Oh dear, I have been slack!

Wow, it has been a month since I last posted and so much has happened.

I’ll start with our ceremony. it was perfect! Such a beautiful day in all ways! The weather was perfect and we had some gorgeous photos taken.

Now the IVF cycle…

EPU was 3 days before our ceremony. I went in and they got 20 eggs! I couldn’t believe it and thought I was hallucinating the number when I looked at my hand as I was still very drowsy from the anaesthetic. But nope, the number 20 was definitely written on my hand.

Carla came in the room where they keep you after recovery and I showed her my hand. She looked so relieved as for some reason, she had the number 8 stuck in her head. I went home and we relaxed. In the afternoon the lab called to say how many were mature. 18! We were so happy with that!

I was a bit uncomfortable when we first got home and then I was in a lot of pain. last EPU I just slept most of the day away but this time I couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep. I dozed a couple of times but found it hard to breathe when lying down. I didn’t know if this was normal or not. I called the IVF nurses and they said the professor would call me back. When he did, he told me that my right ovary was not being co-operative when he was collecting the eggs and so he had to manipulate my stomach and uterus a bit and wasn’t surprised I was in pain. Well, that made sense and I slept propped up on a mountain of pillows that night.

The next day we got a call to that 12 out of the 18 eggs had fertilised overnight and that they were watching 5 other good quality eggs that hadn’t interacted with the sperm. We had no idea they did this as our old clinic just discarded any that didn’t fertilise overnight. I think Carla was a bit sceptical about how good they would be as they should have fertilised already.

The morning of our ceremony was day 3 for the embryos. I got the call around 8.30am and was told we now had 15 embryos on Day 3! That is such an amazing number! I ran back into the rumpus to tell Carla and all I could say is “You’re going to be so happy. we have 15 embryos!”. I found out later that she was about to tell me that she didn’t want to know but too late! She was worried that it would be bad news and she would be upset for our ceremony. We were both stoked though! All day we kept just saying the number 15 to each other.

Monday was transfer day. we went in and the professor told us he was very happy with how everything was looking. He then told us that on Day 5 we had 8 blastocysts.

8.

One more than 7 and 1 less than 9.

8.

That is such a fantastic number!

We put one back into Carla and they would freeze the other 7. We went out for a lovely breakfast together as we had a really good experience with the transfer (previously they would hurt Carla a lot but this doctor was very gentle and so good about it all). We had been home for only an hour or so and were curled up on the couch together when the lab called me again.

My heart dropped and I know Carla’s did as well.

They said they were calling to let us know that since we left, 1 other embryo had caught up so they would actually be freezing 8.

We were in total shock. This cycle had gone so much better than we expected.

So fast forward to 5 days later on the Saturday. We were at a friends, having stayed the previous night and decided Carla should pee on a stick.

To our amazement, there was a line. A bloody good line!

We were going to have a baby! Finally!

Over the next week or so the line just kept getting darker and darker and on the following Friday Carla went for a blood test.

HCG – 488.

Such a good result!

A week later there was a follow up blood test (yesterday) and her HCG is now 3769. Carla was concerned as her progesterone had dropped a little (it does fluctuate day to day). So we decided that she would start on progesterone pessaries in case it kept dropping and our little one didn’t stick around. The doctor was fully supportive of this, even though he didn’t think it was needed, but for our peace of mind he said it wouldn’t do any harm.

So we now have a little Pingu (bub’s nickname) due in early January next year!

We are so excited and so happy and we can’t wait to become parents!