Super-Secret Post
Pertaining to Month 27
As promised, here separately is the account of our private couple’s pre-treatment counseling session. (more…)
Super-Secret Post
Pertaining to Month 27 and 28
The testing in Waterloo was very different than in Vancouver. With all the appointments scheduled for me at the beginning of a cycle and performed at one location, it painted an extremely detailed picture of one cycle instead of piecing together data from different points of different cycles from different specialists at appointments I had to secure for myself.
Much detail follows. (more…)
Super-Secret Post
Recap of the end of Month 26, composed near the present since I had no contemporary notes
We were pretty excited about our consultation in Waterloo. We had been referred before we left Vancouver so we had an appointment waiting for us within three weeks of our arrival. With 4 cycles between then and my work placement, I figured there’d be no problem getting our 2-3 bank-up IVF cycles done by March (the idea being that we wouldn’t transfer any embryos and bank them all; the idea was from our doc in Vancouver).
Right away, things felt very different. (more…)
Recap of Months 24, 25, and 26, composed in the present since I had no contemporary notes
We had been waiting for quite some time to decide if we were going to relocate. When we got the bad diagnostic news in May of 2013, I said we were picking up and relocating without a reason to do so except that we needed to come home (and I wanted to feel in control of *something*). We picked our university town of Waterloo and started making plans.
We hired a moving truck, but to get ourselves there, we opted for a road trip. It gave our truck time to catch up with us and also killed some of the time before we could get our referred consultation at the only full-service fertility clinic in town. I had to take some time off school, but I thought doing so would free up December, January, and February to be IVF cycles before my next work placement in March.
Ultimately, it meant we were out of the assisted-fertility game for three cycles, and about 3/4s of the way through cycle 26 when we saw the specialist in Waterloo. But more on that next time.
In the ongoing saga of collecting information and basically charting my innards, our new training fellow thought we might benefit from a 3D ultrasound.
“Have you ever seen those 3D ultrasound pictures on Facebook?”
“Sure. They’re cute, but I’m a little freaked by the fact that no doctors have OKed them as safe for entertainment purposes. But since there isn’t anything in there to hurt, knock yourself out.”
“Yeah. This is pretty much the same, except you won’t want to put the pictures on Facebook afterwards.”
(Turns out the last 2D scan was done by “one of the best” in the supervising-doctor’s opinion so a more-detailed look was not actually required, yay.)
I forgot to edit my browsing history on Amazon after looking for a resource to bring to my work placement at a daycare centre. Today I was sent the Featured Baby Deal of the Week right to my inbox. 🙁
Super-Secret Post
Recap of Month 23, composed in the present since I had no contemporary notes
We had wide-open schedules at the end of August and beginning of September, so of course that month I ovulated on a weekend day just as would have been helpful the month before.
We did another IUI. The numbers were far more like they had been in the testing cycles, I had no adverse side effects to the procedure, and then we weren’t even a little bit pregnant by the end of it. And that’s all we wrote for the Vancouver clinic; we’d be on the road for our next cycle and be in consultation at our new clinic in the cycle after that.
There’s one funny story about that cycle, though. Again, I was supposed to take a home pregnancy test if I thought my period was starting before day 28. Again, I had a foolproof digital test left over from a bonus from an Amazon.com purchase. Except that it wasn’t foolproof; I managed to somehow create the error code that meant the test was invalid (I guess it’s the equivalent of there being no control strip on another pregnancy test?). Good thing I hadn’t dropped $20 on it, and that I could retest the same morning with another test.
All that was left was disposing of it and the other one… because they’re electronic waste. Luckily, it was a woman working the desk at the recycling depot when I went with the last of the special-disposal stuff while we were moving out.
Yeah.
Super-Secret Post
Written during month 22
Recap of circumstances at the time (August): We had a chemical pregnancy, and then the chance to do another IUI immediately following, assuming we could happen to hit ovulation on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday (or else my work placement gets in the way).
I am afraid.
I don’t want to have sex. I don’t want another IUI.
I don’t want to make plans in case we miss another IUI. But I don’t want IUIs to get in the way of life. But I don’t want to run out of chances to do IUIs while we’re with this clinic. But I don’t want to stop doing IUI just because we move. But I don’t want to waste too much time on IUIs before IVF.
Considering the timing of my estrogen spike, I *might* ovulate Monday, but probably not. I’ll just let that decide whether or not we do an IUI this month since I would have to lie to take a day off a work placement (there are no days off aside from Mondays; only sick days) and it would throw the rest of my month off work-wise.
I am watching a lot of TV this month. Let me live someone else’s life.
The timing did not work out, but there’s one more cycle to work with before we move. Nothing else but even-more-nailbiting came from that month. Oh, and the 4-year-old who asked “Are you a mom?” and when I said no, asked “Then what are you?” I’m proud at how I didn’t miss a beat even though I felt like I died a bit inside (“I’m a student, a friend, and a wife. And I want to be a mom soon.”).
This blog chronicles our personal experience which comes with its own quirks of challenges and advantages.
Note: This post will be occasionally updated to reflect our current status. Feel free to reach out if you have questions about a previous version. Most recent update: November 2014.
I want to explicitly acknowledge some of the ways this process is easier for us than for some others. It doesn’t make it “less” of an experience that I have these things easier, but I need to remember to be mindful of how we have it differently than other people.
I’ve focused on fertility-related advantages in this post, but we have others I’m glossing over (we’re white, middle-class upbringing, post-secondary/graduate-level educated, and English-as-a-first-language speakers (in Canada), just for starters).
Dreams of babies are to be expected, but the way they’ve “shattered” lately has been pretty traumatic.