The deafening silence

Today we went to out IVF clinic for what we thought would be the last time for this cycle. I'm 7 weeks 4 days pregnant and today should have been the day when we heard our babies heartbeat for the first time. The nurse inserted the scanning probe and moved it around a bit and we all waited and listened for that pulsating sound that would have put our minds at ease. That sound never came. We were faced with a deafening silence. The nurse tried very hard to find what she knew we needed to hear. However she was trying in vein. She showed us the screen and said she could see everything she needed to. There's a gestational sac, a yolk sac and a foetal pole (what the embryo is called now) but, alas, no foetal heartbeat. As I had some bleeding 10 days ago the nurse said it may be that baby had died. She did give us a glimmer of hope though. She said that very occasionally the embryo beds into the lining so deeply that it obscures the heartbeat. I have to go back next week to see if we can find the heartbeat. So we have another week of uncertainty ahead of us. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. I know we have a God who loves us and can do miracles. I know this is an opportunity to pray for the heartbeat to appear miraculously. However, after the bleeding scare and everything up to now I feel like I'm all prayed out. I don't have enough faith left to believe we'll hear a heartbeat next week. I want to buy I'm so very tired! So, friends, if you pray please pray for me. Please have faith for my miracle when I don't have any left.

Another rollercoaster of a week!

Nothing is ever simple is it?! This week stated with worry as I had 2 episodes of bleeding, one on Sunday, one on Monday. This meant I had to have 2 blood tests to check my hormone levels are rising enough. I have the second one today. I'll find out the results tomorrow. However I'm pretty sure I'm still pregnant. I had been having a bit of nausea and had thrown up once. Monday afternoon I started to feel really sick but also had diarrhoea so wondered if it was just a bug. I then started bleeding again and the nausea stopped. Then I stopped bleeding and threw up shortly after! Yesterday nausea hit me like a bus! I still feel so very sick. My diet is now plain toast, plain rice and ginger biscuits! I'm going to have an interesting Christmas dinner! I now only feel sick so maybe it is pregnancy related and not a bug. I've not actually thrown up since Monday but I've barely eaten anything. I talked to a midwife at my clinic yesterday just to check. She said it sounds like it is pregnancy related but maybe I picked up a bug too. She said as I have experienced nausea with all artificial hormones I've taken in this process this is a good sign that hormone levels are increasing in my body. I am of course still taking hormones 7 times a day but the fact that the nausea is getting worse is maybe a sign my body is starting to take over. How strange to talk about feeling awful as a good sign!

There's an additional issue for me with morning sickness affecting me so badly. As long as I can remember I have suffered from emetiphobia (fear of vomiting). This has been debilitating for me. I've never felt I can articulate it so as a child I just cried every time I felt sick or someone around me was sick. As I got older I got angry and would scream and shout. As an adult it induced panic attacks, which would make me feel sick, a viscous cycle. In all honesty this phobia made me reluctant to get pregnant in case I got morning sickness. Thankfully, about a year and a half ago, at a freedom in Christ away day, I confessed to my phobia and God began the process of freeing me from this phobia. In God's wonderful timing I'm now able to be sick without, most of the time, having a panic attack. However he's not done setting me free yet. Feeling sick and like I will be sick is accompanied with a constant anxiety. I feel out of control and like I can't cope with anything when I feel like that. Also the problem with it being pregnancy related is seeing the end. I now have to pray every day that God will complete his work of freeing me from this debilitating phobia. I am praying for some perspective and some hope. Being sick is never going to be an enjoyable experience but if I can get through this without the constant companion of fear and dread that would be lovely! I was praying that I would escape morning sickness but I realised that was a prayer from a place of fear. As silly as it sounds in actually grateful to be feeling like this. After the bleeding is reassurance that I'm still pregnant. I now need to pray that I can cope with the sickness and maybe get some respite occasionally. If you believe in the power of prayer would you please join me?

An unexpected wait

It would seem nothing is ever simple with our IVF journey! Yesterday I woke up with severe cramps like really bad period pain. I then went to the loo and discovered I was bleeding, really quite heavily. I called the clinic and they said it would be too early to see anything on a scan. So I had blood taken today and will have more taken on Wednesday. The levels of pregnancy hormone in my blood should double every 48 hrs if I'm still pregnant. The bleeding has stopped and my nausea has returned. I will find out on Thursday, Christmas eve, if I'm still pregnant. So this week will be the wait I never expected.

