The reason for the silence

After sharing my whole IVF journey with you (well the less disgusting version) I suddenly went quiet. I have had a couple of emails asking whats up so I thought I would let you know…I am indeed pregnant! It’s very early days so I don’t plan to say anything more about it on here for a while (I have plenty of other stuff to blather about in the meantime though) but my blood tests have all come back showing good results. My first scan is at the end of next week and we will get to hopefully hear a little heartbeat. Oh my. I am holding my breath every minute of every day that nothing goes wrong before then but suffice to say the fear is balanced with the joy.  There is only one problem – I found out at 3.5 weeks. This is going to feel like the worlds longest pregnancy.

PS – How cool is it to have a photo of our baby at cellular level?

PPS – I will be back with baby knits and stuff as soon as I stop wanting to fall asleep.

Claret Cowl

After casting on a month ago I finished my claret cowl inspired by Ginnys gorgeous yellow one. This is the first ‘just for me’ thing I have knit. Which possibly explains why it took so long. The Malabrigo silky merino yarn was my consolation purchase for being unsuccessful at IVF cycle 1. If I hd succeeded it would been my ‘reward’ though because lets face it – I’m never going to pass up a chance to buy Malabrigo. This was my first try using silky merino whih is a DK weight and while it pilled a little it is like butter against my skin. I thought that it would be a bit bluer/grayer than it turned out to be when it arrived. I was like “pssshh, a purple sky?” Turns out even we get purple skies. That shut me up!

And I thought I better mention that my appointment with Doctor Handsome went very well on the 10th. He is even more delicious than I remember and he said that we can try again next cycle. I will be doing a manufactured cycle which means there is a small mountain on pills and pessaries waiting for me. But if it works then I know that all the hassle will feel like it was just a tiny little moment in time!

It will all be ok

Some of you may have guessed how my blood test went by the silence. I’m completely devastated and feel like…well I alternate between feeling complete agony and feeling nothing at all. I have a review appointment in April and we should be able to start a FET (frozen embryo transfer) cycle in May which is short and easy. As easy as any of this gets. I have to believe it will all be ok. I’m working on it. For now there’s only tears. And knitting. Of course. Always with the knitting. I’m so glad I learnt to knit.

The bun is in the oven

Meet Petri (dish, get it?), he’s a 5 day old blastocyst and apparently he’s performing quite well. But then I always knew I’d have smart kids. We’ll find out next week if he’s decided to stick around or not. I’m absolutely terrified. We have 5 suitable for freezing which is an above average number (smart kids!) but still…I like Petri. I hope he decides to stick around.

Egg collection

After weeks of treatment, 5 blood tests and a scan we had egg collection yesterday and it could not have gone better. Well maybe it could have been less painful but this is obviously a ‘no pain, no gain’ sort of deal. Dave says I was conscious during collection but I needed two does of the drugs so I have no memory of it and only came around at the end to wobble back to the recovery cubicle. The final tally was 17 eggs – a pretty impressive haul indeed! We had to wait until today to find out how many were actually mature and of those how many fertilised. We got 11 injectable eggs (I am so proud of myself and my body) and of those TEN of them fertilised and one was apparently still thinking about it. There’s always one idiot in the pack right? Between now and transfer day (most likely Monday) it’s most likely that some will not continue to divide as they should but if we reach Monday with 5 or more viable embryo’s then my head will most likely explode from the joy of it all. They will call us every morning and let us know how many are progressing. The more we get the more we can freeze and use for FET (frozen embryo transfer) if the fresh transfer fails (not that it will of course). It never hurts to have a few spares just in case or we could try for a second baby from any ‘frosties’ later on. Because one day maybe Dave won’t go white as a sheet at the thought of two children. One distant day.

The picture is unrelated – obviously. I got it for free from the thrift store today and it’s very similar to one I had as a child which always makes me happy.

A very big week

This is The BIG Week!! We have egg collection tomorrow! I took my trigger shot last night and woke up this morning feeling like an inflated beach ball. The trigger shot Ovidrel (which according to the information leaflet in the box is made from genetically engineered chinese hamsters!) sort of speeds up the maturation of the eggs (as I understand it anyway) and etc etc etc. All I know is that I’m been increasingly uncomfortable in the belly area since Friday and the Ovidrel seems to have kicked that up a notch overnight. But if it makes lots of nice plump healthy eggs then it’s all good! Also all good is my recent purchases:

You may remember that this year was all about destashing: knitting from the stash and not buying any more until it was nearly all gone. And you also may remember how I broke that plan twice on January the 1st. Apparently after that I just completely gave up on the idea. Two etsy purchases and a LYS purchase have made me feel pretty good this week – it’s been all about rewards and goals (baby knitting) during this process. Although I’m trying to be a little bit realistic – if it does fail I have yarn to make Dave a hat. It never hurts to be kind to the man who drove you to 3 7am blood tests in 7days and a scan at 8.30am on a Sunday. (The scan showed 11 decent sized follicles and 10 small ones – the balls of fluid that contain the eggs! I’ll let you know how many eggs we get.)

