I’ve just been sorting through my Pinterest boards (my life is WILD). I’ve been cleaning them up and deleting all the weird arsed things I thought seemed like a good idea once. I came across a secret board I’d kept while we tried so hard to conceive the Little Miss (now 6 months old – our gorgeous IVF miracle). It was called, “Planning for Baby #2”. I was able to pin articles on infertility in there and birth announcement ideas etc. It was this little spot on the internet where I could save things I didn’t feel comfortable sharing and occasionally where I could let myself dream just a little.…
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35 weeks pregnant.
This post was written at the end of my 35th week of pregnancy (some time around the 13th January). Well, well, well. What a big week. Mentally, physically, emotionally! It feels like I fit a month into just 7 days! It started with some little pleasures. I basically had a much closer look at the health food aisle in the supermarket after suffering from absolute boredom with my gestational diabetes friendly diet. Don’t get me wrong – there are lots of healthy options out there. I was just missing treats that reminded me of actual sweets. I had tried for so long to avoid anything that wasn’t perfectly clean and…
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34 weeks pregnant.
So…let’s just say I’m feeling quite…over it. This week was not an easy one. At all. I spent most of the week housebound and stir crazy…when I wasn’t too exhausted to feel stir crazy, that is! My PUPPP rash decided to re-emerge with a vengeance after being fairly well controlled for weeks. It started to viciously attack my legs and arms once again. This did not help my sleep or my stress levels. I spent a lot of time just sitting underneath the air con (freezing my poor family) in nothing but a bikini and a kimono. That sounds really self indulgent, like all I needed was a topless Channing…
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Our IVF story: Part 5 – Pregnant or not pregnant?
4 June 2017 (2 years and 11 months after beginning our attempts at trying to conceive) Waiting after our first round of IVF to find out if I was pregnant or not was pretty tough! I had basically coped by talking myself out of any possibility of it working that time. I tried to be philosophical about it all. I figured that if it had failed, then it wasn’t meant to be. I wanted my eventual baby to be strong and healthy and if it wasn’t going to be viable, then I would have to be OK with it. I still had more chances before my odds of success decreased…
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Our IVF story: Part 4 – Transfer day (when they put the embryo in).
25 May 2017 (about two months after my egg retrieval) I was so nervous on transfer day. I’d already been driving myself insane with the craziest thoughts leading up to it. We were to drop the Little Mister off at school and then make our way to the clinic (an hour’s drive from our home). We were going to be a bit early for our midday appointment so we tried to take our time. We weaved our way through Fremantle and found weird ways to stall without actually stopping in public (because I felt like the hottest emotional mess there ever was). I was also trying to stay fresh ‘down…
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Our IVF Story Part 3: Egg retrieval.
March 2017 I had survived the hardest part of IVF – all of the injections and scans and tests leading up to my egg retrieval. Here is how it went… As you can imagine, I was bloody nervous. Not so much about being put under general anaesthetic (I figured I’d survived my first experience with that the year before) but about how many good eggs they’d be able to retrieve. I was also a bit worried about something going wrong and I had to really really try to put the actual mechanics of the procedure out of my mind. Nobody wants to think about a big needle going up your…
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Our IVF story Part 2: Before egg retrieval.
March 2017 I decided to keep a diary of my first experience with IVF. Partly so I can remember everything in this chapter of our fertility journey, partly for therapy (writing is what keeps me sane) and partly to educate. I know that even I went into this without knowing all of the ins and outs and timelines. If you’ve been through it, I wonder if you can relate. If you haven’t, I urge you to read this anyway. Chances are, someone in your life will struggle with infertility and you may be a much better support if you have an insight into what a person might be going through.…
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Our IVF story – Part 1: Deciding what to share about our IVF experience.
I wrote this in February 2017. Mr Unprepared and I had just started seeing a doctor at a specialised fertility clinic. We had been given an information overload at our first appointment, after being told by the doctor (a real straight shooter with a quirky sense of humour) that he could send us for more medicated cycles but if pregnancy hadn’t happened by now, it probably wasn’t going to. He suggested IVF and said we could decide to wait another couple of cycles before seeing him or just sign ourselves up and get it moving after waiting so long for some kind of definitive progress. We were so ready to move…
