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If you're not up to this please scroll on and I hope this hasn't upset anyone - it's never my intention. I just want to give an update and maybe some hope to anyone who may be feeling a bit hopeless.
Update:
My LG is here - after what seemed like a very straightforward pregnancy it all went suddenly wrong about a month ago and my waters broke around 28 weeks (slowly, without me noticing!) and I had complete placenta previa. We clung on in a horrible limbo until it became too risky and I had a section nearly a week ago. She's been on the intensive care unit which is terrifying but in the last few days has got strong enough to come off everything bar a feeding tube. No idea when we can take her home but she's here - my very tiny rainbow.
Thank you:
3 years ago, I was 37, had been TTC for 7 years without ever even having a hint of a positive test. We'd had a cancelled round, then 18mnth delays due to lockdowns, poor and 'weird' responses to two back to back rounds of stims, poor fertilisation, painful collections and two early losses on fresh transfers. And I was pretty low. At least before all that I hadn't had it so starkly brought home that there was something not right and I was so conflicted about doing any more transfers as I felt I was wasting precious embryos in my clearly broken body. Then with some tweaks, and probably chance, it worked. I had my LG. Confidence resumed and now with even more of a sense of ticking clock and desperation to give my daughter a sibling, I had a terrible 'banking' round (one egg, transferred early against my instincts) and that ended in a PUL and emergency surgery at 10 weeks. That floored me. But this forum saved me - the ladies on here rushed to answer my frightened posts and made me get treatment and insist on being taken seriously (how the NHS can let women in that potentially life threatening and distressing situation just keep being sent away is beyond me). You also sent me wonderful hopeful messages and checked in on me. I will be forever grateful.
I'm not sure I was ready but I had a FET a few months later and it was a BFN - losses are hard but that was my first BFN and I started to feel again like things were hopeless and maybe I had had my one miracle. The guilt of not really being there for my daughter and equally worrying she would never have a sibling was tough. And I felt selfish, indulgent and greedy for carrying on. But I set out to have a natural FET the following month - just wanting this part of my life over with. I had my bloods back and they were off - cue me assuming I had some sort of hormone disorder, and then when my 'period' was light, that I was in early menopause. So I started to prepare myself that maybe I couldn't even transfer the few remaining frosties. When the doctor finally persuaded me to test I was nearly sick with what I saw - two lines. I thought it was over before it began as I wasn't on any meds, had been out for drinks (a lot), and assumed I had destroyed my only ever natural baby. I hadn't.
Turns out I didn't need any meds or any of the things that I thought had given me my first and kept her safe. I have no idea why now and not in the prior 10 years. If she hadn't decided to come early I would have been 40 when I had her. I've now had two babies in less than two years.
Excuse the bluntness but what I've learned if anything is that this whole infertility thing is an identity sucking, life pausing, financially ruinous, relationship ending head f*ck(!). I don't know now what worked and didn't, or why, the doctors seem to have even less idea. I am changed by it for bad, and for good. I have my miracles. I also have physical and mental scars. It's hard to accept that it's numbers, or chance, and that you have to keep throwing the dice, but they have now rolled twice for me so I can't argue. What I have achieved, I think, is closure.
You are all so so strong and please no matter what you decide to do or have taken from you, don't forget that. Stopping and deciding not to put yourself though this is incredibly brave, as is going the donor route, or surrogacy, or adoption. Or carrying on. Some of you are doing this in the most diffucult circumstances and I have nothing but admiration for you. You are not too old or tired or broken. You can take on anything and come out the other side, even though it won't feel like that at the time.
Thank you all for your support, and for helping me know I'm not alone. It has meant the absolute world to me.
Mrs OJ x