The Test
1. We went shopping for pregnancy tests last night. We went to three stores, deliberating between the various designs and styles. We settled on a three pack of the first response.
2. We had planned to test this morning at 13DPO and CD32. A day before my period is due. We’ve been pretty restrained not testing prior. The clinic blood test is on Tuesday.
3. I woke at 5am and desparately needed to pee. Lo woke up and we deliberated about the instructions on ‘first morning urine’, we decided to test then, bleary eyed in the bathroom.
4. It was definitely one line. And one line only.
5. There was a mix of incredulity, disappointment and some relief. This cycle has been really tough. And I’d like another shot at staying calm and welcoming to our little baby, rather than the difficulties we’ve had these past few weeks. I felt sad that if we were pregnant, the first few days of being pregnant had me in a bawling and paranoid state. While of course we would have been thrilled to be pregnant and to be successful on the first go, it also would’ve felt quite soon from our perspective. We’ve been gearing ourselves up for it to take a few months.
6. We’re going to spend today’s road trip discussing how we approach the next cycle. There will be another, but I want to reflect on the lessons learnt from this one.
7. Lo is packing up around me, I am drying my hair with one hand, and writing this with the other. We’ve packed the other two pregnancy tests in case my period doesn’t show. Lo hasn’t given up hope yet. And I am about to google the stats regarding 13 DPO etc to see whether it’s possible we could still be pregnant.
8. Alas. Writing this, I feel sad.
Blog-keeping
1. I have done a bit of house-keeping about the blog. I saw a good friend on Saturday night and she said “You didn’t tell me you had a blog!” Cue the need for some long overdue de-identifying! You will notice that we’ve made some changes to the who we are page and adopted some cute blog-names : Lo&Ve (not to be confused with Vee, Ve is me (and I expect will be rarely used, given it’s always me writing)).
2. I had a two hour mega-session with a wonderful counsellor today. It was so so so good.
3. We’re going to HPT on Friday morning (13DPO). We are taking Friday and Monday off work and driving down to spend some time with my lesbian sister and her partner in the countryside. It’s a eight hour drive each way so we have plenty of time to debrief. I think we’re also going to talk to my sister about it.
4. I decided to reduce the load I am studying this semester, but still have two assignments due in two weeks. With fulltime work and far too many voluntary commitments, I am feeling a bit stressed about finding the time to do them, but need to keep this in perspective. I figure I can always get DY&F to verify a form giving me a medical exemption for an extension if necessary. I need to be gentle with myself and stop procrastinating.
5. It’s been rough. I am feeling a bit better. And wondering what the rest of the TWW has in store.
Known donors, bad fences and the gayby boom
1. I’m starting to feel really excited about the prospect of possibly being pregnant, but not feeling very many ’symptoms.’ So, this is what the 2WW is like, huh? Plenty of googling, plenty of obsessing, and plenty of time spent buried in my diary calculating days. I am very much over the paranoia and really hope this is it.
2. In exciting and unexpected news, one of our known donors, KDY, who’s 60 million count sperm we used on Saturday, has emailed to say that he is coming back for a few months for a work assignment, as of next week. The other donor, KDX, will remain away but will likely come back for visits. After the initial excitement about seeing him, it took Lo and I a few moments to register that he would be here in person for a few MONTHS. Meaning that we have the possibility of doing it the good ole’ fashioned turkey baster way (if he agrees). Funny how things work out. So we’re keeping this in our thinking if a future cycle is required.
3. Wherever Lo and I live, we seem to find ourselves with homophobic neighbours of one variety or another. We love our current house, but are sad that relations with our neighbours are laced with a silent homophobia. Tonight, they cornered Lo and got her to agree to cutting down a lovely flowering hedge that divides our two properties. When I asked Lo why she acquiesced so quickly to their demands despite really liking the hedge and the role it plays screening out their house, she said ” I wanted to please the heterosexuals.” It’s true. We may be gay, but if we agree to your demands will you like us better?
