Exciting times!

Foo was in disbelief when I told him, I turned up at work after the doors had closed and waited for the staff to leave before telling him,.(it was a long couple of hours keeping it to myself ) He was sure I was going to give him bad news as that is the way it normally had happened. We couldn’t wait to tell everyone! Jem and Beau were waiting at home for any news, I wanted to see Jem’s face when I told her so I hid the email from her, lucky I did because she was home before we were, and went searching!!

That night was a blur of phone calls, visits and champagne!!! It was so exciting, everything I had hoped it would be.  We phoned Mum, she was that excited she ran a red light! We decided that if we tell one person, then we share it with all the special people in our life. It was such fun and excitement telling everyone, I loved just how excited everyone was for us.

Three days later Mrs N had another blood test to check if the levels were doubling as they should…340 IU/ml , spot on !

Three days later again another blood test…1293 IU/ml… excellent!

Two days later another blood test…..3652 IU/ml….awesome!

Mrs N will have an ultrasound in 5 days, this is the big one, we find out if there really is a sac and maybe even a heartbeat. I can’t sleep.

Mrs N is feeling a little nausea and her ultrasound has been postponed til Saturday.

“ Congratulations …once again! The scan shows a presence of live TWIN intra uterine gestational sacs! Another third empty sac is seen, this should be absorbed later.”

Time to celebrate once again! Foo was in shock, I was jumping up and down!!

We’re having twins, we’re having twins, we’re having twins! Could we be so lucky?

Jem and Beau , were sharing in the excitement, champagne- check, telephone – check.

I can’t remember being so happy, our babies are due 9^th March 2012

Getting started

Our decision was :

Indian Donor Egg cycle with Indian Surrogate

It was exciting and very surreal.

We phoned our previous IVF clinic to organise sperm samples to be frozen and shipped to Mumbai. We couldn’t let them know what we were doing as under the current laws they are unable to assist us in any way.

We had two frozen samples (17 straws) shipped via DHL under recommendation from Corion. The process was very simple and took about 2 weeks from the time we froze til the time the straws arrived at the Corion.

In the meantime Dr K had been sending us Donor profiles. Egg donation in India is anonymous and Intended parents are given a very limited amount of information regarding prospective Donors. One A4 page with a small, often blurry picture and the following details:

Initials

Age

Weight

Height

Complexion

Blood Group

Caste

Marital Status

Education level

Occupation

Medical Problems

Surgeries

Allergies

Children

Abortions
Miscarriages

Limited Hormonal Profile.

It sounds like a lot of information, but when faced with choosing the biological mother of your potential children it gives you only a small taste of what you want to know and what you would like to have available to your children when they start needing to know more.

At first it seemed like too big a decision to make. So we based our decision on a couple of things:

Age – the younger the donor the better the egg quality

Height – Indian women are generally very short, so the taller the better!

FSH level – The lower the number the better the egg quality

I’d be lying if I said that we didn’t take looks in to consideration……after all everybody wants the best for their children.

We spent hours mulling over this decision only to have our first pick unavailable for a few months.  We couldn’t wait that long. Our second pick was already chosen for another couple. Our third pick had a family member pass away just before our cycle was about to start so she was no longer available. It looked like we had hit the jackpot with our fourth pick and all we had to do was wait for her to come in to the clinic for a checkup before getting started.

We waited for several weeks and upon contacting Dr K we decided that she probably was not going to go ahead and donate. Dr K had a donor available to start that very day if we were happy to go ahead and use her. Yes yes yes. It was pure luck that she just happened to fit the criteria we had set . I think probably we would have gone ahead regardless.

We were so relieved to be starting.

Our cycle was pretty straight forward, it felt strange that I was starting to feel so much better whilst another lady out there was going through countless prodding and injections to help me. I felt relieved and guilty at the same time. We retrieved a total of 10 eggs. By the following day 7 eggs had fertilized, by the next day we had 5 cleaved embryos. We were looking good for transfer. We were a little disappointed with our quantities after hearing of others achieving better numbers but we also knew that we only needed one good one to achieve a pregnancy. Fingers crossed.

We were advised that Dr K would choose a surrogate for us based on the surrogate with the best looking endometrium on the day of transfer.

The next email we got was to say that 4 Grade A embryos had been transferred to Mrs N and that she would have a blood test in 12 days times.

Surprisingly, time passed quite quickly.

We were expecting an email anytime. It was 2pm and I had just sat down to have some lunch. I had decided that I wouldn’t check the email until Foo got home from work so that we could get the news together. Out of habit I picked up my phone and touched the email icon. Next thing, out of the corner of my eye, the subject heading:

“CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!”

