A beautiful morning

 This morning I woke up and let the cat in and as I breathed in the cool fresh air and saw the beautiful mist I decided to go for a walk. It was wonderful, just what I needed.
The past 2 days I feel like i've walked out of the fog i'd been living in for 3ish weeks. Although I feel very lucky not to have gotten any major side effects considering all the medications that are involved with IVF, i'd been feeling constantly tired and just blah, and just not myself at all. Starting Monday it was as though someone clicked their fingers and I was back to normal, my energy has come back and I feel like I can make it to the end of my work days without feeling like i was very nearly concentrating to keep my eyes open!
It's a wonderful feeling, I feel so happy just to feel normal

Just 5 days until we get results!

I'm looking forward to finding out (I think?) I'm crossing my fingers and feeling hopeful and at peace as much as I can.
I feel generally calm and to be honest am not expecting it to be positive. Not in a negative way, that's just how i deal. My mind set is 'lets prepare for the next step in this fertility journey and if we don't need it that's a bonus.'

Ill still be pretty disappointed if it is negative but we have our follow up appointment on Aug 6 so my body would have a nice break in between (and 2 chances of falling pregnant naturally, occasionally people are more fertile between IVF cycles because their body still has some of the drugs and they get a surprise :) and then we would have a few goes at frozen embryo transfer which is an easier process than IVF

 Even if we need another full IVF cycle or more, (I think the average is people needing 3 cycles)  i'm not too bothered. Now that I've done one and know what to expect it wouldn't be nearly as scary second time around. It wasn't as bad as I expected at all so I would feel confident to do it again and i'd cross my fingers that it all went as well as this time because short of the positive pregnancy test I feel like this cycle went perfectly.

 During my waiting I've been wasting time one of my favorite ways- looking at things for our 'one day baby' (I almost feel like I can change that to 'one day almost certainly in 2014 baby' :)
I've been getting ideas for a peter rabbit themed nursery/baby room and baby shower and also buying a few more outfits. These 2 are my current favorites.
I'ts so nice to daydream. When I look at these outfits I feel pretty sure that they will be worn by a cute baby of mine very soon

I also found this gorgeous little white hat with tulips, perfect for a little future dutch baby girl (my mum's family come from Holland when she was 11 years old) If I don't have a girl I can definitely see this being passed around the VanAdrighem family in the future

meet our maybe baby 'celli'

 Meet our hopefully baby celli. Cute huh?
I said he looks like Benny and Benny laughed at me but you can see the resemblance right?
After a nervous few days I went for my embryo transfer. They were supposed to call me the night before to let me know how the embryos were but no call. That morning I missed a call from the embryologist so for the rest of the 2 hour drive I stared at my phone willing it to ring (i didn't have the number to call back)
I was so terrified that i would get there and find out all my eggs had died
I had been told the night before that I would be having an extra blood test to rule out OHSS as i'm a likely candidate for it due to having pcos and my slim size. I hadn't been having any symptoms but I was still worried I wouldn't pass the blood test and be able to have transfer as planned.
Anyhow, blood test was all clear and it turned out I still had 7 embryos, phew!
The best one, 'celli' was transfered. S/he was growing well. By that day all the healthy embryos were supposed to have between 8 and 16 cells. Our little 'celli' had 16, perfect!
We also had 4 others that had divided/developed enough and 2 others that were a day behind but could  possibly catch up.
It was pretty cool walking out of there feeling normal (well as normal as you can feel bloated full of crazy fertility drugs) but knowing that our little one is along for the ride. Hopefully for the next 8.5 months but if not ill still enjoy the next 2 weeks.
This arvo I was contacted and told that we ended up with 4 frozen which can be used other months if we need them or for baby number 2 (!) which is pretty good.

 It was a really fun day out too. Dad came with me because Benny couldn't get the day off work. We were already pretty excited about our road trip together and decided to go to one of our favourite places, the botanical gardens. On the way my sister Anneke happened to call for a chat and when I told her we were heading to the city (where she was on the way to for work) she decided to see if she could swap her day off. She was able to so the three of us had a really fun day together wandering the botanical gardens, eating ice cream and yummy toasties from the kiosk and then had tea at a nice place before heading home again. We had fun re capturing last years silly autumn photos and also made friends with some adorable super friendly ducklings that came right up to us

lucky number 16

So i've gotten a bit behind in updating but I really want to record all the details so I can look back on them
Cycle day 8 (Mon 12th) and 10 I had bloods and scans. On Wednesday I was contacted to have no more of my usual injections and to have the trigger shot that niht instead. The trigger shot was similar feeling to puregon so not bad at all. I had heard it wasn't very nice so felt relieved once id done it.
Friday I was ready for egg collection. I was pretty scared and especially not looking forward to having an IV again but this time it was much less painful than last time. Last time it was put in the back of my hand. After it had been taken out it hurt for days but this time it was put in my elbow joint (where you have a blood test) as soon it was out it felt fine. Last time i could feel cold liquid traveling up my arm and hated it where as this time I didn't feel it at all.
When I woke up (I was out for half hour longer than usual again, they said probably because I rarely take so much as a panadol it just works extra well for me) I looked at my hand and saw that they had writted a 16 on it which meant they had gotten 16 eggs. I slowly sat up from the bed, they gave me a sandwich and drink and they got Benny to sit with me. I had 2 panadol and 2 nurofen before I left and then didn't need any more pain killers until the next day when I over did it a little going to our friends wedding.
The next day they let me know that 12 of our eggs were big enough to fertilize. Out of those 12, 3 out of 8  were inseminated and 4 out of 4 with ICSI (sperm is injected into the egg) At this point we had to wait until the following Tues for any more news on how they were progressing. It was a nervous weekend knowing they could potentially all die off

