Note may contain triggers

To back track, a little, again, we decided to finally pull the trigger in December. We were going without meds and using my natural cycle to time everything (which in itself is amazing scientifically). I was delighted as it meant little to no medications, and so off we went.

And as every parent, with a child in Kindergarten, every damn virus hit us whack after whack. On the back of my daughter’s second birthday (which was winter wonderland of snow and ice and family and cosiness), we were prepping for Christmas as well. To say it didn’t go to plan is an understatement. I am officially starting the Christmas planning and shopping in August this year!

The week of Christmas my sister was moving apartment, my daughter was sick on and off, I was carrying a constant cough, and my husband was neck deep in work stuff. I had scans every 3 to 4 days to check where my cycle was and if I was ovulating. It turned out, as one of the very blunt IVF doctors told me, my feet still in stirrups, “well that ain’t happening this side of Christmas!” Her complete Austrian bluntness and lack of gentleness and empathy, is the reason I have never requested her again (just a side note every other doctor or assistant I have met in the clinic have been nothing short of spectacular, understanding and kind).

The reason was, it seemed, I didn’t ovulate (probably due to covid that I had had 2 months before plus general stress). It’s supposedly quite a common thing and can happen 2-3 times a year, supposedly. However, the issue was that the clinic was closed, for two weeks during the Christmas holidays, for a deep clean so the next earliest cycle would be January or February.

As I mentioned in my last post, the waiting is excruciating, and so we decided to go full steam ahead for a cycle in January. However, now, we were backed into a corner because my period would happen during the time that they would be closed. It was either skip January and start again in February or take some medication to push out my period to the beginning of January so we could start as soon as the clinic opened.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the impatience got to us. And so, instead of waiting, I started the medication, norethisterone, to push out my period.

It. Was. Terrible. We all contracted the vomiting bug over Christmas, and I started the medication on Christmas Eve. The nausea was akin to the first trimester, the bloat was unbelievable, the tiredness (that was an accumulation of everything), and my mental and emotional health took a hit. Despite it all, we still had a lovely Christmas and even managed to get my daughter potty trained while everyone was at home, but none of it was how I had imagined anything. Let’s say it worked well as a test run for Christmas this year.

However, just before New Year’s Eve, I felt quite short of breath and noticed one leg calf was slightly bigger than the other. It could have been legitimately anything but I was on high alert for thrombosis, because of what I had read about Norethisterone, and so I called the medical line and before I had even finished the call, they were sending an ambulance to the house, while telling me to sit down, open all entrances and remove or/contain any pets we had. My husband was like “What’s happening?” and his face dropped when I explained. Oh, the sheer drama of being carted through the Austrian countryside in a Red Cross ambulance to the little town hospital was an experience and a half let me tell you. Having lived for almost 7 years in Vienna (Austria) and had a few trips to the hospital for broken ankles, this hospital was a welcome one, but I could *totally* see a little medical soap being filmed there with it’s quaintness (let’s call it). It was, however, efficient, and that was all that mattered to me.

After several tests and a call back the following day, everything came back clear. No thrombosis. The IVF clinic told me to stop taking the Norethisterone which I was relieved at but also bitterly disappointed as our hopes of a January baby were disappearing. There were tears shed as I was starting to realise just how naïve I had been to think that everything would be smooth sailing.

The irony of ironies is that when you stop taking Norethisterone, your period should come within 2-3 days. That’s not what happened in my case. I was delayed by a week. It was probably as a result of the meds, the viruses, the stress, and every little thing in between. Yet, trudging onwards, I went for scan, and again, no ovulation to be seen. Surprise, surprise.

I didn’t realise how devastated I’d be or even we would be as a couple. I can’t reiterate the feeling of hearing the news and knowing you have to wait again for at least another 4 weeks. And now the worry and paranoia had started to kick in. Was there something wrong with me? Why was I not ovulating? What if we can’t get pregnant, like at all? I felt I my body and was letting me down, and not just me, my husband, as well. He – and I – put so much faith in my body and counted ourselves very lucky that in the grand scheme of things I had no infertility or medical issues. It had always made our approach to IVF “easier” (relatively speaking). Yet, here we were, and it was not going as planned.

It’s also important to say that because he works full-time and we have a toddler and daycare, I was going to all these ultrasound appointments and scans myself. They were short, 15-minute meetings, but schedules and commutes didn’t not allow for time off work (and wouldn’t have been worth it really either stress wise). And so I would sit in the waiting room, a waiting room I had always admired and felt comfortable in, for unknown reasons, but I had always felt a hint of positivity in there coupled with a comforting comfort. Don’t ask me why, but the decorator or interior designer nailed whatever the assignment was!

The outcome was now moving forward we were going to move on to medically managing my cycle and ovulation so that we could do an FET (frozen embryo transfer) sooner rather than later. On the back burner, we also had the finances and the grant that we had received and while incredibly generous it also has an expiry date attached to it, just to add a little bit more pressure.

And so once my next period came, I started taking estrogen 2mgs, and a few weeks later, I added on progesterone pessaries twice daily while lowering the estrogen. I never hated anything more. For my first pregnancy I had also taken progesterone so I knew the pitfalls but with the first pregnancy I took them orally which technically I was allowed to do this time around as well, but I was warned that it would make me even more tired than I already would be/was and so the other way, was the way! (I’ll go into the effect of the meds in another post as it truly deserves its own light to be shone on it).

Towards the end of February, we FINALLY got to a stage where we could do the frozen transfer. My daughter had contracted conjunctivitis along with a virus a few days before the transfer and while she was on the mend, she was still not in kindergarten, so there was some scrambling to rearrange things In the end (on a side note, not a lot of people knew we were going through this at the time, so when shit did hit the fan and we needed help i.e. someone to mind her for 30 minutes while we did the transfer, we had to reach out, but man, I’ll never forget the support we got even if it didn’t work out as she wound up going with us into the procedure). All the stress fell away as my darling angel demon conked completely and missed the entire thing. All that panic for nothing.

Prior to being led into the surgery room, we were told that earlier that morning they had thawed out one of our embryos for the transfer, but sadly it didn’t survive the thawing process. This hit us like a ton of bricks. We hadn’t expected that to happen or be told this just before we were about to enter the room to do the transfer. The second embryo survived the thawing process successfully and was ready to go. It was a hurried, bitter-sweet moment, as we stood with tears in our eyes at what we had lost without knowing why. We then gathered ourselves and proceeded into the surgery room.

While we had explicitly not wanted our daughter in the room with us for the procedure, it turned out to be actually weirdly nice and I would not have said this beforehand as I would thought “ergh that’s sort of weird” but the reality was far from that because, although she was asleep, she brought with her her own sort of hope and energy of possibility that it could and would work. I felt like a family, and it was just one of those moments in life that felt just right. She was our first little ‘Air Bubble’, the OG, after all, so it felt just right for our little family of three. I had my husband beside me, holding my hand, and in the other, he had our beautiful success story. It all somehow came together and full circle. It was a beautiful moment to see our ‘Air Bubble 2.0’ be transferred, and we felt so lucky and positive.

And then the two week wait started. And funnily enough it went quicker than anticipated, but that’s what happens with a toddler to distract you. Most days I fell into bed exhausted, but slowly optimistic at the prospect of being pregnant.