There was no waiting for Foo now!!! I swear I didn’t even read the rest of the email before jumping around the room, bursting into tears then jumping around the room again, several OMG OMG OMG’s!!!

Mrs N’s HCG value was 131 IU/ml, definitely pregnant!!!

OMG!

So I have something to tell you!

Foo and I are going to be parents!

                                        

OMG….. We are so excited! Let me tell you the story.

We had heard stories of a local couple going through the process of surrogacy in India. When you are trying to have a baby, many people try to tell you that they know of a faster, easier way to get a baby…because they know someone who did. I always felt like saying…”don’t you think I’ve researched everything I possibly could and if that was the case then I would have done that instead of countless IVF cycles?” So when I heard of Candice and Mick’s story , I wasn’t convinced.

We had googled “surrogacy in India” a little over the last few months so we had a good idea of how it worked. Now it was time to get serious. The day after we found out our final IVF cycle didn’t work, I emailed Dr Kadam at Corion Fertility Clinic in Mumbai and waited for a reply.

I also emailed Candice (what the heck, maybe it was true!) and she replied almost immediately, she has been a fabulous help and I can’t thank her enough! The biggest tip she has given me is that Indian people work on Indian time! Expect to wait……I can do that …the last 9 years of my life has been about waiting.

A reply came through within a couple of days. It was a fairly generic reply and indicated that we needed a letter from our Doctor stating our fertility history and that Surrogacy was our only option.  Panic set in….. I was never going to get a Doctor here to do that for us. I sent Dr K our full fertility history and then waited again for a reply. I was nervous that this wasn’t going to be an option for us and then where did that leave us….

A reply came through a few days later indicating that they could certainly help us. Hooray!!!!!!

We weren’t going to waste any time thinking about it, we had to do it before any thing changed and it wasn’t an option.

                                               

Rach was still willing to do whatever it took to help us and offered to donate her eggs in India for an attempt at surrogacy. I was feeling so grateful but uneasy about this as she had done so much for us already. I emailed Dr K to see if this was an option and she advised us that it would not be a good option for us to take given our history, ages and failed attempts with Rach’s eggs.

Our next step was to decide if we would send our one little frozen Embryo to India with the hope of transferring it to a surrogate.   We knew that we didn’t have many more attempts left in us and we had to give ourselves the best possible chance of having a baby. The risk of attempting to use one embryo is that it may not survive the thaw and we have nothing to transfer.

This decision was heart wrenching for me and it makes me teary just thinking about it. I know what Rach had to go through to create this precious gift and how much she really wanted to be the one to help us. We had 2 choices, we could attempt to use the embryo with little chance of success or we could use an Indian egg donor with a very high chance of success.

 

The alcoholic speaks!

For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Foo. I’m the hubby with a drinking problem that Ange has often mentioned here in her blog . The blog has been a fantastic thing for Ange as it has helped her to clearly outline the last ten years; ten years that have defined us as a couple.

Those ten years have flown by really. I still recall leaving our first visit at Pivot IVF clinic in Perth. We had been given the stats- something like a 25% success rate per IVF attempt. So we were pretty confident. Even if it doesn’t work this time, it shouldn’t be too many goes and we will have what we really want; a kid. After 20 goes and ten years of IVF, adoption and donors , we can’t believe how naive we were back then.

Helping Ange with her blog has given me a lot of recollections and reminders. I won’t lie and be brave here. It was bloody hard. And it’s funny how your brain works when it comes to these things. I remember finishing a game of footy a week or so after the first ectopic pregnancy and bursting into tears as I walked off the ground. I don’t know why it hit me then. It all came out though. I’m sure the boys at Brentwood thought I was crazy to take another loss so bad! Actually they were sensational, although being blokes, they didn’t ask a lot of questions. They knew what was happening and I suppose they could guess that the news wasn’t great.

Then I remember the hospital visit when the second ectopic happened. It was election day and Jonny Howard won again. We thought we’d be at the hospital for a couple of hours as it was a simple operation. I thought it was going to be a look around sort of set up. So I took the form guide with me and had a few bets on the phone account. Ange was later going in than we thought, but that was ok because I was backing a few winners and didn’t have anything else to do on a lazy Saturday arvo. In she went and when she came out she was still under the anaesthetic. She was still sleeping when the doctor came in and told me he had taken out the other tube . I’m no rocket scientist but I knew enough to know that it was going to be bloody hard to make babies naturally without any of those tubey things left.  I still remember the doctor telling me that we could still conceive- but that we’d have to do IVF. They decided to keep Ange in overnight and sent me home. I drove for an hour to Mandurah before I realised the radio was on the election result the whole way. I was stunned. I’d never drunk wine before that night- but I couldn’t find any beer. I drank three bottles of red and rolled into bed feeling shocked, and so sad for Ange.