Today i'm on day 7.
Yesterday I had my first blood test to see how my hormone levels were from the puregon injections so far. My levels were ok and I was told to continue my current dosage (125) which I think is a good thing

I also had my first orgalutran injection. I was nervous because compared to puregon its said to be a bigger needle and stings but I iced my belly until it was numb as advised and it was fine. (the needle and liquid being injected didn't bother me, it just stung a bit for a while afterwards but not badly and didn't bruise.
 So now I have 2 needles each night for the next week or so as weal as blood tests and scans to check egg folicle sizes on Mon, Wed and possibly Fri (or egg collection might be then if they are the right size)

My only possible symptoms from the injections so far are being tired and feeling a bit sick when I wake up but we've been really busy and I have to wait until I've had injections at 11pm rather than having early nights when i'm tired. All in all i'm feeling pretty good

Last night was my first injection.
I had been waiting to suddenly get nervous for weeks about it but my nerves only really came on the day. Even then I felt pretty good, still a bit scared but ready.
Benny has to work late all week but luckily yesterday he came home on time to help me.
Before he came home I was anxious but excited about getting my puregon pen ready, watching the instructions dvd and making sure I felt confident.
As soon as he got home I felt really nervous
I wanted to do it myself so I got it all ready. I was pleasantly surprised about how tiny the needle is compared to what I was expecting to come out of the chunky plastic case. It was so fine and small which made me feel a bit better. I put it right by my belly, pinched a bit of fat ready... and was scared so decided to wait a few moments. Many moments later Benny asked if I wanted him to push my hand in. I said no. Then I said yes. In a sec. Eventually I let him and the second it touched my skin I was relieved. It didn't hurt a bit! I had been worried that I would hate the feeling of having the medicine pushed in but it actually just felt like having water squirted on my skin, it didn't bother me at all.
Afterwards my heart was beating fast and I felt so excited that I had officially started IVF!!!
I feel so good about this, i'm trying not to get my hopes up that it will work first try, just being excited that each step is a step closer to our baby (whether it be this cycle, another or found a different way)

I was pretty proud of myself so I decided I needed something special to mark the occasion. 

I found this cute onsie that seemed like it was just about made for our one day baby who we have so far waited 5.5 years for and will happily continue waiting for until the time is right knowing this little one is so 'worth waiting for' 

If they had a onsie that said'

'worth waiting 5.5 years, trying 15 rounds of clomid, enduring a laparoscopy, ovarian drilling and IVF for' I of course would have gotten that one but I guess target was out of those so this one will have to do instead :)

I also got the blue stripey top because it was cute and $4. bargain.

My current knitting project is a baby yoda hat requested by my favorite star wars geek.
Benny showed me the pic of it on facebook and said that our baby so needs one of them. I hunted down the pattern months ago and planned to surprise him with it but he recently found it on the computer and reminded me so it's now in the works. I bought the silky merino malabrigo for another project ages ago expecting it to be a different shade so its good to find a project that bright green wool will work for. Hopefully the ears arent to floppy because of the silk, i've never used fabric softner so i'm not sure about it 's capabilities but fingers crossed it turns out ok

waiting waiting waiting

 patiently of course...

 On Tuesday we received all my drugs for IVF so now all were waiting on is my period and then it will all start!
Wednesday we had a call from a nurse to explain to do my needles. Being how many videos I've watched on you tube I would have gotten along fine anyway but it confirmed that i'm confident in what to do.

Not so confident about actually being the one receiving all these needles but ill just have to keep focused on what is hopefully going to come from it all. I've been listening a lot to  'a thousand years' by christina perry and have a feeling the parts in the song where she sings 'one step closer' will be popping into my head each time I have to do something scary or painful

The drugs I have are
Puregon- which makes my eggs grow. I will start my 125 dose on day 2
Orgalutron- which stops me ovulating too early. I will start day 6.
I think I will continue both of these until around day 14
Ovidrel- Is to make me ovulate at the right time. I take it 36 hours before egg collection

My main stress lately has been getting time off work for it. Initially I got the impression that I could do all my bloods and scans locally and just need 3 or so days for egg collection and 1 day for embryo transfer. At my last appointment my doctor said it really would be best if I came to the clinic (2 hours away) for as much as possible. I was so stressed I couldn't sleep at the thought of telling all the day care families that I couldn't pinpoint a single date I would need off but their would be about 10 coming up all of a sudden with little warning for unknown 'medical reasons.' I felt so awkward and worried and Benny in the end convinced me to just tell them. I've not told all of them but 2 really need to know dates asap for work so I explained the whole situation and that I will have a better idea once my cycle starts etc. and I felt a weight come off my shoulders. They happened to be the two mums that i'm closest to and as it turned out one of my day care children is a miracle herself, that is here because of a corrective surgery, otherwise they would have gone to IVF next. As you can imagine her mum was super understanding as soon as she knew and is excited for us now:)
Now that I've let them all know about my time off I feel so much better and can focus on being stressed about the IVF instead. No, just kidding. So far I've been strangely calm about it. All along I've expected that surely as it got closer fear would kick in but so far so good. I'm glad that we waited until I felt ready, a few years ago I would be a wreck right now but i'm just ready. Hopefully my calmness continues as I all starts to happen, I know there will be moments of fear and stress but I feel confident that I will do ok