Bring on ice cream and white wine

Negative.

I feel rather pathetic to be honest. I feel pathetic for things I felt which I thought were a good sign. I kinda feel it may all have been in my head.. I feel pathetic for being so predictable in my reaction: not caring about my job, wanting to move away from Paris, wanting to go away, wanting to be alone. Every time it’s the same thing. I feel pathetic because even after a negative pee test yesterday I was still hoping that the beta today could be positive. I must have googled "false negative" at least 20 times yesterday.

I’ll get over it. At some point. But for now I need some sleep, ice cream and a good glass of white wine.

We have 2 frozen embryos of medium quality, so at least we don’t have to run straight into IVF again. But the success rate for frozen embryo transfers is only 10% here so I’m not too hopeful. In any case I need a wee break, so I’ll think about this later.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts, crossed fingers, vibes, wishes etc. It’s great to feel supported. I hope those who are waiting for news will be luckier than me.

Hope and disappointment

This week is almost over and so is the two week wait. I haven’t been great at staying calm and waiting but I haven’t been too bad either. Tomorrow I will go for the blood test and I should have results by early afternoon.

After the last IVF round I was told by several people that it had not worked because I hadn’t hoped or believed enough. I disagree because I don’t think it makes a difference. In any case, this time no one will be able to say that I haven’t hoped enough. I even think I have let myself dream too far. I have let myself imagine being pregnant, telling my husband that it had worked, holding a baby (our baby), I have thought and discussed baby names, moving apartment and making pregnancy-friendly holiday plans.

I have hope but I feel my disappointment will be proportional to the hope if the test is negative. By now I know that I will stand up again after falling. I’ve done it before. But I don’t know how long it’ll take this time or how bad the fall will be.

Just a tiny bit more waiting…

Little angels

How many stories of abandoned babies do we hear? Every single time I hear of abandoned new born babies found dead I feel pain inside. How can you abandon a little baby in a place where he/she will inevitably die? There have been a few cases of this type in Italy lately, probably more often than usual. I just read this post by an Italian journalist I adore about a baby who was abandoned last month. It really moved me so I thought I would translate it (it may lack some of the original poetry since I am not a writer).

I am still here

Good morning, my name is Gabriele Francesco. I was born in Novara (Italy) on April 11th 2013 and I would be a month old if I were still alive. But I was dead the same day I was born. Now you must all be thinking that my mum and dad did not behave well: in fact they left me alone, under a bridge, with just a few dirty clothes on and with no bottle-feeding around. But I cannot judge them. It is true that we new born babies are defenseless we get thrown off bridges, exploded under bombs, sold for a few dollars. We are meat for newspapers. Before closing my eyes, I bundled up in the garbage to find comfort and wondered: is this world I am about to leave really that ugly? Then I felt myself being carried in the air and from the cloud I am writing from I can see that there is still beauty. There is beauty in the truck driver who found me and in the inspector who gave me my beautiful name: it is important to have a name, it means you really existed. There is beauty in the police men, fire men and forest guards who all donated money for my funeral. And there is beauty in the funeral home, whose manager said “we don’t want any money for the funeral”, so the money went to volunteers who help sick children in hospital. A memorial will be put where I was born. So I was not born for nothing. My name is Gabriele Francesco, and I am still here.

Translated from:
http://www.lastampa.it/2013/05/11/cultura/opinioni/buongiorno/non-invano-x76kxrFrJ8xVr7FE4bQwvN/pagina.html

Everything is a symptom

If you try to google "two week wait" (TWW), you’ll find a few websites describing what the TWW is and listing possible symptoms but most of all an enormous amounts of women in various Internet fora freaking out, describing symptoms and signs and hoping to that someone will help them understand whether what they are feeling is a good or a bad sign.

I know I shouldn’t google and I shouldn’t read these things since it does not really help get an early answer on whether the IVF has worked. Everyone has different feelings, symptoms and reactions. But reading through websites has helped me understand how useless looking for symptoms is. What was a good sign for someone, was bad for someone else. A certain feeling can easily have been felt by someone who got a positive or someone who got a negative.

This is very clear to me in theory. Yet, right now everything I feel is a sign. I don’t know whether they are good or bad signs, but I can’t help wonder…

On the first day after the transfer. I couldn’t feel anything. I thought that was a bad sign. I googled and figured that some people who had felt nothing got a positive result. Basically useless sign.

On the second day I had some cramps in the lower abdomen and thought it was a good sign. It could be a bad sign too but it has been described as a good sign by many. the cramping didn’t last long though.Then during the night I woke up at 3AM with really strong cervical pain. These are cramps I usually have right before getting my period. Clearly a bad sign. Since I woke up in pain I panicked and immediately turned on the computer to check if anyone else had felt the same. I couldn’t find much but had a hard time calming down. At 5AM I decided to force myself to sleep: I put on "Tangled" (thank you Mr Disney, I love that movie and I’ve seen it so many times it makes me fall asleep in10 minutes by now).

