A victim of progesterone

I consider myself someone who is not easily fooled.  I put this down to hard nosed realism - some would say negativity - and a feeling, lately, that this just can't go my way.  So, it came as some suprise that after my early and ridiculously faint positive hpt,  I found myself fully convinced that I was pregnant.  I had every symptom going and all of them matched my last two pregnancies.  I just felt pregnant, I really did, just as I had the two times I actually was pregnant. I was so convinced that I worked out a due date, revised my company's maternity policy and checked out what happens if you are made redundant during maternity leave (we're about to be made redundant in the next year).  In fact, so convinced was I, that I tested on Saturday, CD25, 15dpiui and a day earlier than I wanted to.  You can imagine my utter devastation when it was a very clear negative.  I don't know why, but it completely crushed me this time.  I was inconsolable and could barely make it out of the flat to go to the supermarket.  Every pregnant woman, every tiny child and baby with doting parents just seemed to be on the street or in the supermarket yesterday.  I was devastated.  I've been through this five times now, so you'd think I would find it easier. I suppose as D Day nears and my time has officially run out I am becoming more upset and distressed by the failures.

I wasted £10.99 on two early response tests, just so I could be sure before I stopped the progesterone and let the inevitable happen.  Of course, the test was negative.  If such an early response test is negative when it can pick up hcg as early as 6 days prior to your period, there was no denying it, I was most definitely not pregnant.  It made me realise that 3-4dpiui when I experienced those tell-tale symptoms of failure - that shivery feeling, a period kind of nausea and a period type of cramp - I was absolutely right to think it had failed.  How could I have been so fooled?  Well, it seems that even hard nosed realists can be swayed by progesterone.  Now I think back, as soon as it had been in my system for a few days, I started getting pregnancy symptoms and away went the 'failure' symptoms.  Of course they did, the progesterone had kicked in.  At 2 x 400mg per day was it any wonder?

I suppose given the positive double follicle scenario, the two very positive ultrasounds and the perfectly timed insemination, I just couldn't believe it hadn't worked on this first round with Clomid.  Well, it didn't.  And there we have it.  Good FSH, I ovulate on my own and produce mature follicles, but I guess it's time to face the fact that my eggs are just too past it now.  I may have been pregnant at 41 and 43 (four months ago), but now it seems it's just a bridge too far.

I'm still upset today and although I will complete two more cycles, making a total of seven in one year, I don't know how I'm going to drag myself through them.  This is when being single really sucks.  I won't even go in to the debilitating thoughts I had about my ex-partner and the very fertile, 20 something girlfriend he found after me, the horror of facing childlessness and my feelings of abject failure.  The truth is today and yesterday have not been good days.  I only wish I was the only one going through this because I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I know that across the globe there will be women who know exactly what I'm talking about and exactly how I feel.  So my thoughts are with you.

The two week wait

I thought I'd get a bit scientific this time and sort of 'chart my symptoms' a bit more.  That will help my mental state, right enough.  I started off feeling the progesterone plummet only 3 days after insemination (3dpiui as those in the know call it). I got mightily pissed off.  I couldn't believe my body was doing this already, and when I was taking progesterone. About 5dpiui, however, that subsided to be replaced by nausea, a poking cramp in my abdomen and headaches that were verging on migraine.  They were terrible and lasted until 10dpiui.  I felt knackered too.  I started thinking that maybe, just maybe, things had turned around.  I recognised all of these symptoms from the last 2 pregnancies.  And then I dashed my own hopes because I also recognised these symptoms from the hundreds of forums I'd read about progesterone mimicking pregnancy symptoms.

I will confess that on CD21, or 11dpiui, I got so annoyed at these swinging symptoms that I just wanted it over and my period to hurry up.  So I took an htp/POAS/pregnancy test.  Of course it was negative so early, until I looked a bit closer and an extremely faint pinkish line could be seen.  I mean, if you held it up to the light it could be seen.  Not that I'm obsessing or anything. So that got my hopes up, although my negative voice was screaming 'its an evaporation line, you muppet.'   However, it didn't leave me any better off really.  I had one day of thinking I might be pregnant, I really might, and then I came home from work yesterday to feel the onset of cramps akin to period pains and horrid dull aches in my left ovary.  Back to square one.  Sore boobs getting more painful by the day, with veins like a road map?  Yes.  Lower back pain?  Yes.  Cramps? Yes.  Peeing frequently?  And so it goes.  I am driving myself absolutely mental, as no doubt you are too if you're up to the same thing.  Of course, all of the above are also signs of an impending red guest, as we know.  I find myself feeling that inner excitement one minute, but after every cramp I feel devastated because I know it's pms.

This is rubbish.  But...I am not going to test again until Sunday, which will be exactly 16 days after my IUI.  My period is actually due on Monday 17th, but no doubt because of the progesterone it won't come until I test negative and stop taking the drug. Oh the joy.  Every one around me is having a normal life (well it appears that way) while I'm waging a schizophrenic vocal battle in my head.  I need to keep remembering that there are no conclusions about symptoms, you just have to wait.  I should write this out, like lines.  You just have to wait...

