Pregnancy Test Day

Posted on by Egg Girl

Monday 28 June – 12 days after my transfer and this was the day I took my pregnancy test.  Whilst I know it is good to stay positive, by the time I got to this day I had a feeling I wasn’t pregnant.  Everything I had read said you would feel certain things and I wasn’t feeling anything at all other than I really wanted to get back to the gym and that I was being lazy for not doing any thing.  Sure enough the pregnancy test came back negative.  I of course had to wait a further two days to do the second pregnancy test that they ask you to do in case it was too early to detect and that in fact the first test was not accurate.  Sadly the second test also came back negative.  I did also go and see my nice doctor in the UAE who did a blood test to confirm I was not pregnant.  Disappointed, sad, dismayed….. none of these words really describe just how I felt.  I felt total heart wrench and less about the fact that it hadn’t worked but more about the fact that I only had once chance (10 frozen eggs) left and this three month preparation and ordeal had put me one step further away from becoming a mother.  

The first few weeks were a bit of a blur and I was thankful that I had a work trip for six weeks in North America that I was going on a few weeks later.  A change of environment and being busy with work definitely helped me rebuild my strength and refocus on life beyond having a baby.  When was I going to give it another go…… I didn’t really know at this point, I just knew it was going to take me a little time to regroup and bounce back from this one it was a blow I knew would knock me hard and it did.

D day – AKA Conception Day

Posted on by Egg Girl

I don’t know if you do have a ‘conception day’ as such with this process, I mean is it on “Day 0” which is the day they defrosted 9 of my eggs and added the sperm to them? Is it today “Day 4” the day they are going to transfer the growing Embryo(s) back to me? I don’t really know but I’m going with today Wednesday 16 June, 2021. 

As I lie in a freezing cold hospital bed in a very modern fertility clinic in Northern Cyprus alone waiting a long three hours while they prepare my embryos for transfer, I can’t help reflect back on my journey and whatever the outcome (and trust me I am all too aware that there are still an awful lot of pitfalls that may still happen), I am really proud of myself and how far I have come to get to this very moment. 

Mid 2015 just after I turned 40 and decided I should freeze my eggs, I was told by several doctors that I had diminishing ovarian reserve and that I didn’t have any eggs left, it was too late for me to have a biological child using my own eggs. I was give no hope and when I look now at my AMH and the many IVF Facebook groups I am a member of I don’t think I have seen anyone try and use their own eggs with an AMH this low and an FSH as high as mine was, in fact most doctors won’t even start treatment with you if your numbers are as mine were. I was fortunate enough to find a doctor who said he’d give it a go. I like to think he did it for all the right reason (help a single middle age women preserve her fertility etc) and I think he did, but you never really know. Either way he helped me and now here I am six years on, almost reunited with some of my eggs in a completely different country from where we were separated and they were frozen several years ago, it all feels very surreal indeed!  

As I wait to be informed by the embryologist that my embryos are good to go I want to savor this moment and be really proud of myself…. For this is the moment when I still have hope, I am so close to being pregnant and I have hope that I will be when doctors said it wouldn’t happen for me. Maybe it won’t, I don’t know, but I also know that they would also have said that I would never have got this far too, so whatever happens, this moment right now is further than anyone thought I would get, hell it’s probably even further than I, deep down thought I would get, but yet here I am hours away from becoming PUPO (what I now know is IVF talk for “pregnant until proven otherwise”)!, so I’m going to relish that thought and this moment. 

I’m reading a book at the moment called “Option B” it’s about how Sheryl Sandburg had to rewrite her story and her happily ever after because of something unthinkable happened in her life. She had to rewrite her story and go with option B…. This book really resonates with me, not because I had the unthinkable act of having my husband drop dead one day, but because I have had to rewrite my story…. This isn’t how I had imagined “conception day” of my first born would be, I’m not wearing sexy underwear, I’m not with the love of my life, I’m not even having sex!!!!! But hey…. We have a choice, and this is what the book tells you. You can give up, be angry at the world for the situation you find yourself in, live with pain, sorrow and heartbreak, or you can dig deep, learn from this deep sadness and turn to plan b, rewrite YOUR happily ever after. Nobody took that choice away from you, they may have taken a lot of other things, but that choice is still yours…. And so here I am living my “Plan B”, with the most comfy underwear I own, alone and being artificially insemination with an embryo that has my egg and a donor sperm from someone I will never meet…. Plan B is not nearly as romantic as the Plan A in my head was, but it’s where I am and it’s my story and I’m good with it because it has made me so much stronger than I ever thought I would be. The thing I am most proud of from this whole journey is not what I have physically been through, but how I have been able to lean into my Plan B, accept it and make it happen. That is what I am most proud of. 

In a few hours they will tell me of my 9 eggs that were defrosted (from my 19) how many are still growing embryos. I know one didn’t make the defrost and then from the remaining 8 only 4 fertilized, so I know the most that could still be growing is 4 and even that is a long shot because each day there is a high % chance that the “less good” embryos won’t make it. This is based on egg quality and whilst they defrosted 9 of my youngest eggs (the ones they froze first) I was still 40+when I froze them, so if I have two embryos left that I could possibly transfer then I would be happy with that result. 

The next choice I have to make (if I have two embryos) is how many to transfer back to me. They usually do 1, but because of my age I can request 2 and sign a letter that states I accept the risks etc. 

I decided that I would transfer two embryos if there were two embryos to transfer, everything that I have research is that there is just such a small chance of them resulting in a pregnancy at my ‘egg age’ that the chances of me having twins was so slim and so I decided transfer two, if I do get pregnant with twins this is a good problem to have.

