Half baked

Twenty weeks! Celebrated by allowing a strange man spread icy cold gel all over my tummy (hey, that’s how I roll). Luckily we saw nothing alarming on the scan, other than a rather spooky looking head with voids where the eyes should be. (Note to self: apparently calling your unborn child ‘freakish’ will get you immediate entry to the Bad Mother Club).

Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering, we did not find out the baby’s sex. I think I will follow Kaz Cooke’s example and answer all future questions about what we hope to have with a reply such as “A giraffe. They’re up and running an hour or so after birth, and starting to feed themselves”. Oh yep, Bad Mother.

I seem to have popped a little bump this week too, much to the delight of everyone at work, many of whom have been visiting daily to check the progress of my tummy. Apparently I’m at the ‘cute bump’ stage, which I assume I will remain in for about 3 weeks before entering the ‘I’m a whale’ stage. I suspect the final stage will be the ‘nothing fits me except my duvet’ stage. Luckily I should be home on maternity leave by that point, fingers crossed.

In fact, I have only about 3 more months of work ahead of me, which is unnerving. I know I will be busier than I can ever imagine right now, but the thought of walking away from my job for 6 or 12 months is very strange, and I know will take some getting used to.

My expectations of what I will be capable of also apparently require some adjustment. The Baron’s parents are due to visit us from Italy in February, and I am signed up for 2 semesters-worth of refresher classes before Peanut arrives to cope with the fact that they don’t speak English. Fair enough – but my plans for an intensive course in Jan (3 hours a day for a week) elicited strange snorts from my best friend, a veteran of 2 newborns. I think she’s trying to tell me something…

 

Difficult decisions

An article in the Sunday paper caught my eye this weekend. Despite the increase in IVF treatment, there is still a lack of couples who have undergone successful treatment choosing to donate ‘unwanted’ embryos to other couples. Apparently only 1% of remaining embryos are eventually donated, with over 90% slated for destruction.

One couple who had already got their full compliment of children chose to destroy their remaining embies, due to the fact that they would not be able to have a say in the family that would receive the donation. This family wanted to contribute not only their genetic material, but wanted an assurance that their moral values would also be transferred.

While I believe this is a very personal decision, one comment was that they had chosen for the mother to stay at home with her kids – and did not want any other ‘children’ to be raised by someone who might put them into daycare at the age of 6 months.

I have to confess I find this a somewhat trivial reason on which to base such a big decision – after all, it’s likely that a couple who have gone through so much to have their own child would value this gift, and offer it a caring and loving environment. But can I pretend that The Baron and I made our decision about the future of any of our embies based on anything more significant?

In Australia, decisions about the future of any frozen embryos need to be made before the actual egg collection takes place. Among other things, we needed to agree on what we would do with the frozen preciouses if one of us died or was permanently disabled, if we separated, and if we decided we wanted no more children. That’s a fairly deep conversation to be having at the best of times, much less at a stressful time when the future is so uncertain.

Currently, the three options for surplus embryos are destruction, donation to another couple, or donation for research purposes.

We just couldn’t feel comfortable knowing that at age 18, any donated embryos would have the right to find their biological parents. The simple fact of explaining why they were not ‘good enough’ to be our kids (embryos are rated on likely success – the best are implanted, the rest remain on ice), combined with the strange fact that we might walk past a child who, but for twist of fate, would have been ours.

And yet, the feeling of ownership over the embryos expressed by the couple in the article- the right to have a say over their future, was never something we were concerned about. The embies to us were just balls of cells.

But in the end, we didn’t want their existance to be for nothing – and felt strongly that we did want to contribute to other couples having their family, as others have done before us – but in a less direct way. So in the end, we were in the 5% that selected donation to research. Which ended up a moot point in the end, since due to the cautiousness of our IVF specialist and a bit of bad luck, we had nothing left over to save.

If we eventually try for another child through IVF, we will have to reconfirm this decision. I wonder whether having a child will make us reevaluate how we see those tiny balls of cells, when we finally see the potential of our one lucky embie fulfilled.

