So, now the horrendous post about my brother is out of the way I can finally get on with telling you what we've been up to earlier his year! If you follow me on twitter as well you'll already know some of this, so apologies, but I always find it quite therapeutic to actually get it all down in writing in more detail than twitter's 50 character limit will allow.
The last post I actually wrote about infertility is here, we had one frosty that we weren't sure what to do with and a friend that had kindly offered to give us about 70% of the money we'd need to do a second round. But did we want to do a second round? We went back and forth on this a lot after what had happened during our first round, would the same thing happen again?
Eventually we decided to go ahead with it, but more for closure. We didn't expect it to work. Having said that there is, of course, always hope. Sometimes I wish there wasn't, but it is always there. When I say that this round was more for closure, I sincerely hope it doesn't sound callous or insensitive to anyone who is struggling to afford a second round or is just struggling with IVF in general. I know how lucky we were to get another round, we genuinely didn't think we would and were only able to since a friend of mine gave us a not insignificant amount of money. We weren't eligible for any rounds on the NHS and took a bank loan for the first round, which we're still paying back, so genuinely thought that our first round was our only shot. But we have been granted another chance. For us however it is not a chance to get pregnant, most (!) of me really doesn't think that will happen, it's a chance to answer the final niggling questions that we have about why things don't work. Haven't worked, won't ever work.
So, April this year we went off on the rollercoaster again - morning injections, frequent internal scans. Fun fun fun. I had a different drug in the 'pen' this time though and didn't get the pain that led hubby to take me to A&E the first time round. I have no idea if that's just a coincidence or if my body is just used to this shit now but there you go. I didn't quite follow the same pattern as the first round, although the clinic were happy with what they saw at every scan. The day I went in for a scan, on what was the equivalent in my first round of booking the trigger shot, they decided that my follicles weren't doing as well as they would have liked and so prescribed me more drugs for the trigger to be four days later. That didn't sit well with work but hey, needs must and work were very understanding about it all.
The retrieval operation did not go as well this time round for many reasons. First and foremost, due to Covid, hubby had to leave me before I went into theatre and he wasn't there when I came round afterwards. When I did come round I was in a lot of pain, far more than I had been first time round, and I hated that he wasn't there. They wouldn't bring him down until they'd done some more checks on me, I eventually found out that there had been some complications. I'd bled a lot from the vaginal incision so they had to fix that, plus there had been an issue with one of my ovaries. They had found a chocolate cyst which they'd also had to deal with. At least that all explained the extra pain! They'd had to put antibiotics through my canular as well as the sedative during the procedure and once I said how much pain I was in they also put some liquid paracetamol through it. That didn't work either so I was given some co-codamol tablets.
By then I was stable so we were given the news. In our first round they'd got 20 eggs out of me (20!! Still astounded at the number despite how things turned out) but this time there were only six. Six. That seemed like a kick in the teeth, we'd gone through it all again for a lousy six eggs. Now, this of course was not my first rodeo so I know it's actually all about how many were mature and how many fertilised rather than how many were retrieved in the first place. Nevertheless, it didn't feel like a good place to be starting at when I compared it to our first round.
As it turned out, it really was quality not quantity - of the six collected, all six were mature and five fertilised. So that put us on a much better footing! Nine fertilised from our first round so we were really hopeful that this time we might actually end up with something. Despite having to continuously remind myself of the reasons we were doing this - for closure, for answers. It wasn't going to work, remember?!
And it didn't. Of the five that fertilised only two made it to blastocyst and they failed the same tests the ones from the first round had - not suitable for transfer. So that was that. Except that, if you recall, one of our blastos from the first round hadn't failed but had come back as a 'no result'. Did we risk a transfer? We went back and forth on this one a lot. But at the end of the day we decided to take a punt, we decided that we'd always be asking ourselves 'what if' if we didn't. So, five months after starting drugs for our second round of IVF I started the drugs to prepare for transfer. Hormone patches, more injections and pessaries. All the fun of the fair.
The patches were annoying, they didn't stick and frequently came off in the shower. Cue panic that I wasn't getting the hormones in my system. The first injections, Fyremadel, were the same as the second injections from a normal IVF round (i.e. to stop me ovulating) so that was fine - well, as fine as these things ever are. However the injections that I then switched to for the second week were more problematic. We were given a small vial, a tube and two sets of needles. You needed attach a needle to the tube, draw the liquid from the vial (which I was rubbish at but hubby proved very adept) and then inject it. Trouble is, they didn't tell me there were two different needles for this process. A very large and very thick needle to draw up the liquid, then a very small and very thin needle to then inject. The first time I did this I injected with the larger needle which was just BEYOND painful. We only found the second smaller needles on the second day and suddenly it all made sense. So, injection fun plus patches fun. Oh! And twice daily pessaries. Mustn't forget them. You can see in this pic the size of the needles (the green ones are the larger ones that I incorrectly used to inject myself initially):
All of the scans I had throughout this process were fine, lining way above what they were looking for and where it needed to be so all systems go. Transfer was all booked, paperwork filled out and hoops jumped through. It was finally going to happen, I was ACTUALLY going to be pregnant!!!! Now, please don't get me wrong - I was fully prepared for the test you have to take two weeks later to be negative. Genuinely I was, but for two glorious weeks I would be properly really actually (albeit technically......) pregnant.