I am worried but there's nothing I can do now, I just have to wait it out. Worrying isn't going to make me stay pregnant. Praying might! This journey has been full of bumps and lessons. It's exhausting this early pregnancy lark!

Transition

We've been trying for a baby for 4 years. 2014 was taken up with unsuccessful fertility treatments. This year has been spent on the IVF rollercoaster. October saw our first attempt at transferring one of our embryos into my womb. That attempt failed. In November, after the clinic changing their minds daily for a week, we tried again.

At the beginning of December, this week, we discover that the second embryo decided to implant. I got my first ever positive pregnancy test (then another 2!). It's very early days but it would appear I am pregnant! I have a scan in a few weeks where we should see a heartbeat. I don't think I'll be able to believe this is real till then.

Now for the honesty. With everything we've been through to get to this point I can't help but feel guilty for being happy about being pregnant. I also feel bad for those who have had several failed cycles. I'm finding it hard to know where my identity lies now. As a Christian I know in my heart that my identity lies in being a daughter of God. However, lately I have felt my strongest identity has been as an infertile woman. Now I'm pregnant. So what is my identity now? I feel a bit like some people think all our problems have disappeared because we've had a positive pregnancy test. We are still grieving for our lost embryos (we've lost 3 one way or another). Infertility still has a huge mark on our lives. We have some counseling and an infertility retreat lined up and I feel bad for still needing those things. But we really do. I still have so many questions regarding why we've had to go through this. I'm hoping we can be an inspiration to other struggling couples. We still need support despite the fact it seems to have worked. In addition, with IVF there are a few things that can happen which can cause a positive without an actual pregnancy. So until we've seen a heartbeat we are not off the IVF rollercoaster. An IVF pregnancy in the early days is fraught with worry. As is any pregnancy I guess. Having said that, throughout this journey I've always wanted to be pregnant at Christmas, now I will be. I'm now in a state of transition from infertile to newly pregnant.

I'm finding the transition is just as hard, if not harder than the journeying.

Learning to rest, wait and live well

Just under a week ago we headed off to our clinic for our second attempt at frozen embryo transfer. We now have 5 days left in the excruciating wait to take a pregnancy test and find out if it's worked. 2 days after transfer I came down with, what has turned out to be, a nasty cold. I don't know if it was the cold/flu bug or the effects of the transfer meds or a combination of the two but I ended up being sick. This was possibly a blessing in disguise as it meant I was forced to take 2 days sick leave from work. If I'd not actually been sick I'd have struggled through with the cold which would probably have been a mistake. Add on the rota'd days off to the sick leave I'll have had a total of 7 days off to simply rest and wait. That sounds like bliss doesn't it? Well to me it's a struggle! I'm really rubbish at enjoying rest time recharging my batteries and always feel guilty for leaving people in the lurch at work, especially when I know how short staffed we are. But I'm slowly learning that sometimes we are given periods of rest just when we need them. I am learning what it is for me to recharge my batteries. I've always thought that for me to rest and recharge I needed to be doing something such as baking or crafts or planning a project. However recently I've been too tired or ill to do any of that. I have discovered the gift of sitting on the sofa watching comfort TV or reading a good book. I had to battle through the wall of boredom and guilt at doing nothing but I now view the last few days as a gift from God! Don't get me wrong there is still a place for baking and making therapy in my life but I'm grateful I now have the ability to rest and refresh a bit.

Another thing I've had to learn is how to wait well. That is even more of a work in progress than the rest thing. One way or another we have spent the whole of this year waiting at various stages in our IVF journey. You'd think we'd be experts at it by now! In reality I seem to find each wait harder than the previous one. This particular wait I was supposed to have work as a distraction but that hasn't happened as much as I thought it would. I know I need to physically wait to see if it's worked and spiritually wait on God to see if he'll come good on his promises to us. I don't know if I'm doing it right, I'm just doing it because there's no other option. We are only about 6 weeks past our first failed cycle which means this wait is full of temptation to think it hasn't worked again. I'm finding I'm having to consciously realign my thoughts to just live and not think too much. Although I am quite bored now I'm enjoying having time to myself. I just have to keep reminding myself that I need to live well through the waiting and resting and not dwell on the thoughts of another failed cycle. On that front I'm definitely a work in progress!