Farewell IUI

Ah well, pessimist or realist?  You decide, but I am defintitely not pregnant now as my bfn confirms.  My clinic thinks it may have been a chemical pregnancy or just the last traces of Ovitrelle. I'm gutted.  Really gutted, but I haven't changed my mind about going again.  That's it for me for the IUIs - I'm making a decision and I'm sticking to it.  I find I can't really face anyone right now though, I feel a bit raw.  I still work as an actor now and again and I had a professional engagement last night.  I really had to steel myself to get out there and to perform.  It was really hard.  However, like everything else in life somehow you just do what you have to do.  Women are great, aren't they?  We could rule the world and it's oh such a shame that we don't!  I digress, probably because I'm in bits. 

I will activate Plan B when I've caught my breath.  I feel ready now, it's definitely time for the big guns.  I'm going to do the tandem IVF - my own eggs and donor eggs at the same time.  Whichever embryos are the most viable are the ones transferred. May the best woman win, so to speak!  I will give more information on this soon, and on this blog, but for now I am drinking a vat of red wine, eating a ton of Twiglets and Maltesers, sobbing my heart out to Adele's 'Someone Like You' and half watching Mark Wahlberg in some dodgy action film.  Goodnight for now.

The peril of testing before you should

Well, this will be a lesson in waiting until your period is due, I suppose...I tested at 12 dpo, 2 days after after my faint positive test on 10dpo. I was, of course, expecting a darker line than 2 days ago to indicate a healthy, progressing pregnancy.  What I got instead was an even fainter line, barely visible, although it did appear within 3 minutes.  I was floored.  Your HCG is supposed to double every 36-48 hours, so this was rubbish.  Breasts were still sore, twangs and pokes still present and that weird feeling of being pregnant.  Funnily enough, face to face with a 'might as well be' negative I started to feel not pregnant.  Let's face it, if you have to hold the test up to the light to be sure, positive it ain't!  My sneezing and runny nose also developed into a fully blown cold, so nothing to do with pregnancy symptoms either. It was obvious that, either the Ovitrelle was still in my system at 10dpo and was leaving it by 12 dpo, or I had a fertilisation that just didn't implant properly, hence the fading positive.  I also got a very upset, churny tummy later that day and lasting all of the next day.  Signs of my body rejecting anything made?  Hmm.  To say I'm not driving myself mental would be a lie.  I am still having hot spells like I did with previous pregnancies, don't have the psycho, ratty behaviour normally present up to 7 days before my period and still feel a bit different to other cycles.  It's remarkable, the power of the mind.  The thing that tells me that I'm not pregnant is that weird, shaky, low blood sugar feeling that I always get just before my period, progesterone or not.  It's here and it's unmistakable.  I will test tomorrow, but I already know the result.  My last fling really, really had me fooled, but it has come to nothing.  I suppose it was just too unlikely.

Adventures with an HPT

Since I got back it's been mental.  My freelance work has gone into overdrive, I have been preparing to send off a 'dream job' application and I'm dealing with the usual horrors of the progesterone supplements.  When I got back to London on Saturday 11 February, I was really tired.  I had poking feelings and that weird kind of wiped out feeling Cyclogest gives you, but I was good at ignoring it.  Then around 5 days later, last Thursday, my boobs started to get unbearably sore and bulbous.  What a nasty word that is, bulbous!  I ignored it, but did think it was odd.  Been on progesterone for 3 cycles and not had breast pain like that before, but it is a side effect of the drug.  Around last Friday I started sneezing and got a runny nose.  A cold was seemingly on its way.  This is odd for me, I don't get colds.  I eat too much fruit and I'm not prone to them.  One every 3 or 4 years is the norm, but then it was 'bone chillingly' cold in Denmark, so I guess that's why. To stop me going nuts I took at a home pregnancy test (HPT) with First Response on Friday 17th, 8DPO.  You can get a result up to 6 days before your period is due apparently.  It was a big fat negative, but frankly not surprising that early.  Then I became a bit of a loony.  I kept looking at it hours later as there was a weird shadow.  24 hours later I pulled the test apart to look at it a close quarters and a faint pink line could be seen.  Yes, I actually did that.  That's how desperate I was.  I know, I know, you must discard tests after 10 minutes and read them within 3.  Anyhow, spurred on by the tiny, tiny possibility I waited two days more and bought another two tests.  I tested today at 10dpo and within 3 minutes there was a very faint line.  It's pink, but it is very faint.  So now I'm officially excited.  I can't help myself.  I know the Ovitrelle might still be in my system, but then I think if it was it would have been a stronger positive going into a negative, not a negative going into a positive as the days go on.   

