Monday 28 May 2012

It isn't easy

This has been a hard week... My mind is all over the place.. What do we do now, do we go again.. Do we go for another frozen cycle or do we do a fresh cycle... Do we look at adoption or foster care.. Do we accept that we need to live our lives without children... I don't know the answers.. If only I knew where all of this would end.. I feel like this whole Ivf thing has become an addiction... When is enough enough... When do we stop???

I know if I had not become pregnant with the twins I would have stopped now, as before our pregnancy we had agreed that it would be our last fresh cycle.. Now we have had a pregnancy I know it is possible for me to become pregnant and now I feel I should keep going.. My DH wants me to keep going for at least one more frozen cycle and one fresh cycle but he is not pressuring me...

I started this post a few days ago and have finally made the decision to cycle again, I will do another frozen egg cycle in July. I have to do some blood test during the week and then start on the scans again.. Now that I have made the decision, I feel better able to cope as I am on another journey.. still hoping that it can happen for me..

I have been trying to keep busy, we are doing a lot of DIY on our house, so I am painting like crazy. We have visitors arriving next weekend, which I am looking forward too.. Its our friends that I stayed with in India soon after the twins died.. It will be nice to have them here, as they were very good to me at one of the darkest times in my life..

I went out yesterday with my hillwalking club for a walk on some islands (The Blaskets) off the peninsular where I live.. It was my first time doing anything like this since the twins died as I have basically lived like a hermit for the past 5 months. My mother and my sister came with me so I had lots of support. I couldn't sleep the night before as I had so much anxiety about meeting people.. It went ok, there were a lot of new members which was good as they know nothing about me, and overall people just said that they were delighted to see me out again.. This was a big step for me..

The islands we visited are no longer inhabited, the last residents left in the 1950's..We walked around the deserted village.. Some stones on the ground were pointed out to us, we were told this is were unnamed babies were buried. The babies would not have been christened, so they died soon before or after birth.. All I could think about is the pain these mothers must have felt, and that I am not alone..mothers have been loosing there babies since the beginning of time... I took a photo of the stones to remember all the lost babies, some of whom don't even have a name.. I share it here so that these little babies can be remembered for a moment...

Monday 21 May 2012

Devastated

Devastated is the only word to describe how I am feeling right now.. I was suppose to test on Saturday but I delayed it until Sunday as I had a hair appointment.. I thought one extra day would give a better hcg result.. but on Sunday morning I tested first thing and it was a BFN.. I was floored.. I mean I knew this was a likely result given my IVF history, but I also thought it happened already for me and the two little embryos were from the same batch as the twins and I have had so much bad luck, surely this was going to work for me.. How much more shit can a person take...

I spent Sunday in bed distracting myself as best I could and I felt ok, in the sense that it wasn't as bad as when we lost the twins.. but today I was floored.. we are doing some DIY around the house so I set about painting our new bathroom unit and the tears started flowing and flowing.. The thoughts of doing all this again is so hard for me to process right now.. I don't know if I have the energy.. as right now I don't think it will ever happen for us.. Why is it so easy for some people, and so hard for us.. At the moment I don't want to continue as I don't know how much more pain I can bear.. hopefully in a few days I will find the energy needed to start all over again..

Financially we are also coming to the end of the road, I don't know how much longer I can keep throwing money away.. I know if I had a baby I wouldn't care how much it cost me but when you have nothing at the end but two little urns it is a hard pill to swallow.. Where does all this end.. I have really put my life on hold, we can't afford to do anything.... and it isn't any of that really.. its just what we want so badly cannot have.. I'm truly devastated, this time..

Maybe it is too soon as some part of me thought that this would help me heal as the baby if I had become pregnant would be due around the twins anniversary, but that will not be the case now.. it was just not meant to be...

Sunday 13 May 2012

5 months today

I was browsing through a baby loss forum and I looked at Luke and Arthur's little tickers and there it was 5 months ago today that the twins were born and that Luke died.. I can't believe its 5 months.. I don't know where the time has gone. It has made me really sad today thinking about it.. 5 months since I said hello and good bye and all the trauma surrounding it..Baby Arthur was in neonatal and we were broken. I still feel broken, not as intense as the early days but a kind of lost feeling with no control over my situation. I still haven't written Arthur's story, I haven't felt strong enough, we had two weeks with him and there is a lot to think about and write down, hopefully I will find the strength to write it soon so I can honor my son.

I am also 8 days post transfer today so I am quiet hormonal as well!!! I'm a bit all over the place emotionally.. I'm trying to do as little as possible so all this lying around isn't helping..I had a friend call today and I had to lie about why I don't feel up to doing anything. I feel bad for that too. I don't know if I am pregnant or not so I don't want to say anything beyond next Saturday which is my test date.

I am fairly symptom free, since I was sick, a little cramping a few days after transfer,twinges here and there but nothing too much.. I have a bit of metal taste in my mouth and I feel like I am on steroids. I am taking Trental which is like aspirin,estrogen, vitamin e, and progesterone. I think that all the symptoms can be traced back to the drugs but could also be that AF is coming or that implantation has occurred. I keep kicking myself when I find myself Googling the same information for the 100th time. One would think at this stage I would known all the answers, but there are no answers till test date and only time will tell. I have to get through the week ahead and try to prevent myself from testing too early. According to Google research if I was pregnant implantation would be completed today and Hcg would start to appear in the blood stream, increasing over the coming week.. but if I am not pregnant then my lining is preparing for AF to come.