 

Ups and downs this week

I had a little scare this week, which I am taking as my signal to slow things down just a little. I was walking to the gym after work, and I started getting really strong stretching pain all around my abdomen, like the baby bump was bouncing up and down and pulling on every tendon. A minute or two from the gym, and the pain became so much that I knew I was going to faint, so I sat down on some steps, and basically blacked out for a few minutes. Luckily, a security guard found me immediately, and called for an ambulance, while continuing to talk me through slow breathing.

By the time the ambos showed up I was lucid again, and my blood pressure was back up, but they took me to the A&E at the local women’s hospital just to be sure. I felt terribly embarassed about the whole thing, but it was reassuring to get a full check over, including a check for Peanut’s heart beat (nice and strong) – and it served to freak The Baron out totally.

According to my Ob, it’s actually fairly common in the second trimester for both the bouncing and fainting to happen – it’s likely that the pain caused a drop in blood pressure, which is already very low for me on a regular basis.

Because this pregnancy has been trouble free so far, I’ve taken for granted the fact that I can continue to do just about everything I was doing before – and this was a big wakeup call that my body can be easily affected by things I wouldn’t consider stressful. So I’ve been taking it a little easier, although it’s good to know this is likely to be a temporary risk only – BP starts going back up again once you reach the middle of the pregnancy.

But on the upside, I’m pretty sure I’m now feeling Peanut move. I’ve been unsure up until now as I was not really sure what I was looking for – many people describe it as butterflies, and others like a gas bubble (romantic, huh!). But I’ve had this sensation several times over the last week of a push from inside (exactly what you would expect to feel), in different places around my abdomen, which I’ve never had before. It’s quite exciting, and I’m really looking forward to it, as it will be a nice daily reminder that things are going well down there (always a worry for an IVFer I think!).

 

A few of my favourite things

I’ve been told by people at work that I am the most organised pregnant woman they have ever known. Week 17 and we have painted the nursery, bought the cot, pram and baby seat, have a complete wardrobe for the first 6 months and have a birth plan all ready. In fact, the only thing still needing to be sorted is a bath (keeping an eye out for a Tummy Tub on Ebay), and cloth nappies which I will arrange during the Melbourne Baby Expo in October when there should be some deals.

Does this seem too early to be all done?

But then again, I do want to have everything sorted now, so that when I get a little bigger and more tired, I won’t have to do anything. And on the plus side, we’ve been buying things now during the winter sales, which is bringing our costs down a lot.

So here are my favourite things which we have purchased, mainly for me, which are making this pregnancy more comfortable.

Snoogle
- I’ve started sleeping on my left side as recommended (how about that for a design flaw in the human body!), and was waking with a sore hip and lower back. The Snoogle (or the Google, as we have been calling it based on it’s G shape) has been fantastic (if you ignore the rather dubious photos of this product!), and will also be great to use when breastfeeding once Peanut’s here.

Hot Milk Lingerie
I’ve already gone up 2-3 cup sizes (did you know there was a size above E??), and welcomed the chance to get into a more comfortable bra – but was really disappointed in the Plain Jane options available. As if you’re not feeling unattractive enough at this point! But I came across this NZ company called Hot Milk, which make really sexy looking lingerie, which also feels fantastic to wear. It’s not cheap, but with options for both maternity and feeding bras, I figure I’ll be wearing them for the next year at least, so it seems worthwhile to me.

Jeans West Jeans
So what I spent on bras, I’ve saved on jeans – 2 pairs of maternity jeans for $99, from the store that’s in every mall around. They are really comfortable (I love they way they pull on like trackies!), come in 2 styles, and can’t be distinguished from normal jeans, other than the banding at the very top above the waistband. Even The Baron was amazed that they were mat jeans.


Leka wooden baby gym
And one for Peanut – our nursery is decorated in what we call Scandinavian Modern – which I guess other people may call Ikea. But Ikea has some of the best things for babies, and I love the simple timeless look of this play gym, without all of the bells and whistles of those from other toy stores.

 

My parental leave decided for me

I am extremely lucky that my company is very generous with its maternity leave – I am entitled to up to a year off, including 12 weeks at full pay (or 24 at half pay), which is fairly unusual here in Australia. And, they are also flexible with return to work options, which are specifically aimed at retaining female staff once they have started a family.

So I was feeling comfortable with our plans for me to take up to a year off to care for Peanut once it arrives, until this month’s budget announcement that the Medicare Safety Net is being removed for IVF treatment.

