Categories: to-be-categorised
Tags: Simon Mayo, explanations, IVF, injections, two week wait
Date: 08 November 2009 08:00:48
*Disclaimer - this post was not written this morning, I am deliberately posting these entries on different dates so that I can be fully open about this IVF stuff without people knowing exactly what is happening when. It's a self preservation thing, with all of the injected hormones I become a bit of an emotional wreck, and am saving myself the pressure of people curious to know outcomes before I'm ready to tell.
Yesterday morning was the embryo transfer. I can feel a 'TMI?' coming up quite soon, can't you?
Before that though let's set up where we were at breakfast time before this second major procedure. Six out of ten fertilised eggs after the egg collection three days before. Plenty of rest and relaxation in between. Showering with non-perfumed soap again. Call to confirm that the transfer is best taking place today (rather than wait another couple of days and do a blastocyst transfer), and after some messing around and calling back because of short staffing (yay), we are told yes, come in now. Drink a pint of water, because a 'comfortably full bladder' is needed, then get down to the clinic as soon as we can.
We get a cubicle with a telly again like we had for the egg collection. This is nice in some ways, we have been sat in the corridor before at this stage, but there are only a couple of us having anything done this morning, so plenty of space. Unfortunately what it actually means is that we are going to have to wait. Drink more water, and wait.
We are shown through, after more than an hour, to the procedure room where we find out the latest developments with our embryos. Of the six that fertilised, only three are at the 'six cell or above' level required. Two are six cells, one is seven cells, but it and one of the six cells have a lot of fragmentation (generally the case with us it seems), which makes it less likely to develop. So we go with the one good one, and the embryologist chooses the better of the other two to accompany it. We see them on a screen, and watch as she assists the hatching with a laser (it's the first time we've been offered this, but at this stage, we'll go for anything - that'll be another £500) on your way out then, ker-ching). The nurses are trying to relax me, as you might imagine I quite need the loo by this point, and start up inane chatter about How Chris Evans is replacing Terry Wogan in the new year on Radio 2, and how he's better than Simon Mayo in the drivetime slot. To be honest, this wound me up far more than if she'd just stayed silent, I think Simon Mayo is brilliant, but would rather not be thinking of him at the closest thing we get to the possible conception of our child(ren?)!
TMI?
OK, so obviously there's more to it than lying back and trying not to think of Simon Mayo... At the point we were called through I was pretty desperate for the loo, but was keeping a handle on things, just about. Obviously it's a case of getting undressed from the waist down and getting onto the bed, legs in the stirrups etc. Then that horrible swab again, eeew. Next, oh, joy is the speculum, which is basically a torture instrument, even when you haven't got a full bladder. No painkillers this time, at least it's taking my mind off the pain of my first few intra-muscular buttock injections.
Then came the words that no-one in this situation should ever hear "Um, we're having some problems finding your cervix." It took a good ten minutes to locate, during which time they used the external scanning wand to press down from the outside, yeah, just what I needed. My only thought through the entire thing was "Dear God, please let me not pee now". The actual embryos, once we have seen them hatching on the screen ("yeah-yeah, just get them in me, and get me out of here!") are inserted via a catheter. Once this is done the speculum finally comes out, but I'm not allowed to move until they have checked the catheter is clear (apparently our potential babies could still be stuck in the tube, Augustus Gloop style). It is, and we finally breathe a sigh of relief, it's all over, we don't have to start again. I don't bother buttoning up my jeans as I scoot over the corridor to the mercifully vacant loo.
TMI?
So that's it in terms of what the hospital can do. I still have nightly injections, and three tablets every morning, but really that's our watch. Now it's what is commonly called 'the two week wait'. This time exists however you are trying to conceive, there needs to be a fortnight between conception and a reliable pregnancy test result. And that's what I'll be doing in a fortnight, for all the flashiness of their latest advances, fertility clinics still rely on good old pregnancy tests. I'll probably post later about the experience of the two week wait, because this post has gone on for long enough, and it's another topic really. But just to say it's a pretty horrible time of being in limbo, and I'll be doing all I can to take my mind off it, without doing too much and jeopardising this whole thing.
Catch up later
xx