Sticky-sticky

“You have a cyst here,” said the doctor, pointing to the ultrasound screen, “but it should be okay. Let’s do another blood test and check your levels.”

Levels of what? I forgot to ask.

Well, here we are again, back at the clinic on the second day of my period, which arrived an astoundingly quick 21 days after the last one. It was nothing short of miraculous timing, honestly – any later and I would have had difficulty getting to the clinic, since my husband was off on a business trip and wouldn’t have been available to watch our daughter. So that’s something, eh! The nurse took yet another vial of my blood – how many are we on, now? – and I went to sit in the waiting room for the half-hour it took for the results to come through.

It was wonderful to be able to sit down for half an hour with no responsibilities, no pressure to do anything else. Maybe I should have my blood drawn more often! Or on second thoughts, maybe not. My number got called and I went back in to the consultation room.

“Everything looks fine,” the doctor said, “so we can proceed with preparations for transferring your egg. Can you come back on the 8th? We’ll need to check your endometrium then, before deciding on the transfer date.”

And that was that. The nurse called me back yet again to hand over the oestrogen patches that I need to stick on my lower belly and/or back every other day for the next week or so – as I have mentioned before, my hormone levels aren’t great so we will be topping me up artificially for the time being.

She was full of advice about how to stop the patches falling off/how to stick them on better if you need to, or what to do if one patch comes off before the other, but I wonder how many people ever actually need to implement any of what she says – the adhesive is so strong that it hurts when peeling them off 48 hours later! I remember my skin ended up being so sore last time we went through this, so I am moisturising a lot and trying very hard not to end up the same way this time round. Two patches for 48 hours, replace with another two for 48 hours, then step up to 3 patches for another 48 hours, then replace with another 3 patches… If my memory serves me correctly we continue with the patches even after the egg transfer (as well as then adding the progesterone), but I can’t remember offhand for now. Hormones, yay!

I keep having dreams that I’m pregnant. How can it not be on my mind all the time? Every day is either new medication or a recollection of when my next appointment is; every thought of the future includes the caveat of “if I manage to get pregnant”, which I know is normal when people are trying to conceive naturally but it’s just so immediate, so layered with the financial/emotional/physical pressure of, “but then what, if it doesn’t work?” I know I was lucky to get that one fertilisation between the two eggs – I know some people go through retrieval and fertilisation with even less luck! But I wonder how many times can I physically and emotionally go through all of that retrieval process again, only to get maybe one egg, again, which (as time passes) stands an ever-decreasing likelihood of being successful… And then there’s the guilt of, “am I putting too much energy into this, instead of focusing solely on my daughter?” – she turns two years old in just under three weeks’ time and is absolutely the light of my life.

These doubts may all end up being moot anyway, if the IVF doesn’t work out. Who knows what will happen!

Another gloomy post today, eh. If you’re going through IVF yourself and can relate to any of this, you have my love. If you want to talk privately, hit me up on twitter any time – my DMs are open. Regardless, if you’ve made it this far, my enormous appreciation for your patience! Let’s see how things go from here.