Well, I could drive myself mental, but I will wait 2 more days and test again on Tuesday, 12dpo and on CD 23. That's 3 days before my period and I'll do it again on the proper test day, 2 days after that.  I cannot tell you how hopeful I am, but how terrified that I'm seeing things that simply aren't there because this is my last chance.  Given the annoying side effects of progesterone, the only confirmation I can have is a strong positive test once I can be sure Ovitrelle is out of my system.  I made a deal with the Universe.  I will be a good person forever and do anything if I can be pregnant.  Anything legal that is!  It seems too good to be true that my very last time it has worked, but maybe my luck has finally changed.  Till Tuesday...

Negative

I'm sure you will realise that, had I hit the jackpot, I would have posted straight away.  Unfortunately, it took me a few days to pick myself up off the floor so I could post. I waited, like a real patient person, until Day 14 and tested.  A BFN, that's what.  I cried, of course, and then I got myself dressed and out.  In anticipation I packed Friday to Monday full of activities and friends, as well as taking the day off on test day.  Thank God.  I was partly tricked by the progesterone again, but more cautious this time so I'd say less shocked at the result.  The temperature rise got to me in this round.  It was quite distinct and I began to be so convinced. Feel a bit of a fool, to be honest.

I did email the clinic straight away on Friday to ask if there was really any point trying one last time.  The doctors think that I can get pregnant, but it will take time because of my age and once every 2 months is probably not cutting it.  They're hopeful due to how regularly and well I ovulate and also how I respond to the Clomid.  I'm sure they're right, but the question is can I put my life on hold any further, living on sod all?  If I'm going to do that surely I'd be better throwing my money at donor eggs. Everyone around me seems to think so. I feel really old.  I may not be old in actual years, but I'm clearly Medusa in the fertility stakes.

I've already decided, I think,  that I will try to scrape enough together to do a final round in Copenhagen, as I said I would, and then it's saving for the donor package in Cyprus at Dogus Clinic.  It will take me four months to save half the money and, weirdly, I am going to ask my father to lend me the rest so I don't have to wait 8 months.  I can pay him back from the month I go.   Dogus Clinic guarantee you ten fresh eggs and transfer 3 embryos rather than two, freezing the rest.  So if it doesn't work the first time, you can try the rest of your frozen eggs twice more for very little financial outlay.  It's got to be better than one pop only.

So, it looks like I may devote almost another whole year to getting pregnant as my career slides into the mire.  Then there will be an end to it, one way or another.  There has to be a cut off point, as I keep saying.  And I am beginning to dream, nay hallucinate, of what it would be like to afford new clothes, a meal out or a trip away that isn't to Copenhagen. Or what it would be like to think about something else.  My choice though and at least no one, least of all me, can say I didn't do my best to achieve it.  If it doesn't work at all, I can slug champagne on a Mediterranean beach terrace and know I tried. Now I'm off to have a bloody glass of wine.

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...

Playing the waiting game

It's been four weeks since I had the miscarriage.  As of last Thursday I am still showing a positive pregnancy test, so no chance of getting my period or ovulating anytime soon.  I'm reminded that HCG levels have to go right back to zero, that's negative on a pregnancy test, before your body kick starts your cycle again.  Apparently it can be anything from 3-6 weeks for the cycle to begin after a negative test.  Great.  All thoughts of an insemination in June are out then.  Hmmm. And again, hmmm.  Not that I'm panicking or anything.  I just assumed my body would play the game immediately - it usually behaves, apart from the miscarriage of course.  Never thought I'd see the day I would be begging my body to have a period.

