Fertility Show - London 2013

So last weekend we went along to the Fertility Show at London Olympia. There were lots of IVF clinics there, not just from the UK, but also from Spain, Greece and the US. It was a really interesting afternoon, and I'm glad we went along. There were interesting seminars from people/experts working in the industry and it was just a good way to consider our options, even though they are limited. We came back with lots of bumpf - a lot I've chucked, but some I've kept for future reference.

I guess our choices boil down to the following: try PGD a fourth time (£9k/$15k), try egg donation (around the same cost as PGD, possibly more, whether we do it here in the UK or aboard), adoption or do nothing at all. And I guess there is trying naturally again and hoping we beat (my very poor) odds. None of these options is easy. I guess I/we are moving more towards egg donation as the most realistic chance of us having a family. In the UK, egg donation is non-anonymous, meaning the child is entitled to trace their donor when they are old enough. But elsewhere in Europe, such as Spain, it is totally anonymous, and the child will never be able to trace their donor.

How do I feel about all of this? To be honest, I'm quite tired of the whole thing. The past few years have been very gruelling and I'm quite exhausted just thinking about it all. Our three PGDs didn't work for one reason or another, and I don't think it's an unusual experience. In the same vein, there's been a small flurry of articles about the impact of IVF when it doesn't work, which I thought were interesting:

Five million babies have been born thanks to IVF. But few people talk of the many more times the treatment doesn't work, says Lisa Jardine, the departing chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24652639

A recent Magazine article by Lisa Jardine about the frequency with which In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) fails prompted readers to send in their own experiences.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24725655

There may be five million IVF success stories, but for many millions more women, the treatments have failed. So why do we never hear from them?
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/27/ivf-where-all-grief-going

PGD 3 - Results

Unfortunately both embies were 'unsuitable for transfer', which again means that they were both unbalanced. Trying not to be gutted, but am. Just very, very sad.

Still hanging in there...

The eggs have survived so far and have both fertilised! They get biopsied on Thursday. Fingers & toes crossed...

PGD No3

Today we underwent PGD No3. I've been doing the short protocol for the past two weeks -  a cetrotide injection in the morning and a Gonal f injection in the evening - and it was looking good. I was producing lots of plump follicles; just what was needed for a good harvest of eggs. But it was not to be. Even though I had over 20 follicles that were over 14mm (big enough for there to potentially be an egg inside) , one ovary did not yield any eggs at all and the other yielded only two. The egg collection was this morning. When I came round from the sedation, the embryologist told me they had got two eggs. I thought I had misheard. My heart sank. The consultant later came round and said that sometimes this happens. We are both very discouraged and right now I'm writing this with the iPad in one hand and a much-needed vodka and coke in the other. They'll let us know tomorrow if either of those eggs was good enough to be fertilised. I hate the way your hopes get built up by IVF and then you have to ride the way down as you get knocked back. Will let you know how we get on.

``Where were you when my baby died?!''

Just been having a look at the TFMR boards I read, and one of the posts really resonated with me. The poster has just broken up with her boyfriend after a TFMR, and she had this to say:

''I'm gutted it's pushed us apart. I just feel numb. I'm more devastated at everyone else's reaction. Everyone is rushing around, so worried about how I am. WHERE WERE YOU WHEN MY BABY DIED? Nobody wanted coffee then.''

That's so true. Is losing a baby, regardless of the circumstance, regarded by people as too serious to even 'go there' so they never mention it or do people really think that losing a baby is no big deal? Being of a pessimistic nature, I fear it's the latter.

Podcast on Infertility

An interesting podcast about the cons & pros of living child free from Resolve, a US infertility support association:

http://resolve.streamguys.com/A%20Family%20of%20Two-Exploring%20the%20Option%20of%20Childfree%20Living%202-1.mp3

Babies & pregnant friends

There's a repeated theme in many of the infertility and baby loss forums I read, and that's about the discomfort, if not outright fear, about meeting pregnant friends or their new babies. Or being invited to baby showers; seeing scan pics and baby pics on Facebook.