Whatever I have had to go through in all of this has been nothing compared to Ange. If anything, the worst thing that has happened to me was a bit of stage fright once when it was my time to step up to the plate. But Ange has been through so much. The operations and the hormones are enough on their own. But it’s the things that others wouldn’t notice that I think have hurt her more so. The repeated conversations with people that obviously haven’t listened to anything she has said before. The cliché responses like “relax and it will happen”, “take a holiday” “my cousin had problems but when they stopped IVF they fell pregnant” and “you’re just not screwing him the right way”. It never ceased to amaze me how ‘friends’ that should have cared and who should have known better could remain so ignorant to what she was actually going through and what the problem actually was.

But her real friends have been brilliant. Ange had fantastic friends in Perth that always asked the right questions, felt the pain she was feeling and understood enough to know that sometimes there was nothing to say that would help. I know that for Ange, just being with them was enough to make her feel better. She couldn’t have coped without those two. And her family have been awesome as well. Ange’s mum is the most wonderful lady that anybody could meet. Sometimes I am sure that some of the pain we were feeling at another negative result was made worse by the fact that we knew it would hurt our family so much, when we had to tell them it hadn’t worked. I know that for Ange, it hurt telling Leanne the most. We know she would have done anything for us to have children if she could. But she couldn’t.

But Rach could. And she did. The gift that Rach gave us both is difficult to comprehend unless you have been where we have been. After as many IVF efforts as we have had, we knew something wasn’t working. That’s when Rach stepped in. Not only did she put her body through the physical and mental demands of IVF cycles for us- but she also gave up drinking and smoking whilst she did it. Being a fellow drink-a-holic I know how hard that would be! You really are a legend Rach and we will never be able to thank you properly.

So here we are. I can’t wait for the next few blogs from Ange. And thankfully, there are more blogs to come. But I want to finish by telling you all how proud I am of my wife. Ange has been through more than anyone should have to go through. She is the type of person who doesn’t expect things to be handed to her, but she expects that if she works hard enough for something, she can have it. She has showed that with her working life as she constantly moved up from job to job and worked harder to earn more. But IVF doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, or how hard she worked, it just didn’t matter. I’m sure that frustrated the hell out of her. But she coped. And she grew stronger. At times she has been hurt as much by a careless comment as any surgeons knife. But she has always maintained a positivity that I’ve found difficult to understand. She has had many bad days but she has always been able to laugh at our situation. We’ve had each other and many times we have reversed the roles of the strong one and the struggling one. But she is my true rock. She has never lost faith, she has been willing to do whatever it will take and she has remained true to her friends and family. Through all of this she has always been there for them when they have needed her. She is the most resilient, caring, strong, thoughtful, generous, kind natured, funny and genuine person I have ever met. I am constantly surprised that she chose me, when I know she could have made any man happy. I love her with no doubt and no compromise. But most of all; I am so proud of her.

US

Me

It is a relief to know that I will never need to put my body through the rigors of IVF ever again.  9 years of trying to have a baby, 20 IVF cycles and 9 surgeries, I am exhausted.

I am very sad that I will never know what it feels like to be pregnant, to carry and nurture my baby through to birth. I am sad that I will never see my sister, my mother or my Nan in my children.

But I do know that if I am lucky enough to have children to call my own, then these things won’t matter at all.

Foo

This is not only my story; it is Foo’s story too. I am hoping that he will have something to say on here as I have been doing all the storytelling. Until then, there are some things I need to tell you about him. Foo is the most amazing, supportive, husband I could have wished for. We could not have continued on this journey for so long if it wasn’t for his patient easy going attitude.  He is my strength, my humour, my love, my friend. Thank you Fooey xx

The Finale

Dr Bowman phoned to tell us we had reached the end of the line in our Fertility treatment. We cannot make quality embryos most likely because of my eggs. Therefore we did not qualify for surrogacy. In most cases like this he would recommend trying with donor eggs but because we had already done this and were unsuccessful he would only be prepared to try once more using donor eggs.

