Guess who got stuck holding the short straw?

Yep that would be me. 

Our GIFT was negative.  From a chemical pregnancy a mere two months and a bit ago to a flat zero beta – right back to where we started… Guess I was right to worry about the fact that we never got any embies from the four left over eggs after all.  My theory of a healthy pregnancy after a chemical pregnancy seems to hold true – for everyone else but me – cos guess what?  I’ve still got that short bloody straw clutched firmly in my hand…

Yesterday was a day in my life that I would much rather not have to repeat ever again.  We headed off to the clinic for our bloods and then rushed off to the airport to meet my Dad’s friends who were bringing him home to us.  The call came through and I just knew I could not answer it.  I gave the phone to Cliff and saw his shoulders slump and felt my heart shatter into a million pieces.  My heart is on the floor of the arrivals hall at OR Thambo so anyone walking through there please be as careful as you can…

Then of course it was having to deal with knowing that  my Dad’s ashes were finally home… His friends that brought him home are so nice and kept on meaning well by telling me to just relax and it would happen, but all I wanted to do was take an axe and cleave their heads open everytime they said that to me.

Going through my Dad’s stuff was hard.  A whole life lived and all we have to show for it is one measly hospital packet with some papers and his glasses in it.  Sad.

Then my sister and I ended up having a massive fight yesterday, all because I asked her to be honest with me and tell me if I was as stupid as I felt for trying over and over and over for a baby with no results.  To cut a long story short, it ended up with me walking to my Mom’s house barefoot and crying my eyes out, getting glass in my foot (bloody litterbugs in SA) and my Mom having to rush out to come and fetch me on the side of the road.  We’ve sorted it all out now but now all I feel is incredible hurt and guilt.

Guilt cos again my body has wasted a vast amount of money, money that was given to us by my in-laws.  Guilt for what I’m putting my husband through cos he married a dud.  Guilt for the hurt that my messed up body causes for those around me who for some reason (God alone knows why) love me. 

Hurt cos I feel so lost and forgotten by God.  I feel like I’m standing in this vacuum screaming and shouting for Him to hear me, to acknowledge me in some small way and He’s standing with his back to me with his earphones on full blast tuned into everyone else but me.  I wish with all my heart that if this is His way of showing me that I’m not meant to be a Mom that He would take this desire out of my heart.  That He would remove the longing in my eyes when I see or hold another person’s baby.  That He would ease the ache I feel when I hear children call someone else (it’s always someone else) Mommy.

Anger cos I’ll never be able to trust my body EVER again. (Not that I really fully did but you know what I mean) I thought I was pregnant from this treatment.  The no bleeding, the heat rises, the on/off cramps etc.  But it was all a lie.  My body colluded with the progesterone and fooled me well and good.  My body is a liar.  Always has been and always will be.

And here I stand, clutching the short straw watching the world around me continue in joy and happiness, with a sore butt and waiting for a very, very expensive period.  And from where I’m standing right now, the world is hazy and it feels like I’ll not be allowed to be part of that shiny,  rosy, happy place.

This sucks.  Huge donkey hairballs.

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.

This is how I feel right now…

 

Except I don’t have a mouse with a gun to my head I have this thing called infertility…

I hate it with such a passion, I hate that it makes me lose sight of the good things in my life, that it wraps me in the straight jacket that I can’t break out of, that it consumes me and is slowly killing my faith and my ability to enjoy the blessings that I have…

Beta was an unsurprising NEGATIVE!  I should have known… any sign of blood in my case is JUST not a good sign…

We have to take a break, firstly because we just cannot afford more treatment now, but also because we need to heal emotionally and we need to focus on trying to be “us” again…

Thank you for all your support – as usual it blows me away at how quickly you wonderful people rally around those who need support and wrap us in your loving arms…

2 Sides to Every Story

Ok so I promise this will most likely be the last you hear of the friend saga…

She called me last night so that we could talk this whole thing out.  She was pretty upset that I called her the night before and “basically shat me out”.  She has been feeling like I have not been putting enough effort into our friendship and that I have not been forthcoming with information about what is going on in my life with the IVF etc.  She told me that although it might look to me like her life is perfect cos she has kids but that she has other problems to deal with and that her life is far from perfect.  She also told me that she did not ask questions and enquire about the IVF cos she did not want me to feel pressured and had assumed that I had a great support system already and did not really need her to be harping on about it as well.  (As it is I did have a fantastic support – our families, you guys, some close friends, we were so very blessed)  She told me that although she never asked about our IVF, she was thinking of me througout and was praying for us throughout the process.  She told me that she also feels that because she does not know enough about the process that she asks silly or stupid questions.  She was very upset that I did not invite her to my 30th birthday party and felt like I was wanting us to drift apart in our friendship cos I did not call her or text her or invite her to my party… 

If I am brutally honest with myself I can admit that I have not put a lot of effort into the friendship in the last few months.  I *have* been pretty self absorbed (rightly so of course but I can understand where she came from after we chatted), and have been focused on my life and our IVF and our grief after the BFN…  I have not really been putting much effort cos I felt like I was not going to share details about our journey with her if she did not ask, it seemed to me that she was disinterested so I never shared with her.  I told her last night that I would much rather have stupid questions that show her interest in what is happening in my life than nothing.  I also told her that I guess I never invited her to my 30th cos I thought she would not be bothered to come cos our friendship was clearly drifting apart.