What can be done about it? Before entering the world of infertility/baby loss, people probably didn't have a problem with this at all. But tumbling into the desperate hole that is infertility, changes how you exprience everyone else's good fortune: if infertility is like breaking a leg, then each time you hear about other people's 'good news' is like getting your leg broken, again and again. It becomes ever-harder to heal as you go back to square one each time.

If you are in this boat, what can you do? If you are at the beginning of this journey, then you are normally still able to psyche yourself up, take a deep breath, and slap that happy face on, faking happiness & interest for the required amount of time. As your journey progresses, this may become harder to achieve. And then you've got to decide if you are going to decline meetings the direct way or the indirect way. The indirect way means 'things come up' at inconvenient times and 'you're terribly sorry, but you just can't make it'. The more direct, honest way, is to simply say that you are having a hard time dealing with your struggle to have a family, and that seeing babies or pregnant women is very upsetting for you, bordering on a phobia. You say that you hope one day she will understand, and that your reaction is sadly very common for people dealing with your situation.

At different points in the past five years I have tried all three approaches, but these days I find it easier to stick with people who don't have kids and are very unlikely (for various reasons) to have them. My life has changed drastically in the years we've been ttc, and my friendship base has totally changed. I guess it's to be expected when the lives of the people you're closest to go in a completely different direction, but it's still hard to live with.

One in 10

http://1in10blog.wordpress.com/

2yr and 4yr anniversaries

These past few days mark the second and fourth anniversaries of my two tfmrs. The first was on May 22 2009 and the second on 28 May 2011. This year I am not feeling as bad as the first anniversary of my second tfmr. After that second tfmr, I pretty much cried at some point every day for the next year and a bit. The first anniversary was an important watershed moment. Since that time I've found out I'm a de novo balanced translocation carrier, had two unsuccessful rounds of ivf/Pgd and am now taking anti-depressants to stop myself spiralling into the worst of my depressive episodes. Myself and DH are currently having joint fertility counselling at the ivf hospital. DH wants to carry on with the ivf, believing we have a good chance of success, while I've had enough, and in a much more negative frame of mind about our chances. Basically I don't think they are good. I realise I'm a pretty glass-half full person anyway, and he's the opposite, but I just don't want more injections, scans, poking and prodding. Plus he refuses to go anywhere near me 'naturally' which I realise is understandable but still upsetting. DH is quite clear that a future without children is not acceptable to him. I am more sanguine about it. I have thought about egg donation and adoption, and I'm not there yet. I don't know what I want. I think what I need is a good, long period of psychological stability and I may slowly revert back to a semblance of my old self. 

A few things you shouldn't say to a childless woman

Pretty good article from Australian publication, The Age, on some of the things people with kids say to those without:

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/a-few-things-you-shouldnt-say-to-a-childless-woman-20130503-2iyj5.html

Impact of Grief

Our circumstances are of course very different, but I can relate to much of what this blogger has to say about how he feels, six months after he lost his wife.

http://lifeasawidower.com/2013/05/01/six-months/

Had Enough

I haven't posted recently because I simply haven't known what to write. I started bleeding a few days before my BFN and thinking that it was all over, I googled furiously, and there were posts saying that people had bled before taking the test and they still got a BFP at the end of it. But wasn't to be for us. TBH, it didn't feel like I was going to get a BFP; i pretty much knew the result before I took the test. I had taken that day off work as i didn't want to be in work whatever the result. DH was at home anyway as he has not been working since June last year.

As soon as i got the BFN, I went straight to my GP and explained that I almost certainly needed to go on anti-depressants as while i was still in the 'numb' stage, I feared that my thoughts would soon go into a death-spiral, and I was anxious to avoid that if at all possible. The death-spiral thoughts have been plaguing me for around two years now, effectively since we got the bad news about baby no2; they manifest themselves by insomnia from 3am-5am, and my thoughts are negative in the extreme. I had hoped that seven months off and therapy would help, and while it did help to some extent, it wasn't enough on its own. The thoughts would normally lift once i got myself out of bed and off to work, but getting out of bed when you are in that mind-set was getting increasingly hard. I should probably have been on anti-ds ever since we got the bad news about baby 2, but I had held out. Now that we got our BFN from PGD2, I knew that would be the only option. They have definitely helped, and my thoughts have been more controlled and not as negative as they could be.

