Mothers Day

My wonderful husband surprised me in the morning with my first ever Mothers Day card and a gift voucher to buy maternity clothes when I need to.  My first ever Mother's Day!  Does it count if you haven't given birth yet??  I've decided it does!!

It was such a lovely surprise and put a huge smile on my miserable face!  Yes, my face has been pretty miserable for the last couple of weeks.  My hemorrhoids/fissure have been excruciating and are taking so long to heal.  The last couple of days though have been better thank goodness.  I only have one more day that I can use the cream so I hope it will be alright this week.

I've put together a list of foods and natural therapies that will continue to help me.  I know that I started this only using natural treatments and it didn't work, but I'm hoping that now I am recovering, I can use them to maintain and use a better choice of foods to keep my constipation under control.

I am also really struggling with tiredness due to both the hemorrhoids as well as the pregnancy in general.  And of course, I haven't been able to exercise - it has been difficult to even walk - and I know that exercise helps with the constipation as well as energy levels.  I just have no energy to do anything.  I sleep for a couple of hours during the day as well as getting a full nights sleep and am happiest if I am just laying down and reading.

I hate the feeling of no motivation and no energy or ability to do the simplest of tasks.  It's not all the time but the majority of the time and is causing me a a lot of guilt and concern.  I know I need to be active, I just can't seem to manage it at the moment.

So somehow, I have to let go of the guilt and just let this moment in the pregnancy take its course.  David is so understanding and wants me just to rest and heal and not worry about anything.  He is driving me to my rehearsal tonight because he knows that my bottom will be screaming after driving for an hour and rehearsing sitting down for two hours.  He says "how on earth are you going to manage to drive home for another hour".  So, he is driving me in, he will have dinner in town and then hang out for a while till the end of my rehearsal.  Thank you honey.  I didn't even think of asking him.

What he doesn't realise as well though, is how much it is helping me with my energy.  Just the thought of going to rehearsal tonight was draining me.  But having him take me and support me, lifts such a burden off my shoulders.  I will be okay.  I love him so much.

I'm doing it tough.  The whole journey has been tough.  And I feel like I'm constantly at the edge of breaking point.  But throughout it all is the wonderful miracle that I am pregnant.  And when I let go of the worry and doubt of that and trust that things are going well, then it makes everything worthwhile.

10 weeks

We met with our new OB on Monday.  He is wonderful and we are so happy with him.  It doesn't matter that it takes us an hour to get there!  I am just so relieved to be in good care by a lovely guy who specializes in high risk pregnancies.  Very reassuring.

We had another scan which showed a wonderful heartbeat.  All things were good - except for the size of our baby.  The baby measured small which is not good.  However, Chris (OB) was having some problems with the scanner and it is also possible that it was the position of the baby as was the case with our first scan.

So, we have another scan today in the scanning facility, not in his office.  All the high tech equipment on hand and we will find out for sure.  He wanted to leave it for a few days so he could see that even if the baby is small, that at least he/she is still growing.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us.  I've been trying to stay calm and relaxed doing meditations and continuing to talk to our little one, but this of course is worrying me.  As the weeks go by, our baby is feeling more and more a part of me.  If anything goes wrong...

And to top of my week, I have had the worst case of hemorrhoids and fissure that I have ever had!!  OOWWWWW!  To the point that I called Dave two days "babbling hysterically" as he called it.  He was home from work 20 minutes later, on the phone to the hospital, down to the chemist for medications and had me booked in to the doctor a couple of hours later.  What a man!!

They started a few weeks ago, once the constipation set in.  I am prone to them, however I couldn't treat them the way I normally would.  So, I went down the natural path - eating prunes firstly, then taking homeopathics, extra fibre.  But they continued to get worse and worse.  On Monday the OB said I can actually use my normal treatment but to be cautious I should wait until 14 weeks.

Well, by the end of that day, I'm thinking I can't wait.  And sure enough the next day, I was crying hysterically.  We got reassurances from both the hospital and the doctor on the treatment and along with some additional medications, I am now getting better.  But I am still sitting on the ring cushion!!

And of course, this is only the first trimester.  I am going to really have to take care of this all the way through my pregnancy - especially third trimester.  But at least from now on, I can treat it straight away.  What fun!!  :(

All I can say is thank goodness I am on the mend!

So now I wait patiently for our scan this afternoon, hoping for the big sigh of relief that will come with a good size and heartbeat.

Love and light
xxx

IVF round 3

The roller coaster ride has continued throughout our ivf rounds two and three.