It had been almost 2 years since Rach first donated her eggs to us. She couldn’t wait to jump in and do whatever we needed her to do. Looking back now at what she went through she possibly would have hesitated just a little bit before saying yes.

The logistics of organising a donor egg IVF cycle can be quite involved let alone when your egg donor lives in WA, your clinic is in Sydney and you live in Tassie.

Rach probably remembers this cycle more vividly than I do. The regime was a little different to last time and what could go wrong, did.

 Firstly, the medications get lost in transit. Then Rach’s bloods end up in Darwin, and then apparently they are lost, so she has to go for more tests. At this point we were liaising with several different nurses at the clinic and getting mixed messages.

The day Rach had to fly out was a disaster for her. She lives over an hour from the airport and was to have a scan and a blood test in the city before she left.

 Lesson learned: never organise anything the morning of your flight.

The next sequence of events goes something like this:

• Caught in heavy traffic on the way to the city
• Arrive late for scan
• No sonographer working today ( nurses forgot )
• Flight time looming
• Go to another clinic
• Can’t find reception
• Nearly twists ankle running around the hospital!
• Panic about missing flight
• Scan and bloods done
• Car crashes into Rach as she is leaving car park
• Cutting it fine, but makes it in time for her flight

Sounds stressful huh? Then try adding in IVF medication. I felt so bad for Rach. It was such a relief when we all arrived in Sydney. We had such a great time and Rach was such a trooper. I could feel her nerves before the egg collection (without sedation) like they were my own.

We all had such a great time, Mum and Madi joined us for that last part of the trip. Things were looking really good. We ended up with 3 Grade A Blastocysts (5 Day old Embryos) and we transferred two. This was the first time we had transferred such strong embryos and we were all feeling very positive.  Thanks to Rach, we had the best possible chance of pregnancy we were ever going to have.

“Dear Rach

Foo and I will be forever grateful to you for the hope and support you have given us.

You are an amazing person and deserve so much good in your life.

I am sorry for both of us that we haven’t been able to make it happen.

We can never tell you how much what you did for us means. You gave us hope when we didn’t have any. You will always be so special to us and we will never forget how much you tried for us.

Thank you with all our heart.

We love you very much.

Love Ange xxxxxx”

Cold hard facts

 Sydney IVF like to keep you awake during the procedures, Not very appealing after spending the last 8 years sedated throughout my procedures. I was just a little nervous about my endometrial biopsy but much more nervous about flying to Sydney to have it done. My darling Nan came along to hold my hand, I could not have survived this journey without my beautiful family and friends. I was armed with My Nan and a little bit of chemical help thanks to my GP , a special friend of mine highly recommends everyone have a stash of valium in their handbag for emergencies, I tend to agree!

Endometrial Biopsy- now if you are googling this because you are about to have this procedure- cold hard facts….It hurts like hell but it is over in a flash.

Thanks Nan for looking after me xx.

The Biopsy results came back clear so we were good to go ahead with our treatment plan.

The lead up to this cycle was a little more stressful, I felt like we had so much more riding on the treatment. A little visit to my lovely counsellor to clear my head and prepare myself was all I needed to pluck up the positivity and get started. We had reduced my medication so physically I felt a lot better than usual. Thank you to Aunty Louie for escorting me on the flight to Sydney and of course the shopping time.

Egg Collection – now if you are googling because you are about to have this procedure done without sedation-cold hard facts….uncomfortable but not painful.

The anxiety I had about having this done without sedation was enough to keep me awake for a few nights before the procedure, I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep during the procedure.

7 eggs, impressive, we were very excited.

0 fertilization. We were devastated.

We got the next flight out the following morning.

Dr Bowman

I had been feeling like we were nearing the end of the road on our IVF journey, but we needed to be sure that we had exhausted every avenue before calling it quits. Or maybe I just needed someone to tell me that enough was enough. We had heard that Sydney IVF was the Rolls Royce of fertility clinics, so we made an appointment with the managing director Dr Mark Bowman, just to get one last opinion.

We made our appointments, booked a lovely hotel overlooking the Opera House and were accompanied by Mum and Aunty Louie. We had a fabulous couple of days.

If you have ever watched an Australian program about infertility it is likely that you have come across Dr Bowman. He is a lovely, compassionate man who tells it like it is.

 We had 3 questions for him:

1. Are there any tests we haven’t had done that we should?
2. Do we qualify for surrogacy?
3. Is it likely we will ever get pregnant?