Its Game Time

After 3 hours of waiting in this freezing room for game time it finally arrived.  I was given a huge jug of water to drink to fill my bladder, told to put my gown and hairnet on and then I was put in a wheel chair and taken down to the procedure room.  I was taking it all in my stride until this moment, but the moment I was strapped into the operating table things became very real.  

I watched as the doctor transferred two of my growing embryo’s into me via a process he explained was much like having a smear done. There was a ultrasound pushed down on my bladder and uterus so I could see these tiny embryo’s swim towards my uterus lining.  That was it. It took about 1 minute and was a pretty amazing thing to watch.  Now I had to lie down for 1 hour before they would let me leave the clinic pick up my prescription of many medications that I now needed to take over the next two weeks and head back to the hotel.

I was tired when I got back to the hotel.  It had been an emotional and slightly surreal day and they had told me that I needed to take it very easy (no working out and no extreme heat) for the next few weeks. That was going to be hard but I knew I had come such a long way I didn’t want to blow it now.

I flew back to the UAE the next day which was relatively uneventful.  Had to have various PCR tests before departure and upon arrival back in the UAE but thankfully travelled safe and covid free and it was now the 12 day wait until I could take my first pregnancy test.

We all know NOT to google things for answers because sometimes the amount of things you find freak you out more than not knowing what the outcome could be, but of course I had to google and see if there was anything at all I should or could be experiencing that could indicate I was (or wasn’t) pregnant. 

What I found the hardest was that I wasn’t pregnant during this time but wasn’t allowed to do anything, so no drinking, no exercise, no going out in the sun (which in the middle of summer in the UAE is a little difficult to do) but I also couldn’t really tell anyone, so it was a long slow 12 day wait.  Click here to see the schedule of medication I took during this time.

Welcome To The Clinic

Posted on by Egg Girl

Final scan and blood test day has arrived and its off to the clinic I go.  Being slightly underwhelmed by Northern Cyprus itself and the five star hotel I had thought I would spoil myself with (I have lived too long in the UAE, no one knows how to do 5 stars as well as them!!!) I arrived at the clinic ready to meet the team I have been liaising with over the past few years and the doctor, PLUS most importantly be re-united with my eggs again!!

First impressions of the clinic – modern, clean, friendly all things I had hoped but you never know.  In fact the clinic to be honest looked very out of place compared to my experience in Northern Cyprus so far.  The IVF industry really is a thing that the region has focused on to attract medical tourism and from what I have seen so far they have done a good job.   

Firstly I met with my coordinator, lets call her Betty, she was younger than I had expected. Because I had spent the past few years whatsapping her and planning this trip I had formed a vision of what she would be like in person and she was definitely much younger than I had anticipated. Her English was perfect however and she seemed very knowledgeable, friendly and explained exactly what was happening and when.  Bloods were done first and would take 30 mins to get the results, that was the first thing that impressed me just how quickly I would get the results from my blood test.  Then I had a scan with the Dr… lets call him Dr Turk.  Friendly man, his English wasn’t as good as Betty, but still pretty good.  He scanned me, was very pleased with my lining, which was at 0.87cm.  He explained that they were looking for a lining above 0.7cm and that mine was excellent and was triple line.  He described it as ‘the garden is ready, the weather is good, we now need to do the planting’ not quite sure how I feel about that analogy but was pleased that my bloods and scan were as good as they could be and nice to inject a little humor into a pretty stressful process. 

A few tips

I had read a few things about ensuring your uterus lining was thick enough and well prepared and of course I tried to adopt all these things in the lead up to coming to the clinic, from the first day of my last period until this day I worked out every day (apparently working out helps send blood to your uterus area which helps the lining grow… )I was all for that as I love working out!

I drank copious amounts of dandelion tea, took supplements including iron, L-arginine and Vitamin E.  I wanted to do all I could to help with a positive outcome.  I also took the birth control pill in the month leading up to my period as my period’s had become irregular so this was going to help ensure my period came. During that month I also took prenatal vitamin and 75-100mg aspirin daily. Click here to see the full list of medication I took each day throughout this process.

So on Saturday 12 June on my first visit to the Cyprus clinic, my lining was good, my bloods were good and so it was time to decide how many eggs to defrost.  I decided on 8-10 eggs.  The actual number would depend on how they were frozen as apparently they arrived from the UK in x4 straws so had been frozen that way.  

The next steps were for them to defrost 8-10 of my eggs today (called Day 0) and then I had to wait an excruciating 24 hours to see if any of them survived the thaw and fertilized when they added the donor sperm!

Go and relax at the hotel they told me! A lot easier said than done but I did my best and was lucky that at least the weather was beautiful and I had a lot of personal admin and book reading to catch up on.  

Day 1 afternoon at about 3pm I received a whatapp message that said ‘we defrosted 9 eggs, 1 didn’t make the thaw, 4 didn’t fertilize but we have 4 that have fertilized.  Now we wait and see if transfer will be Day 3, 4 or 5’….. and so with a little bit optimism and a lot of googling about Day 1 embryos’ and the % that make it to Day 3 and Day5 I waited patiently to find out if there would be a transfer day and if so what day it would be, Day 3, Day 4 or Day 5. Literally like living on egg shells, but I kept telling myself that there was absolutely nothing at all I could do to determine a successful outcome so I should just wait patiently and see what the universe had planned for me.   I learnt my lesson the heard way when I was freezing my eggs that you NEVER get your hopes up in this process and even when you think you can you don’t because there are so many possible permutations for outcomes even ones you haven’t yet considered that its best just to take the ‘mini-win’ and then start focusing on the next hurdle… 

Day 3 went by and all 4 embryos were still growing, it was only towards the evening of Day 3 that I was informed embryo transfer would take place on Day 4.  Of course I had a million questions but communication was limited from the clinic, I assume because they were busy but when this is the most important thing in your world you want to know all the details, why day 4, is that good or bad, can I transfer 2, can I freeze the other 2, how long will I need to be at the clinic for on the day and so on.  All I got was a ‘we will tell you tomorrow, be here at 9:30am’.  With that I tried to get an early night thinking that sleep was about the only thing I could do to prepare for my big day tomorrow…. Conception day!

