“My hopes were low and I had started to doubt the process and the medics around me. Mysterious fluid they can’t explain and an uncooperative uterus lining…”
So it was the 5th of January 2017 on the dreamy island of St. Lucia, he got down on one knee and popped the big question. Of course I was elated and said yes! A few days later we decided that actually we wanted to grow our family first. Baby girl had just turned 3 and we thought the timing and age gap was right to try for baby number 2. I had it all figured out; fall pregnant within the next few months, book the wedding for 9 months post birth – Perfect! I didn’t want to be a pregnant bride, plus our daughter was getting older and I was conscious of the age gap. Our wedding was not time-sensitive to us and we knew it would happen eventually. So we started trying to conceive!
After 9 long months, a sea of ovulation and pregnancy tests, and nothing! Not even close to a pregnancy scare and alarm bells started to ring. My periods were like clockwork and I was so angry with my body. 30 years old, and I couldn’t understand how 1 month of missed birth control lead to the conception of our daughter (the mysteries of the human body). I just knew something was wrong. I figured the NHS was not going to help us since we had already conceived one child, so I booked us in at a fertility clinic.
My first impressions of our fertility doctor was great. I liked his humour and he put me at ease about our situation. For the first time in 9 months I felt like the pressure had been lifted from my shoulders. We had finally handed over our fertility problems to somebody else. I felt relieved and reassured that within a couple of months we would be pregnant.
That was short lived, after a few tests and scans it became clear that I was a bit of an anomaly. Every test was coming back normal and my doctor just could not see why we couldn’t conceive.
So what next?
So he talked us through our options and highly recommended IUI. I remember he said that on average it takes 3 rounds of IUI to conceive. The odds may have seemed favourable to some but after doing some calculations I figured that the cost of 3 rounds of IUI was about the same as 1 round of IVF, and the success rate was the same. Guys, I’m impatient! Plus, I just had a gut feeling that our problem had nothing to do with my egg or sperm quality, so we decided to start our IVF journey.
It was at this point that the true problems reared its ugly head. Persistent fluid in my uterus detected during every scan. Funnily enough, I wasn’t worried. I still had faith in my doctor and I guess my body. The doctors had decided that if the fluid was still present by transfer day we would just aspirate it and delay transfer to the following day. Sounded straightforward and reasonable to me!
IVF Journey
Nothing can prepare you for your very first round of IVF! 4 weeks I abused my stomach like a pincushion, a hurricane of hormones, no troubled teenager could challenge. The daily phone calls from the clinic seemed endless and terrifying and I had started to think the worse. You see it was during these 4 weeks that we found out I had polycystic ovaries, which meant a barrage of phone calls to change my dosages and book in subsequent blood tests. Although we made it through the cycle, it was not without the nasty beast that is OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome). I looked like a walrus, my stomach was so tender – but praise the Lord! 36 eggs retrieved!
Fan-dabby-tastic! 36 eggs, woohoo! Or so I thought! Unfortunately, the stinker that is polycystic ovaries means high egg retrieval numbers are a by-product of low-quality eggs. So only 26 eggs were viable for fertilisation, 10 made it to day 1, and we ended up with 7 blastocysts for freezing. My knowledge of polycystic ovaries during IVF was minimal and as silly as it sounds, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated from 36 to 7.
And that was not the end – we go hit with the double whammy! Now they were telling me it’s too dangerous to do a fresh transfer on someone going through OHSS as you need to give the body time to recover – #%!$&! You’ve got to be kidding me right! Basically, I needed to give my inflated stomach and ovaries, that felt as big as watermelons, time to reduce in swelling. However, my disappointment was short lived, they didn’t say no but was just moving our transfer date. So, I soon became excited once again, I had 7 good quality embie babies ready to throw in the oven. The end goal felt close and was very clear – I could almost taste it! The pain, swollen ovaries and distended stomach marked the achievement of being that much closer to holding my baby in my arms.
2 months later and our first unmedicated frozen embryo transfer attempt failed. My lining was thin and not playing ball, and that wretched fluid was still haunting my uterus – Hay Freddy Krueger! So the following month we attempted a medicated cycle. My hopes were low as you can imagine, I had started to doubt the process and the medics around me. Mysterious fluid they can’t explain and an uncooperative uterus lining, hmmm, aren’t they the specialists! All this time and money and I felt like I was back to square one, no closer to an answer or baby number 2. I guess on the bright side, we had gained some priceless yet currently unusable frozen embie babies.
Asherman’s Syndrome
So after my fertility doctor advised that I either see a specialist for a laparotomy or go to the NHS I began to do what I do best – research, research, research! They had mentioned that the fluid could be a result of my labour and post-labour complications I had with my daughter. So amongst my research and symptom checks (thankyou Google) a condition called Asherman’s Syndrome (or AS) kept popping up. The accumulation of scar tissue and sometimes free fluid inside the uterus. Yes, guilty as charged! Dr Yaz with the self-diagnosis. I know, I know… but don’t judge – I was right! Oh and of course AS is not a straight forward condition to cure, nor is it a condition to be trusted in the hands of an ‘unlisted’ AS specialist. I don’t do things by the halves! Which brings me to the present day, now under the care of an AS specialist, 1 hysteroscopy surgery down (still 70% scarred) and many more to come I’m sure – sigh!
So until the next blurb….
