the middle of the bush wedding!  Thankfully Mother Nature played nice and the sun came out in all it’s glory for their wedding day…

We really let our hair down and partied the night away.  It felt so good to just be Cliff and Sam the husband and wife, Cliff and Sam the people who loved each other, and Cliff and Sam who are more than the people they’ve become through their walk with infertility.

 

I wish I could rememer to be those people more often.

Where we’re at…

So we had our follow up appointment last Thursday. It was not an easy one to get through.  The first thing that Stephan said to us was this “You’re not giving up.  There are still options here and you’re not giving up.”  So at least we were on the same page of the book on that one…

I had my list all ready to ask him and as usual the man pre-empted me.  We discussed A LOT.  First on the list was the fact that we were at the point now where we needed to dig deeper and look at other tests that are not run as a standard.

Stuff like chromosonal testing for both Cliff and I.  We have a 96% chance that our chromosomes are normal but we need to have it checked out cos if  by some chance either of us fall into that 4% no amount of treatment will get us pregnant with our own eggs and sperm.  Then we headed into the HLA testing talk.  These tests are DAMN expensive!  And for a less than 1% chance of us having HLA issues it’s a big decision to make to have them done, I mean they cost R10 000.00 and Stephan told us that even then they are mostly inconclusive.  In light of this our doc feels that with our next IVF we should consider having the IVIG drip (the drip they use to treat an HLA incompatibility issue) just in case we do fall into that less than 1% bunch of people.  At R6000.00 a drip (with 2 drips needed) that is also a big thing to discuss and right now we’re first waiting for the results of the chromosonal tests before we make any decisions on this one…

The thing is that the embryologist grew on our 3 left over embies after our transfer – of the 3 only 1 went onto hatch and that worries me.  I had a big question mark with regards to our embryo quality and cos of that I have to admit that I’m now worried.  BUT for now I’ll just have to wait for the tests to come back…

We spoke about protocol change – we are done with the clomid/menopur/cetrotide combo.  From now on we’re doing menopur/cetrotide and I’ll be monitored daily to try ensure OHSS does not occur again.  He also wants me to be on metformin while I’m stimming next time round.

We discussed the clinic’s stats for PCOS patients specifically and surprisingly this is not tracked.  However our doc did say in his last 5 years at the clinic he has not seen a PCOS girl have more than 4 fresh attempts before having a success, obviously provided all the other “stuff” (my words not his) is in order…

We spoke about IVM which while tested at the clinic is not a viable option right now as the only clinic that really has had success with this treatment is in Canada.  We spoke about GIFT but my age plays against me on this one as he would not be comfortable putting anymore than 3 eggs back and that kinda defeats the point of GIFT.

Lastly we talked about when to try again.  I wanted to try end April / beginning May but he won’t do IVF with us until June.  After much thought, I know he’s right.  It’s just that I felt like we had to be “doing” something.  Something that is not waiting around.  But we’re waiting around again.  For our blood test results – and then, then only can we decide what the plan of action will be.

Standard Answer?

I’m ok. 

But the truth?  The truth is that this IVF failure has hit me WAY harder than I expected.  The truth is that I’m not doing so good.  And the fact is that I’m not really sure what it is I’m feeling right now.  I know that I’m sad, but it’s not an overwhelming sad.  It’s a sadness that just sits on my shoulder slightly behind me and tags along where ever I go. 

I know that I’m angry with God.  Boy am I angry with Him.  And I know that cos of that anger I feel towards Him I’m pulling back from my faith. 

I know that I hate seeing the hurt and anger and sadness in my husbands eyes.  I hate that we’re in this place with a passion I’ve never hated with before. 

I know that I feel empty and hollow.  And the I know that I am not the only person out there that is feeling these things right now – which makes it all the more fucked up.  I feel that this is just so unfair.  Why do good people have to deal with this shit?  It just does not and probably will never make sense to me.  And that just sucks.

I think at the heart of the emotions I’m feeling is, I’m not sure what the right word is – disappointment ? that I allowed myself to believe so fully that the last IVF was the one, that I did not protect myself and my heart against the fact that realistically it coudl turn out the way it did.  I feel like I fooled myself and the people I love into a false sense of security.  And I’m just overwhelmingly sorry.

Way too much going on emtion wise right now for me to make sense of it all.  Way too much white noise in my head to see a clear path to healing.

