Tag Archives: 2WW

So I duly went and did the stupid, pointless Beta this morning. Guess what the result is???? C’mom, guess???

YES! You’re right! Its Negative!!!!!!

But guess what else??

As if to prove a point, the point being that some of us are destined to walk a harder, longer, more painful journey to motherhood than others and that I fall into this category, you know the answer simply couldn’t just be Negative, stop your meds, let your period start, we’re so sorry. Oh no. That would be far too simple, that’s what happens to other people when they have treatments, not to me. So just for a little bit of extra fun, to make sure I’m well and truly tortured by this process. Guess what the IVF Co-ordinator told me???

She kakked (shat) me out for testing 5 days early and told me, I may NOT stop my medication, instead, I should continue to pretend like there’s some hope, continue taking the stupid meds and retest again on Monday! Yay!!! I’m so f*cking lucky! I mean lets face, it, its plausible to believe that the blood test results, 9dp5dt, could change from a stone cold negative today to a bright, shiny positive on Monday! Of course it can, in f*cking fairyland!!!!!!!!!!

Last night, what I’ve been waiting for, anticipating and dreading happened. The first signs of spotting. The irony is that at the beginning of this IVF, because of how my previous IVF’s had panned out, I kept telling myself that if I could make it to 8dp5dt I’d have reason to be hopeful.  So I did make it to 8dp5dt and watched as hope glimmered in W’s eyes. But you know, as one of those people who’ve had to walk the special sh*ttyjourney, one of those who’s not going to receive a BFP from taking Clomid, doing a timed cycle,having an IUI, or falling pregnant on my first IVF, one of those people who has experienced just about every sh*tty treatment and outcome that one can have on this journey (bar one outcome that I’m too terrified of to even verbalize) I knew nothing was going to come of it and I was right.

Last night, after returning from wishing my MIL happy 50th birthday, I raced into the house to do yet another frantic pantie check and there it was, the first signs of spotting. The part that surprised me was that it actually upset me because I’d been expecting it. At least now I know what to do, as hard as this is, I know what to expect because I’d done this so many times in the past.

I’ve got so many mixed emotions at the moment. I’m so incredibly sad, I have this strong sense of loss, I am unbelievablyangry, I’m confused,I don’t understand why, why can’t I be one of the lucky ones? Why can’t I catch a break? I’m wracked withself pity. And to be totally honest, I don’t know if I want to continue on with treatment either. After 7 years, countless timed/triggered cycles, 3 IUI’s and now 4 IVF’s, I’ve yet to receive even so much as a glimmer of hope from fertility treatment. I cannot help wondering if what I believe to be God’s promise to me is just one big fat lie? Or some fantasy I’ve created in my head to justify keeping on going. I know a lot of what I’m feeling has to do with the massive disappointment and sadness over this failed cycle and that perhaps in a few weeks I’ll start to feel different.

For right now, I’m scared, I’m scared of how much this all hurts, I’m scared of moving on, I’m scared of how I’m going to cope with my friends pregnancies, I’m so raw that everything hurts. I feel judged and I judge myself harshly. I’m filled with self loathing and despise myself for putting W through this.

But I just need to get to the end of this now, so this morning I’ll be going for the stupid, pointless beta at 9dp5dt so that I can stop the meds and move on.

And the home tests are still coming up negative. I’m devastated, had/having a good cry.

So many questions in my head, but the overwhelming theme is why? Why do some of us have to suffer on such a hard journey? Why do some people’s journey’s have to be so much harder than others? I guess the part that’sreally messing with my head is that I’ve met so many people from my clinic who had success on their first attempts, I really really thought I could be lucky and also have success on my first attempt. i guess what’s really messing with my head is that of the group of us who left the old clinic at more or less the same time, who were all diagnosed with structural issues prevent pregnancy/causing miscarriages, everyone has had a positive pregnancy on the first or second attempts, most of them with timed cycles and IUI’s. But not me. But its not to be me.

The most overwhelming emotion right now is one of guilt. When I look at W, I feel so guilty for doing this to him. He was not exactly excited about doing IVF again, but he agreed to it because he loves me and he knows how important it is to me. To see the disappointment on his face again is killing me.

I just want my period to start now so that we can fully get this over with and try and pick up the pieces and move on. Again.