He had 3 answers for us:

1. Yes, we can do an endometrial biopsy (sounds like fun L) to check for disorders of your uterine lining.
2. No, multiple IVF failure does not qualify us for surrogacy, I would need to have either no uterus or a medical condition that could be fatal if I was to fall pregnant.  The process could take up to 2 years and he would not be prepared to put us up before the ethics board at this stage.
3. He promised to give us an answer within 12 months.

 Dr Bowman was keen to establish as best he could if it was my eggs or my uterus compromising our ability to conceive.  His plan was to grow our embryos to blastocyst stage (approximately 5 days old) and hopefully have something to transfer. If we successfully transfer healthy looking blastocysts several times with no pregnancy then it becomes obvious that our problem is my uterus.

In most cases fertility issues arise from poor egg or sperm quality, It is quite unusual for the problems to lie with the uterus and rare for the problems to be caused by both.

If we have an egg issue then surrogacy will not help us. If we have a uterine issue we may be able to look further into surrogacy. My amazing sister was still sitting on the sidelines waiting to do whatever she could to help us.

I was feeling a mix of emotions as we left Sydney, relieved and overwhelmed, so much so that I had a fully fledged panic attack on the plane back to Launceston.

My Sister's Gift

Our first donor cycle with Rach was a wonderful family experience and one I will treasure forever. A donor cycle takes a lot more co-ordination than a normal IVF cycle so Rach began her medications in Western Australia before coming to Tassie. Injections and giving blood were not her favourite things to do, let alone having to administer them to herself. She did it with no fuss at all. Rach took it all in her stride and never once made me feel guilty. She truly is an amazing person and a wonderful sister.

Mum and Madi joined us on our road trip to Hobart, we had a fabulous time ( I can say that because I wasn’t the one having a big needle in my yoo hoo!)

Have you ever had one of those moments that will stand still in time and you will never forget where you were and what you were doing at the time? …..I can think of a few….The Port Arthur Massacre, The death of Princess Diana, The World Trade Centre attack, The Bali Bombings, The death of Michael Jackson ( R.I.P MJ x).

Another time that will stand still for me forever and I am sure Mum and Rach feel the same, was receiving the result of this cycle.

We were racing against the clock to get to pathology before they closed for the weekend, otherwise we were going to have to wait until Monday…..We were not going to let that happen!

The phone rang unexpectedly as we were travelling over the Don bridge heading to Devonport. We were not pregnant.

I was so sad for us and especially sad for Rach as I know just how much she wanted to help us.

We love you Rach xx

Rach

I love dearly every member of my family and my sister Rachael is no exception. Picture a 5-foot tattoo covered, beer loving, Harley Davidson owner. Everyone that meets her instantly loves Rach. I have always been jealous of her for that. We live our lives by a totally different set of rules. She has none and I have many! Loving our family has been about the only thing we have had in common until she knocked on my door one day over 9 years ago to tell me she was pregnant. I remember jumping up and down and squeezing her tight, I was so excited then I saw the look of panic on her face “ I am on my way to tell mum… will you come with me?” She was 23yrs old.

I remember sitting in a room nearby with my brother falling all over ourselves with laughter as she told her. Not nearly as sympathetic as we should be.

                                                   

Madison was born on the 12^th May and it just happened to be Mother’s Day that year.

I was there, down the business end, when she was born. The vision of her face as her head pushed through is as clear in my mind as the Easter egg I ate 5 minutes ago. I often think of this day. The bond I have with my niece is a constant reminder of why I will try everything I possibly can to have a family of my own.

A few years ago Madison and my Mum were accompanying me to an IVF ultrasound and as a curious 6 year old would, she needed to understand what was going on. Now for as long as she has been born Foo and I have been trying to get pregnant. During that time we have endured two ectopic pregnancies, eight surgeries and 19 failed IVF cycles. So we have had a lot of explaining to do to Madison over the years as to why Aunty Ange is sick or sore or in hospital.

“So, Aunty Angie and Nanny how will the Dr help you make a baby?” My first thought was, oh no! How can we fudge this one? She is way too young to understand, it took Foo almost 5 years to work it out. Then with the wisdom of being a mother for 34 years, my Mum explained the process to her in 6-year-old terms. Now, when I ask Madison how we are going to make a baby she says “Aunty Angie has an eggie in her tummy and Uncle Foo has a big Tadpole in his tummy. The doctor makes a little cut in their bellybuttons and takes them out and puts them together in a dish in the hospital. Then when they stick together they put the baby back in Aunty Angie’s tummy, Hopefully it grows but if it doesn’t that just means that the baby was too sick to grow.” She is now a nine year old with a better understanding of how to make babies the infertile way than most adults do.