Feeling like this?  It’s just fucked up.  Truely.  And that is the one thing that I know for sure right now.

Today

Today marks a place in time when I was in my mind celebrating the fact that I was finally going to be a mother.  It was going to be the day I finally got to give Cliff a book I bought him last May.  It was a day for happy tears.  Today was going to be a day where I was going to worry about how I would break the news on this blog.  I did not want to be too over excited as I would be mindful of the fact that there were still so many of you in the trenches trying to attain that holy grail of pregnancy.

Instead, today my heart is very sore.  Instead of being excited to get beta results, I am trying to heal my heart cos I already know that it’s over and that my dream is over.  Instead, today I am bleeding – both physically and mentally.

But it’s not been all doom and glood today.

Today two dear friends got great news.  The one got an excellent fert report and the other finally got to see a heart beating on a scan.  This is wonderful, excellent news, and makes the fact that today is sad for me, not as sad as it could have been.

And yet, I still sit here and wonder – what could have been?  I wonder how on earth I am still in that trench we call infertility…

That sound you hear?

It’s my heart breaking. 

Big Fucking Negative!!!!

Going quiet for a few days.  Thanks to you all for your support and love, it has been amazing.

The End?

Looks like this is as close as I get to having a baby scan for now… late yesterday afternoon I had a reasonably big bleed, so I rushed home and bought some HPT’s and took one.  Stark white negative. 

I went in for an early beta this morning – just to confirm what my head and my heart already know.

This sucks.  Huge hairballs.

Tenter Hooks

I freely admit that the panty checking and loo paper inspections are at level OBSESSIVE.  Every time I feel a little “wet” down there I rush to the loo and do the panty check.

So far so good.  No more red blood.  When I cleaned out the crinone residue this morning it did have quite a bit of brown blood in it but I’m taking brown blood as a good sign.  Previously when I’ve had brown blood it’s always turned to red blood rather quickly so again, leap of faith, I’m believing that the fact that I’ve not had anymore bleeding is a good sign.

I’m swinging on the giant pendulum regarding POAS before beta day.  I’ve only got 3 more sleeps left.  It almost seems pointless to now go and buy a HPT and pee on it.  Almost.  I’ve taken Friday off so that either way I’ll be at home to celebrate & cry or drown my sorrows and cry.  *sigh*  I know I’m overthinking this.  But the overthinking?  It’s how I cope – this is what I do in times of strife, I think and I put the pieces of the puzzle together, break it apart put it back together another way… and somehow it gets me through.

Gotta dash – panty check!

It just could not be easy could it?

So I created the whole debate on whether I should pee or not pee on those cursed pee sticks and then merrily went on my way still blissfully believing that this has worked. 

On Saturday we cleaned out the back room and threw out boxes, donated items we never use and literally cleaned house.  Yesterday we went for lunch at a dairy farm yesterday with some friends and their twin girls and had a lovely day.  We got home and I decided that was a good time to do my daily clean out the cottage cheese crinone left overs from the vaj.  So I cleaned it out.  There was some brown old blood mixed in but I was not too worried cos I did bleed a bit from ER and maybe this was just old crinone that I had not reached in the last week.  We watched some TV and then got ready for bed.  I inserted the lovely crinone and when I pulled out the applicator – red blood!  SHIT!  I freaked out in the bathroom wondering how the hell I’m going to tell my husband that my body fucked up again.  I told him.  We hugged and sniffled.  We got into bed and just held each other while we cried and just kept on saying please don’t let this be the end.  Cliff just kept on saying over and over again how we need to pray and believe that we’ve still got a chance.  We both believed this was IT for us, and we just had to keep on believing.

After sleeping literally 40 winks I called my Mom at 06h24 this morning in tears.  She called me back later and told me that she does not believe this is over for us.  She refuses to accept it .  I was crying and telling her that historically blood does not bode well for me and that I’m terrified to go through this again.  She told me about an experience she had at church last night where she was called out of a congregation of 5000 + people and given a word that the pain and hurt is over.  She told me that the only pain she feels is the pain I go through on this journey and how she feels it for me.  She prayed over me and I do believe that my God can do anything.  I believe in miracles.

Due the the word my mother received and the fact that I have not had anymore bleeding today, I’m believing that just maybe I’m in the middle of a miracle.  I’m standing on my faith now more than I ever have before.