Long overdue update (plus DEIVF)

So hi…yeah sorry…it’s been a while

*embarrassed face*

I’ve been AWOL for quite a while now. But I have been following silently and cheering from the sidelines. I’ve needed time out from blogging all thinking about fertility after 3 years of obsessing over it and driving myself half mad in the process.

I hope you’ll be pleased to hear that the break definitely has done us good. We had a great holiday in August, followed by lots of weekends away with friends in between working really hard in a new job. I’ve found a bit of lightness again in life, things don’t seem quite so heavy and hard (well not always at least). I also made up with my friend that I fell out with in July. Things have just been I guess, ‘normal’ for a while with infertility taking a back seat in life.

This doesn’t mean that our progress has stopped. And so here’s a quick update on where we are…

We decided back in August to definitely pursue DEIVF (donor egg IVF). In October we selected a donor and has to wait for some extra genetic tests (as my husband is a recessive carrier of a rare disease).

The tests were ok and the donor started injections at the start of this month. It has been been very weird carrying on with normal life (and going to Christmas parties) knowing that a complete stranger was injecting herself on behalf of us. I’ve felt humbled and thankful that someone would do this amazing thing for us.

Yesterday was egg retrieval day and my husband had to fly over to the clinic to provide his sperm. Again, very odd for me as it was the first time that I’ve been not been central to the situation. Odd, but not in a bad way.

I got the update from my husband straight after the sperm sample. We got 17 eggs retrieved (wow!!) though we were warned that quite a few of those were not mature. A big surprise was that my husband’s sperm this time was rated at ‘excellent’ (that has NEVER happened before….we did add Proxeed supplements at great cost this time, but we’re still amazed). As a result of this the Drs decided to do straight IVF instead of ICSI. I was slightly nervous about this as we’d always done ICSI, but focused on the thought that natural is generally better if the sperm are good.

Then came the dreaded wait for fertilisation. In my new spirit of getting on with life (for more read: Ahhh f*ck it) and as I was home alone for the weekend I decided to distract myself with a pre-Christmas night out with friends.

This morning I am weirdly proud to say that my distraction mission was accomplished in style: a drink turned into a gig and then a nightclub and dancing until 5am. I was woken up after 5 hours of sleep (luckily without a hangover as I only had 3 small wines) to my mobile ringing. And amazingly I actually had NO IDEA who would be calling me on a Sunday morning and nearly didn’t answer it.

A very nice embryologist asked my name and if I could talk (obviously I tried to sound like I hadn’t been dancing for half the night). And he told me that out of the 17 we have 7 fertilised. He explained that quite a few of the eggs were not mature so that was an ok fertilisation rate. He will now call again on Thursday to tell us if any embryos have made it to freeze.

So now, mission distraction starts again…(not with partying, but with Christmas shopping and preparations). From the last three rounds of IVF I’ve realised that obsessing (and manically googling) at this stage achieves ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

So as they say here in Italy…. “che sarà sarà” (whatever will be will be)

Here’s to a happy Christmas everyone (we all sure deserve it) XXX