This has made me angry on a number of levels. Firstly, infertility is not of our own making, and yet medical treatment for many other causes (self-inflicted or not) is still being covered for others. It will delay many people trying for a child while they save for the funds, with a further impact on fertility. And we are trying to have children at a time that should suit the country. By 2050, almost 1 in 2 Australians will be over the age of 50, with many much older, and the economy will be needing workers, and income earners to help fund this huge bubble of Baby Boomers.

The impact will be families being forced into the situation of never having children, of waiting too long, or of facing a gambler’s debt in personal loans or increased mortgages for the chance at rolling the dice.

In practical terms, what this will mean for us is that instead of a single treatment costing us around $3,000 (and a bargain considering what we will get for it!), the cost will almost double to around $5,000 (not including extra drugs, health insurance extras and acupuncture). Now, we were pretty lucky scoring first time – and we have to be realistic that we will need to budget for at least 3-4 rounds to have a good chance of giving Peanut a sibling.

So, we will need to save almost $20,000 over the next 2 years, while paying for an extra family member, paying off a mortgage and saving for future expenses. As I am the primary income earner, it makes it entirely impractical for us to consider having me stay at home full-time. If we want another baby in the next few years, I will need to go back to work.

I don’t mind the thought of this at this point anyway, although many people have told me that this will change. I love working, I find it very empowering, and a big definition of who I am. And yes, I know much of that will shift once I am a (strange to say the word) mother, but I don’t expect to lose the core essence of myself either.

What I would really like is for others to understand that this is our world. We don’t necessarily have the luxury of choice of whether I will stay at home or not. Much of that has been taken away from us with the recent budget changes, which only adds to the infertility that we were already faced with.

 

Week 12 results

We had our week 12 ultrasound scan this week, and combined with the blood test results this has given Peanut a 1 in 7550 chance of having Downs Syndrome. Not that I was worried, but this is a good result, and well above the threshold at which we’d consider further testing, so we’re all relaxed about that.

The scan was pretty freaky – I’ve been feeling absolutely no symptoms over the past 4 weeks, and it was amazing to see just what developed while I was blissfully unaware. Peanut is almost fully formed now – and we got to see its head and spine, fingers and toes, and a little beating heart – the scan was even able to show the direction of the blood flow which was interesting. Amazing how developed the technology is these days.

I’ve been told that this scan is the best of all of them, since it’s the last time we will be able to see the baby all on one screen at a time. We got given a copy of the scan on DVD, and it even had commentary, although I wish someone had told me that – you can hear The Baron and I burbling on in the background!

So this marks the end of the first trimester, and I’ve now announced it at work, to general excitement (preggie ladies seem to be popular here!)

 

Back to business

So Cambodia was fantastic, and we had a great time despite the searing heat, which soon lead us to be active in the early mornings and evenings, and sluglike between lunch and dinner. 2 days in the temples around Siem Reap, and then 4 days in the capital Phnom Penh, checking out the markets, the Killing Fields, and the royal palace and temples.

We took care with what I ate and drank – while I have travelled extensively in the past, pregnant women are meant to be very susceptible to gastro, and can’t use any meds if they get it. But I’ve come home with a clean bill of health, some great photos and good memories. In fact, I’ve been very lucky to have avoided morning sickness completely so far (particularly while we were away).

On our return, we started the business of shopping around for an obstetrician. The first, who we’ve decided to go with, was prompt, quick, friendly and completely unstressed by our trip away and my desire to keep up my fitness regieme, while the second kept us waiting for half an hour for the first appointment for the day, and proceeded to lecture me in detail about every aspect of pregnancy, even expressing surprise that I knew things like how the human body produces Vitamin D in sunlight.

The Baron attended these sessions patiently and had said that the decision was mine – but we got out of the second session and he exploded that we were not going to see her again!! I guess he can have an opinion after all, despite most decisions up to now being left to me.

The side benefit was that we got two views on an ultrasound of Peanut, and The Baron got to hear the heartbeat for the first time too. Peanut’s looking a little froggy at the moment (with two giant eyes on stalks growing out of it’s head. Or, those could be legs and we were looking at things upside down. I guess.