This last round (round three) began with us saying to ourselves, that after round two, that we were due are nice and straight forward round.  Instead, what happened was we started the drugs, then found out I was pregnant, stopped the drugs, tried the support the pregnancy which was unsuccessful, then found out that my follicles were still growing, had to trigger them to release so I wouldn't develop any cysts on the ovaries, but weren't able to harvest them because my hormones were all mixed up with pregnancy hormones and progesterone hormones from trying to sustain pregnancy and excess eostrogen from starting the round and then we had to abstain from intimacy as there was a chance of multiple pregnancy from the follicles that were released.

In a nutshell.

How did it happen that we even started the cycle?   Well, I had a bleed.  It was unusual, but I still thought that it was a period.  My OB was away, she gave a phone approval for us to start and then we saw her a few days later when she returned.  After we started and I saw how my "period" continued, I was unsure about whether I had started taking the drugs on the right day.  I asked her about this and she questioned me on my "period" symptoms, she straight away sent me for a blood test.  She suspected it may have been a pregnancy - and my bleed was either a heavy implantation bleed, or maybe a pregnancy really not getting off the ground and my body was all confused.

She assured me I didn't need to worry about the injections I had taken so far.  If anything, they would have helped the pregnancy.  But she definitely didn't want me starting the second lot of drugs which I was due to start the next day.


I am SO glad I talked to her about what I thought was my period.  Otherwise we would have gone through the whole round oblivious to the pregnancy, spent thousands of dollars and gotten to theater possibly with no result or nothing viable.  The whole thing was totally screwed up.

Since then, I have had to go through multiple ovulation symptoms, my body preparing for a pregnancy and not succeeding, the emotions of the hormones as well as the emotions naturally caused by the circumstances.  The physical symptoms have been huge - all the way to completely erect, hard and painful nipples.  Boy, the things we have to go through.

The one thing I really don't understand is the Catch 22 of the follicles.  The clinic is doing the right thing and being cautious on both sides, but it is confusing and frustrating.  One one hand, the OB won't go to theatre and harvest because of the pregnancy hormones that will be putting everything off.  On the other hand, the follicles are still growing, need to be triggered to release and we have to abstain from intimacy because of the chance of multiple pregnancy.

I feel like there a half a dozen of my eggs just going to waste.  And that is so upsetting.
On the other hand, the last thing I want to do is be initimate.  My uterus and ovaries hurt too much to do anything.  I just couldn't deal with it!

So round three was a big flop.  So much for being due and nice and easy round.

The good thing is that we were given a full refund and will try again in January when we get back from our honeymoon.  And as for the honeymoon, we get to sit around the pool with alcoholic drinks rather than mocktails!  While I would rather be pregnant, I am looking forward to that!!!  :)

IVF round one

Well, we have finished our first round of IVF – unsuccessfully.  I have a month off now to recover and then we go again.

Unfortunately, we only got one viable embryo, which was of course implanted.  So with no frozen embryos to use, I need to go through the whole process again to produce more eggs.

It was a difficult month.  I didn’t have any trouble with the injections nor did I go through any mood swings which was great.  But I was exhausted.  All the time exhausted. 

And then there was the ovary bleed.  After the egg retrieval, I had what I thought was the usual discomfort after this procedure, only to wake up in complete and utter agony in the middle of the night.  It was excruciating.  Fortunately our clinic has a 24 hour service and we called them at 1 am. 
The doctor on call was fantastic.  He diagnosed what was wrong and I went on a high dose of pain medication and we were able to manage.  I couldn’t move on my own, couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t straighten.  It hurt so much to pee even.  I was on my back for a week.  And then I continued to get spasms of pain right up until I sadly got my period.  I knew something wasn’t right.  I said to Dave “being pregnant shouldn’t feel like this”.  That night we found out I wasn’t.  Even now, a week after my period has finished, I still feel mild symptoms of discomfort which could be the residue of the reproduction system getting a complete battering!

The next working day after the bleed began, I was at the clinic having blood tests and scans to confirm the diagnosis.  Fortunately it wasn’t ovarian hyperstimulation, but a bleed from the ovary.  The doctor is not sure whether it began a day after the surgery or was a slow bleed that took a while to manifest.  Either way, it didn’t matter, we knew what was wrong.
 
In the end, I had two weeks off work from the exhaustion before the retrieval and then from the bleed.  The end result of all of that, is that I have cut my teaching back a day.  There is no way I can go through all of that again and try and maintain the same workload.  I am so relieved!!  As of now, I am teaching one day less.  Woohoo!

We learnt a lot from the egg fertilisation.  They got 10 eggs and they fertilised half via IVF (natural selection) and half via ICSI (where they inject the sperm into the egg.) 

From the IVF procedure we only got one embryo.  Apparently as you get older, the outer lining of the egg hardens and it is harder for the sperm to break through. That explains a lot.
From the ICSI , we got 4 embryos! 

However, none of the ICSI embryos developed.  It was the IVF embryo that got through to a stage of being able to implant.  But even that had a lot of fragmentation and the doctor wasn’t really happy with it.