Cyprus Bound

Posted on by Egg Girl

Its finally here, I am on my way.  The last six year journey has led to this very point, I have resigned from my job, I am in the final few months of my notice period and I am sitting at the airport in Istanbul, a little scared and a little excited, heading to my where my frozen eggs are at a clinic in Northern Cyprus. I feel like I am playing a game of poker and I am ‘all in’.  Having absolutely no ability to know or control the outcome, knowing that I could be left in a few months time with no job, no pregnancy and feeling very lost, scared and searching for purpose or I could have my heart filled with joy and be heading closer to motherhood, there is just no knowing at this point. The only thing I do know is that I couldn’t do this next step half in… it had to be all in with the intent of leaving my job, starting a new chapter and in order to do that I had to learn harder into my fear than I have ever had to before, I had to say goodbye to a life that was safe and comfortable and jump with both feet into a new one of twist and turns that may bring me immense pain but may also bring me unimaginable joy. Either way I’m in…. and there is no turning back now.  

As I sit here at the airport waiting for my final flight, there are so many things I thought would be different, I could never have predicted I would be here in a million years.  I would never have thought I would have frozen my eggs, I never would have thought I would have sent them to a clinic in Cyprus, I never would have thought I would be trying to use them with an unknown sperm donor that I purchased for 250 Euro. I never would have thought I would be travelling to a country to use these sperm during a pandemic. There are SO many ‘I never would have thoughts’.  I think that in itself is teaching me something.  It is telling me that no matter how prepared I might want to be, how much control I might want to have about all the possible outcomes, we just can’t predict what will happen in our lives.  The universe has surprise after surprise for us and we can choose to live in fear or embrace that unknown, lean in to it, thrive off it, let it actually fuel us and ride a wave that is surely going to have many ups and downs but I’m starting to see that the ups are worth the downs, the highs are worth the lows and that I would rather live that way than a way of never knowing, a life of mediocrity because I was just too scared to try anything else. 

I find it slightly funny because I am a complete control freak, I make a plan for a plan, I prepare so far in advance that by the time the plan comes into play it needs to be updated because so many variables have changed, but for this part of the journey when I have thought about it over the past few years I thought I would be freaking out, scared, full of anxiety because I didn’t have complete oversight of what the outcome was going to be (I mean how could I), I thought I was really going to struggle with that aspect more than anything else……..but here I am about to get on my last 1 hour flight from Istanbul to Ercan (Northern Cyprus) and I feel a complete sense of calm.  Even as I was packing and a few friends and family members left me messages wishing me luck and telling me how proud they were of me it felt like they were more nervous and had more anxiety about the situation than I did.  I wasn’t phased about going alone, in fact I actually feel that this is something I needed to do alone and I seem to be totally detached with the outcome (at least right now) which is SO unlike me.  Normally I would be playing all the different scenario’s over in my head trying to predict what will happen, trying to say prayers and having anxiety about what will happen if this doesn’t work…. I mean maybe those feelings will come, but right now I feel complete calm. I think I have realized that there are just SO many possible permutations of what might/might not happen.  I might arrive in Cyprus have a scan and blood test and my body might not be ‘good to go’.  They might defrost my eggs or some of them and they might all die, my eggs and donor sperm might make embryos but then after a day or two they may not develop, they might put some embryo’s in me and they might not embed in my uterus and thus no pregnancy, an embryo might attach to my uterus but be chromosomally abnormal thus miscarrying or it might all go well and I might get pregnant…. Just SO many possible possibilities.   I try and not go to any of these outcomes for too long in my head for whilst I want to keep positive, I also want to prepare myself for the worst and just trust in the outcome.  All this being the case, funnily enough I feel that I am exactly where I am supposed to be and that I have done everything I could possibly have done to get to this point.  If things don’t go the way I want them to then I have to trust that having a child this way is/was just not on the cards for me and the universe has a bigger plan.  These are words that are helping me now and god knows I likely may need them to help me over the next few weeks and months, but right now I feel a state of calm knowing that I have tried, I have really tried and done all I can physically, mentally, emotionally to give this the best possible chance of a positive outcome even when doctors told me there was NO chance of a positive outcome.  Other than having a child in my 20s, there really is nothing else I could have done and if I had had a child in my 20s then I wouldn’t be who I am today with all the life changing experiences I have had and crossing paths with all the amazing people I have been so fortunate enough to come across, so I have to have zero regrets about that.  

So as I board my final flight to try and bring this next step of my journey to life and become pregnant using my own eggs and donor sperm, I do so with an open heart doing all I can to not be attached to whatever the outcome of this ‘possible last part of my journey’ to becoming a mum could be.  I’m trusting in the universe and I’m seeing what life has in store….this is all I can do at this point and it strangely feels not as scary as I had imagined it would!

Back to Baby Making

Posted on by Egg Girl

So……. It’s May and I’m almost at the end of my ‘pill month’ and let me tell you how it has gone so far.

Finding an amazing doctor in the UAE

Now that I wanted to get this baby making journey back on tracks I decided I really did need to find a doctor I could trust here in the UAE.  It’s not easy to ask if a doctor is ‘willing to help you as a single women in the UAE have a baby’.  The rules are still so grey and you don’t even know if asking this of a doctor is going to make them feel uneasy so I was thankful when a friend of a friend recommended a doctor who had helped someone in a similar position to me.  Let’s call her Doctor Natalie, a regular gynecologist, not an IVF expert, but I went to see her in January 2021 all the same.

