28 January 2013

Butterflies...

Hello everyone!

This is likely to be the longest post ever!

So as you all know we had our meeting with the consultant at Bourn Hall a few days ago on the 25th January. If you recall i told you that as it was at 9am we were going to have to be awake at 5:30am! Urgh...

Luckily for us though my lovely sister Sharon (who amazingly lives just 4 miles away from the clinic) said that we could stay at her house on the Thursday night! Fantastic! This meant we were able to have a good night's sleep in preparation for the meeting!

As we got to the clinic we were so nervous, especially about my BMI, which was at 30.2 the day before. Even though i was only 1lb over the maximum allowance for IVF it will still not be accepted, but we just thought they would hopefully ask us to come back in a month and be weighed again so we can start the process then. In which time i know i would of easily lost that last 1lb, and more!

The moment of truth arrived, i was weighed and measured, as was Phil, but the lady did not give us the results, oh god... i said to Phil that it was probably bad. Still, with high spirits and wearing my lucky 'orange knickers' we sat in the waiting room for our appointment time.

Our consultant is a lovely man, you can't help but feel comfortable and confident around him, which is brilliant. He went through the whole process, explained certain aspects of it all, IVF, ICSI (for those who don't know, ICSI is where they take a single sperm and inject it directly into an egg, it is used for those with a low sperm count/ low morphology etc, which is the problem Phil and i have).

Basically the process involves me injecting Buserelin for a few weeks to dampen down my own hormones (called Down Regulation), then injecting Gonal-F for about 2 weeks to make more than 1 follicle grow in my ovaries (he hopes for anything between 8-10 follicles, but it could be anything up to at least 25!). Then after regular scans to check how those follicles are growing there will come a time where they will ask me to inject a hCG 'trigger shot'. This will make the eggs mature and they will need to be collected within 36 hours.

This is when Phil and i will go into the clinic and have my egg collection. It is also when Phil will need to give his sperm sample. Depending on the quality of the sperm we will either have IVF or ICSI (i expect it will be ICSI) and then the embryo's will 'hopefully' grow for up to 5 days and become 'blastocysts'. Then we will go back to the clinic and have 1 of these little miracles put back into my womb and pray that it sticks! The other embryo's will be frozen for future use.

Lots of relaxing will follow, and after 2 weeks i will be asked to do a pregnancy test, if the test is positive then i will be asked to repeat the test a week or so later, if that is also positive they will book us in for a 6/7 week scan!

So there you have it, how to make a baby in however many steps... easy isn't it? Ha ha!

Whilst he was telling us all of the above in the back of my mind i was thinking 'this is all well and good but what is my BMI!'. I was just waiting for the bad news to come when casually the consultant said 'oh yes, and your BMI Sarah is 29.2 so you will need to try and keep that down as it is quite close to 30'. To say Phil and i were in shock is an understatement! They must have rounded my height up to 5'2 as i am about 5'1 and just over a half. What a relief!

We went back into the waiting room and were just looking at each other, completely gobsmacked...

Then we went in to see a nurse who would take us through starting dates etc, as i hadn't started my period yet nothing could be booked, but she said once it had arrived i was to call the clinic.

They also arranged for us to have our 'drug teach', which is where we learnt how to do the injections. Then we had a lovely drive home, laughing and chatting about it all. It was lovely!

I hadn't expected my period to start until the 31st January so when it started that evening after the appointment i said to Phil 'it must be because i am wearing the lucky 'orange knickers!'. Typically though it was too late to call the clinic so i had to wait until today (Monday) to call them.

The call went really well, she confirmed that because my period had started in the evening after 7pm that Saturday the 26th will be my Cycle Day 1. She said my medication will be delivered to me in about 2 weeks so i can start my Buserelin injections on Cycle Day 21. Then i will have a bleed about a week later (normal period, maybe a bit heavier) and then i am to call the clinic again so they can confirm when i am to start the Gonal-F injections.

She said that with those dates they would be looking to have the egg collection on the 18th March, with the embryo being returned to the womb 5 days later, and the testing 2 weeks after.

Now... i know what you may think, you may say to Phil and i to not get too excited, but we just can't help it! I have had loads of happy butterflies in my tummy all day long! I just can not believe it is finally happening! For 3 years we have been waiting and finally we have a great shot at getting pregnant.

So it's all happening...

I can only hope every day that it works for us, first time! We deserve this little bit of luck!

Come on Baby Cole, i know you are ready to come meet us!

Take Care All xxx

6 comments:

  1. Sarah, fantastic to read this and I'm so please it all went well.
    I to have now had period start and I start down regging on the 17th feb. baseline scan is 7 march they haven't told me when egg collection will be. Take care. Luv bo xx

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  2. Thank you so much for your comment Bo, im so excited that we are Cycle Buddies!

    Good luck to the both of us xxx

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  3. This is veeeery informative, I was very interested in how it all works. March is baby cole month. I can tellx xxx

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  4. Thank you Tashi, i really hope you are right :) xxx

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  5. I found your blog on BabyCentre, i so hope your ivf/icsi works,ive got my fingers crossed for you and will be following your blog in the hope of hearing some good news

    good luck xxx

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  6. Oh thank you so much! That's so nice of you. I hope whatever stage you are at that all is going/ goes well for you too xxx

    Take Care! x

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