I haven't posted during this cycle because I have been a bit overwhelmed by it all.
We have finished with all our injections and are booked for surgery tomorrow though, so I should probably put in an update.
We finished the last cycle with a very big low. Having spent years focusing on sperm issues we suddenly got the unexpected egg issue. Even with my having PCOS and endo in my right tube, my eggs have looked healthy and perfect. And I am regularly told I have a lovely uterus (which is quite an odd compliment, but we'll take it). Fragmenting eggs was very unexpected.
We, very obviously, did not get pregnant.
So we went on holiday. Not really a break from IVF as such, as it was our rest cycle, but definitely a mental rest break.
Grumpy and I went to Tasmania for a week and we went driving and drank lots of wine and ate lots and lots of food and took walks around lakes and generally just enjoyed our time with each other. It was a little moment of peace, which was very much needed.
Particularly as when we got back, within the week we were back on the IVF roller coaster of appointments and injections and craziness. This time round I am seeing the in-house shrink. Apparently me crying every time I go to the Dr's is a sign I'm not coping... Who knew??
--ooOOoo--
Ok, so why was I such an emotional wreck so quickly? Well , that is a long and depressing story. To tell the short version - we now have a limit set on how long this can go on for.
I have been an emotional basket case for a while (let's be honest, most of the last four years), I think because the future stretched out in front of me with no discernible change - I would keep doing IVF until my ovaries gave out and I was a shrivelled old woman... Not really, I guess, but I didn't have any end point in mind. This on one hand was great. It meant that we had oodles of hope that one day, some day, this will work. But the other hand it meant that we would never be able to do anything else with our lives. We didn't book holidays, we are miserable around our friends, we are continuing to sit in an IVF bubble and watch as the world around us grows and changes.
So Ashley sat me down and basically said - here's our budget. Here's how many times we can afford to keep doing this.
Because let's be honest. This shit is EXPENSIVE!!! We are pulling money out of our house to pay for this. We have potentially set ourselves back five to ten years in mortgage payments. Unless I want to sell my home and car and get a job with a fancy pay rise... We just don't have unlimited money. So there has to be a limit. A purely financial limit on how much we can do.
And it's soon.
If this cycle doesn't take, we can afford one more go.
And that is sad. Really, desperately sad. Excruciating, rip-my-heart-out, sad.
So when I went to the Dr's to start this round I knew I was on a limited time frame. And I was miserable from the get go. So the first couple of weeks were definitely beyond what I could deal with. I kind of wanted to curl up in the foetal position and never move. And I was mean to everyone around me.
But I think I am dealing better now. I think that even as terribly sad as letting go of this dream - this hope - is, it's kind of been freeing. If we get to the end, we will have done everything we can. We will have done everything that the Dr has told us and we will have put in all we can. And we will have to find a new dream. It's still sad to think about, but really I'm okay with it. Maybe we could take a holiday? Maybe we could buy a puppy?
... Maybe we could adopt??
Who knows. But we still have time. And we still have hope. And we still have at least this round to go.
So wish me luck tomorrow. Pray for beautiful eggies that love lab conditions and can't wait to be made into little babies :-)
E xx
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