WOW…. Dr Natalie was amazing.  She was direct and to the point, but I could tell was very smart and would be very supportive of my journey.  She wanted to read all my medical background from my clinic in Cyprus and she said she would help me however she could.  This was a massive relief and so with that I decided I had better get on and get vaccinated, wait a few months and then get this journey going again.

I was luckily able to be vaccinated in the UAE as early as January 2021 and had my second vaccine the first week in February.  All the reports I had read said ‘if you are trying to get pregnant do not get vaccinated’ and ‘do not try and get pregnant in the three months after getting vaccinated’.  I had to make a quick decision and I decided I needed to get vaccinated quickly and then wait for three months before I tried to get pregnant. I felt this was the safest way to ensure when I did need to travel to Cyprus I was protected from Covid.  I was also worried that the UAE was going to make vaccination mandatory and if I was pregnant then I wasn’t going to be able to get vaccinated but I also wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone why.

So three months after being vaccinated I started taking the birth control pill.  Let’s call this Day 1.  

On day 7 of taking the pill I went to see Dr Natalie for some blood tests and to have a procedure that apparently helps embryo implantation called ‘the scratch’.  I had read about ‘the scratch’ and everything I had read indicated that it was ‘uncomfortable’ but not too bad.  I had had plenty of ‘uncomfortable’ on this journey before so this wasn’t going to phase me – right!

Wrong! The scratch is essentially like a uterine biopsy.  The doctor uses a plastic cattier like straw to go through your cervix into your uterus and essentially ‘wound’ the uterus lining.  This is done so that your body self-heals and in the process of doing so produces lots of hormones that your body needs to help with embryo implantation. All that I read about the procedure says that this sometimes helps with embryo implantation, there is mixed research as to if it really does help but it definitely doesn’t hurt, so I decided to opt for it as I wanted to give everything I possibly could a try to give things all the possibility of succeeding.

Dr Natalie told me that the procedure sometimes requires anesthetic but we would see how it goes.  OK…. So this is going to get graphic…..

Yoga Breathing Needed

Upon entering my cervix the doctor asked if I had ever had surgery on my cervix as there was an ‘irregularity’ she had seen.  I answered that I had not and started to get a little worried. Seconds later she announced that I had an irregular growth in my cervix. It was a small tumor a polyp and that I would need to book an in-patient procedure to have it removed.  She explained that it was probably not cancerous but it needs to be removed and a biopsy done to be sure.  Seconds later she announced that if I held very still she might be able to remove the polyp right then and there and avoid the ‘in patient procedure’.  Sure enough a little tug and she removed this ball of flesh from inside me and popped it into a Petri dish ready to be sent for the biopsy.  I actually didn’t feel anything during this procedure but she did comment on my exemplary pain threshold which I was quite proud of….. However what came next assured me that my pain threshold wasn’t quite as exemplary as I had thought!

Next was carrying out ‘the scratch’ or the uterus biopsy.  In order do to this, this plastic catheter needed to enter my cervix into my uterus.  Well my cervix was firmly closed and it did NOT want to open for anything.  A second doctor joined us to hold my hand and push hard with an ultrasound on my bladder as Dr Natalie inserted the plastic straw like thing through my cervix into my uterus.  

I won’t lie there needed to be some serious breath work that took place here.  It was like my worst ever period pain times 100 not to mention the pressure on my bladder.  Thankfully the procedure only lasted about a minute and there was no need for anesthetic which Dr Natalie was very pleased about.  I had some cramping and bleeding for the next 12 hours but all in all I was ok.  Another sample was sent off to the lab and now I just had to wait 5 days to make sure I didn’t have uterine cancer!

On day 12 of taking the pill I got an email from Dr Natalie’s nurse informing me that my biopsy of the polyp and the uterus lining were normal and nothing to worry about! – phew….. crisis averted… back on the baby journey and now I had to wait until day 16 to get a uterus scan.

Day 16 and I am back in Dr Natalie’s office for a uterine scan. I am so used to these now that I barely think about it.  Dr Natalie took some pictures, some measurements and said all looks as good as it should at mid month and ordered her nurse to immediately send me the report and pictures so I could forward them to my clinic in Cyprus. 

I sent the report and scans to my doctor in Cyprus thinking that they would instruct me to take a prescribed injection of hormones that I was due to take in the next few days.  This was an injection that would help with the growth of the uterus lining. However after receiving my scans the Cyprus doctor told me there was no need to take the injection and to just carry on with the pill and aspirin and pre-natal vitamin and contact them again on day 1 of my period, which was due in about 3-4 days.

So this is where I am….. a few more days of the birth control pill and then it is ‘game time’ and shit is getting real! I am really doing this thing.  And as those of you that have followed my journey know, my biggest dilemma has been that I can’t stay in the UAE if I do get pregnant.  This means that I will have to leave my job, something no one in their right mind would do during a pandemic when so many people are getting laid off, but again is that just another excuse?  I do however need to jump into this thing with both feet and give it all I have to just see what happens and then worry about the fall out of no job or no pregnancy or both, if that happens.

This being the case I made a plan and that plan involve an end date for my work. Helped by some definite signs from my work that it is time to move on, I put a 12 month plan in place at the end of 2020 and that plan is starting to be put into action.  It is scary as hell but I think no matter what is going on in the world it is now or never to try this next chapter, so with that being said I handed my notice in at work last week.  Not only is the baby making journey getting real but so is the next chapter of my life whatever that may look like.  By the end of 2021 I will be unemployed and hopefully pregnant.