Seems to me that this whole debacle is a clear cut case of miscommunication.

Both of us agreed that we did not want to see our friendship in the gutter (I was her maid of honor for gosh sakes and am honorary auntie to her kids) and that we were both in the wrong for what had transpired between us in the last couple of months.  We agreed that we needed to nurture the friendship more and both make more of an effort if we wanted to continue being friends.

So for now our friendship is in the process of getting back on track.  We’ll see how it goes…

Wicked Wednesday

Thank you so much for all your comments on the friend situation, I have decided that I will give it another few days and if I still have not heard from her to give her a call.  Because I was so upset with her, I was all for the “I’m not licking her arse to be friends” mindset, but I do realise that sometimes tones or feelings can get lost in translation when one writes to another.  So a phone call it will be.  I’ll gauge whether the friendship is “worth the effort” once we have talked.  Again thank you so much for the support!  You girls rock!!!

In the lines of support needed, if you have time, please pop over to my dear friend Super M, she got a BFN from her first IVF today, and although was kinda prepared for it due to negative HPT’s, the hurt is still intense.  She needs some love.

And my other friend Shaz needs some hugs as well – her house sale has fallen through which means that her emigration plans have had to be put back onto the back burner for a while - she has also just received a visit from AF and is not happy to see her…

Wicked Wednesday struck twice today.  I wish I could help heal my friends hurts, but know that support and love from you chaps makes it feel better, so head on over if you can.  

What to Do?

I used to work for a large company who at the time was riding high and was hugely successful distributing product  of a powerful globally recognised brand.  I used to hold a highly responsible position there and was under immense stress and constant pressure.  I loved it. 

Then I got married and went on honeymoon and the cracks in this organisation started to show.  Another girl who worked at the company started telling lies about me (she really wanted my job and badly) and got me into a LOT of trouble while I was blissfully enjoying being a newly wed.  I came home from honeymoon (where we had made a decision to try for a baby pretty much right away) and found myself the centre of a storm in a teacup.  But I got through it.  During the next three years I had to deal with a lot of back stabbing, jealous, highly neurotic people while still keeping my international customers happy all the while getting treatment for my infertility. 

While working my ass off for the benefit of my company and making my bosses look good, I was learning all I could about PCOS, AI’s, IUI’s, sperm counts, follicles and and and…  I was understandably a truckload little stressed out.  No wonder I never fell pregnant – I mean we all know one has to “just relax” right? 

I made the decision to leave this job, this career and to focus on what was really important in my life - my marriage and the children we so desperately wanted to complete our picket fence story.  That was June last year.  I have NEVER once regretted my decision to leave this horrible place, and know that I made a decision that probably saved my marriage.  BUT the decision initially put us under a little bit of pressure cos while I did not need the stress of that job and the career I had chosen, I did need the salary that went with it.  I used my pension payout to give me a few months to find another job, and I was quite lucky to get some good offers within a reasonable time frame.  I accepted a job at a production company (not a good decision it turned out) which was run by a very unstable character and once again found myself in the position of looking for work to pay the bills. 

A friend called me up and asked me to contract to her company while I was looking for a job and I never left.  I am now working at this place and while the job is by no means brain surgery, it keeps me out of mischief and pays the bills quite nicely.  I took this job not as a career move but as a “this will help me get my baby(s)” move.  Fate has stepped in again.  Last week I found myself involved in yet another storm in a teacup at this new company.  It was not centred around me at all but was centred around my friend who had called me into work here.  It was nasty and she ended up leaving (completely on her terms, on the day I started the spotting which led to my BFN) and then I had to deal with the loss of little number 1 and number 11.  Not a good week for me at all emotionally.  But bygones.

Part of the plan in accepting the current job was that once I had fallen pregnant and had delivered the baby(s) I would look at doing something from home (not 100% sure what that something is going to be) that would allow me to spend time with my children and to bring in some money to continue to pay the bills.  I am thinking that perhaps the whole BFN and the situation (very tense and still unstable) at work is telling me to look at this option a whole lot sooner than I had originally planned.  I am quite prepared to work my ass off to establish a business but what to do?  For those of you who work from home, how did you decide on what to do?  Did you take your other professional experience and turn it into a consulting firm? 

I just am not 100% comfortable job wise right now and really want to explore this further… but feel a bit at sea…  Any advise would be most welcome.