4. Our lesbian GP just had a baby. So did a huge number of lesbians in this city. The gayby boom is in full swing. A friend of mine is newly dating a 40something single lesbian mama. So now she’s suddenly keyed in to the lesbian parent community. She’d never met a lesbian parent before, but now she exists entirely in the lesbian parents section of the community. It’s a smallish town, so there’s all these strange links between donors and lesbian parents. i.e. you find out a male colleague has had a donor-child, and you find out some lesbians you know have just had a baby. And then you put two and two together. I like that about this place.
“Welcome to Pregnancy”
This is what Dr Y&F said when I called her about how badly hit I had been by the HCG shot. She seemed somewhat blase about the massive emotional upheaval it caused and thinks I should prime myself for another nine months of life with pregnancy hormones. We talked about the options for me not to do the booster shots, and we have agreed that I will go in for blood tests on the days I was meant to take the booster to check my progesterone levels and then take a decision. She mentioned that a progesterone suppository was another option, but was expensive, messy and required long periods on your back (this doesn’t sound so good). I am sitting open to all the options, and feel like I could take the boosters, with my eyes open about the impact, but want to know why and if it’s neccessary. I am starting to trust my body more.
This morning I felt pretty ill and I threw up in the toilets at work mid-morning. I am not sure if this was a very eager onset of morning sickness, or probably, more likely, my body responding to the dregs of the HCG shot and the slightly too acidic apple, lemon, celery and spirulina juice I started the day with. I also have a bloated stomach (I chose my loosest pants for work today, wore them belt-less, and found myself having to undo the top button during the day) so this process is not boding well for my wardrobe.
But, I am excited. I have made it through the haze of confusion, and now sit open to the possibilities of a baby entering our life. It dawned on me as I was sitting at my desk mid-morning, looking out into a beautifully sunny day, ‘I could be pregnant’ and a huge smile came across my face. It all feels so much less daunting now I have my faculties about me.
After a morning of being tuned in to every possible symptom (so many of which can be linked to the HCG), this afternoon and evening I have felt fine and totally normal. More energised that I have in a long time, focussed, and quite relaxed.
For a minute there, I lost myself…
Yesterday was so intense and totally took me by surprise. In the night, this line from Radiohead was going around in my head ‘for a minute there, I lost myself…’ It was how I felt. The HCG shot gave me a really bad trip. I was having such a hard time. When we went to bed, Lo really calmed me down making me do relaxation exercises and deep breathing as well as us having a really good conversation about all the options we have. Today I feel a lot better. But I think the whole insemination experience really split me open, more than I can probably describe here.
I am pretty certain that the HCG shot was a big contributer. It did not agree with me. I don’t think I could see at the time what effect it was having, but it really knocked me off-kilter. We talked about asking/telling Dr Y&F that we don’t want to do the booster shots (1500 which I am meant to do on Wednesday (4 DPO) and Friday (6 DPO)) because I reacted so badly. I am still thinking that might be good idea, but I have a few days to decide. I really scared myself with the thoughts I was having last night. It brought up so many issues.
Despite our planning, thinking, reading and talking, I don’t think I had quite processed my feelings about having sperm in my body. I felt changed. My five star lesbianism was suddenly gone. I have never even kissed a boy so to suddenly have such an intimate experience with sperm threw me. It was something Lo and I had talked about in the early days of thinking about ttc, but hadn’t revisted. I feel really good about our donor, and his count is great, and am glad to know it’s him, but it was a strange sensation last night, feeling all bloated and imagining something starting to grow inside me. Suddenly it felt very real. Moving from the abstract to the potential was quite a leap.