Getting You Up To Speed

Posted on by Egg Girl

The last 12 months have been a bumpy road! I don’t think anyone could have predicted just what an impact Covid would have on the world.  I have been relatively lucky that Covid’s impact to me personally has been limited to stopping me from going where I need to go internationally, but other than that I haven’t lost loved one or been in complete lockdown for months like many people.  I am lucky to live in a country that had the means to provide healthcare for all those that needed it, vaccinate early and also lift lockdowns to allow life to continue even with some adjustments for social distancing and mask wearing.  A reason I am grateful to live in the UAE.

One big impact COVID did have on me however is delaying my ‘having a baby’ plan. Getting to Cyprus where my eggs and donor sperm are was not possible for almost a year and even now it is technically possible, but there are a lot of restrictions, testing, quarantining etc.  So with the already challenging journey I am on COVID definitely hasn’t made it any easier.   

I have tried to view the delay as the universe telling me that the timing wasn’t quite right yet, however as I turned 46 in April there is only so much ‘universe patience’ one can have.   I know my eggs aren’t getting any older because they are frozen, but my body certainly isn’t getting any younger and I don’t want to be a mother who can’t run around with her kids, so pandemic or no pandemic I need to get this baby show on the road and that’s what I am doing.

Northern Cyprus is still on the UK’s ‘red list’ so if I was living in the UK right now I wouldn’t be able to get there, but from the UAE I can at least get there,  I mean it isn’t easy what with having to pre-pay government accommodation, quarantine for 10 days on arrival, PCR tests before you travel, when you arrive and before you return and that might be ok if you could plan it, but with not knowing when you need to travel until a few days before you have to go (due to scans and blood tests) this stretch of the journey isn’t going to be an easy trip to plan.  I am hoping that things might ease a little before I have to travel as travel restrictions seem to be changing day by day. 

So here I am, end of May and waiting for my period to arrive in the next few days.  At the beginning of this month I had to start taking the birth control pill, aspirin and a pre-natal vitamin.  You are probably wondering why I have to take the birth control pill!  I never thought that was something I was going to have to take again!  I have to take it the month before treatment because I need to make sure at the end of the month I have a period and as my period’s have become very infrequent to almost nonexistent over the past 12 months (early onset menopause! – a whole other chapter) this was a way to make sure my period did come.  Let me take a slight detour and talk about this ‘other chapter’ for a minute…..

Thyroid Tumor

Just before lockdown started around the world (March 2020, I decided to go and see my gynecologist in the UAE for a checkup as I was just feeling a little off and not myself.  If felt that my hormones were out of whack and I wasn’t sure if I should go and see my regular gynecologist ‘Dr Trump’ or I should go and see an endocrinologist.  I had never seen an endocrinologist, so I decided to go and see one but in the same hospital where my gynecologist practiced medicine.   

I walked into my appointment with the endocrinologist not really sure what to expect, but what happened next I certainly didn’t expect. She took one look at me and said ‘you are Dr Trump’s patient aren’t you?’  As I was confirming her question and about to explain that I wasn’t sure if I should have gone to see Dr Trump, or her as an endocrinologist, she told me that Dr Trump a healthy 48 year old, had passed away from respiratory problems a few days earlier!…. was it covid I thought, we were just in the early days of covid and no one really new but I could tell this doctor was visibly saddened by having to share this news with me.  I too was very shocked and sad.  Dr Trump had been one of my big cheerleaders on this journey and she was gone, so suddenly and way too early in her life.  This curve ball I definitely didn’t expect.

This doctor’s visit went from sad to worse….. after some blood tests and an ultrasound of my Thyroid it was declared that I had two tumors on my Thyroid and they needed to be biopsied asap to ensure they weren’t cancerous!  Of course I quickly sought a second opinion, was this why I had been feeling so out of sorts?  It was confirmed by a second clinic and doctor that yes these two masses on my Thyroid did indeed seem problematic and needed to be biopsied, but as the world started to go into lockdown and hospitals stopped taking non-essential procedures I struggled to find a hospital that would perform the biopsy as most hospitals were only accepting critical treatment and this wasn’t deemed critical.  I went back to the hospital, who had found the tumors initially and thankfully they managed to fit me in later that week for the biopsy, the day before full lockdown took effect.

The biopsies were performed under local anesthetic.  One was relatively simple the other was not.  They had to enter my thyroid three times to get the sample they needed so rather than two holes in my neck I had four! Not pleasant.  Especially as I had to get a taxi home alone and spend the next seven days in full lockdown on my own waiting for my results thinking about every possible worst case scenario – obviously.  This is exactly when NOT to google things!

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I have to say this was a low point for me….. not really the alone part, that part I am quite good at, but the time I had alone to think about how badly this could go, I did learn however that if there is any type of cancer to get Thyroid cancer is one of the better ones!

Thankfully seven days after my biopsy the doctor called me to confirm that both tumors were thankfully benign and I didn’t have Thyroid cancer!  I hadn’t however got to the bottom of what was making me feel so average and why my hormones were off but I did at least have the relief that I didn’t have cancer!

I put lockdown to good use. I thought if I can’t get to a doctor to find out what on earth is going on with my body then I will at least do all I can to try and get it back in shape and feeling healthy.  I walked up and down 32 flights of stairs inside the building where my apartment was located every day.  I drank 16 oz of freshly squeezed celery juice every morning, I used my terrace area to exercise every day and I almost completely cut sugar and alcohol from my diet.