Tired from the night, I spent the third day with teary eyes and in complete pessimism. I had also found two spots on my face and decided my bad skin was a sign of my period coming. Luckily, since I was exhausted, I slept most of the day.

Today was again a day of no feelings. I only had mild pain in the abdomen for a tiny bit. I told my mum I was in pain but that I was happy about it. She looked at me like I was a nut case. But I really don’t like feeling nothing!

There are a number of other common symptoms:

- sore breasts: I’ve had sore breasts for basically 2 months now because of treatments, so I can’t count this as a symptom.

- feeling bloated: I feel a bit bloated but it’s nothing compared to last week. I would think this is also a bad sign, but it may just be my body enjoying the lack of injections.

- spotting: none so far. Could be good (no period coming) and could be bad (no implantation).

- fatigue: I feel very tired but then I blame that on the progesterone pessaries. I was exhausted last year too but it didn’t work.
- other: I’ve had none of all other symptoms (headaches, frequent peeing, constipation, thirst, nausea, etc..).

I know myself how useless an exercise this is. But I can’t help it. And given the amount of people asking for help on the net, I see I am not the only one. In a week tomorrow I’ll find out, so I only have seven and a half days to go. Let’s see what other symptoms I can come up with.

TWW

I had two embryos transferred today. Yey! Apparently one was of very good quality and the other a bit less good. We decided to transfer two, despite the nurse being really concerned about the possibility of us getting pregnant with twins. It’s the last of my concerns. Any number greater than zero will be great! Zero is the only thing that scares me…

My husband was with me for the first time (he couldn’t come to the transfer last year). It was quite funny to have him watch on the screen and ask lots of questions.

We have three embryos left but they are not of very good quality so the lab will wait until tomorrow to see how they develop before they decide whether to freeze them or not. We’ll receive a letter with information about it later on.

So, I am officially in my two week wait. I’m not very good at this. I spent the afternoon trying to calculate probabilities.Not the brightest idea.. I am rather proud of myself for remembering all rules of composed probabilities though. But not very proud for spending time doing useless calculations.

I’ve waited for so long to get here, that a couple more weeks shouldn’t be impossible. I can wait without freaking out and trying to interpret every little thing I feel as a sign.. I can do this!

Transfer tomorrow!

Last night I was so tired I put on a movie but fell asleep before seeing the title. I was exhausted. I slept really well until this morning at 5AM when I started waking up every half hour wondering when I would get a call from the clinic and worrying that they may call saying that there was nothing to transfer.

The clinic finally called at 9AM and this lady, who had the voice of someone who was about to give bad news, actually gave me very good news. Of the 8 eggs, 6 could be micro-injected and of these 5 were fertilised.
So, I am to go in for the transfer tomorrow! Yey!!
I have never done a transfer at day 2, all other times I was too sick with OHSS to have the transfer immediately and did it on day 5. The first time all embryos died between day 2 and day 5, the second time, only one blastocyst survived. This time the gynaecologist wants to try to have a transfer at day 2 to see if the embryo develops better inside me than in the lab. I’ve heard different theories about this but since the day 5 transfer never worked for me, I’m happy to try at day 2.

Another step is done. I was so relieved to know that there could be a transfer. I just need to stay calm and rest to be in good shape tomorrow.

Egg retrieval day

This morning we got out early to a desert Paris. It’s holiday time in France so everyone is away. It was great to skip the battle to find a seat on the train. We found the same quite atmosphere at the clinic: no queues and no wait, everything was super quick. It was great though a tiny bit overwhelming. My husband was called for his job and while normally he would be back before the nurses came to get me, this time they came before he was back. No big deal though, especially since all the nurses were lovely today. I was really lucky.

It was the first time I had total anesthesia for the egg retrieval (actually it was the first time ever). I really didn’t like the perfusion, but it was much easier to be asleep. Being asleep I avoided all the stress and panic I had last year. After we came back home, I slept for a few hours. I’m feeling better now though still a bit sleepy so I think I’ll also have an early night. But before I go back to sleep, I have a bunch of meds to take: an injection of ovitrelle, estrogen patches and progesterone suppositories plus pain killers of various sort. The injection is just for today and than again in 3 days; the rest is for 15 days unless there is no transfer. Having injection and patches after the egg retrieval is a bit weird but it’s all part of this protocol to avoid OHSS.

I had 8 eggs retrieved. It’s much less than the other times, which is a bit upsetting, but then I know it may mean that they are of better quality and that they may lead to better results. We should get a call tomorrow morning from the clinic to know how many eggs got fertilised, if any. On normal conditions I would probably be unable to sleep, but the good side of being completely drugged up is that I’ll sleep no matter what.

I feel really lucky today! I got lots of support and encouragement messages. Thanks to all who read this blog for the messages in the past days! A few good friends were also aware that the egg retrieval was today and they all sent messages. It felt good to be supported.

We’ve done our job, now all we can do is wait and hope to have some good embryos..