Booking in

Life has been hectic around here lately, and will be for a couple more weeks - over a six week period, we will have had trips to Spain, the US and the Czech Republic, as well as lots of travel around the UK.

One of our UK trips last week was to visit the new clinic. We had meetings with the donation co-ordinator, the counsellor (it's compulsory to have counselling before any sort of donor treatment here, although I do wonder how useful a single one hour session would be if you hadn't already worked through the issues beforehand) and the consultant, as well as the usual scans and blood tests.

I found the whole scan experience mildly amusing, as there was a new nurse there who was learning the ropes and asked if she could sit in on my scan. Over the next half hour or more, I sat there half naked in the most undignified position as the experienced nurse gave the new nurse a very thorough tour of my reproductive organs ("This setting allows you to see the blood flow to the uterus... And if we press this button here, we can get a 3D picture of her left ovary", etc). Fortunately, after 3 full IVF treatments, I have no more pride and simply followed the show with great interest.

I loved our new consultant. I was a little anxious at the possibility of an unmedicated FET, because after my body has let me down so many times in the last three years, I don't really trust it any more to do what it's supposed to do. So I was delighted when he listed out all the drugs that he was planning to give me. We gave him a copy of our file from XXXX clinic, and he saw that I had had immune treatment there and said he would do the same - as much to reassure me as anything. He said they usually give progesterone in pessary form, and I found myself saying that I felt more secure with gestone by injection. He didn't question it, just noted a reminder to himself on the file to prescribe gestone for me - so I've let myself in for another fortnight (or hopefully longer if it's successful) of having a dead leg.

All in all, we felt really positive about the whole experience, and are now looking forward to getting started with the FET - probably some time in June or July. And in the meantime, I have some more relaxing to do...

Quick update

First of all, thank you so much to all those who have kept checking in and have left messages asking how we're doing. I'm so sorry I've been such a bad blogger recently - over the last month, I haven't even been reading blogs, and I do intend to catch up with all of your news as soon as I can (which probably means next week some time).

So, what's been going on for the last month?

Well, having got the news about the embryos, I went in for my blood test hoping that I would get a clear answer one way or the other - and I did. My FSH was 14.1, which was the highest it's ever been.

This was the signal we needed that we were making the right decision, and although I did have some sadness when I heard the result, I immediately contacted the new clinic to accept the offer of the embryos.

We've been in a bit of a holding pattern since then - having filled in a pile of paperwork, we were given a date for our initial appointment at the clinic, which will be in a couple of weeks' time.

This all happened about five days before Lent began, and for those five days DH and I indulged ourselves in all the things we enjoy that we have been denying ourselves for the last couple of years - treats like wine, beer, chocolate, a cream tea... And now it's Lent, and the reason I'm depriving myself of any of the things I enjoy is completely different and not surrounded by stress and angst.

It's been unbelievable how as soon as we had properly made the decision and come to terms with it, it was as though a huge weight lifted off both our shoulders. I've been so stressed for so long about our IF that I'd stopped even realising how profoundly it was affecting me - barely an hour went by over a period of about two years without me worrying in one form or another about whether I was doing the right thing, whether there was anything extra that I could do to improve our chances of being parents, whether we would ever have children, etc, etc.

I don't know whether our donor treatment will work, and I know I'll be devastated if it doesn't. But it's unbelievable the extent to which we are now comfortable with the idea that we're never going to have a child that's genetically related to us, and the extent to which I've managed to relax over the last month.

So although I'm sorry I've been so neglectful of my bloggy friends over the last month, and I have still been thinking of you and praying for you even if I haven't been following your blogs, in my case I can definitely say that no news has been good news for me, and I'm enjoying this period of calm before the upcoming turbulence of our next round of treatment.