Day 42

Day 42

Day 23 of injections

4 Blood tests.

My week has been filled with needles. I have been doing 2 injections daily since Thursday 29th March and I have had a couple of blood tests this week. Actually, make that 3 blood tests, because on Tuesday, my left arm didn't want to give up any blood so I then had to have a second one in my right arm. Fortunately today's blood test was much easier. I put it down to the 5 glasses of water I drank in the hour before hand. 

Today I am definitely noticing the effect of the drugs. My belly is feeling very full, much more so than I remember feeling with the previous 2 rounds. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come.

Tomorrow I will be at the blood lab at 8:30am when they open, for yet another blood test and then I will be getting my first scan. I am actually feeling a bit excited about it. My nurse has told me that my blood test results have been great, but the scan tomorrow will be my first opportunity to really see what's going on - how many follicles I have growing and what size they are. I am hopeful that it will all be looking good and that I will do my trigger injection tomorrow night. This will mean that egg collection will be on Monday.

We are nearly there. 

I am feeling excited.

 

And nervous.

And very at peace about it all.

I will update again tomorrow.

Alana, Flex Thunderstache and Frankie

Day 35

Day 35 this of cycle.

Day 16 of injections.

Roughly 10 more days of injections to go.

Apart from how annoyingly long this cycle is, everything is going well.

I had my first blood test on Tuesday and everything is as it should be. I have another blood test on the 3rd and I expect I will also start having scans from late next week.

Yesterday I started my second injection. Gonal F. This one will zap my ovaries into production and help my body to produce lots of follicles and eggs.

Finally, I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a  very long tunnel but he end is in sight. One way or another, it will come to an end soon.

I have surprised myself this round with how laid back and relaxed I feel about it all. Yesterday I did my injections sitting on a bathroom floor in a restaurant. Tomorrow I will be doing them at a wedding. 

I think I have come to a point where I realise that I have done everything I can. It will either work or it wont, but that's not on me. I have done my part. The rest is up to God. And I trust His plans. 

Isaiah 43:18-19 'But the Lord says, do not cling to events of the past, or dwell on what happened long ago. Watch for the new thing I am going to do. It is happening already - you can see it now! I will make a road through the wilderness and give you streams of water there.

Thanks for reading,

Alana, Frankie and Flex Thunderstache Xx

Day 21

Injections have started!

Finally!

Although we started treatment just over 2 weeks ago, now that I am doing the injections, I feel like things have really started.

Flex Thunderstache didn't even know we had started treatment until a couple of days ago! I am not sure if he wasn't listening or if I didn't tell him. 3rd time round and I am feeling pretty relaxed about it all. It's amazing how casual we have become about it. Its just part of our routine and injecting myself each night just seems normal. 

As this is a long cycle, I will be doing injections for about 25 days. 2.5 times longer than the previous cycles. 

Lucky me.

This time I am using a drug called Lucrin. For this drug, I have to draw it up in the needle out of a little bottle. This is new for me, but fortunately they make it all pretty straight forward. The great thing about using Lucrin, is that I wont have to use Orgalutran this time. (The one that stings heaps and has a fat needle) Yay!

So for now I just carry on with the injections. My first blood test will be in about 1.5 weeks. This should give us an indication of how things are going and how well I am responding to the drugs.

Until next time,

Alana, Flex and Frankie

Day 12

Day 12 and everything is ticking along nicely. Actually it's been pretty uneventful but I am getting closer to the day I start my injections (15th March) and then I will really feel like things have started.

I had an appointment with my naturopath on Monday and all is well there. I am continuing with my current plan which is hopefully going to give us some good quality eggs this time. I have loosened up (just a little bit) with my strict diet so I need to tighten that up again. We are so close. I just need to be strong and disciplined for a little bit longer.

Last night Flex Thunderstache and I completed our consent forms for this cycle. I was thinking back to the first ones we did and how it felt like such a big deal. I think I actually had a bit of a melt down over them. Now we are experts. It took all of 2 minutes as we confidently ticked boxes and crossed out options. How things have changed!

Last weekend, I headed up to martinborough (one of my favourite places to escape to) for a girls werkend. I went with my mum, aunt and sister in law. The fair was on and we had such a great time. Great conversations, lots of laughs and lovely food. 