So, while I wait I will go back to the donor.  That wonderful Danish man who 'got' me pregnant.  At Stork Klinik you are able to get some very basic details about your donor after you get pregnant if you sign a release form to say you've thought it all through.  There is an argument for knowing nothing, I mean let's face it what good can a few details do you when you've selected an anonymous donor?   But I wanted to know.  I suppose I just felt that it would give me something to tell my child about his/her Danish heritage. I had only specified height must be over 6ft when I made my donor request originally, leaving everything else to chance.  Don't ask me why height was important.  I signed the release form and the information I received back by post was his blood type, height, eye colour, hair colour, weight, physical features and occupation.  It was fascinating.  Really.  Me being me however, I did something I actually feel strangely guilty about, as if I've defrauded the clinic. I knew that Stork only use two sperm banks and both are detailed on their website.  I went on the websites of both sperm banks and did a donor search, inputting my donor's blood type, physical details, occupation etc.  I got a direct hit on one site for the donor, still registered as anonymous rather than open. Exact centimetres, exact blood type (and this was unusual), exact occupation, exact weight etc. I know it was a bit of a long shot, but it seemed impossible that it could be any other donor given the exact combination of details.  The sperm bank said his sperm was sold out at that point, as it probably would be given that the clinic had purchased it recently.  So I took a slight gamble and assumed this hit was my donor. I was able to find out a little bit more about him even though he remained anonymous on the sperm bank.  The bank offered you a chance to buy a little more information in the form of an audio interview with the donor, let's call him A, an extended profile and a family history.  I purchased both for about 25 Euros each.  Two minutes later they were in my email inbox and downloaded.  I was enthralled as I listened and read - all in English.  Bizarrely, A's favourite films were my favourites, his personality sounded lovely, his voice was warm and friendly and his intelligence was obvious.  Even better his family medical history revealed nothing worse than a bit of depression in the mix of relatives and my own family is no stranger to that. Yes, I was very happy with what I had discovered and needed no more information. I just wanted to know that my baby's donor was human really, if you know what I mean, rather than a shot of sperm in a catheter.

Not exactly crime of the century, but I did feel a bit of a cheat. But then, I did it anyway.  I feel a little sad that the lovely A will undoubtedly not be my donor next time.  I had to let Copenhagen Fertility Centre know my donor preferences for the future and I again selected height as being over 6 ft and added hair colour as either brown or blonde and any colour eyes.  It made me think, was I selecting a man that might resemble my ex partner?  Interesting.  Yes, if height is anything to go by!  However, when I got pregnant I didn't really care about any of the donor's details to start with, I was just so glad to be pregnant.  If they had made an error and he had ended up being 5ft 4', I wouldn't have cared.  Dr. J at Copenhagen Fertility Centre, told me 'you might as well specify height, eye colour and hair colour because otherwise I have to pick them and it speeds things up if you select.'    Maybe if he hadn't said this I would have left it all up to fate this time.  Or maybe I would have selected motility and youth if it had been possible!  Given that most donors are under 28, however, that would probably be a bit daft.  Oh yes,  the next time a man over 40 gives you grief about being a woman over 40 trying to conceive, just remind him that a man's motility dive bombs in his thirties.  As one male doctor once said to me, ' actually, the biggest cause of infertility in woman is often their men.'

I have no idea as I write this when I will next be able to have an insemination and I'm hoping that's a WHEN and not an IF, but I do know that when I am able to I absolutely will.  Three more.  For now.  Before I hit 44 and throw myself off a tall building.

Third time lucky

Looks like I won't be needing a visit to that new clinic I sized up, nor will I have to take the proposed Clomid after all. I almost can't believe I'm able to write this but... I am pregnant.  In terms of the internet's best due date calculator I am 4 weeks pregnant to be precise.  I can't quite get my head around it and am still dashing to the loo every ten minutes expecting to see the red visitor.

Around 8 days after the insemination, I knew.  There were only two tell tale signs that were markedly different, given that all cramps, bloating and twangs could be either pms or pregnancy.  The first was this... Normally, 7 days before my period I have extremely intense irritation and snap at the slightest thing.  I describe it as a kind of tummy flip.  I don't appear to have any control over it and when I think back to all my terrible arguments with my last boyfriend, each one was right before my period.  Including our ultimate one.  So when I was 5 days away from my period and felt serenely calm I knew something was definitely going on.  The second thing was a total lack of sore boobs.  Again, these normally kick in around 7 days before my period.  I must have looked like a crazy woman, constantly tapping and touching them for signs of soreness, oblivious to the public.  There are names for people who do that.  3 days before my period I could feel them just beginning to ache, but in a different place. I cried for a whole day as I'd been so convinced that I was pregnant, I couldn't believe it had just been a delayed period.  Just out of sheer bloody mindedness and spite I took a test the next day and I was completely floored by the very faint line that popped up next to the control line.