And, this is going to sound really dumb, but maths is definitely not my strong point. I misread one of the pregnancy books that had a chart for working out your due date. I thought you calculated it from the date of your missed period, rather than your last period, so I had been thinking that a baby we conceived now would be due in June and that I would be just over three months pregnant at Christmas. When we got home from the appointment, I was re-reading one of the first lesbian TTC blogs I came across and seeing that the baby they conceived in early August was due in May (and ended up arriving in April). I couldn’t believe it, so exclaimed to Lo and she was like ‘yeah, I thought the June thing sounded a bit strange’ but she remained totally relaxed. So I typed my expected due date into one of those pregnancy due date calcuators, which told me I was 3 weeks pregnant. I had just inseminated that day! I wasn’t ready to be three weeks pregnant! I know I am really not, and I realise that is how they counted it, but I hadn’t quite applied it to our specifics.
The reason the timing stuff is such a big deal is because there’s some complexities with my work. I don’t think the date really makes a difference, but June just had different optics than May, given that I am starting in a new role in the beginning of January. Lo says ‘they’ll judge you anyway, so judging you in May or June makes no difference.’ And I think that’s right. And in my rational mind, the baby will come at the right time and the time that’s best for us. We started now because we’re ready to start our family. It’s not like I love my job either. And I definitely didn’t want to delay my personal reproduction to fit in with my work’s timetable. There’s just a lot at stake. When Lo and I were talking about it, we worked out that it is because my family are small business owners that I have grown up with this anxiety about leave and time off work and have this strange sense of obligation. My work entitlements about leave are pretty clearly articulated. So, this is one thing I should definitely stop caring about (and do, when I am in a more rational mind, but last night I definitely was not).
We chose to start now because we’re ready. We also knew that we only had until November, so wanted to maximise our chances, which is also why we chose to go with the drugs, to minimise the sperm encounters, maximise our use of a limited sperm supply and limit the number of months spent visiting the clinic visits. Lo remains incredibly calm and firmly believes that all works out for the best. I am still processing where things are up to. But am feeling so much better today. I took a yoga class and took care of my stomach during it. I have started checking what foods to aviod during pregnancy and how to exercise. The clinic’s instructions said no strenous exercise, but my class was gentle and I need to keep myself moving. I am feeling ok, just still overwhelmed.
Today
I don’t know if I am ready to write about today. Except to say it was intense. And after feeling very calm in the morning before the appointment, I suddenly got scared when we were in the room, me up on the stirrups, Lo sitting next to me, Dr Y&F about to insert something inside me. And I felt bewildered afterwards. We went home and I tumbled into bed, where we hung out for a few hours, and then we went out and had a really nice day of lunch, some shopping, and window shopping, a stroll in the sunshine, and afternoon tea at our favourite cafe. I felt much better getting out and about and taking my mind off things. I think I’ve got a lot of stuff about my mum hanging around emotionally (the twin single bed saga was a reality check), am a bit worried about pregnancy timing (more on that later), or finding out there are five babies in there (given that there were two follicles of different sizes that’s unlikely, but I’m a worrier, in case you haven’t noticed).
The facts – I know I sound hazier on these than I should, I was so bewildered that I didn’t quite take everything in, but here’s it as I understand it: there were two follicles, one was smaller than the other one, and I think one had been ovulated and the other hadn’t yet (?) (I don’t know if that’s how it works?). The sperm was thawed and was 60 million whatevers. Dr Y&F inserted the washed sperm by IUI but also put some unwashed sperm around my cervix (ICI) I think to meet the egg that was yet to ovulate or something. She mentioned that as there were two follicles that meant there was a chance of twins. She said that ideally we were getting two chances at a single pregnancy at once. Lo was very great and has been incredibly calm and loving all day. She is being very zen about it all. I have been pacing and stressing about all sorts of things, which I know I shouldn’t, but I also have the trigger shot HCG racing around my system so that probably explains why I am moodswinging so much. That, and that I did the biggest thing of my life today.