Alternative Therapies

I love a therapy or two.

Naturopathics,Homeopathy, Cupping, Reiki, Reflexology, Cohen’s Fertility Diet, Gonzo’s special Meds, Massage, Angel Cards, Hypnosis, Chinese Herbs just to name a few. Acupunture is about the only therapy Fertility Specialists will recommend, so what the hell a few pin pricks is a small price to pay if I get a baby out of it.

Cupping ..ouch

After 6 months of Acupunture I was feeling pretty confident going in to our next cycle. The day of egg collection came around and we retrieved 7 eggs, our best haul ever, we were pretty excited. It never ceased to amaze me how we drew the positivity out of ourselves for our next cycle after so many failures. IVF is a constant rollercoaster of emotions and this cycle was no exception. The morning after egg collection is usually followed by a phone call from the clinics embryologist to advise you how many of the eggs fertilised. When our phone call came I was surprised to hear Dr Bill’s voice on the other end, this can’t be good. ….no eggs had fertilized.

Every failed cycle was devastating but this was worse. I had read that these cycles we especially hard to cope with and I wasn’t really prepared for it.

My eggs were just not going to cut it. So much for alternative therapies….

TASIVF

We were nicely settled back in Tassie, no seminars and IVF to occupy our time.  I was physically and emotionally feeling so much better.

I had recently been to see our resident Gyno about having all my girlie bits removed, IVF leaves some nasty long lasting effects on your body and I had had enough, I figured if we were adopting then I didn’t need them anymore. Dr J suggested that we just remove the ovary that was giving me trouble and then if things don’t settle down we would do a full hysterectomy. I was Ok with that.

Left ovary with precancerous cyst removed, phew that was lucky.

One morning about 6 months later I woke in tears after dreaming of giving birth to a baby, I remember feeling distraught for days. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Have you ever had a really vivid dream that just stays with you every minute of the day?

There was no hope that the adoption was going to happen anytime soon and I began feeling like we needed to keep all of our bases covered.

We had always known that going back to IVF was an option whilst we were still young. These thoughts were starting to creep back in to my days. Mum was also very keen for us to try again. Love you Mum xx

The success rate of IVF for couples under 30yrs is approximately 25%, this figure rapidly declines after the age of 35. I was in my early 30’s and didn’t have time to waste. Besides, I don’t want just one baby, I want lots J. Our last IVF Dr in WA had told us it was unlikely after 5 attempts that we would get pregnant, so we made an appointment to see Dr Bill in Hobart…just to see what he has to say.

We had heard great things about Dr Bill, I warmed to him immediately. He is a tall, redhead in his forties unlike his name suggests. We left his rooms, medication in hand, beginning our very next IVF cycle that day. He was very positive about helping us, such a stark contrast to our last Dr.

TASIVF and Dr Bill Watkins are fantastic and I would highly recommend them to anyone considering IVF in Tassie. It was because of their professionalism and personal service that we were able to continue on through many IVF cycles.

I was visiting Nan and Pop just the other day and they had watched an episode of “Inside your body” the night before. Pop looked at me in disbelief and said…”it is a miracle that anyone conceives a baby”.  This is so true, if you don’t know much about conception because one bonk got you pregnant then you should google it!

Nan & Pop xx

Unfortunately we moved through our next few cycles with very few eggs and no success.

We needed to look at other options.

Adoption

My feelings were bittersweet about our move, I was excited to be moving forward with our plans to have a family and I was also devastated to be leaving our beautiful family and friends.

No more all day shopping trips with my Mumma.

No more coffee and cake and lounging around with my besties.

No more Sunday dinners with our favourite King family.

No more weekend visits to the Prem to visit the family.

No more sleepovers for Madi Donnelly, Squibb , Elson

No more hot summer days

I was worried my special connection with my darling niece, Madison and our gorgeous god-daughter, Sian was going to disappear with the distance between us.

Sianny x

Madi xx

We did have a lot to look forward too. We have some very special families and friends in Tassie too.   It turns out our timing was impeccable, Foo’s Dad wasn’t well and would be spending a considerable amount of time travelling back and forth to hospital. Foo was going to be around just when his family needed him the most.

I was most looking forward to Tuesday lunches at Nan and Pops with Aunty Louie.

Anyone lucky enough to come on a Tuesday knows why.

My cousin Jemma and I are one and the same. We arrived Christmas Eve and were lucky enough to spend our first couple of months camped at her house until we got settled.

