Happy dance

The red witch is here and I can finally get this show on the road. I phoned up the clinic this morning and left a message for the nurses, and one of them called me back a few minutes later. She updated me in the system, made sure I had all my drugs, then put me through to the receptionist so I could book my first scan. That's right, no stupid blood tests this time; our new FS generally judges all timings and medication adjustments by performing just one or two scans leading up to EPU. So my first scan will be CD 10, which is next Friday. For now, I'm waiting til this Friday (CD 3) when I will start jabbing Gonal - F, then in a week from today (CD 8) I will add Cetrotide to the mix, which is the antagonist that will stop me from prematurely ovulating (hopefully!!).

And so until Friday, I will sit here cuddling my hot water bottle (these period cramps have gotten stronger as I've gotten older, I swear!), and dare to dream that maybe, just maybe, this is the last time I have to do this... until we try for a sibling, of course. I'm throwing everything I reasonably can at getting a good lining this time around, as it has let me down the last two cycles. I am drinking pomegranate juice every second day, will be trying to eat lamb a couple of times a week as recommended by a fellow IVF-er, and as per the advice of my old FS, I will continue taking 500mg of Vitamin E every day, in addition to whatever amount is in my daily Concieve Well Gold multi-vitamin.

Last night I was looking up obstretricians who deliver at what will probably be my chosen hospital in Brisbane. Alan said that he was really happy that I was doing this, as it showed positive thinking and cemented for him that I really believe this could work. I agreed, but also said that it's more to do with preparation than anything else; if I want to have someone with a decent reputation, I would basically have to book as soon as I got my first blood test results, or I could miss out on the best options. So it's best to be prepared, because even if this particular cycle doesn't work, our next one could (which wouldn't be til early next year, at least), and if I already have an obs and a couple of back-ups chosen then I won't have to worry about it again. Unless they retire in the meantime... hehe.

Pointless post

I smegging wish AF would hurry up. The worst thing is I know it might not come til early next week. I'm just getting emphatically impatient, and then I'm feeling stupid because I'm so definitely setting myself up for disappointment in this next cycle. Seriously, all my expectations have been placed on this new set of procedures; unlike the last two times, I think I will honestly be absolutely heartbroken if this one doesn't work. And the fact it's costing us so bloody much won't help either.

The last two days I've found myself looking at photos of positive HPTs and people's pregnancy belly pics. I don't know why, as it's quite a sadistic thing to do. It would probably be healthier for me to take a step back and try and concentrate on something other than pregnancy and babies, but I am completely, 100% obsessed with the whole topic. The other day I was even comparing pros and cons of two private maternity hospitals in Brisbane. In short, I am useless.

I just need to get this show on the road so badly. I might try a hot bath tomorrow, even though it's probably still too early for a bleed to start; I could possibly be as little as 8DPO. I just wish I knew! I wish I knew so many things...

Ready.. Set...

We went to our final counselling session and clinic appointment on Wednesday afternoon, and although Alan still hadn't told me 100% what his final word was regarding anon vs. known donor, I discovered his answer when he was talking to the psychologist. Which was to proceed as planned, thankfully. We went ahead with our number 1 choice, and at our clinic appointment we reserved one straw of this particular donor's sperm for our potential use next cycle. The donor in question is, as I mentioned last time, American, but his parents are from Yugoslavia. He has dark hair and dark eyes like Alan and his brother, so the colouring is right. And he just generally sounds like a nice guy; late 20's, married but no children yet, works as an analyst, and believes in family and working hard for a secure future. We were able to keep whatever profiles we wanted, so we kept the top 3 we'd selected just for future reference. If we end up having to use this donor and are successful, wayyyy in the future we'll be able to show our kid the donor profile for his/her interest, if they so desire.

Anyway, I got all my injections for the first part of my cycle, and they are now taking up an entire shelf in the door of our fridge! We also paid the cycle fee; unfortunately this clinic requires you to pay it before you start, so we are skint now, as we won't get the rebate til after EPU! Which is scary, because due to Alan also undergoing procedures this time, we will have to fork out a lot of money on EPU day too, and we're not even sure if we're going to have enough in the bank to cover it yet. But I'm sure we'll find an out if we need it...

All the consent forms got signed too, so now it's just waiting for AF to show! Unfortunately it may take a while; I have a feeling that I only just ovulated early this week, which will mean that this could be my longest ever cycle in memory. Typical! I'm due this weekend but I could be waiting nearly a couple more weeks. The nurse did confirm on Wednesday that the Laparoscopy could definitely have interfered with my natural cycle. All good though, I'm just really, really excited and nervous about this brand new plan of attack, so I'm keen to get going. Next update will probably be after I've started, unless anything new crops up. :)

Things are happening

Alright, where were we? I'd had my appointment with the new FS last time I posted. So a week later, I went for my Lap & Hyst. FS rang Alan after the surgery to tell him that he had found a bit of endometriosis, but had removed it, and that otherwise all my bits looked good and healthy. We went for our follow-up two days ago, wherein FS showed me pictures of my insides, and gave me the photos to keep which is very cool! They included pics of the two patches of endo that he lasered off, and they really were fairly small, in my uneducated opinion anyway. He then filled out our confirmation thingy for our next cycle, and handed us over to the nurse who we spent ages with. She talked us through the cycle and the costs (I accidentally mistook the Medicare item number as the cost; I thought the upfront was going to be $13200! Lol!), then gave us a lot of info and all our consent forms to take home and fill out, which we will bring back to be signed and witnessed at another appointment this Wednesday. We also brought home profiles for their nine current donors they have available; the clinic actually imports sperm from America, so the profiles are very comprehensive. They include lots of info such as DOB, ethnicity and race, marital status, blood type, heaps of physical characteristics, health info for both the donor and their immediate family including gransparents, as well as stuff about personality attributes, and a large paragraph talking about themselves in which a couple of them address the future child, which I thought was kind of sweet.

Anyway, we have gone through these profiles and selected our top three preferences. However, Alan is having a final rethink about whether he should still be considering using a known donor instead. Seeing the profiles for the donors has made them seem more "real" to him; he said he would have preferred the clinic to just choose one for us based on his physical appearance (and of course taking into account family health and such). He's not sure how he feels about our future adult child wanting to track down and meet their biological father. I don't either, to be honest, but I'm sure when the time came we would be able to find ways to cope.

Hopefully he makes a decision very very soon, because the exciting thing is that we will soon be able to get started on our next cycle, pretty much next time my period shows up! That should be in around a week or so, depending on whether the surgery has screwed with my natural cycle at all, or if my natural cycle is behaving itself. As I mentioned before, we are going back to the clinic on Wednesday to sign all the forms, and I will also be collecting my drugs and everything I need. The best part is that this new clinic doesn't do blood tests, apart from the final pregnancy test. So all I have to do is take my injections when I'm initially told, and show up for a scan on around CD 10, then possibly another one to work out when to trigger, and that's it. No more rocking up on CD 2, 8, 10, 12 or whatever first thing in the morning for blood tests, yay!!

Last Friday and this coming Wednesday we also had/have counselling appointments with a psychologist to talk about using donor sperm; it's a legal requirement. The first session went fine, it was probably just the psych talking about two-thirds of the time, talking us through some of the potential issues and getting our input. The next session might be interesting if Alan is feeling a bit cold-feet-y about the anon donor thing, but maybe by then he'll have made peace a little more with it.

More to come after Wednesday...