The funny thing is that when you first go to the doctor’s office they talk about the chances of success with stimulated IUI being 15 per cent, which is what we based our thinking on. But when we were in there, they talked like this was likely to be successful and they’ll be surprised if it doesn’t work. And as strange at this sounds, I don’t think I was quite prepared for that. It all felt so huge. And suddenly very real.
Tomorrow!
Buffy just called. I am surging. Finally. And so I take the trigger shot at 3pm this afternoon, and then we have the insemination appointment tomorrow morning (I give up on even predicting how this works, obviously it’s not 36 hrs later – but the clinic has the best success rates in Australia so I trust them – and I am glad it’s Saturday as I was going to be having to do some rescheduling if it were Sunday or Monday).
how
exciting!
I am so glad I am at home today. Best decision ever. I could take the call without having to whisper and can have the trigger shot at the best time, rather than trying to race home from work to do it.
I love Buffy.
(I don’t think I can convey exactly how cool Buffy is. Lo has decided she wants to be Buffy when she’s older. I want to clone Buffy and appoint her to every profession we need throughout this process, midwife, nanny, caring and accepting parent. She’s just the greatest, ever.)
The good, the bad and the uncertain
The Good
When I arrived on Wednesday for the blood test and ultrasound regime, all ready to be my most assertive self, the young nurse greeted me by saying straight away ‘Do you want me to get the other nurse to do it?’ and then she insisted that she would get the nurse. So I enjoyed (never thought I’d say that) the experienced hands of Buffy and left a lot less punctured than I had been previously.
The Bad
Lo & I are having a holiday with my parents in Sydney in October (This is good news in itself). They are coming over from my home town and we’re going to spend a few days in the city before driving back to where Lo & I live. The plan was for us to book a two bedroom apartment for the four of us to stay in altogether.
Background: My parents house has a few different guest bedrooms as they’re now empty nested in the family home. One room has a single bed, one room has a queen bed, and one room has twin singles. When Lo & I first went to visit together for me to introduce Lo to them, my mother insisted that it was on the condition we have separate bedrooms ‘I just believe in single beds for single people,’ she said. At that time, in the interest of building a relationship and demonstrating respect for her rules (which could have equally been applied to heteros) we agreed to go with it. So Lo had the queen bed and I stayed in the room with two singles in it. I would sneak into to A and cuddle her briefly in the night, but we obediently stuck to the separate beds regime. We expected there would be a relaxing of the regime as we all got to know each other better.
The next two times we visited were at Christmas time, so each time my older brother and his wife and my niece and nephew were also staying. This meant that my brother and his wife got the queen bed, the room with one single bed got made up to accommodate the two kids, and Lo & I stayed in the room with twin single beds (pushed against opposite walls and with a bedside table wedged firmly in between). I think we were all relieved that my brother’s presence gave us an excuse not to have to deal with this issue.
When my parents visit us they live under our rules which means that we sleep in our bed as usual and we provide them with a queen bed in the guest room. It seems to work ok, with plenty of discretion.
So, back to the apartment booking in Sydney ( I bet you can see where this is going..), my father offered to pay for the accommodation, which was generous. So he and I were on the telephone while he was booking online and there was an option for the composition of how the rooms in the apartment would be made up: one king and two twin singles or two kings. So my dad says to me as he’s booking: “What do you want, twin singles or king?” and I say “Dad, I’ll leave that to you, I expect you can figure that out,’ then he says ‘Well I know what mum would prefer,” then I say ‘Dad….’ then he says (as though acquiescing to a petulant demand from a little girl wanting an ice cream) ‘ Oh, Ok then, two King rooms it is.’ I could feel my mother’s awkwardness about it all down the telephone line as she stood in the background to the telephone call. I could have been less evasive, rather than my ‘I’ll let you figure it out, I don’t want to name that I want to share a bed with my wife’ I could have launched an anti-homophobia pro-acceptance tirade, but then do I have to? (and in my experience this doesn’t always work so well). I am sure some of you are thinking, why are we holidaying together if there’s this much homophobia? (particularly as my parents were at our wedding – you would think they would have come to terms with the fact that we sleep together by now!) But I expect we’ll have a great ole time as we always do. But sitting with this tension is hard and managing the complexities of it all!