Slow

I got my blood test results yesterday afternoon and am happy to report that my estrogen (technically I think it’s oestrodial) levels are getting there. Like most parts of my life it seems I’m just being a little bit slow about it. Bloody typical. But I feel much more postive now there’s progress. After Tuesdays low levels I flipped out totally and got really paranoid. But now I am a lot calmer. Because lets be honest – there’s very few parts of my life where I’m not just a wee bit slow. World’s slowest knitter (finally up to the sleeves), world’s slowest wheeziest runner, I’m not always a lightning fast thinker for that matter. But I get there in the end on all those occasions and I will on this one too. I have a scan on Sunday morning to check the progress in there and the scan results will help determine what day we are hopefully looking at for egg collection. Until then I have sleeves to knit. One day soon I’ll have a baby who grows far too fast for their mama’s liking so I guess I’ll try savour these slow days while I have them. Although I might try to knit just a wee bit faster. My ‘To Knit’ list is enormous.

Calendula baby balm

(My blood test results came back saying all the right things on Tuesday! Yay! I was able to begin my second daily injections last night and reduce my morning dosage. The symptoms have eased in the last couple of days and hopefully the new injection will help them ease further. I would really like my short term memory back please!)

After Ginny blogged last year about making calendula/comfrey baby bottom salve I decided it would be a perfect project to try so I scattered some calendula seeds in my newly planted garden bed and waited for them to grow. Sweet mother of…they took an eternity. Then about 2 days before they (and I) were ready to pick the entire garden got thrashed by a wind storm. Despite ending up a foot back from where I originally planted them they were one of the few garden survivors. I used Ginny’s instructions and it worked perfectly. The pellets I used were very light compared to the bars in the photo so the balm is lighter than I expected but it’s still balm. I left out (okay I forgot) the comfrey but might try it next time.

Since I am not having a baby until at least November I think I will give this batch away (does 2 small tubs count as a batch?) but luckily it’s ‘baby season’ so that shouldn’t be hard to find a recipient. The good thing about calendula balm is that it’s all purpose, not just for baby bottoms and diaper rash. It’s also perfect for the little bangs and bruises kids like to collect so I think this will become an annual project. I don’t know about you but around my house the adults do the occasional bit of wound collecting too. Dave looks like he’s hugged a hedgehog when the cats have finished kneading his arm. Hmmm maybe I better keep one tub.

Halfway

I am almost halfway through IVF…or am I a little over halfway? Well either way you know what I mean. The days are running together but I’m at a point where I can see the end. I have had some fierce symptoms this past week and none of them have been fun. I feel both mentally and physically drained. Insomnia on an epic scale, moodiness, constant tummyache, bad memory, it’s all beating me up! I’m so tired that sometimes my knitting progress is counted in stitches rather than rows. Before I began treatment I decided that even if it was a bit rough I could surely finish 7 baby items in 7 weeks. This is numbers 5 & 6 and now I’ll just be happy to finish one of them. And how funky is that aqua?! So glad I bought it after all.

(My first blood test is tomorrow. Fingers crossed it says what it should!)

Yarn Along

I finished the body of my puerperium cardigan last week and just have the sleeves left to do. And of course the part that takes the longest – choosing the buttons. I’ve put it aside for the past week to learn magic loop knitting so I can finish the sleeves nicely. I decided to learn the technique on a little pair of baby legwarmers and if someone else was working on them they would also work up really quickly. It will actually look like a legwarmer in a few days I hope but my time is being split a little thin this week. I’m sewing up a storm for the first time in months and then yesterday we had a big huge thing happen – we had our IVF drug instruction session and got our injectable drugs. Talk about daunting! And I had to inject myself with an empty needle to prove to the nurse that I can do it. We start our injections next Thursday and I can probably look forward to some fairly fun menopausal symptoms. Yay.

And the magic loop technique? I am so embarrassed about how afraid I was to try it and how incredibly easy I found it. I find new things hard to learn but magic loop was most definitely not hard and I’m pretty sure I will never go back to straight needles voluntarily! No more seaming!

The book is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and so far it is really good if slightly creepy. I tried so hard with The Night Circus but I finally decided that if I kept reading I would constantly be asking myself if I was enjoying it or not. And I was never quite sure if I was. Reading should definitely not be that hard!