IVF Journey: 11w6d 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.

It is good news, there’s a live and kicking baby in there.

I was nervous this morning, and woke at 8am – much earlier than planned. So I spent the morning watching TV and feeling nervous. One hour before the scan, as specified in the appointment letter, I had a wee then drank one litre of water. Then the husband and I headed off to the hospital where our scan would take place.

When we got there it was quiet and we were the only ones in the waiting room, then another five sets of people turned up. We all waited a bit. There was loads of notices up – an unusually high number of notices – asking us to make sure we sign in before sitting down, and asking us to give a £1 donation if we want a print out of our scan. Several of each notice.

Just about everyone got called in at the same time, maybe five minutes late so not too bad.

The husband and I went into the scanning room and an extremely nice man did our scan. He got me to lie on the bed and pull my trousers half way down my ass, then he tucked in some paper towels and lubed me up with jelly. There was a screen up on the wall to watch what was happening inside me.

The scanning man then pushed the ultrasound down on my belly and I could see straight away that there was a baby-shaped thing in there. Such a relief. The scanning man said that he could see the heartbeat.

Then he said my bladder was far too full to see anything properly so he asked me to go and empty it, which I did, and the rest of the scan took place with an empty bladder.

Lubed up again, then more pressing about, and at some points with the bed tilted backwards with my head-end down. We saw the baby from all different angles, through its brain and down its spine and different bones and bits and pieces. It measured 61mm and was wiggling and waving and turning about all over the place.

The scanning man then measured the nuchal fold, which is a bit on the back of the baby’s neck. The idea is that if this is a nice small measurement the likelihood of Down’s Syndrome is low. The measurement was 1.5mm, which is plenty low enough (I believe you want it under 3mm). So (touch wood) we’re not too worried about that.

The baby measured in at an age of 12 weeks and 3 days – four days ahead of its actual age (and we do know that from the IVF). The due date came in at 1st July, but the scanning man said as we had an IVF date he’d leave the due date as that (4th July) for now.

(So I’ll carry on with the date numbering as I had been, for now).

I thought I’d cry when they did all this, but I didn’t. I was just so pleased, and so fascinated to see the thing moving about and waving its little hands. Plus relief, I guess, was the over-riding emotion.

The scanning man explained that he’d update my file and put the pictures of the scan in it and I’d get it back at the end of my appointment.

I then had some blood taken by someone else for the second part of the Down’s Syndrome test. This went fine, although I was still a bit bruised up from the midwife taking blood more than a week back. I really only have one usable vein so the lady today had to go in through the bruise but she got the blood no problem.

We then got our file and pictures and went on our way, after an extremely positive experience. They were all lovely.

We asked the blood taking lady if we should give her our donation for the picture and she seemed confused, so we went to reception and they seemed confused too. But we left them a few quid. It had, after all, been requested on several notices.

So that was that. We consider this official now, really going to happen. Which is exciting. We have a few people that we are close to but don’t know yet that we’ll tell over the next week then maybe go properly public around Christmas.