I think I’m just a bit surprised that this is still where they’re at.. What are they going to do when we have kids, put them in the double and us in the twin singles? And what will happen when we go there this Christmas when my brother won’t be there to provide the alibi for why we need to be in the twin singles? Now that we’re married, the ’single beds for single people’ line just doesn’t cut it! I do think that it’s time to demand/ suggest more.
The Uncertain
I have the longest cycle known to man. I have been pumping Puregon for thirteen days now, since CD5. Tomorrow will be CD18 and I have another blood test and ultrasound scheduled. At my last ultrasound, on Wednesday, the sonographer said that I had two follicles that were neck and neck in terms of size and development. I am not sure what this will mean in terms of chances for multiples. A and I are feeling like we’re just going to go with it, and whilst we were originally worried about a multiple birth, we now feel more comfortable and open to the prospect if that’s what happens. Dr Y&F is very anti-multiples, so we’ll see what she says, but we discussed this prior to her deciding on this very low dose of the drugs.
Anyway, I had expected that I would be doing the trigger shot on Thursday for a Saturday insemination (you’re meant to take it 36 hours in advance), but they want me to do more ultrasounds and blood tests tomorrow morning, Friday, meaning I won’t get the results till tomorrow afternoon, meaning the insemination is likely to be Sunday (CD19) or Monday (CD20). It’s really hard not knowing when it’s going to happen, and it’s feeling really drawn out. My cycles have been a religious 32 days, with the occasional 34 day cycle, so I know it’s a long process, but Buffy had said we’d inseminate between 11 – 15 August, so I am feeling like I’ve been waiting ages. I also get worried that I’ll ovulate in between my every-second-day appointments, although it’s reassuring to see the follicles on the screen, and I think the drugs are meant to manage all that. I get the sense they know what they’re doing and are monitoring things pretty closely and I trust Dr Y&F.
When I was thinking the insemination would be one day this week, I had it in my mind that I would take the day off sick and that Lo would arrange a day off work also. But now it looks like that’s not likely to happen. So I decided tonight that I would take tomorrow off as a mental health day anyway. I am really strung out at the moment, which is not where I should be right before the insemination, and figure having a day off will allow me to get my life in order, catch up on some study and relax a bit. So we have an 8am appointment, then I’ll drop Lo off at work, go to a yoga class and then spend the rest of the day at home. I can’t wait. (It also means if I end up having to take Monday off for the insemination it looks like I am legitimately ill). Dr Y&F does the insems in her lunch break and has suggested we come in our lunchbreak and go back to work, but I don’t want to do that, at least not this first time.
Patient assertiveness
The past week has been a blur of morning injections, then blood test and ultrasound appointments at the clinic. They keep seeming to expect an LH surge even though I tried to explain to Buffy & co that I had a 32 day cycle at the outset. However, from about last week, each time they call me with results, they tell me, as though I will be surprised, ‘it’s early days yet.’ They suggested that the drugs speed up your cycle, but I haven’t seen evidence of that yet. According to my personal calculations, I expect we’ll inseminate on Saturday, or possibly Friday, with a trigger shot preceding. So the early days are over. But the process has been a good way of keeping an eye on my developing follicles and making sure I am not reacting crazily to the drugs (which, by the way, I seem to have totally adjusted to and now have no side effects).
We have another date tomorrow morning with the dildo-cam and the evil woman who does the blood tests and can’t find my veins. Lo believes that she’s some plant from the religious right who’s purposely got a job at an IVF clinic so as to torture by multiple needle pricks the women that go there. Each time I have seen her, she has missed my veins twice, and then had to call a more experienced nurse (cue Buffy), to complete the test. The worst of it is, on the third day she did this routine, she looked at me blankly and said “I haven’t missed with you before have I?” to which I responded, “yes, actually, each time I’ve been here,” as if my track marked arms weren’t evidence enough.