A few months of lockdown later and I was feeling a lot better, still not wonderful but definitely on the right path.  I had signed up for this hormone/wellness virtual seminar.  I had decided that knowledge really was power and if I understood what was going on with my body then maybe I would start feel better and diagnose what was causing me to feel so ‘off’.  I had to go and get a blood test done where they tested for SO many things, all hormones, vitamin deficiencies etc and then you took your results to this virtual seminar where these doctors talked through what having high/low levels of various things could mean.  It was fascinating!  The things that were most ‘off’ for me were my cortisol was really high, testosterone very low and FSH really high.  Now I knew about FSH from my egg freezing days and I had suspected that I was maybe in peri-menopause but nothing had been confirmed.  

During the seminar we got onto the Q and A section and I didn’t hold back, I needed answers.  I told them my results and all three doctors immediately said ‘menopause – you need to try bio-identical hormones.  We don’t know if the UAE has them but if they do try them’

Bio-identical Hormones

After some google research and discussions with a friend who had used bio-identical hormones in the UK I thought this was definitely worth a try.  I managed to find a doctor that specialized in them in the UAE.  They are a form of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) but because they use a compound pharmacy for the medication it is produced to match what your specific body needs and it is more natural than synthetic HRT. 

After two months taking bio-identical hormones I felt wonderful.  With a strict diet and good exercise I managed to lose the weight I had been struggling to loose and finally I started to feel more balanced, my sleep was better and I just started to feel more myself.  I knew that when it came to being able to start my ‘having a baby’ journey again (when the world opened back up) that I was going to need to stop taking these bio-identical hormones, but for now they were helping me feel balanced and that is exactly what I needed so whilst the world was grounded due to covid I was just going to ride the wave until things opened up again.  

Judgement

Posted on by Egg Girl

Judgement – a funny thing really, as none of us want to believe we are judgmental people, but in reality aren’t we all?  Likely not meaning to impose our ‘best intention’ opinion on someone else, especially someone we care about and make small digs about how they are living their life, but we all do it and we it seems we can’t seem to help ourselves. But why? I mean how can we know what is ‘right’ for someone else unless we have been in the exact same position they have at the exact same time?

Judgement is something I have experienced quite a lot of on this journey. I expected it to a certain extent, but surprisingly there were people I didn’t expect it from who, seemingly unaware, became very judgmental and then there were those who I had expected judgement from who surprised me with their openness.

I shouldn’t blame people because I know it is only their fear that is triggering the judgement, how could they possibly know what it feels like to be me right now, even I have taken a while to come to terms with how ‘right now’ feels for me.  I, never in a million years, could have imagined myself being 46, single and trying to have a baby using a donor sperm 10 years ago, but here I am.  I think the sooner we accept that life rarely turns out the way we think it will, the better for all of us.  I think so many of us have this inner angst when our actual story isn’t turning out like the childhood story we had envisaged, we feel like we are ‘going against the grain’, we have this un-comfortableness that makes us feel unsettled, off balance.  I know this was definitely what happened for me.  Life wasn’t turning out like the fairy tale I imagined for myself and I could NOT get my head around it.  Friends and family members kept telling me ‘oh don’t worry, your time will come’ but it never did and the older I got the more off balance I felt because life was just not working out the way I had planned and I started to feel like I had failed.

It was only when I realized that I hadn’t failed at all, I just needed to view things completely differently and have a new plan, my own unique plan, not one that everyone else, including myself, had developed for me.  A plan that perhaps not everyone was going to be ‘ok’ with because it wasn’t what they had hoped for me or would hope for themselves, but this new plan was going to be my plan and my reality and actually…….. Isn’t that quite exciting? That I get to have my very own unique plan, not one that most people follow?  The sooner I got my head around that and got on board with the excitement of my own unique plan, the better. I had one life, it was MY life and I had to live it in a way that I felt good about, not how my friends and family wanted me to, not to keep the neighbors and work colleagues from gossiping behind my back, all of that was going to happen anyway, I had to live my life for me, for what I believed was going to give me the most purpose, meaning and freedom.   I needed to be sure that when I got to the end of my life, I had no regrets.  This realization was a big one for me and one that took a lot of time to come to terms with, I lost friends over it but I became more courageous because of it and I knew that as long as I was able to look at myself in the mirror every day and know that I was being true to myself at the core, then that is what would keep me honest and keep me moving forward.

I can assure each and every one of you reading this that there NEVER comes a time in your life, however old you are, whatever your circumstance, when you give up the hope that Mr Right might swoop in on his white stallion and whisk you off your feet and you don’t have to be considering doing this along using a donor sperm.  I mean here I am aged 46 and two weeks away from being artificially inseminated with an embryo using my eggs and a donor sperm and there is still a tiny part of me thinks maybe Mr Right will get here in time! – crazy I know especially because I actually think it might be easier now to do it alone looking around at some of my friend’s relationships, but I still wish for it and I can promise you if you ever find yourself in my position, you too will have this crazy thought that maybe, just maybe Mr Right will get to you in time!

Maybe I should dismiss this thought especially now being so close to this NOT being my reality, but I don’t, I think ‘hope’ is important, but so too is being realistic. I am trying to be open to all possible outcomes good or bad, traditional or unconventional and know that there isn’t one ‘right’ way for everyone to do things and that the ‘right’ way for me will be something that the universe will guide me towards.  This journey has taught me many things but a couple of lessons that will stick with me for life and I like to think are lessons I can take with me to all aspects of my life are ‘care less what other people think’ and ‘be more open to all possible outcomes’.  

To elaborate a little, for the longest time I was so worried about what other people would think of me choosing this journey. I mean I didn’t see it as a choice but for many it was.  Of course this isn’t the way I would want to have a baby if I did have a choice, but I thought it was much better than either living with regret of not trying or of spending my life with someone who didn’t make me happy just to have a baby.  

