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.

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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.