Tick Tock

I was back at the clinic again today, Spy Moon got a photo of my chart when I was left alone for a moment, if I was being watched on any cameras I can imagine they fell off their chair laughing watching me get out my camera phone super quick :-)

All seems to be going fine and I will do my trigger injection on Saturday with egg collection on Monday as planned, eek. My menopur dose has been dropped down again, now to 75 IU for my last dose which I took this morning. In total for this cycle I have had down reg injections (buserelin) for 27 days, and for the last 11 days of that I've also had stimm injections, way too many needles to count, but only one bruise! 

I have fewer follicles than my last two cycles, but I'm hoping trying Menopur this time may give me some better quality eggs. Looks like I could be on for about 10 eggs overall, with maybe 7 of those being mature enough for ICSI.

So my trigger injection (ovitrelle) is scheduled for 10:45pm on Saturday night, rock n roll.

Keep Calm and Drink Tea

What an interesting week so far, what was supposed to have started out as a peaceful demonstration has turned into widespread riots across the country, it’s been going on for days now and I’m truly shocked at the destruction these mindless people are causing . . . the rioting, looting and violence is still continuing today, it’s madness.

That little squirt from Big Brother, Sam Pepper, has set up a facebook group and has got #OperationCupOfTea trending.  It’s kinda cool, the idea being that we should make tea, not war. People have been posting photo’s of their cups of tea! it’s the number one trending topic on twitter at the moment, tea solves everything right, I like to think so :-)

In other pressing news, I had my first monitoring scan yesterday . . . these new waves of nausea I’m experiencing these last few days are not too pleasant, I’m sure the nerves didn’t help though. Thankfully, all was fine, one side is responding better than the other, c’mon sleepy ovary.  I’m responding a bit quicker than last time so the menopur is affecting me slightly differently and I’ve noticed that in my symptoms too. To slow things down a little and to give my smaller follies a fighting chance they are reducing my dose down from 225 IU to 150 IU, and I’ll be back there in a couple of days for another monitoring scan and egg collection is pencilled in for early next week as planned.

Dr Angel tells me that I must practice being ‘open’ and not kid myself I’m being open when I’m not really feeling it inside, so that’s this week’s task (just a small mountain to climb then!), she’s got me sussed out.

Auntie Moon

I’m on my twitter break and I have to say it feel a little weeeird, I haven’t decided if it’s a good or a bad thing yet, it’s probably a good thing as my tweets would have just been too whiny! I’ve been struggling somewhat in my down regulation phase this time, I have an array of aches and pains and generally feel pretty exhausted and down with what life continues to throw at me.

Technically I am now an auntie, my brother/crazy SIL had a baby boy a few days earlier than expected. Over the past week I have had some limited contact with my brother and I’ve been hearing filtered information through my mum, bless her, she is stuck in the middle of all this too.  As always, I am the bigger person, I haven’t mentioned the stunt my SIL played the other week that I mentioned in my last post, instead I passed on my congratulations and sent a card and gift. My parents are visiting their first grandchild right now, I don’t expect to be included but it still makes me sad as there is no resolution to this horrid situation right now.

I found out earlier this week that my dad has been told he is diabetic and is now on medication to help control this. Who keeps throwing these things at me!

I had my baseline scan earlier this week (a good old date with Mr Wandy again, oh how I haven't missed you), despite all the odd aches and pains there is nothing untoward happening in there thankfully and I started my new stimulation medications that same day. I’m trying Menopur this time (rather than Gonal F) just to see if it makes a difference to our embryos. The mixing of the powder and solvent seems quite straightforward, although some days I’m having 3 injections to be able to get the right dose from multiple bottles, ouch!  I’m having quite a bit of injection site pain, especially as the day goes on as my IVF bloat is now reappearing and stretches my tummy area!

I’m hoping I’ll start to feel better now that I’m on the Menopur, hopefully I’m growing fabulous follies inside.

Goodie Bag

Unplugged

I’ve decided to take a little break from twitter, I plan to return soon but in the mean time I still hope to blog through my third ICSI cycle . . .

I’m doing this in an attempt to stay as sane as one can be in a treatment cycle and I think I need to unplug for just a little while.  I’ve been struggling with all the stresses in my life recently, they are all getting on top of me and I guess everything is becoming too much. Even being on twitter from time to time can increase my anxiety which is ironic, as before this is the first place I would turn to. I hope my friends on twitter understand that I need to take a break for a little while and concentrate on this cycle and do what I need to do to get through it, it feels a little selfish but I’m finding it hard to read about other people’s stories at the moment – both those with good and not so good news, all are making me feel more anxious.

My counsellor advised that I have to let go of something, at the time I had decided that I would let go of my brother/SIL situation ('You Can't Choose Your Family'), this only lasted a week or so unfortunately. Right before leaving for my bridesmaids duties he texted out of the blue after not being in touch for about 8 weeks. I won’t go into the details but I wasn’t best pleased with the tone of his texts and I realised he is not the brother I miss, I miss who he used to be.  Since the wedding he has made an attempt to resolve the situation with my parents given that their first grandchild will be making an appearance into the world any day now and he wants them to visit as soon as the baby arrives. He has also been in touch with me again to say he’d like to speak to me this week, I’m not sure how I feel about this as I have enough on my plate but I guess if he makes the call I will hear him out.

I have already accepted I won’t be meeting my niece/nephew anytime soon and I’m acutely aware there is no quick fix to this, but this doesn’t make it any easier to handle. Actually breaking news from Tuesday is that the crazy SIL has contacted my mum to pass on a message to me, to ask me not to contact my brother at the moment, I took 10 steps back in my quest to stay sane when I heard this. Seriously, I give up, they are causing me more grief than I can handle right now.

In terms of my cycle, I’m 12 days into my down reg phase, the injections are going fine, but unlike last time I am struggling with how they are making me feel, I'm literally having to just take one day at a time and I’m trying to be strong. AF has also made an appearance, as expected during down reg it was just a day or so late like last time, yet again no miracle baby here!  The pain has been awful at times but I’m getting through it. So I’m all set for my baseline scan in the next few days and then the plan is to try a different stimm medication this time, one that’s more fiddly and requires mixing so I’ll be having a demo next week.

Both Mr Moon and I are struggling a bit this time round, we feel so alone which is making us hide away a little, probably not a good thing, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to just ‘pretend’ everything is fine and we are normal when we couldn’t feel further from it. It’s difficult to be full of hope when we don’t understand why there were no real answers in Mr Moon’s recent tests. I saw Dr Angel for my acupuncture this week and she gave me a lot of useful advice, she asked me to keep an ‘open mind’ about this cycle, she’s so sweet, she didn’t tell me to be more positive, she didn’t tell me to less negative, instead something about the way she described just about being ‘open’ to the possibilities made me feel brighter.

I know many others are going through difficult times too and it makes me sad to think there are people out there just like us, feeling these same emotions, I wish I could fix it for them. I wanted to give a little shout out to one lovely lady, @ladyisis, her latest post made me cry and I can relate to a lot of her emotions, we seem to be on the same wavelength, this is the one good thing about twitter, I have found some people that I can truly relate too. Here is her blog with her latest post, please send her some support . . . Don't Look Back

On a positive note, one thing that has helped last week was meeting two tweeps, @ivfchronicles and @lilytaj, in London for the day. I can’t describe how it felt to meet two lovely ladies who know exactly how I’m feeling right now, I felt connected to them straight away. I’m so pleased @lilytaj stopped by in London on her holiday (she lives in Oz) which gave us all a reason to get together and eat cupcakes, yum yum.