I was so worried that by taking this path I would be the talk of the town, people would look down on me, I would have ‘failed’ because I wasn’t following the traditional way of doing things.  This may sound stupid but I promise you, this is what goes through your head, particularly if you live in a country (like the UAE) where what I am doing is illegal (being single and having a baby).  The reality is that most of what we think other people are thinking about us is actually in our heads.  There were and are of course people who are going to talk, going to judge, going to tell me I am selfish, tell me they would never take this path or find some other way to make me feel less than adequate because what I am doing is not in keeping with their way of doing things.  That has and likely will continue to happen, but there are also those people who have surprised me along the way, who have told me I am brave, courageous, selfless and will make an amazing mum and these people are the people that have encouraged me to lean into all the fear that I have, be open to all the different possible outcomes and continue on a journey that is scary, sometimes a little lonely and definitely unchartered.  Whatever the ending of my story looks like, I hope that whatever has happened on my journey so far has taught me to worry less what other people think, perhaps even give them the benefit of the doubt and to be open to other possible outcomes in all situations for it is rare that there is only one ‘right’ way to do things. 

Let’s Doula This Together

Posted on by Egg Girl

If someone had told me in my mid 20s that at 45 I would be unmarried and trying to have a child alone using donor sperm, I would have laughed at them. Never in a million years did I think that would be me, yet here I am 45, single and about to do this.

It has taken me a while to come to terms with where I am at. For the longest time I kept telling myself ‘I’ll just wait a little bit longer to see if Mr Right shows up, I have got time’…. you tell this to yourself month in month out, year in year out until one day you wake up and are 45! There is never a time or age that you consciously think ‘ok I now have to do it alone’ you still always hold onto the hope (despite it being completely unrealistic) that Mr Right will show up just in time! I mean even last year at aged 44 when I met someone I thought….. ‘maybe we could do it together’ but the reality is, that is just too much pressure for any person or relationship. I am however now at peace with trying to be a single mum by choice, in fact I think it might be slightly easier in some regards. Through this process I have learnt to care less what people think of my decision, It isn’t their life and of course doing it this way wasn’t my first choice, but sometimes we have to change our plan and make a new one if we are going to reach our dreams and that is exactly what I am doing.

Alone, however i am not…. Obviously I always thought I would be trying to have a baby with the love of my life, but things change and I have had to adapt my story. I am however definitely NOT doing this alone, I have a wonderful network of friends and family supporting me at every turn and I am so thankful for that. One friend in particularly has been my rock and i want to talk about her in this post.

Her mantra is ‘Because no one should have to do it alone’ and those beautiful words are the words of my very best friend (sometimes known as the little sister i never had). I will call her Naomi for the sake of this post, but she knows who she is.

I met Naomi over 10 years ago when we were both volunteering in Africa. She was a fresh graduate taking some time out after uni and I was in my mid 30’s ticking off a bucket list item and probably (although i didn’t realise it at the time) running away from a 7 year relationship that I knew in my heart was not meant to be.

We become friends from the first day we met, her energy was infectious and it was impossible for people not to love being around her. In the past 10 years we have travelled together, worked together, laughed together and cried together. Neither of us is perfect and we both have our ups and downs, but she is most definitely my most treasured friends and always will be no matter where we are in this world.

Through this whole journey she has been there to support, love and cry with me. I remember back to receiving my AMH and FSH blood test results over 5 years ago. For those of you that have read my blog you will remember these were NOT good test results, in fact I was told it was too late for me to even try and freeze my eggs. At that time I went into a state of shock and slight depression. I couldn’t process what I had been told and I didn’t know how to pick myself up again. Naomi, who i am proud to call my best friend got on a plane, flew from where she lived to the UAE, where I was, to be my rock. She picked me up and told me I was NOT giving up and reminded me that nothing good comes easy. She was there for me when I started my first round of egg freezing and had my first injection, in fact I think she may have even given it to me! When she had to leave to fly back home to her life and job, she left me 30 hand written notes, one for each day i was having treatment that month. I was to open one note when I woke up in the morning and these notes would pick me up and keep going in her absence. She was my beacon at sea and she helped me get through one of my most difficult times of my life. I will never forget this and be eternally grateful for her wonderful friendship.

Fast forward to a few months ago and this amazing human who LOVES children (and will be an amazing mum herself one day) didn’t let the fact that she got Furloughed during COVID-19 get her down…. nope, she put her ‘lockdown time’ to good use and trained to be a Doula!

I like to think (slightly selfishly) that it was because she knew I was going to need a birthing partner that she made this decision and that it would of course be her who took that role by my side, so she thought she had better get some ‘training in’, but I know it is because she isn’t just going to be there for me but for hundreds of others out there who need someone by their side when they might feel alone. This is the kind of selfless person she is!

So, whilst i don’t have a partner in the traditional sense of ‘baby making’, i do have a partner in the untraditional sense and someone I know will be my biggest cheerleader, my rock when I need it and the most amazing godmother to my child if I get that far. I am very fortunate!

During this journey some people I have come across have told me that bringing a child into this world with only one parent is a selfish act because this child will only experience the love from one parent, not two. These people don’t know me and they don’t know Naomi! I have so much love in my heart that I am ready to give to a child and I know Naomi has even more! If I am lucky enough to have a child then the love this child will receive from Naomi and I will be way more than some children ever experience from a traditional two parent house hold, so I am confident in knowing that my decision to be a single mum is in fact not in the least bit selfish and whilst it might not be the ‘normal’ way of doing things….. what is normal anymore especially during these unprecedented COVID times…. if what has happened to the world during COVID hasn’t shown people that ‘normal’ isn’t always best, then I don’t know what will. We are in a ‘new normal’ now and its time to embrace this change.