She’s young and I have actually been very nice to her and understanding about the whole thing for most of the time, in apologetic patient mode, making small talk and telling her not to worry about it at all and chastisting myself for not having drunk enough water that morning. However, I have never had this problem with a blood test before, so I think a lot has to do with her inexperience and technique. She doesn’t tie the tourniquet very tight, which probably doesn’t help and she seems to lack confidence. When I tried to suggest that Buffy had tied the tourniquet tight and that had worked well, she said “but I don’t want to hurt you”. I refrained from telling her that the multiple jabs, and track marked arms, were far worse.
The other thing is, once she’s missed on one arm, but pierced the skin and drawn blood, she tries the other arm and doesn’t change the needle. I notice that when the other nurse comes in to take over, they always change the entire thing, new needle, new syringe, the whole lot. I know it’s just my own body, so there’s no chance of contracting something, but I don’t think it’s good practice to keep trying with the same needle, is it? It also probably means that the needle is blunter, thus making the second or third attempt more painful. Anyway, my inner-elbows just can’t keep this up, so tomorrow, I am going to go in all assertive and tell her “You may recall that we’ve had some trouble finding my veins the past few days. I’ve done what I can to make this easier by drinking plenty of water, I’d appreciate it if you can try and make this a bit easier by tying the tourniquet tight. If you miss and need to try the other arm, I would prefer it if you use a new needle.”
So that’s my resolution for becoming a more assertive patient, a skill that I am sure will be handy to have. Let’s hope that tomorrow’s blood test (once it happens) shows that something is starting to happen. Lo and I are both feeling pretty relaxed and good about the process and have settled into this new routine, but let’s hope we don’t need to keep it up too much longer.
Romancing the sperm
You may have read my earlier post here about the way that courting our donors brought out this inner-hetero in me that wanted to clean and cook and make sure everything was perfect for ‘our guys.’ Well lately, I’ve had this strange desire to make sure that I’ll be at my absolute best for the insemination. It’s like I think the little sperm will be able to look out and decide whether or not it wants to make a home in me based on the silky smoothness of my legs or the colour of my toenails. So I spent far too much of my Saturday at the beauty salon getting my legs waxed and today I just had my hair cut for the first time since January (it’s long, and I normally get away with cutting it myself). I feel like I’m getting ready to go to a ball…It is nice to feel prepared and to have something else to be working on to pass the time. I guess I am also conscious of wanting to look my best in front of Dr Y&F.
And I was about to write about how today is the first day where I’ve felt totally normal and have not been conscious of the fertility drugs. However, I just went in to the bathroom to shown Lo (who’s in the bath tub) a card I bought for good hetero friends of ours who have just gotten engaged. The woman is a true romantic and the proposal is a dream come true for her. When it was our wedding last year she bought us one of those huge, elaborate, embossed golden wedding cards with lots of sappy wording. We knew she was projecting all her nuptial desires onto us! Although the card was a little more elaborate than our own tastes, we really appreciated that she took our wedding so seriously (rather than the euphemistic congratulations cards we received. ) So, this afternoon, after the hairdresser, I took it upon myself to go and buy a similarly elaborate engagement card for us to give to them. I was pretty proud of myself as I found the ultimately cheesy prince-charming style card that I knew she was going to just love. So there I was showing Lo the card while she soaked in the tub, and in what only could be a moment of hormonally induced clumsiness, I somehow dropped the card on the floor, picked it up, spun around, and dropped it into the toilet! Arg! I have no idea how that happened. So, back to the newsagent tomorrow to try and track down another and I’m pretty sure this was the last one. Although there’s plenty of other designs to rival this one. This episode may just be me, and nothing to do with the drugs, but I would prefer to blame something!