Love you Jembo xx

I found a wonderful place to work, full of very special ladies and friends I am sure to have for the rest of my life. These friends were going to be the ones to help me through the next part of our journey.

The adoption process begins with seminars designed to scare the bejesus out of you.

Not to be deterred, we moved on from one seminar to the other. In Tassie this process moves pretty quickly, I can’t imagine what it is like in other states when it takes 12 months before you can even attend an information seminar. For anyone considering Adoption as an option, this link may be of some assistance: http://www.adoptionaustralia.com.au/index.html

Some seminars we attended were thought provoking and others were just emotionally shattering. The head of adoptions at the time was a very matronly lady with no compassion for the stories that led people to attend these seminars. She barked orders at us about swapping all our music to Mozart and then followed up by saying the average wait now is 5 years and that if we weren’t prepared to wait that long we should leave now.

They drill in to you that this process is not about you, it is first and foremost about the children, which is exactly how it should be. But it’s not!

I have some pretty strong views on this, so bear with me…..

Local adoption in Australia is almost non-existent, some could argue this is a good thing. Then again, others that read the newspaper and watch the news might agree that the state of our country’s care for neglected and abused children living in dire situations is despicable.

Why are we giving these parents opportunity after opportunity to ruin these children’s lives? How can you say the best place for a child is amongst filth, starvation, sexual and physical abuse as long as they are with their biological parents. Yes, I believe we should all be given a second chance, but not a third, fourth, fifth and sixth.

There are approximately 6 million children across the world at any one time in desperate need of a family to love and care for them. They are sitting in orphanages, on rubbish dumps, in gutters and being taken advantage of.

6 years ago, Australia’s intercountry adoption count was somewhere around 500 children. Just last year these numbers dropped well below 100.

We send our troops in to fight for the rights of people in other countries, but we can’t send delegates to fight for the rights of these children who have potential families waiting to love and nurture them.

Instead we sign with the Hague Convention to protect these children from being adopted?????

Don’t get me wrong, I believe safety of the child is paramount, and the Hague convention is there to protect children from abduction and trafficking. But there has to be a better way than creating so much red tape that these truly orphaned children are left destitute.

There are many families out there that the adoption process has been a very fulfilling one for them. I may think differently if we were one of those families.

So we attended all the seminars, and met with our case worker over several weeks, completed our home study and our Ethiopian application and were approved on the 6^th September, just 6 months after attending our first seminar. All we could do now was wait……and listen to Mozart. This was four years ago.

What they don't tell you....

Some of the things they don’t tell you about IVF that they should:

• The medication will make you feel positively pregnant.
• If the medication doesn’t make you fat then your constant hormonal cravings will.
• Not all medication is taken orally or subcutaneously!!
• If you don’t ask, they won’t tell.
• If you are going to put it out there and tell everyone, be prepared for plenty of assvice from well meaning people.
• Don’t plan social events anywhere near the time of your pregnancy test.
• Oprah and chocolate will always make you feel better.

I can’t tell you how many times I was waiting for Foo to come home from work so I could tell him we were going to sell up and move to Africa to build a school for the poor. If I wasn’t going to be a Mum then I was sure going to do something else meaningful with my life.

 

Breaking Point

Cycle number 5 was breaking point for us, well for me anyway. Just a little tip for those viewing at home: if you find yourself driving yourself to hospital in the wee hours of the morning convinced you are having a heart attack…..several times a week, then it may be time to pop a valium, sleep for 2 days and then have a really good look at what is happening in your life. So after a myriad of heart and lung tests at the local emergency room that is exactly what we did.

At the time, we had just moved into our new home in a beautiful new subdivision full of young families, just the kind of place you see a father and son kicking the footy at the local park and a procession of young mums pushing their babies in prams along the footpath.  Foo and I were out for an afternoon walk with our little white fluffball,  when it dawned on us….we needed to take back control. By then end of our walk it was decided. Our house was going on the market, we were moving back to Tassie and giving IVF the flick. We were going to find a new way to create a family and we were going to start the adoption process.



"Our little Fluffball Oscar"







IVF

Our first IVF cycle was to be the most successful of our 19 cycles.  I don’t think I could recount each and every cycle if I tried. You’d think something so massive would stick in your mind forever.

We encountered many nurses and doctors over the years. Sometimes it felt like we were guinea pigs for a new treatment and then other times like we were passing through a toll booth behind many others travelling the same route.

Our first few cycles gave us some rather traumatic experiences.

 I recall sitting outside the clinic with my beautiful Mum and husband waiting for embryo transfer.