I took another the next day and another the next, both faint positives.  I was convinced that I had an ectopic or non-viable pregnancy as the lines were so faint.  Why in God's name are my HCG levels not rising?  So I waited another three days, driving my self and my friend, D, truly mental by reading forum after forum.

Finally I tested on Monday, 3 days after my period was due and there it was - a dark line, not quite as dark as the test line, but clear and bold, appearing in 10 seconds.

You'd think that I would be ecstatic immediately, wouldn't you?  And let me tell you I really, really am. But.  And here's the truth. I am now overly aware of (read completely obsessed by) every little cramp, pain and twang and am STILL driving myself loopy. Is it ectopic? It's bound to be. How could it attach to my thin endometrium? What if it has attached to the scars where my fibroids were removed?  It won't make it. I'm 43; the miscarriage rate is 50%. It's inevitable. Aaaaahhhhhh!

Fortunately, for everyone concerned,  I have calmed down a bit and have booked myself an appointment with my GP to get myself in the system.  Finally some professional care that doesn't cost me a mortgage payment.  He can check out my ectopic fear in a couple of weeks and monitor any weird pains, which I seem to have a lot of.

Now, lots of women want to know what you did differently when you are finally successful and I did a few things that may have made a difference.  I will tell all in my next post.  For now, I'm still reeling, hoping that I maintain this much wanted mini-baby and terrified about, well everything really. 

So my parting words for this post?  If a 43 year old woman with a recent late miscarriage, followed by a full on open abdominal myomectomy,  leaving a thin, irregular and scarred endometrium can get pregnant by donor insemination and without ANY fertility drugs, then so can you.  It really is not over till that fat lady sings.

The blight of PMS

Well, at 7 days past the IUI I started getting sore and swollen boobs and the blighters have got worse and worse.  I'm already a big chested girl; now Jordan looks like an A cup next to me.  I've had cramps and a sort of heaviness in my abdomen, kind of like constipation, but different.   Not very scientific in explanation, I know.  I am not really sure why my unmedicated IUIs are bringing on such extreme PMS symptoms, and so soon.  I normally get mood swings about 7 days before I'm due my period, but sore and swollen breasts and cramps usually only 3-4 days before.  Now it seems that I am suffering for a whole 9-10 days!  Grim.  Still, I suppose it cuts down the two week wait to just one week.  I am feeling so irritable and down that I've taken half a day's leave this afternoon and come home. I must have seemed like a moody witch to my colleagues, who know nothing about what I'm doing.

So,  I'm snuggled on the sofa watching a truly rubbish DVD (The Boat That Rocked - utter trash), I feel swollen in every area and about as pregnant as an old man.  Ah well. Although I have been calmer this time and less obsessive, I took an early pregnancy test 10 days after the IUI to see if the weirdy cramps were a symptom of pregnancy.  I knew damn well they weren't, but I was ever hopeful.  It was, of course, negative.  I now wait for the dreaded flow which is another 4 long days away.  I feel disappointed and hugely irritated that I am swollen, whale like and sore with no reward to be gained at the end of it.

I'm sure everyone going through this experiences something similar.  You can drive yourself crazy.  I have read countless forums and experiences of other women and I don't know if it helps.  Sadly for me, a British woman doing this on my own finances (over 40 and single), I have no support from a gynaecologist or fertility expert to tell me if I'm wasting my cash.  All I have to go on is the tests my GP did for me.  I have an FSH of 7.5, 10 antral follicles, good clear ovaries and an endometrium that's as thin as it's allowed to get before it's pointless.  I am grumpy and feeling very sorry for myself today, wishing I'd not wasted my time in a long relationship that failed so late on in my biological clock, leaving me in this position past 40.

Oh well, spilt milk and all that stiff upper lip stuff.  Time to down another vat of Earl Grey tea.  I'm having March off to replenish my finances and do some acupuncture.  I think I need a month off so that I don't become absolutely deranged!   Here's hoping a few needles, Eastern thinking and some new clothes will make a difference for April.