Tuesday 1 April 2014

Last day of jabs - woo hoo

Day twelve of stimulation, day seven of cetrotide and trigger shot (ovitrelle) day!

This is going to be a rather short and sweet post.

Despite it being less than month since our first consultation at The Lister we are now galloping towards the IVF finish line. It's felt intense, the jabs have hurt more this time round (yes they bruise and I normally bleed after each and every one, my belly also goes bright red and itchy immediately afterwards). Despite a lower dose I have been responding well but I am very glad to not have to jab myself for a good while after today - fingers crossed. Today is the first working day since last week that I haven't be required at hospital, it feels strange. I had roughly 14 follicles that looked ripe for harvesting at my scan yesterday, my hormone levels have been balancing out, I'm learning to relax and I'm trying not to fret about not being at work.

I'm nil by mouth from midnight tomorrow, in at 7am Thursday morning in preparation for egg collection by general anaesthetic later that morning - I'm first on the list. This is the main difference between being treated privately compared to the NHS. At my previous egg collection I was heavily sedated so have vague recollections of what went on and my Hubster was in the room with me. They 'woke me up' and two nurses then walked/carried me to a bed in the treatment waiting ward. I was then shuffled out the moment I was 'compus-mentus' and sent home; at The Lister I'm knocked out via general, I won't be aware of the 'bum torpedo' (this is a term I picked up from a fellow IVFer for the diclofenac suppository they give you rectally before surgery to relax your womb - it's not a pleasant experience I can tell you, I'll let your imaginations work out why), and my Hubster won't be in theatre with me. I'll have my own room and can leave when I am discharged which should be roughly four hours after I've been in theatre - so when I'm ready to go home, not when they need me to go home. There are other differences with this treatment cycle compared to my first fresh cycle: I have been monitored very closely, I've had a lot of blood taken to monitor my hormone levels - this didn't happen at the Kings ACU and I think if had been monitored as closely as I am now I wouldn't have gotten so poorly last time round. 

We're provisionally booked in for embryo transfer this Sunday (6 April) but I'm pretty confident that we'll go to Tuesday (8 April) for a blastocyst transfer. We've paid for a more advanced version of ICSI called IMSI - this stands for intra cytoplasmic morphologically-selected sperm injection. The main difference is that the swimmers will be selected by an extremely strong microscope (x600 times stronger than the one used for standard ICSI) and then injected into my eggs, this should give us the best chance possible of making fabulous mini-mes - together with the endometrium scratch I had a couple of weeks ago should encourage implantation.

So for the interim I'm at home, relaxing trying to put all the nonsense of the past few weeks that could have very easily interfered with our treatment to the back of my mind. I'm focusing my energy on making protein rich, healthy eggs and trying not to focus on the negative - I am repelling stress as there's only one thing that we need to focus on. I have acupuncture at 4pm so I'm certain I will remain zen like in preparation for egg collection and for the transfer of our mini-me(s).

I'll be back in a few days with a round up with how egg collection went - exciting times!

Laters x

2 comments:

  1. I'm coming out from lurking to say 'best of luck' and to cross everything for you for this cycle. I really hope it's the One! Am so excited to have found another blogger in London-town going through treatments, and to read about your experiences at the Lister clinic. We are still jumping through the NHS hoops to get to our two free IVF cycles, but are preparing ourselves for potentially having to go private, too, at some point in the future. Lots and lots of good and relaxing vibes to you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi @Haisla - I must read your blog!

    Good luck jumping through the hoops, it's definitely worth it and if you are able to get a positive result out of having a go on the NHS then that would just be perfect.

    I'm waiting with baited breath to do my write up of egg collection - we find out tomorrow how many of our 'mini-mes' are still going. If less than 3 then we are going for transfer tomorrow at midday. I'm keeping everything crossed that they have managed to keep going and we can wait until Tuesday for a blastocyst/5 day transfer and then have some to freeze.

    I wish you so much luck and love ing our quest to make a mini-me. Good luck xxx

    ReplyDelete