Well, there’s no going back now! Egg Sharing/IVF consent forms have been signed and our next trip to the clinic will be for the injection lesson, exciting!
As always, with us both being a bit OCD, we arrived at our appointment mega early so decided to make the most of the free coffee in the reception area. The clinic is right near the airport so we passed the time looking at incoming planes, apparently we’re both massive plan spotting geeks now. ‘Look, there’s another one coming!’ ‘It’s an Emirates! I can see the writing underneath!’ ‘We should go to the viewing area at the airport one day’ ‘Oh my gosh, yes! We absolutely should!’ - it’s a good job we’ve got each other eh? We were also very disappointed in ourselves to discover that we had both simultaneously recognised the voice of Kerry Katona on Loose Women even though we had our backs to the telly, dear me. Having said that, it did make us grateful that we work full time and don’t have to be subjected to daytime TV, every cloud.
Two cups of (decaf) coffee and a biscuit each later and we got called into our counselling session. It’s at this point I’ll admit that whenever we get given the name of someone we have an appointment with, I stalk the sh*t out of them, usually starting with Facebook. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying ‘Gosh! You don’t look anything like your profile picture!’ when the lady introduced herself. Anyway, she was absolutely lovely, you know when some people are just born to do a certain job? That was her. She made us feel like we were the only people in the world going through all of this and that we were these amazing people for just existing - if anyone ever needs an ego boost, I highly recommend her. Me and the boyf also had a cheeky glance at each other and suppressed giggles during the session when the counsellor mentioned the number 69, I sometimes wonder if we’re actually mature enough to be parents.
Next up was the family medical history with the doctor. HE WAS OFF HIS T*TS! So nice and friendly but also, I’m pretty sure, clinically insane. He laughed at EVERYTHING, particularly his own jokes. He was also into ‘big reveals’ where he’d type something into Google then spin his screen around so we could see a Daily Mail article condemning IVF or Egg Sharing or some such nonsense ‘What do you think...OF THIS?’ he’d cry, responding with ‘Very good, very good’ when we told him we thought that the article was a load of rubbish. I think he was trying to psych us out to see if we were up for the challenge. Luckily we passed the test and he handed us the consent forms, but not before p*ssing his pants at the fact that he’d accidentally printed two copies of our passports. Bless him.
Final stop on the appointment list was blood tests for me. Last time it was easy, just one vial of blood, easy - this time she took, seven. SEVEN! I regularly donate blood anyway so needles and stuff don’t bother me but effing hell, with the pathetic drips that were coming out towards the end I would have totally believed her if she’d said ‘Sorry about this but I appear to have extracted your entire supply of blood’. Anyway, not to worry, she hadn’t taken it all and I survived so all was well and off we went.
On the way home we called at Tesco because I was starving (‘She’s taken all my blood! I have to eat!’) We got THE most delicious Hollands Steak and Guinness pasties that we ate in the car (we both had an apple and a smoothie too to cancel out how unhealthy the pasty was, I’m no nutritionist but I’m sure that’s how it works). The whole delicious pasty thing isn’t really relevant to the whole fertility journey thing but they were that good I thought they deserved a mention. Seriously, try them. They’re a game changer.
So, now we’ve just got to wait for my blood screening results and keep everything crossed that they’re OK then hopefully start treatment at the end of August. We’re both getting really excited now, I’m a teacher and I don’t think I’ve ever wished that the six weeks holidays would every hurry up and be over. We do try to take it in turns to be sensible and with one of us saying ‘We can’t get over excited, it might not work’ but then we both just go ‘Ahhh, f*ck it! What shall we call the baby?!’
PMA innit?!
xxx