(PS–> by the way, the wheel totally turned on those horrible people at my last company.  The company is nearly bankrupt, many of them no longer have jobs and many of them have had their marriages fail.  I did not wish this on any of them, but in a sadistic way I am glad to know that the wheel turned on them and that they got their just desserts…)

Post Mortem

You know what is harder than having to deal with a BFN after a “perfect” IVF cycle?  Hearing your doctor say that he is just blown away by the fact that it did not work cos he thought it was “a done deal”. *Sigh* 

The post mortem of the cycle was a really good thing to do. It has helped me close many of the open holes that I had in terms of dealing with this BFN.  My doc is very happy with the protocol of the cycle, and was more than happy with my reaction to the stimming process, he was chuffed with the egg retrieval and the fert rate of our little ones.  He was very pleased with Cliff’s sample from the day (80% of his boys survived overnight – apparently 25% is considered good).  The only thing he was not pleased about was the fact that we ended up with a BFN.  My main concern was the fact that I only made it to 9DP3DT, and he was concerned about that too. 

Right now we are going to focus on doing an FET.  We have four good embies on ice and realistically we would never have frozen them unless we were going to use them.  So I am on BCP and will be kicking off the cycle on the 26th June with a scan to make sure my ovaries are nice and quiet, then I will start with lucrin to make sure they stay that way and then we’ll mix some estrogen into the mix to beef up my lining and do transfer when the lining is ready and the embies thaw and grow to day 5.  Once transfer is done I will be doing PIO shots instead of the cyclogest to make sure that I get the most progesterone that I possibly can.  I believe they are shyte sore to administer, but I will do whatever it takes!

IF we ever need to do another fresh cycle, my doc will keep the protocol the same, the only things he will change are that we will automatically do a 5 day transfer vs the 3 day transfer and I’ll do the PIO shots instead of cyclogest.

Now I need some advise from those of you who did FETS please! 

• How soon did you do your FET after your failed cycle?
• What were your reasons for waiting if you waited a while?
• How many embies did you have on ice?
• How many embies made the thaw and were transferred?
• Did you have any successses with FET’s?

Either way we are moving forward with our FET at the end of this month, I feel ready for this, and have peace in my heart about our decision… I just want to get a bit of background from FET’ers.

Better…

Thank you so much for all the sweet words of love and comfort over the last few days.  
The Durbanville Hills and stunning flowers that Martiza dropped off were also just such a great comfort – thanks my friend!  Initially my first reaction to the BFN was to throw in the towel, I felt like I could not possibly get through another disappointment like this and I could not do this to my husband any more. (I was scared to see how deeply this BFN rocked him, I never want to be the cause of that much pain in his heart ever again).

But today I am feeling much better.  I am steadier and I feel stronger and am ready to meet with our doc to have a post mortem of the cycle so that we can analyse what we learnt about my body through the last cycle, and how we can use that information moving forward.  I am concerned that I only made it to 9DP3DT and will be discussing this with him in depth.  I really don’t want to bow out of the next race to early…  We have four on ice which is logically going to be our next step - I know that statistically FET’s are not as successful as fresh cycles but it seems like such a waste not to use them…and one never really knows does one?  Those frozen embies could very well be our children, who will drive us nuts and give us love and cuddles…

Anyway, once we have the meeting with our wonderful doc, I will update you all as to what the plan of action is, but either way we are going to take at least a month off.

It is my birthday next week Monday – the BIG 30!  I am having a dress up party so am going to throw myself into organising and sorting put all the final details this week.  I am getting myself back to gym and will be stricly following my dieticians eating plan from Monday onwards.  I figure that I should use this break to finally shake those last 3 kg’s that I have been battling to get rid of.

I must admit that I have been very angry with God the last few days.  I had hardened my heart against Him just could not wrap my mind around the fact that all went so well with our cycle and that He allowed it to end with a BFN.  But boy was I put in my place this morning at church… I know that I need to get my soul right with Him, to get over this set back. 

In my heart of hearts I know that everything happens for a reason, and the worst thing about it is that we very rarely get to know the reason until we are long past the challenge.  I need to be still in His presence and I need to keep my hope alive cos hope is the substance of our faith.  I have hope and I have faith. 

I will climb back on this horse and I will win the race.  Not this time round, but next time, maybe, just maybe it will be our turn.  And that my dear friends is what I am focusing on from now on.   That and losing those last blasted 3 kg’s…

Not a Mommy Yet

Firstly let me say thank you to everyone for your most supportive comments.  You guys are truly amazing.

I went in for the E2 and progesterone tests this morning, and I got a call from my doc to say that they had dropped drastically.  He also ran a beta just in case and it is all over – a resounding negative. 

In my heart of hearts I was expecting this, but I have taken this really hard.  I am gutted.  I am angry.  I am hurt. I feel so betrayed by my body and I feel so sad that I have yet again disappointed my husband by not being able to do this basic thing. 

I really don’t know what the next step will be but right now I am just trying to get myself through the hell of today and then we’ll take it one step at a time.  And one thing I do know is that I am going to have the biggest glass of wine tonight cos abstaining clearly did not do any good.