I did an HPT yesterday and got all excited at the results! A big bright positive, I was so excited, I rushed out to show W! He was cautiously optimistic after viewing the test, I guess the part that convinced us both was how rapidly the result came up. So today’s W’s birthday and I thought I’d surprise him with another positive HPT. Ha! Murphy and his f*cked up laws had a good laugh in my face. I decided to do 2x HPT’s, different brands, one the same as yesterday and wouldn’t you just know it, it showed + again this morning. And then a Midstream brand which was a BFN! Of course this pushed paranoia into over drive, I’ve since then used another midstream HPT and again, the result is the same as this morning – BFN!

In the interim the Crinone has started to play havoc and all the additional hormones have left me feeling like cr*p. I guess the confusing HPT results are also not helping.

This morning I also figured out why I haven’t starting spotting as yet. With my previous IVF’s the IVF cycle ran longer than my natural cycle, so the early bleeding post ET always came at exactly on CD28/29 of my natural cycle. Today, I’m only on CD24, that’s why we haven’t noticed in ominous spotting as yet, but it will come.

I have this sinking feeling on the inside that this is over. Please please do not try and bull sh*t me into believing otherwise. With every pregnancy I’ve had in the past I’ve received consistently + HPT’s regardless of the brand by this stage of the game. I had a 5 day transfer, so the embryo’s should have hatched and attached before the weekend so in all likelihood I need to accept that they are dead.

One thing is for sure, this never gets easier to cope with. The worst part, its my wonderful husbands birthday today, he deserved a nice surprise but it doesn’t look like its meant to be. I can see how disappointed he is, but he’s trying hard to hold onto hope and believe that its still too early, I guess the sad part for me is that I know too much and I know its over.

Since yesterday the anxiety I always experience while waiting for the results of an IVFkicked in. The frantic pantie checking started somewhere in the middle of the night, you know when you sit there with a wad of toilet paper in you hand, your eyes scrunched closed, praying that when you look down you won’t see any traces of blood or anything else that couldbe misconstrued as spotting. The desire to start doing home pregnancy tests is absolutleyoverwhelming, I’m literally white knuckling it through this desire to know and to know now. Every now and again I have to remind myself to take long, deep breaths because I catch myself holding my breathand feel my heart beat start to accelerate as I re-live all the failed IVF’s from the past. How I knew each of them had failed, that moment when I knew, the emotions I experienced.

Of course what’s not helping is the fact that my OHSSsymptoms have all but disappeared, I keep wishing they’d return with vengeance, this is mostly because my RE informed me that OHSS often bodes well for a positive result and that in 50% of cases, after implantation, the OHSS symptoms return. I want to fall into that category, I don’t care about the pain, the pain will offer me comfort, it will offer me hope that the treatment has worked, I don’t care if passing urine makes me want to faint, if walking becomes agony and changing positions in bed makes me want to cry, bring it, I need the comfort of it. I also know that by now, given that we did a 5 day transfer, one of two things has occurred- one or bothof my beautiful embryo’s has implanted or one or both of my beautiful embryo’s has died.

I’m 4 days past transfer, experience has taught me that if this treatment has failed, somewhere in the next 3 days I will start to see blood, its W’s birthday in 2 days, God please, don’t let his birthday be ruined because of failed treatment. The last IVF, I started to spot exactly 5 days after transfer, my then clinic had the cheek to tell me it was impossible, it was too soon. Well here’s something I’ve learnt after 7 years of trying to have a baby, my body has very strong cycles, no amount of manipulation or hormones can over ride those cycles. My period has started on the 28thday of my natural cycle with both of my previous IVF’s. The first IVF was 7 days past transfer, the second IVF was 5 days past transfer.

As you can see, I’m failing miserably at having faith, its way harder to put into practise than to just talk about, I’m not even sure I have hope right now, both hope and faith are too scary to face at this moment in time. I’ve started to think that hope and faith are for the people who’ve actually received a positive pregnancy test from some form of fertility treatment, not for people like me, who despite being pregnant numerous times, has never actually achieved a pregnancy from fertility treatment. I’ve joked in the past that I’m like that anti-patient, what works in theory for others does not work for me, I really really want to be wrong this time.

Another day paralysed by all the what if’s………..