The word I have found myself using a lot for this round of treatment is hope. While checking put all the amazing stalls at the fair, I saw a necklace printed with the word hope and I new I had to have it. My lovely mum insisted on buying it for me and when I put it on, my aunt commented on how it was the perfect lenght. The word hope sits right on my belly. And my sister in law said that one day I will be able to get the second disk printed with the birth date of my baby.

Sometimes I feel foolish for being so hopeful.

Sometimes it's really hard to let your heart be so vulnerable. Infertility has hurt it so many times.

But one day I will be able to tell my child that I believed that they would be mine. That I hoped and waited with expectation

for them to arrive.

This is why I choose hope.

Xx Alana, Flex Thunderstache & Frankie xx

Day 4

And here we are again. 

Today is day 4. Our 3rd cycle has finally begun. It feels like we have been waiting a really long time for this.

Today I had my drug teach session. I am a bit of a pro now at the injections, but this time we are doing a long cycle and I have a new drug called Lucrin. For my previous drugs, they come all ready to go. With Lucrin I have to draw it up out of a bottle. Fortunately they make it all pretty straight forward to administer yourself and after my drug teach I am feeling confident I wont have any issues with this.

The first part of this treatment involves me taking a contraceptive pill for about 3 weeks- seems a little odd right? The reason for taking it is that it shuts down my ovaries and stops them from producing any follicles or eggs. This gives my ovaries a bit of a rest, and then when I start on the Gonal-F injections, it will zap my ovaries into life and hopefully help me to grow lots of follicles and eggs. It also means that both ovaries will be starting from 0, which should help them to grow evenly. With our last cycle we got 10 eggs, but only 4 of them were mature. We are hoping that this cycle will grow them slower and we will get more mature eggs.

The injections will start on the 15th of March and my egg collection is scheduled for the week beginning 9th April. 

I am so ready for this and feeling relieved that the wait if finally over.

Much love, Alana, Flex Thunderstache and Frankie

I choose Hope

Yesterday on my way into work I was reading an infertility blog by 'Grace while we wait'. It mentioned the bracelet that my prayer partner had given me. The one that is engraved in Hebrew with the word Qavah.

It means to wait. 

To expect. 

I love wearing it. I reminds me to wait with hope and with expectation.

For the last 6 or so weeks I have been planning a big trip to Europe for Flex Thunderstache and I in case our treatment goes pear shaped. I have spent hours watching travel shows, looking through travel books, trying to map out the perfect holiday. I have been getting really excited about it and found myself looking forward to going.

Looking forward to going on a trip that will only happen if this treatment fails.

This planning has been great for keeping my mind busy, but what I have realised is that it is already creating in me the mindset that this treatment wont work.

I want to approach this round with hope and expectation. I want to have faith, that this time it will be different.

And so I made a decision.

I decided to put away the travel brochures, the maps and books. I decided that I would make my heart vulnerable again. I decided to start planing my baby shower again. To re-visit my pintrest board filled with nursery design ideas and I ordered fabric so I could sew again my for my baby.

I chose Hope.

The end is in sight

February!

I am glad to see you. 

I has been a challenging few weeks.

I have heard stories of couples who tried to conceive for 10 years before having their miracle baby. I always thought I would be able to do this if needed. But the truth is, after 6 years, I am tired. I have hit a wall. I have reached my limit. I am ready for this to be over.

I am tired of being so controlled with what I eat. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is have fish and chis on the beach. This year it has been salad on the beach, while everyone else around me enjoys one of my favorite activities. I am tired of taking handfuls of pill every morning and evening. I am tired of feeling guilty when I have a weak moment and eat a handful of potato chips.  I am tired of putting life on hold.

February is treatment month. I wont be starting till the end of Feb, but now the countdown is on. The end is in sight and this has thankfully given me some new strength.

We have received the results back from Flex Thunderstache's sperm test. This test was to check if there was a problem with DNA fragmentation in the sperm. The results are given as a percentage. Under 16% is considered excellent. Flex Thunderstache's results were 9.2%. 

This is good news. But for me, also bad news. While I am really happy that everything is great with Flex Thunderstache's swimmers, what it also means is that the problem really is with my eggs. And this just really doesn't seem fair. How can he have such good sperm when his diet includes a lot of fast food and he is constantly surrounded by nasty fumes and chemicals in is workplace (Flex Thunderstache is a motorcycle mechanic) And yet, I am so fit and so healthy and have poor quality eggs. Truly, this is something way out of my control. 

So the countdown is on. Treatment will begin in approximately 3 weeks.

Bring it on! I am ready!

Xx Alana, Flex and Frankie