However, having said all that, I did have a breakdown on Saturday morning. DH told me that my SIL2 has had her first baby, so that's three babies on DH's side now from his two brothers. His cousins also have three babies now and I'm sure there are plenty more to come. Anyway, I had a total meltdown. I really don't think I can do this anymore; I've had my fill.

BFN

Unfortunately, I tested today and it was negative. These embryos haven't taken sadly. Numb at the moment.

Leaning In

So, I’ve received my copy of Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’, her treatise on women in the workplace. She is phenomenally successful and it’s easy to see why: she is ultra-smart, ultra-hard working, and she’s charming too. Not the ball-breaker stereotype of the successful business woman. In the ‘olden days,’ I would have normally considered myself to be very ambitious. I did well at university and had planned, in my idealistic moments, on being a working mother. But the events of the past few years mean that it’s an achievement just getting out of bed and getting to work. The mental energy it takes just to project the fine sliver of normality needed to function in the workplace is enormous, and most days I’m hanging on by my fingernails.

So I find myself asking: what would she do if she’d been dealt the cards I’ve been dealt? What if her children had been born dead rather than alive? Would she have still have fired off emails in the immediate hours after their birth, and then returned to work within three months, hitting the ground running like nothing had happened? How would someone like her have handled it? Am I on the overly-negative/depressed scale of things, or would someone with a more naturally optimistic outlook have coped better? I really don’t know. I’m just lucky that I still have a job given the recession and the scale of the job cuts all around. I’m lucky that I can still function in my job, in fact it helps to keep me sane and thinking of other things, even if I am a wordless misery while I’m here.  

But work is still only a temporary distraction. What has happened to me dominates - still - most waking thoughts. But now I at least can watch a program like ‘Born to Be Different' without crying. Realistically, all the conditions that these children have been born with would normally be identified in the ultra-sound scan, and many expectant parents would choose not to carry on. That does disturb me. The alternative life I would have led if I’d kept my babies (as long as they hadn’t been stillborn) is what this programme focuses on. That is the truth of the decision I made and I have to live with that.  

But we have had some hope recently. We have now completed our second round of IVF/PGD. And this time, for once, we have some good news. I was put on the ‘short protocol’, which meant a two-week treatment plan rather than a six-week treatment, which was a lot better (though I did have to do double the injections). We managed to get 12 eggs, of which eight fertilized. And two were ‘suitable for transfer’. They went ‘back in’ a few days ago, and then I have to do a pregnancy test next week. Watch this space…

IVF Drug Costs

I've just been looking into prices for IVF medication for our forthcoming PGD attempt (No.2). If I'd thought there would be a standard price for the different drugs (fyi this time I'm doing the short protocol rather than the long protocol for No1) , then I was much mistaken. As you can see below, the price variations aren't small, they are HUGE. It's a Moroccan bazaar out there! (numbers green are the cheapest prices and those in red are the most expensive)

	Gonal F 900 iu pen x 2	Buserelin 5.5 ml vial x 1	Cetrotide injection 0.25mg x 7	Oestradiol valerate (Progynova) 2mg x 84	Ovitrelle injection 250mcg x 1	Delivery	Total
Healthcare at home	£307.20	£18.99	£107.52	£10.07	£8.28	£30.00	£482.06
Asda	£564.00	£14.32	£158.27	£7.30	£31.38	£0.00	£775.27
Central Homecare	£564.00	£16.47	£193.20	£7.60	£38.31	£0.00	£819.58
Fertility2u.com	£595.00	£21.50	£191.73	£21.60	£37.94	£20.00	£887.77
Chemist Direct	£752.00	£35.64	£218.40	£10.08	£39.50	£0.00	£1,055.62
Boots pharmacy - over phone	£634.00	£33.02	£189.91	£9.85	-	£0.00	£866.78
Boots (My local branch)	£846.00	£41.28	£237.39	£8.01	£47.07	£0.00	£1,179.75
Co-op pharmacy online	£676.80	£16.51	£189.92	£8.76	£37.66	£0.00	£929.65
Lloyds pharmacy online	-	£16.51	£189.91	£8.40	-	£0.00	£214.82