IVF Journey: Third IVF day 1

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for nearly four years now, and have a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility'. We have finally reached the top of the waiting list for IVF - a form of assisted conception. I'm blogging about what happens as it happens, as a kind of therapy for me and as an awareness raising exercise of what IVF is all about.

Hurray, this is the start of IVF cycle number three. We will be using one of our six remaining frozen embryos (blastocysts) around mid October and the time until then will be used to prepare my body to hopefully accept it.

So this morning was a pre-treatment scan. I left home an hour and a half before the appointment time of 10am and this time arrived fifteen minutes early. That was great though, as they took me in straight away so I was out again by 10am!

I knew the drill by now – into the consulting room, strip from the waist down, sit on the bed and cover my modesty with a towel. The doctor came in, gave me an internal scan, and pronounced everything normal. I then had an appointment with a nurse who took my blood pressure and pronounced that normal too. Therefore good to go, I was given a date to come in for my next two IVF appointments and sent on my way. Easy.

The last two times I did IVF the first set of drugs I took was self-administered by daily injection. I had no problem with this, I don’t mind doing the injection and the side effects were minimal. Last time I was offered a new treatment option where I could have one larger injection given to me at the clinic at the start instead of daily injections for a month, but I opted out of that in favour of ‘better the devil you know’ plus I wanted to feel like I was doing something to contribute to the process. Well this time I’m going to have a go at the single big injection in the spirit of minimising the IVF and trying to get on with my daily life as normally as possible. Let’s hope it doesn’t make me sick or crazy.

This means that rather than coming away with a big bag of drugs today I am empty handed, and due in again on day 21 of my cycle (which is 13th September) for the injection.

Until then, more waiting.

The last week or so I have been excited to be getting on to a new cycle and looking forward to getting started. I’ve had to wait 34 days between cycles this time as compared to 56 days last time and this has been infinitely better. I’ve actually enjoyed my time off rather than feeling like I was in a pointless annoying limbo waiting game.

I remember going in for my pre-treatment scan last time and feeling a bit blah, thinking a thaw cycle was a long shot with crappy odds and not being hugely hopeful. Things have changed since then, I have more information and the consultant has assured me that with our high quality blastocysts it is no more a long shot than a fresh cycle. So I do feel better this time.

But… slightly odd now I’m here. I suppose I was keen to get to today. Now today is here I’m keen to get to the end of October. I don’t mind doing the IVF, but I suppose I wish it the cycle was over and I knew if it worked. Especially as I’m going to try and make this cycle as mundane as possible I’m aware that I will yet again be treading water for two months waiting to see whether my life is going to change beyond all recognition… or not. Again.

This is our third try, with really all of 2013 having been dedicated to IVF.

Maybe it will work this time. Any single go at IVF is more likely to fail than work, however it does work for nearly half of people. That might be us this time.

If this one comes up negative the husband and I are going to re-evaluate our position. We can certainly carry on. When we started this process we thought we’d have exhausted our NHS allocation around this point. However, it is entirely possible that we will come out of this cycle with five frozen blastocysts remaining which the NHS will fund us to use and we are also entitled to another fresh cycle (and replacement of any resulting frozen embryos) funded by the NHS too. Then we could start paying. We can’t go on forever. But we might go on a bit longer. So if it is another negative we’ll have a think and decide what to do next, or maybe leave it until after Christmas and see how we feel then.