So, over the last three years of us trying, if one of the little suckers actually managed to break through the outer lining, we may have been fertilising eggs and they just didn’t develop. 

I am feeling a little disheartened with the results and what we have learnt.  I knew age was a real factor but this bit of science really made it a reality.  Nevertheless, we go again in a few weeks.  And I need every minute of those weeks to recover – both emotionally and physically.

I’m  not doing so well right now.  My anxiety levels are up and I am just not with it.  All I really want to do is hide away in bed and read.  But after next week, I have two weeks holiday, so the timing of that is terrific!

Day 1

It’s Day 1 today.  I’m still having those uncomfortable uterine pains which I relate to my last pregnancy, but upon googling others experiences of post-miscarriage PMS, it all seems fairly normal.

It can take 3-4 months for the body to return to normal.  Until then, the symptoms can often make you feel as though you may be pregnant again.  Which is exactly what I am experiencing.  It is quite different to my usual PMS and period pain.  For me, as with some other women who have written over the net, I am experiencing lower back pain, cramping which is more like a constant dull ache or stretching sensation, nausea, mild breast tenderness and tiredness.  All of which, can be symptoms of pregnancy!  It can all be so confusing!

Last cycle, I began experiencing these things right after ovulation.  This time, they started about a week ago, along with a mood change of feeling quite sad one morning, which is a common PMS thing for me. 

The positive thing is that this is a 30 day cycle.  Having always had irregular cycles - , they can be anything from 30 – 36 days - having a 30 day cycle is a good sign for me.  I still have the hope that having experienced a pregnancy, my body has been reminded on what it has to do and is making the changes already.

As for what to do next, I have had enough of waiting to get pregnant.  I’m getting in with the OB asap!

Post miscarriage pains and bushwalking!

I’ve done a lot of internet searching the last few days about miscarriages and have found a lot of information.  But what I haven’t found is any information or anyone’s stories about the type of cramping that they have had.  Aside from the standard “period like” cramps that are to be expected, I’ve also had sharp stabbing pains that are more muscular and today, a new type of pain.  It is higher up in my abdomen and comes and goes like a pulse. 

I did read one ladies comment that the sharp stabbing pain could have been the cervix shrinking back into pre-pregnancy shape, but it was isolated comment and certainly there has been no official explanation anywhere talking about this.  Not even my doctor gave any explanation for it.  But in reverse when I was feeling these pains when I was just pregnant, she did say that it was normal.  Once again, no explanation that it may have been the cervix expanding and once again, I got that thought from a forum.

So, if anyone has any thoughts or experiences or “official” information on this, it would be much appreciated!!

I am feeling much better emotionally today and with the exception of these new abdomen pains, better physically too.

Several weeks ago, we organised a bushwalking trip with friends and that is today.  I’m not sure how I will go, but certainly I will go better today than I would have even yesterday.  I will take it easy and see.  But being out in the bush in the best place for me.  It speaks to my soul and lifts my spirits.  It always makes me so happy!  So, even if I have to hang back or sit and rest while the others go on, surely it’s going to be good for me.  Fingers crossed that that will be the case and it won’t do the opposite and wear me out again!

I will let you know!! 

Bye for now,
love and light,
xxxx

Day 34

Day 34.  I haven’t had a Day 34 since July last year.  Still no period.  And a negative pregnancy result.  Also a lot more pain. 

Without a positive pregnancy result, I’m a bit at a loss.  It could be muscular from the gym I guess, but I have never pulled a muscle at Curves before.  Although I did go back on Curves Smart last week and worked quite a bit harder on Saturday.  But why a delay before the pain appears?  A little unusual.

It  does say on the pregnancy home test that it doesn’t work for everyone and considering that Maybe Baby never really worked for me, maybe I’m just one of the strange ones!  Quite likely!  lol  :)  :)

My doctors appointment is on Friday, so plenty more time for my period to begin or not.  And also plenty of time for possible strained muscles to heal.

I don’t feel any need this morning to go to emergency, although I was considering it last night.  ‘Twas not good.  But this morning, I can breathe a little easier and it doesn’t hurt so much when I press down.

D slept in the spare room after our 2 am sit up - for both of us.  I was able to move around more freely and be restless without disturbing him or trying to be quiet and he was ensured a decent sleep before heading off to work today.  If I needed him, he would have easily heard me and been there for me.

So now it’s a waiting game.  Period to arrive / muscles to heal??  I am thankful to still be on school holidays and not have to deal with this at work.  I recorded some new season TV shows last night, so I may just chill out and watch them this morning.

Thanks for listening. 

And to our little one to be.  If this is because I am newly pregnant with you – then you are absolutely, without doubt, worth every little bit of pain and I so hope that it is because we are pregnant with you.

 

 

                                       Katie Lee Photography