IVF Journey: 8w5d pregnant

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for 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.

Continued to feel crappy throughout our holidays in Argyll, though that was fine and expected – might as well feel crappy in nice hotels and driving about pleasant surroundings. Exhausting though, even though I barely stood up the whole time. Home on Tuesday and spent Wednesday in bed recovering from doing nothing on holiday. Had hoped to do a bit of work or go round to the corner shop or something… but just didn’t have the energy or inclination. Everything felt very overwhelming. Was barely able to hold a conversation, certainly couldn’t think in any meaningful way.

So today the husband thought he’d take me up to the GP again, as my antibiotics had run out and I was still unable to do much.

The GP was running about a half hour late.

However, when we saw her she was lovely. She asked about my symptoms and listened to what I said. That shouldn’t be significant, but it is. She listened to me. I felt like we had a really good consultation. Although to be fair I didn’t say a lot myself, I was simply not up to leading on a conversation like that. The husband helped me through that. I’d taken in a new urine sample and the GP had not yet got my test results through from the out-of-hours GP (quelle surprise) but she was able to do a dip test and then send the rest to the lab. Anyway, the test on Sunday had contained blood and protein and the one today contained only blood. This is good, means the antibiotic has cleared something up. Good. The GP thought it best to send me up to specialists at the hospital so that they could decide what to do with me. She made some phone calls, and arranged for me to go to obstetric triage straight away. She gave me a one page printout of my medical summary (which said she observed me to look very pale, unwell, and ‘spaced out’) and the husband drove me up to the hospital.

This was a great relief in a weird way, that the GP considered me so unusually ill with morning sickness that I should be looked at by specialists. This made me feel that I wasn’t over-reacting.

So this obstetric triage is nearby the IVF clinic, and it felt like a big deal to finally cross over to the other side that I had only ever walked past before. We waited perhaps 20 minutes, then were seen by a midwife.

The midwife asked me for a urine sample, which was a pain in the ass because I’d literally just gone, but I managed to squeeze a bit out and the midwife joked about whether I’d taken it from the tap as it was very clear.

She then took me to a consulting room, took my blood pressure (a little high but no cause for concern) and my temperature (normal) and asked a few standard questions. She then went away and a doctor came in. This bit was less satisfactory, as the doctor seemed to have no interest in listening to what I had to say. She was talking as if I was not keeping food down, saying I felt so bad because I was dehydrated (so not true – see reference to quantity and clarity of my urine!) and told me to stop thinking about work or the fact that I’d feel like this indefinitely. She explained that nausea and fainting in pregnancy was normal and that some people got it worse than others, but that I was no cause for clinical concern.

So I steeled myself and explained that I’d read a meta analysis on nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, that I knew I was no cause for clinical concern, but that I felt so bad that I’d been virtually bed bound for weeks and was barely able to hold a conversation and that I knew this wasn’t normal. That I was choosing not to work and earn money because I felt so fuzzy headed and crap. That this was unusual for me, as evidenced by the fact that I was the sort of person that would voluntarily read a meta analysis. We then talked a bit about my mood, which I described as low but that I considered it to be a direct and proportional response to the situation and I expected it to improve if the other symptoms improved. The husband explained that I had worked in mental health, that I knew a bit about this sort of thing. Overall it was not at all satisfactory in that I just felt so patronised and misunderstood. However, the outcome was fine which is that she changed me on to a different anti sickness drug – cyclizine.

The midwife then came back with a bottle of the new pills, and I took one. We asked the midwife if I was employed what her advice would be regarding working or being signed off. And this was the bit that brought it all back to being OK and made me feel both hopeful and better about myself. She said that this was irrelevant – that it was entirely possible to control nausea and vomiting in pregnancy and that I should not need to be off work. That if I did not see a substantial improvement after 24 hours of taking the new drugs then I should phone them and they would try me on something else. What a relief. This indicates that how I am feeling is not normal. That having spent weeks in bed is not normal. That having started taking anti nausea drugs and still feeling too unwell to work is not normal.

But that they should be able to sort me out.

Home, for more resting.