However it was not to be. The morning that transfer was booked for, when hubby was already on his way into town and I was half an hour away from leaving work the clinic called. Our little embryo hadn't survived the thawing process and so that was it. They were that heartless about it too, the empathy of their embryologists really does leave a lot to be desired but that's another conversation. I was heartbroken, of all the 'it's not going to work' scenarios I'd gone through in my head this wasn't one of them. I'd always assumed the transfer would happen and it would just fail at some point after that - the two-week-later test would be negative or, even if it was positive, I'd lose it before 12 weeks. I had never even considered that the transfer wouldn't actually happen.
I tried to ask if we could try with one of the other embryos we had, I knew they were all technically unviable but I'd taken all the drugs and we had a slot in theatre so surely there was something that could be done?! The embryologist didn't know what to do with me so said one of the consultants would call me back. Once that phone call was over I desperately tried to get hold of hubby but he was on the tube. I left so many missed calls that he phoned me as soon as he was above ground, before the consultant had called me back. He was equally heartbroken but when he found out how the news had been broken to me he got angry - he wanted to go round there (I was still at work but he was ten minutes' walk from the clinic) and talk to someone. I told him not to just as the consultant called so I hung up on him with a promise to call straight back and took the other call.
The consultant was far more measured and far more apologetic. She at least said she couldn't believe this had happened after all we'd been through and she was so sorry. I asked about another embryo, and she explained that it just wasn't possible. HFEA rules state that the remainder of our embryos could not be transferred due to the results of the tests that they had undergone, it really was game over. I hung up in tears and called hubby back to explain. He cried. I just wanted to hug him. I told him I was going to leave work so he got the tube over and I said I'd meet him by the station nearest work.
I picked up my bag and coat and went to my boss' office. I walked in, told him in tears that I was going home (it was 10.30am at this point) and he, knowing our history although not knowing about the transfer, just looked at me and said 'oh no, what's happened?'. I told him everything, we hadn't told anyone (not even parents) that we were going for the transfer as we hadn't wanted to get hopes up so he was technically the first person I told. He was lovely. I left before 11am, met hubby and we went to get very very drunk. We'd reassess things further down the line but at that moment booze is what was needed.
This had all taken place on a Friday and the following day, as fate would have it, we had to go to eldest nephew's birthday party. The same nephew who's birthday party the previous year had started the situation that I now find myself in with my brother. As you can imagine, that was exactly where I wanted to be. As fate would have it, my parents were late so when they arrived we went out to meet them in the car park to tell them. My brother happened to be there at the same time and when hubby said he had something to tell them I believe my brother's exact words were 'I don't need to hear this'. To which hubby, to give him credit, just looked at him and said 'yes you do'. After he'd told them all of the events of the day before my brother just walked off, looked like he couldn't care less. And I hate that that bothers me. I shouldn't have been surprised, but there you go. Mum and dad didn't really take it in as they were surrounded by sister-in-law's family and the kids a few minutes later but at least the news was out there.
We went over the hubby's parents that evening and told them, the following weekend we spent more time with my parents and went through it properly. But it was all so horrible. I went into work on the Monday as I was sure I'd be fine, I had things to do and needed the distraction. But I couldn't concentrate. Couldn't stop the tears from coming. I was sent home at 3pm, I didn't go back that week. I did a little work from home towards the end of the week but that was it.
I spent a lot of that week at home just crying. It was over. My eyes were so sore but still the tears came, I will never be pregnant. I will never have a child of my own. This is it. The pain was too much. I still had marks on my legs from the patches:
I couldn't scratch them off, no matter how hard I tried they wouldn't go away. Hubby caught me trying to peel the skin off my legs to try and get rid of the marks. Permanent reminders of what had happened. I couldn't deal with it.
The next week the UK government announced changes to the international travel rules and we started to look at holidays. Two weeks later we booked our break. The sunshine did wonders for my skin and the marks that had been on my legs finally disappeared. We've realised we don't have to go through our local council for adoption, that there are other agencies we can use so that route has opened up again. Hopefully. We'll look at it next year. For now we just need time to grieve, to heal. Although, to be honest, I'm not convinced I'll ever fully heal from this.