The next step is the risk test for Downs, which comprises a blood test at week 10 (I’m at 9 weeks now), and an ultrasound at week 12, to measure the nuchal transparency in Peanut’s neck. While this won’t give us a firm answer, it should indicate likelihood or not.

I’m really hoping that we get a nice ambiguous low risk, as this is one area that The Baron and I disagree on. He’s very much in favour of termination should we discover any abnormalities, and I’m…not so sure. It’s been a long road to get here, and I would find it very hard to simply end it – but then again, I don’t want Peanut to be in a position where it suffers due to ill health. So best to stay positive and assume that our low risk pregnancy continues to be so.

 

Double time

Test results today: hCG 6919 and progesterone of 247. Nice, solid results according to betabase with a doubling time of just under 35 hours, which makes me feel much better about having made an obstetrician appointment for when we get back from Cambodia, and already being booked into a hospital for delivery. Perhaps it’s just me, but the prize for me of IVF was simply getting a positive result – I haven’t gotten it into my head that the journey is just beginning.

For example, I can’t believe that at week 5 you are already expected to know what sort of birth you want, and how you want it all to go down. How are you expected to know? Public v private v home birth, obstetrician v private midwife v doula. And it doesn’t help that no side of the argument seems to be entirely impartial.

But I will go full support, at least this time around. Mum had two rather serious issues with my sister and my births, and I know enough women who eventually needed intervention that I will feel more comfortable going in that direction – and surely that’s all it’s about.

 

Not tempting fate

Well things have been quiet in the Barreness’s castle over the past few days now that the news has had a chance to settle down a little. It’s been weird though – the initial excitement has been tempered by the fact that we don’t know at this point whether Peanut is going to stick in it’s jam sandwich.

I woke up the other night with rip roaring cramps – the real ones I remember from the start of my period, and I convinced myself for several minutes, lying there in the dark, that it was all over rover. A quick trip to the bathroom revealed it was nothing at all (except a 4am freakout). But it means that we are waiting on tenterhooks for the second blood test this Friday.

This should hopefully demonstrate that my hCG levels have been doubling like they should – if not, it’s a significant indication that this pregnancy may only be temporary.

I read somewhere that IVF couples never truely get over the feeling that something is going to go wrong. Perhaps, after having come to terms with the fact that the deck is stacked against you, and that you need a little help, you can never really get used to the odds being in your favour. So we dread blood results, prepare for an empty screen at an ultrasound, and worry that every person we tell our happy news to, is another strike against this all working out.

The Baron got a call from his brother in Italy today – he and his wife are expecting their 3rd child (conceived first time around, naturally!) in November as well. We’re obviously very happy for them – and yet I am kind of jealous that they are so confident of an outcome that they are happy to share their news. We’ve only told those who were on the IVF journey with us – I couldn’t even admit it to my yoga instructor today when she asked if there were any pregnant people in the class, for fear of assuming too much.

Fingers crossed for a good result on Friday, which should hopefully allay some of my worries.

 

Remember remember the fifth of November

It might have been created without a bang, but will hopefully come into the world with one – our baby (not used to saying that!) is due on Guy Fawkes Day.

Culmination of a very stressful day in fact! We actually got a faint positive on Wed evening which shocked us both, but I held off testing again until this morning as I didn’t like the thought of getting bad news at work unprepared. I dreamt all night that the very expensive accurate digital test wouldn’t work – and guess what – BFErrormessage.

That threw me, and I’ve been feeling rising anxiety all day. I know that the nurses have mentioned they leave the bad news until the end of the day, so at 4.50pm I was convinced they were delaying the inevitable. I finally rang to find they had been having a very busy day were way behind, but the nurse was very kind and went and found my test results.

We’re still in the very early stages so don’t want to get over excited, but with an hCG level of 247 and progesterone of 217 at 15dpo, things look pretty promising. Perhaps it’s our IVF training, but we’re still wanting to take this just one day at a time.

And now what?? I’ve been following such detailed instructions on every aspect of this, that I don’t really know what to do next on my own. I really wasn’t expecting this, and have done no research (this is very unusual for me I know). Time to hit ‘What to expect when you’re expecting’ I think.

Thanks to everyone who’s been following me on my journey – and to those of you waiting for your BFP I hope it comes soon.