Leaning into the Fear

Posted on by Egg Girl

Covid Caos

COVID-19 hit the world by storm early this year and I think when it did everyone thought ‘lock everything down, give it a few months and we will be able to move on with our lives’. This has most certainly NOT been the case. We are definitely NOT back to the life we once thought was normal and I don’t think we ever will be.

The question for many is do we actually want to be? I know for me I like my new normal. Don’t get me wrong there are certainly challenges to it (not being able to travel freely, see friends and family easily etc) but what these ‘Covid times’ have given me is the chance to slow down, take a breath and find a sense of balance and what is really important in life.

Pre-Covid the next step for me on my ‘trying to become a mum’ journey was to try and travel to Cyprus (where my chosen clinic, frozen eggs and donor sperm are located) this summer with an aim to be pregnant by September this year. Obviously with everything be locked down and travel being virtually impossible this hasn’t happened. The downtime I have spent during lockdown has however given me time to reflect on just how much I want this next step or at least to give it my all in trying and hope that having a biological child is in the cards for me.

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Making a Plan

I have been in regular comms with my clinic to understand the parameters around travel in and out of the country and it seems that the UAE is still on the restricted list, however they are allowing people to travel there for a maximum of three days IF it is for medical reasons and thankfully IVF is deemed medical, so I am now able to get to Cyprus albeit with some logistics and challenges whilst getting in and out. So what am I waiting for you are probably asking…. if i know 100% i want to give this a go, i have accepted it is going to be with donor sperm (not with a partner i had hoped to find by this time in my life) why aren’t i there right now giving it a go!?

I wish it was as easy as that and maybe i am just making up excuses to delay further but I am worried about the logistics. I mean what if they defrost my eggs and sperm and then for some reason lockdown happens again and i can’t get into Cyprus OR what happens if i get there for my three days and then test positive? All real possibilities so do i wait longer an hope the Covid situation will improve or have i waited long enough and just go for it and pray everything falls into place? I think i am verging on the latter, especially not knowing when Covid will be under control. I mean it could be another year or so before a vaccine and i don’t have another year. Each month i am getting older is going to make it harder for this to work because despite my eggs not ageing (because they are frozen) my body is and I don’t want to be a mum who is too old to do all the things mum’s do with their kids, so i really do need to get going pronto!

That being the case I am just waiting for my next period to come. Then I will take the medication i have been prescribed by my clinic for the month prior to treatment and hopefully by the end of November/early December I will be on my way to give this thing a go.

Feel the Fear and do it anyway

If i am being brutally honest I am petrified, not of the treatment or the travel or of getting COVID, but of it NOT working. While I have my eggs frozen and safe i have hope and once I have tried, if it doesn’t work then that hope is gone and if that happens i don’t know how I will deal with that emotionally.

I know I have to give it a go but I am really scared of the outcome. I have had so much disappointment in the past on this journey and at times it has taken strength i didn’t think i had to dig deep and keep going and when I look back i know how far i have come especially after being told over six years ago (at the beginning of my egg freezing journey) that there was no hope at all.

There is a little part of me that thinks about what an amazing tale i will have to tell if and when I hold my biological child in my arms and I want that so very badly, more than anything. I couldn’t imaging my life feeling complete without it, so i think for now i need to hold on to that. Visualising that moment isn’t going to make the devastation any less painful if it doesn’t work so I need to hold on to it right now and not worry about the outcome. I will just deal with the devastation of it not working if and when that happens. There is no point worrying about something that that I can’t control and hasn’t actually happened yet – right!

I read something the other day that said the majority of anxiety that people experience is either from worrying about past or present things it is never from living in the present. I keep thinking about this statement and keep coming back to just how true it really is. When i think about me here and now I have no worry, no uncertainty it is only when i think about what ‘might’ happen that I become anxious, so I just need to trust in the universe, keep breathing and lean into my fear, something I have become quite good at especially over the past six months.

Lets hope by Christmas I will be in a position to look back on 2020 as the year that definitely didn’t go to plan, but it was the year that I got what I really wanted for Christmas……. the feeling of being pregnant!

A BIG bump in the road, not my belly!

Posted on by Egg Girl

It has been almost 9 months since i last posted and i had hoped that this post would be about my next chapter and i would be on my way to Cyprus for treatment, but this is not on the cards at the moment because COVID-19 has put a standstill on the world and most definitely on my ‘becoming a mother’ journey for now.

My previous post was about a very raw heartbreak which I am pleased to say i got over rather quicker than I expected. I had some amazing people come into my life including an amazing guy who restored my faith in the power of human connection and showed me what I had been missing in previous relationships.

So, the plan was get to this summer, head to Cyprus, see if i could get pregnant and then worry about the rest of ‘what happens next’ if i manage to get pregnant. Sadly as Covid-19 hit the world hard in March and is still playing havoc with people’s travel plans I have no idea when I am going to be able to travel without restrictions and quarantines etc. One thing is for sure, when i do decide to go to Cyprus i don’t need any extra stress, so i have decided to wait until travel is somewhat back to normal. It won’t be ‘normal’ as we knew it ever, I don’t think, even when a vaccine is introduced, but at least, hopefully by next year, the world will have learnt how to live a little bit better with this new ‘norm’ and travel protocols will be in place to make things safer to travel. Until this time I am focusing on me, getting back into shape, loosing some weight, getting strong mentally and physically and just trying to be in the best condition I can be until it is safe to travel again.

We are living in unprecedented times and this is just a small spanner in the works, nothing that is going to stop me from trying to reach my dream, just delaying the process for now. So I am going to continue to trust in the universe and believe that I am exactly where I need to be right now and that with time I will be back on the road again.