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.