The waiting room inside was full of patients including a lady recovering from her anaesthetic. The theatre was running 3 hours behind time. Trying to hold your bladder for that long and keep yourself relaxed is quite a challenge.  Then try staying relaxed with your legs up in the air surrounded by 5 strangers in a room the size of a broom cupboard. Oh and did I mention the 1 ply serviette they placed across my bits to defend my dignity.

One of the clinics we sought treatment at was housed at a women’s and neo-natal specialist hospital in the centre of Perth. There were always lots of pregnant women hanging out at the entrance to the hospital, fag in one hand, drip in the other. Foo often recounts the story and you all know how much he loves a story,of peering out the hospital window and seeing a heavily pregnant woman and her 6 kids leaving the hospital, only to find that their 2 door mini was boxed in by another car, the 4 little kids jumped in the back, mum behind the steering wheel, the 2 big kids pushing from the front and then raced around the back and pushed the matchbox car down the road, they all seemed to know their place like they had done it a million times before.

I came across a website very early on in our IVF journey: www.essentialbaby.com.au

It’s forums are full of many amazing stories of egg donation, sperm donation and embryo donation. There are stories of men and women whom have endured multiple failed IVF cycles. My tears have flowed through many tales of negative pregnancy tests, chemical pregnancies, miscarriages, stillbirths and the anxieties of those that fear they may never be parents. Although my tears flow just as fast when I read about positive pregnancy tests, hearing their baby’s heartbeat for the first time, morning sickness replacing the nausea and pain of IVF medications. The only difference is I have a beaming smile on my face and it gives me hope that just maybe the next cycle will be the one,

This website is amazing and the wonderful people that contribute to the forums have taught me how important it is to be your own advocate when it comes to your health. I learnt that the more you know and understand about your condition and the different avenues available to you then the more in control you feel.

The diagnosis

“......T-shaped Uterus with septum, Long cervix with two tracks one leading to uterus and one ending in blind, presence of endometriosis, left ovary adhered to pelvic wall, dye spurting from tear in uterus...”   Oh my god, Foo’s head was about to spin off it’s axis!

Dr Loftus was still positive he could help us, his exact words were “We shouldn’t have a too much trouble getting you pregnant, however, you may have a problem carrying a baby due to the shape of your uterus, this condition can result in several miscarriages before reaching full-term”

Not exactly the results we had hoped for.

I can’t really remember how I felt back then, I think I always had a feeling this wasn’t going to come as easy to me as it does to most.

Bring on IVF cycle number one:

5 Embryos, 100% fertilization rate, 1x  A-grade embryo transferred and 4 Frosties. Sounds awesome right? I felt bloated, tired and excited at the same time. Self injecting luckily wasn’t a problem for me, the same can’t be said for Foo, he couldn’t watch me even remove the syringe from the packaging. Yeah, yeah I know..poor Foo.

I remember the trip back home after our embryo transfer, we were thinking “this is easy I don’t know what the big deal is and why people don’t just keep going until they get pregnant”...these words have come back to haunt us many a time over.

8 cell embryo ( 3 days old )

Our beautiful Squibbie family was over on holidays at the time. Mandurah is a beautiful place to live, feels like you are on holiday every day of the week....that is unless you have to make the hour drive to Perth to work for the day.

Everyone was joining in the excitement, including Uncle Nige, his highlight I’m sure was his first nursing duty injecting a 2 inch needle into my butt. Thanks Uncle Nige x

The Squibbies xx

I felt pregnant. That 2 week wait to find out is excruciating.

“No , I’m sorry you are not pregnant.”

“I have pain...”

“Yes, you may be pregnant.”

“More pain and nausea.”

“No, you are not pregnant”.

“You have an infection.”

“Do something!”

4 weeks later I am back in surgery.

The day of surgery was a long one. Foo remembers sitting in the hospital room overlooking the Swan River with his form guide and the races on TV all day. He was getting used to this hospital stuff.  It was 3pm and I hadn’t eaten since 8pm the night before, I was starving and you all know that is not a good look on me!!

It was a relief to finally be wheeled away to the operating room.

That relief soon disappeared as we received the results of my surgery:

“.......we had to remove the other fallopian tube...ectopic pregnancy”

Are you serious? .. I knew what that meant straight away. No fallopian tubes =  no midnight rendezvous for my eggs and Foo’s sperm.

The news hit Foo pretty hard on the way home from the hospital late at night

My reality is that I can’t make babies.  No racy lingerie, knee trembling sex or relaxing island getaway is going to change that.