Like waiting for a bus!

We’ve all been there, stood at a bus stop waiting for what feels like an eternity for a bus. I’ve found our fertility journey very much like waiting for the bus. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that the waiting is what can be so difficult especially when you have no control over it.

Unlike waiting for the bus you don’t get a timetable and know what to expect and when to expect it. I wouldn’t say the waiting drives me insane as in the whole I believe I am a patient person, it’s more frustrating.

Take for example IVF. We have decided to try for our second round. We started our second round in March but it was cancelled due to Covid19. Our second round was following our heterotopic pregnancy. When my day 1 arrived (in layman terms the first day of my period) I rang the clinic to prepare for the injections and get our dates from day 21. We were all set with the dates given and when we would test for our pregnancy.

My body had other ideas. Day 1 came again a week later. This meant that we had to start again with planning the dates for certain injections, scans, transfer and pregnancy testing.

The irony is that if my body hadn’t had other ideas we would have been too far along our IVF round and it would not have been cancelled. We thought we were yet again in for a long wait. No one knew how long the clinics would be shut down for and when they could reopen.

As I’ve said previously we were ok with our round being cancelled as we didn’t know enough about Covid19 and the impact on pregnancy or babies.

It was a huge surprise to Neil and I that we fell pregnant naturally again against the odds following my tube being removed and turning 40.

The clinics opened and people were excited to start their fertility rounds again. A few weeks later at 8 weeks pregnant Neil and I were told that our babies heartbeat had stopped at 8 weeks pregnant.

It is now 4 weeks and 2 days since we were told. The pregnancy test I took this morning still says I’m pregnant following the miscarriage. So Neil and I have to wait for my body to recognise it’s not pregnant so I can ovulate and then have Day 1 for our IVF round.

I can’t speed the process up. There is no pill to take to remove the pregnancy hormone or increase the decline of it. We just have to wait. We don’t know how long this will take. We believe we are close to seeing the Not Pregnant on a test.

I’m normally and a glass half full kind of girl but at the moment fear is creeping in. The longer my body takes to ovulate the longer we have to wait for Day 1 and Day 21. My fear is Covid19 and a second wave. I’ve been watching the news about other countries and their second wave. I saw how people met to protest, celebrate a football win and flock to the beach.

The pubs will open soon and as people fill themselves with alcohol I fear social distancing will go out the window. We have already seen that people have ignored the advice regardless of their reasons.

So you see my glass at the moment is half empty as I fear that by the time my body is ready for IVF a second wave may well have hit. We could be back to square one with the clinics being shut and our round being cancelled again.

If we are not affected by a second wave then we will start our second round of IVF and this will involve waiting. We will wait for Day 1 then Day 21. We will wait to have a baseline scan to check that my body is ready to have the embryos implanted. We will wait on edge when they unfreeze two of our embryos. We will wait for the call to let us know if they survived the thaw and reached blastocyst. If they do make it to this stage we will have the two week wait till we can take a pregnancy test to see if we are pregnant.

They say all good things come to those who wait and Neil and I have waited! We have waited with baited breath at scans when we have found out that Kora and Ava had no heartbeats. We waited with excitement and anticipation at another pregnancy when we were sadly told that we had lost one twin and the other was in my tube and I needed surgery. We waited with anxiety till week six to have a scan to be told our baby had a heartbeat only to be told 2 weeks later the heartbeat had stopped.

We have waited every month to ovulate and then test to see if we are pregnant. We have waited for a funeral date to cremate our identical twins. We have waited for autopsy results (for 6 months we waited). We have waited for results of tests to show that everything is ok with the babies we conceive and us. We have waited for hormone levels to drop. We have waited for our baby to pass after medical management of miscarriage. We have waited ten days for my body to deliver Kora and Ava. We have waited for the pregnancy test to still show we are pregnant and haven’t suffered another biochemistry miscarriage.

I guess now we continue to wait. Let’s just hope that the plan for us isn’t like waiting for a bus then three come along all at once! We might have a plan in place and we might be positive but only time will tell what our future holds and for that we will just have to WAIT and see.