And already the mental torture has started. I guess being on bed rest is really not helping, far too much time to think….

The insomnia has also kicked, not sure if I mentioned this before, but I always battle insomnia during the 2ww from an IVF. Last night I must have woken up about 10 times and lain there thinking about Blip and Blop, wondering if they were hatching, if they were attaching. The fact that I’m still battling residual symptoms of the OHSS is not helping, my bladder is still very sensitive and its extremely painful if I allow it to get too full, so I have to get up about 5 times during the night to pass urine, again, so painful I want to faint, and having to drink 4L’s of water a day is not really helping at all.

Yesterday, I did almost whack somebody after I’d had ET. Dr J had asked me to wait 10 minutes before using the loo, now imagine, very swollen ovaries, very sore uterus, very full bladder, waiting 10 minutes, I was in agony. I couldn’t even stand up straight to walk to the toilet when eventually the time finally came for me to relieve my bladder. So the chic sitting in the recliner opposite me goes: “Shame, I had ER on Saturday and my tummy is also a little sore!!!”

Sweetheart, sore!!??? Sore doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’ve got OHSS, not the sore you get after ER, I’m in agony, its really not the same thing. I had to stop myself from swotting her, she simply did not understand the concept of OHSS and seemed to believe it was the tenderness one feels after ER. Ja, keep believing that Love!

Anyway rant over.

This morning I told W I also plan to go for my blood test early. I simply cannot bare the thought of getting the results on a Monday at work. I cannot face that, I need to be in the privacy of my own home so that I can fall apart and not worry about my dignity if its a BFN. So I’ve decided that I’m going to go for my blood test on Saturday, 28th March. It won’t make a different to the + / – aspect of it, but at least I can be at home and celebrate/mourn my result without the my entire office staring at me. I’ll be 12dp5trf which is good enough to get a good beta count if I’m in fact pregnant.

I also plan to POAS about 50 times at least before then! Wish me luck!

There they are! My 2x five day old babies. How incredible is that? I must admit, I always think this is one of the very special things that an IVF offers, how many couples can say they saw their babies at 3 past conception and then again at 5 days past conception. Not too many.

This mornings appointment went well, Dr’s confirmed that the freezing of our 7 embryo’s went well and that we had 3 blastocytes (exciting knowing that at this stage they’re no longer just fertilized eggs, but are considered embryo’s) to consider for transfer. I was fairly keen to put back all 3 because of my age and history, I feel the chances of all 3 taking are low. However, W was hesitant and the Dr’s agreed with him. Dr felt that given the quality of our blasts, that the risk of triplets was too high and that the quality of the blasts cancelled out my age. So, although I’ll probably always wonder what would have happened with that third one, I went along with the Dr’s and we’ve transferred 2.

We did learn something VERY interesting today. Something that has once again made me furious with my previous clinic and with how I feel they failed me in their treatment. My current clinic do scan assisted embryo transfers, my previous clinic did not. The Dr doing my ET today, Dr J, asked if this was my first scan assisted tranfer ever, which of course it is. He then asked W if he knew what they’re taught in medical school is the average length of a woman’s cervix? Of course W didn’t know, the conversation went something like this:

Dr J: “We’re taught that the cervix is 2.5cm’s in length and that during ET, you push the guided cathetar 6cm’s into the cervix to ensure that the embryo’s go inside the userus.”

W: “Yes, that makes sense”

Dr J: “Yes, we used to think we were so cleaver, but that was before we started using scan assisted ET’s. W – do you know how long your wife’s cervix is?”

W: “2.5cms?”

Dr J: “No W, your wife’s cervix is 6.5cm’s, this means that we have to push the cathertar in much further to ensure that the embryo’s are in fact deposited inside the uterus in optimum position!”

I had always been concerned at my previous clinic that they could not actually prove to me that the embryo’s were in fact inside my uterus. Now that I’ve had a cervix measurement done, I’m really left wondering…..

I’m just so glad that my good friend convinced me to change to VL, even when I got so angry with her. Chantal – all the best for your 2ww!

So, I ‘ve had another intralipid transfusion today, had a rather odd side effect this time, no headaches, but hot flushes and pain in the bones of my arm where the drip was being administered. But you know, I”m hoping and praying that I get to experience it again in two weeks time because that will mean I’m PREGNANT!!!!