IVF and mumma bear blog

I'm writing an IVF and motherhood blog.... it's very honest so if you are all fuzzy animals and sparkles it might not be for you but this is some of my blog for those other ivf mums. I hope some of you can relate to it! Xx

IVF- even the word scared me. I didn't know what it meant, what would happen or if it'd work but as I stared back at the surgeon all I did know was I had two choices -be strong and brave like I was brought up to be, take on this new challenge or accept the reality of never being a mum. The choice was easy and so our journey began.

We'd been trying for a baby for a year, the weeks and months leading up to this were just like any other hopeful parents. We'd spent money on herbs, tablets and teas, spent each month eagerly awaiting a positive ovulation test, patiently hoping for two lines on pregnancy tests and listened to all the advice 'it'll happen when you stop trying' being the most common. Today I was laying in a recovery room being told I needed both my fallopian tubes removed and that with them I couldn't conceive but without them I may not be able to either. I had bilateral hydrosalpinx and they didn't know why, all they knew was that the damage was too extensive to ever conceive naturally. The next few months passed and my tubes were taken from me, with it I felt my woman hood was gone. I felt like a failure, I couldn't have children naturally and for a while that made me feel like I wasn't a woman. I was embarrassed to tell anyone what we had to decide to have done for fear they'd judge me and wonder why my husband didn't find someone who could give him children easily. All of these horrible dark thoughts are natural and most IVF mums will think them but it is so far from reality, thank goodness. Having no tubes didn't make me less of a woman, I wasn't a failure and I was determined to be a mum.

At the beginning of January we started our cycle, I had one injection daily to start the growth of the eggs then this was followed by a painful needle to stop me ovulating on my own, this hadn’t been an issue in the past was all I could think but we did as we were told. The first needle I had read was painful, ‘ice the area’, ‘expect pain’ so when the injection was seemingly painless I was sure we had done it wrong, I googled and googled hoping for answers and in the end had to just trust my husband’s ability to read, he wears glasses so this was hard in itself.

On the day of the egg collection I walked up to the clinic by myself, up 2 flights of stairs and into the waiting room not knowing how it would all go but scared to be having yet another anaesthetic. There were two other ladies in there, both in their 40’s who said they were giving it ‘one last go’ and you could see how important this day was to them. Although I was desperate for this to work and for this cycle to be the one, I knew that if nothing else age was on my side. I woke up in recovery mid sentence, not a surprise to those that know me as I can talk the leg off an iron donkey so anaesthetic was nothing! The nurses were laughing as I woke up and told me I’d been singing Led Zepplin and had assured them I had 100% seen Jimmy Page dancing naked under a rainbow.... a babe rainbow......this is a brilliant band we saw in Byron Bay so I had escaped to my happy place I guess. At least my drugged up self had a good time. I had 16 eggs, 12 mature and of those 12 all were fertilised. Within days we had an implantation date and 8 blastocyst/brothers and sisters ready to go. On January 21st we had our first embryo implanted; rated 5AA which I had already read was good but not a guarantee. We went to a family gathering straight after and our well meaning family were eager to hear when we would be adding to our clan not knowing what I was carrying and hoping to keep hold of.

The next 2 weeks were slow, on the Monday I swore I felt a pinch in my uterus as I walked to the bank, this had to be baby burrowing in I thought to myself. I had a diary and wrote in it almost day. I over analysed every symptom, every twinge was implantation and every cramp was a sign of failure. I was a long month, the longest of our lives so far. The day before we found out we were pregnant we were at Normanville beach swimming, my back was aching and my stomach bloated. All tell tale signs that we had failed this round. I remember feeling devastated, it had failed, I had failed again and it may never work. The following day I rang the clinic and was asked to come in, they thought I had been hyper stimulated and I needed to be checked over. The nurses fussed over me, they couldn’t get blood from me, I was bruised, felt sick, was all by myself and kept being told to be hopeful ‘but it takes an average of 3 rounds for success’. This was our first; my hope was fading and my back still aching. I left the clinic hours later with my phone on loud awaiting my condolences call and trying to work out how I would react if they rang to say we hadn’t been successful.

At 4pm the clinic called, I’ll never forget the first words she said ‘Have you got a moment, I just need to do some maths’, my heart stopped, mouth went dry and my eyes glazed over. I WAS PREGNANT. I threw the phone at my husband not able to find the loud speaker button and that was it, I was a mum. Finally a mum. Our embryo had made itself comfortable and we were a success story amongst all the negativity surrounding infertility.