Round 5 (or round 2 post miscarriage) and 28 degrees

So, arriving in Copenhagen without a sense of humour because I had to deal with Stansted at 5am, I find myself dive bombing into serious bad temper.  It's 28 degrees and I'm wearing a jumper.  To make matters worse that's all I have to wear so that I don't have to pay for luggage on the budget airline.  Not happy.  I make my way on the 5A to Lytgen and make it 30 minutes earlier than my appointment. I calm down once in the cool of the clinic and its clean design.

Dr. Svend appears to give me an ultrasound and confirms that one of my follicles has popped and the other is about to go.  Based on this, he says, I should be inseminated in 30 minutes after a shot of Ovitrelle (an extra 350 DKK or £38) to ensure the second one pops too.  I'm relieved.  As I'm whipping my trousers back on to wait while they do whatever it is they do to the sperm, Dr S says he's very impressed with the quality of my ultrasound report from the London Ultrasound Centre.  'I should think so', I replied, 'it cost £120 - practically half the cost of an insemination'  'You didn't get it on the NHS?', he queries.  'Er...no.'  Where to start?  If I explain why that wouldn't be possible, I might start ranting about being over 40, female, single and British.  And I'm wearing a jumper in 28 degrees.  So I don't.

After a 30 minute wait Dr Jan ushers me into a suite.  He's my favourite.  He's a very friendly, avuncular sort who doesn't make me feel like a muppet asking all the questions I usually bombard him with.  He greets me and then asks me if I'm happy with blond and blue as requested.  182cm this time.  I say yes and sign on the dotted line and up on the couch I go.  Not for the first time I consider just how truly bizarre this is.  A couple of minutes later it's done and off I go to enjoy the sweltering heat of Copenhagen, with a 'good luck' and 'take two progesterone suppositories per day from now on' ringing in my ears.

I got so bad tempered in the heat that I caved and bought some cheap clothes from H&M so that I could actually enjoy a bit of sightseeing.  After a spin around Nyhaven harbour, the shops and the castle grounds I made for my hotel in Orestad.  This time I chose Cabinn Metro and I wish I hadn't.  It really wasn't up to the standards of Wakeup and it was  located a metro ride away, by a huge shopping centre and nothing much else.  It was, however, only 485 DKK or £58.

The next day I sat by the river for ages in the heat and pondered my lot, whilst feeling yucky about the ooze that comes from using suppositories. I considered the fact that, if this round doesn't work, I have just two more shots (self imposed end - emotionally need to draw a line and well in to my 44th year).  As if to cheer me up a crazy man on an adapted cycle, complete with sound deck and sound system, cycled past pumping sounds and whooping. Everyone sitting on the wall and by the river whooped and joined in, including me.  I hope it was a good omen.

Crazy Clomid

Well, I just don't know about this drug.  I took it days 3-7 as suggested and the side effects were, thankfully, not too awful.  Hot flashes definitely and a good bit of bloating and moodiness, but no nausea, sore breasts or other horrors.  The thing of it is that I'm not sure how well it worked because, not having had an ultrasound pre ovulation before, I had nothing to compare it to.  On CD6-8 I got ultra hot and had a lot of other tell-tale ovulation signs, but I assumed that it was just the drug because it was far too early.  After all Clomid was supposed to delay my ovulation not make it happen earlier.  So I didn't test on CD8.  I usually test from CD8 onwards.  I wrestled with myself on CD9, the morning I booked my follicular scan at the London Ultrasound Centre. Should I test this morning or not? I decided not. I arrived at the clinic and saw the size of my follicles on a super sonic screen.  One at 21.5mm and one at 14.5 mm with an endometrium of 8.5 mm.  The left ovary couldn't be seen, the little devil. The sonographer estimated ovulation within 24 hours.  Damn it I thought - so my body wasn't lying and I was going to ovulate on CD10 -  which meant that I would have had an LH surge on CD8 or CD9 in the morning.  I had never had one as early as CD8 or before CD9 in the late evening.  Can only have been the Clomid.

Cue mental booking of flights, taking a flexi day off and swapping my planned leave on Monday for leave on Friday.  Plus much testing using an OPK. Of course, there was no smiley face because I'd missed the surge!  However, Copenhagen Fertility Centre were great.  They booked me in the next day and said they'd do a further ultrasound first and we'd decide what to do next.  The London Ultrasound Centre had emailed over my results and the doctor was very happy with them.  The follicles can get quite big on Clomid so it was no guarantee that I would ovulate the next day, though certainly within 24-36 hours.  They reassured me that we had a good window and plenty of options!  So I geared myself up for a hideous 7 am flight, which meant a 3am rise.  Grim.