This is such a hard place to be between trying to conceive and thinking about my lost babies and trying to be a part of the real world. One day at a time....

Friday 11 May 2012

2 week wait

I'm now officially six days post transfer.. so another eight to go.... It's been up and down. I traveled back from Kiev on Sunday via Paris. It was probably the worst trip I have ever been on... I became really sick on the flight home and developed a really bad headache.. All I wanted to do was lie down a curl up in a bed.. I filled three bags on the air plane and still had to face an hour bus ride, a four hour train trip and half hour drive.. That is what you get for living in rural Ireland.. By the time I reached home I was wrecked and still quiet sick.. I went straight to bed forgetting to take my medication.. I was still sick the following day with a little anxiety added in as I hoped this wouldn't affect the transfer and  a missed  dose of progesterone is perfect to get the nerves going.. I have never been this sick after a transfer so I am wondering if I got a little food poisoning or something to that effect, who knows but I'm still not right...

I have been taking it easy over the last few days with the odd few searches on Goggle. I remember when I started on this journey I Goggled everything..but now I do the odd one for reassurance. I have had some cramping yesterday and a bit today, which is a side effect of the progesterone but could also be implantation. I keep trying to compare was it like this last time..but if I remember my pregnancy with the twins I didn't really feel anything. I'm trying as much as possible to think of other things.

I went into town this morning, it's my first time walking around the town center in months. I had been in a few weeks ago but only in my car.. I was so grateful it was raining so I could hide behind my umbrella.. I even called my boss  to meet for a coffee and have a chat about me returning to work in June, he was away so we plan to meet later in the month. That was a huge step  for me as I have bee procrastinating about getting back into the real world.  I know it sounds crazy as I have been out and about and I have been to Kiev on my own and I spent a month in India but I still find it hard been close to home and the thoughts of meeting people, so I have been practicing a lot of avoidance.. I know this is not healthy, I just can't stop myself.. It's the easy way out..

I'm dreading the thoughts of returning to work and having to deal with colleagues.. It's been on my mind lately, I still have seven weeks to go but I know that time will fly.. I would love to be pregnant returning as it would make it more bearable... The debate going on inside my head is whether I want people to talk to me about loosing the twins, to be honest right now for me I don't think I do..but we will cross that bridge when it comes for now I just need to think about getting through these two weeks and staying sane!!

Saturday 5 May 2012

Transfer

Today I had my frozen egg transfer. It went well I think!!! It was all a bit too easy, usually there is so much more involved with a full round of IVF but today it was just show up and that was it. I seemed to be waiting for something to go wrong all day, I had so much nervous energy.

I arrived on my own after a long journey to Kiev, with a stopover in Amsterdam. I contacted my coordinator at the clinic when I arrived, she asked after my DH who I told her did not come with me. There was a scramble for a few hours as I was suppose to have a letter of consent from my DH with me. Since I didn't know about it till that moment there was a bit of work to contact DH and get letter written then scanned and sent to hospital. I thought for a while they would cancel transfer, but that was my own imagination running away with me.

I walked around the city in the evening taking in the now familiar sights as this is my second visit to the city. Kiev has a busy city centre with a really nice atmosphere. It is really warm here at the moment. So it was pleasant to sit outside and have my last glass of beer for the next two weeks and hopefully nine months!! I had a few mishaps, due to all the nervous energy, my sun glasses broke and then I forgot shopping at the supermarket. But as DH told me later on the phone, these are small incidents in the scale of things. Never a truer word spoken.

I slept well and set off to the clinic for a ten am appointment. There was still some confusion about the letter from DH as their computer system was down and also I couldn't pay as their credit card system was attached to computer system. I was a little hyper with little thought to how I was feeling about all of this. I was back in the same clinic where the twins were conceived meeting the same doctors, it was all a bit surreal.

The transfer took only a few moments and I was back in a room to rest for an hour. I had two, eight cell embryos transferred. The doctor informed me that they defrosted three to get two, this sounded good to me as originally I was told they would defrost four or five to get two. So I still have six embryos left. In my day dreams I hope to have a singleton pregnancy this time and come back for a sibling soon. How the mind works, all the plans for an unknown future.... I was given a scan picture of the transfer, which I forgot and then I proceeded to get really pissed with myself for doing so. I question is this another bad omen. But of course I know now, which I never paid heed to before that there is no luck or ritual one can do in the hope of a better outcome. Things just happen for no good reason. Yes bad things happen to good people and a forgotten scan picture won't change that...

I do feel different this time round. Firstly before the twin pregnancy I didn't even know if I could get pregnant, they showed me that I could. I don't allow myself to get too carried away with what may or may not happen. I now have someone more concrete to talk to as I haven't stopped talking to the twins throughout this whole experience. I am taking them on the journey with me. They are on my mind constantly.

Now I am alone in my hotel room, reflecting on my day and my two little embryos snuggled up in my uterus, hoping one will survive.. Too be honest I would love the two of them to survive but my doctor would not.. Now to start the two week wait.. With its many ups and downs... I hate this part of the treatment where every twinge or cramp is analysed.. I hate the waiting.



Friday 4 May 2012

Waiting

Waiting for the train
Waiting for the bus
Waiting for the plane
Waiting for the taxi
Waiting for the embryo transfer
Waiting for the pregnancy test
Waiting for the pregnancy
Waiting for our baby to take home

Its all a waiting game at the moment.. Please give me patience