The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me on my first ever blog post.

After lots of people telling me I should start blogging, I have finally decided to bite the bullet and create one!

In my blogs I will be talking about lots of different things, firstly going through IVF and finding out I was having twins, hyperemesis gravidarum, dealing with TTTS, having to deliver the twins early and also our NICU journey. If you have any requests of things for me to blog about please do get in touch.

So….here we go….

Finding out we needed IVF!

Myself and Joe have always both wanted a family. So when the time was right and we wanted to think more about children I went to the doctors to have a check up as I have polycystic ovaries. My doctor then referred me for a scan, I attended my scan and was told if myself and Joe want to have children I would need to go onto tablets to help me fall pregnant and he would need to be checked to make sure everything is ok with himself. When I told Joe he needed to do this he was extremely confident everything was ok with him. So he went to his appointment to provide a sample, the sample was tested and he was asked to go back and give another sample as nothing came from the first one. He then went back and repeated his sample, after he had done this we received a call from his doctor asking him to go into the surgery for a chat.

Joe went to the doctors for the “chat” which consisted of him being told in the samples he gave there wasn’t any sperm. So from there we had an extremely long road ahead of us, from February 2016 until August 2016 we had a lot of un answered questions. The feelings we felt in this time were something I never want to feel again, there were times where Joe would be in tears and tell me to leave him if he can’t give me children. As you can imagine this was heartbreaking to see and hear him say things like that.

Appointments then started and we were referred to a urologist Mr Kalsi, he saw us several times for many different things. Joe had scans and numerous blood tests done to try and find out what the issue was. In the end Mr Kalsi decided that the best thing to do was a sperm retrieval to see if there is any sperm. I wont go into detail about that! we decided to pay and go private for the operation as we just needed answers as soon as possible. Prior to the operation we had to attend counselling in Harley Street to make sure we understood that the operation could either be a good or bad outcome, gynecologist appointments and also IVF appointments.

On the 12th August 2016 Joe had his operation. After the operation Mr Kalsi came down to room and explained that everything went well. After this the embryologist took what they found in the testicular tissue to test, we were told we would have a call by Monday (it was Friday) That evening Joe was discharged and when we got home we were speaking with our neighbors on the stairwell of our flat, when suddenly my phone started ringing and it was the embryologist! She started to say how well the operation went and she had good news to share with us, I fell to the floor crying so Joe took the phone to speak to her. She explained they wasn’t sure why the sperm doesn’t come out but he has it in his testicular tissue and its really good quality!

On the 4th October 2016, we received an email whilst we were in Florida to say that our IVF funding had been accepted and we were going to be starting IVF at Oxford Fertility in Oxfordshire! We were completely over the moon as this was the next stage of our journey.

Once we got back from Florida we attended our first IVF appointment with our consultant and nurse, in this appointment we had to sign consent forms and talk about what would be happening next. The day finally came where we were attending an appointment to start our first cycle of IVF, after having a scan done on myself they found a dermoid cyst. This meant that we couldn’t go ahead with the cycle until I had the cyst removed, as you can imagine I was absolutely devastated. You get your hopes up for something and then they are completely crushed. I was so lucky to have private health insurance through work which I managed to have the operation within two weeks on it. On the 26th November 2016 I had my dermoid cyst removed, they also lasered my endometriosis whilst I was down. I don’t cope with anesthetic well as you can see so I had to stay in the hospital overnight.

Finally we had got the sperm and I had my cyst removed so we could start our IVF! 22nd February 2017 was the day we started my first injection. I hate needles so Joe had to do them for me, I had 1 injection for 4 days (Gonal F) and then on day 5 I introduced another injection (Cetrorelix) I then had a scan to check everything was ok prior to the egg collection, we got the green light that we could have the egg collection on 7th March 2017.

I went down for my egg collection at 9.30am and they managed to collect 8 eggs which we were over the moon about! On 12th March 2017 I had the embryo transfer, we had paid for embryo glue to try and increase the chances of the embryo sticking. They transferred one embryo as the quality of them was really good. We then had to wait until 24th March 2017 to do a pregnancy test, this felt like the longest 12 days of our lives!

 

I couldn’t stop waking up in the night as I was so nervous, every time I woke I would say to Joe can we take the test now and he would say no Dan go back to sleep we will do it in the morning. At 6.30am I couldn’t wait any longer so I went into our en-suite to do the test, I done the test and left it in the bathroom for Joe to look at as I was so scared. I was shouting at him to tell me the answer as he was taking so long, he didn’t know what he was looking at so I went into the bathroom and saw the test was positive. I couldn’t believe it so I took another test and also called my sister in law to check that the test definitely said I was pregnant, you can clearly see how dark the lines are!

Finding out I was pregnant meant that this was then the start of the next chapter of our journey.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my first ever blog post and I can’t wait to share the rest of our rollercoaster journey with you!

Lots of Love,

Danielle x

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