ICLW July...second time lucky

• Well last ICLW I discovered I was not on the list and had feared the same thing had happened this month despite completing the form...but hurrah...I have just discovered 2 lovely comments on my blog so it's worked this time...I already have one day to catch up on. Time to revive my blog!
• I am 17 weeks pregnant as of yesterday and haven't felt much like blogging about it recently so I think my next few posts will be a bit random, I have lots of other things on my mind.
• Not much to add to my intro/info, I live in South America, we needed ICSI for male factor IF, 2nd time lucky with our x2 embryo transfer (2 left which were Grade B)
• I will be having an early 20 week anomaly scan at 18.2 before I fly to the UK for my annual trip home to friends and family.
• I'm very anxious about flying (at the best of times) and I'm having lots of nightmares involving ridiculous scenarios mid air so I'm trying to be rational about flying in pregnancy but it's hard.
• I will be breaking our good news for the first time when we are back in England so I am excited and nervous too. It will be the first time I have seen any of my family or friends for a year and what a year it's been, needing ICSI, 2 operations, a failed fresh cycle and a pregnancy.
• What else...I'm never more than a few weeks away from mild brown (not spotting) just a little discharge so I live in fear of it returning, despite normal scans, closed cervix and reassurance that it's 'just one of those things' it's very hard to relax and think to far ahead.
• And...while my world has been turned upside down in the past few years I have managed to continue with my passion for art. I have exhibited but not sold anything (maybe a few years down the line). Most of the work I have come up with recently has no real subject it's more about purging my frustration and just enjoying putting contrasting colours along side one another until I feel the page is 'balanced'...very childlike.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I look forward to discovering lots of new and inspiring blogs this week :)

A better day...

Calm was restored more quickly than I thought after my moments of panic. I woke on Saturday believing entirely that my trip to the on call gynae service was a dream. I discarded the small panty liner with a light brown smudge on it and got a flash back of the linen bin full of blood stained gowns and towels in the linen trolley from the real emergencies. The bleary-eyed Doctor with pillow creases on his cheek asking how much blood I had lost while I tried to explain that there was no blood but a hint of brown maybe, I had nothing to show but how important this was, especially as I may have deadly food poisoning...2 + 2 = ?disaster?

I picked my pregnancy book up again and found something useful about sensitive cells in the vagina causing spotting after intercourse or bowel motions but describing something more obvious than my meagre findings. Things moved back into perspective as I remembered the heart beat and the closed cervix. Also, a very uncomfortable internal examination but despite this I have had no more colourful PV loss. Maybe my body wasn't letting me down after all. The same book explained that gastroenteritis was not risky to the pregnancy alone, more the effect of resulting dehydration and therefore seek advice after 48 hours, if not tolerating fluids or you have a fever. So actually 5 hours of nausea, a bit of vomiting and one episode of diarrhoea didn't seem like the end of the world.

I wrote a few bits down in a post on BC re. above experience, fear and frustration that I seem alone in compared with the ladies sharing a due date in December post IVF online and got a lovely response from a handful of women, many with pregnancy number two, sharing the fact they did not shop until post 24 weeks for the baby, never stopped knicker watch ever, unless the baby had moved within an hour and one lady didn't announce until 30 weeks on FB. I felt much better after that, I have to say.

Happy news re. the lady with a high risk of Down's that I mentioned has also had the all clear. Her risk was very high 1: somewhere-in-the-teens but the official tests came back negative and she passed the risk stage of m/c post procedure, she says she would never, ever have the screening again. I can imagine how that would feel. For me it's worth the gamble because to be low risk is one more encouraging sign. I know I start at 1:350 so I'm looking for a reduction in that to make me happy. Still a week to go before the results.

Today's picture is of a Mother and her son on 'the world's slowest ferry'. The little boy was very fidgety and grizzly and his Mum was tired, eventually she pulled him to her and they both slept for about 10 minutes so it was a perfect opportunity. Sometimes I consider giving these little sketches to people but wonder if it would feel weird to think someone had been watching you without you knowing, a bit risky maybe. Anyway, I remember how I felt when I sketched it, not jealous but envious and hopeful that I might have a moment like this one day and that if I did I hoped I would appreciate it and remember it rather than the hard work and temper tantrums.

From the best day so far to just dull, boring, repetitive stress...blah blah...broken record alert

After climbing in to bed following my last post, I opened my first pregnancy book. A friend passed it on to me who is in her 2ww after a 1st failed cycle so I hope to pass it back to her very, very soon. I had just given up after visiting the English bookshop and found just one book "What to EAT when you are expecting". So typical here where there is a famous obstetrician who puts women on 1500/day calorie diets. Most pregnant women wear skinny, white jeans and sport a basketball sized bump until EDD.


Diet has been an issue for me, more in an effort to get enough nutrients in (antenatal vitamins aren't recommended/widely available) as there are a lot of do's and don't's which vary culturally and I found it very hard to find anything to eat here. Partly because I can't read all the labels, I already have some food allergies and as I have no toxoplasmosis antibodies Dr P said, if you're unsure how your meat/veg/fruit is prepared...don't eat it. So I ate some well cooked chicken for the first time in the evening and I've eaten more of a variety of foods since passing 12 weeks so I expected a bit of 'gastric upset' but at 03.00 I woke and vomited violently, hourly, finally with some diarrhoea and I showered and dressed and went to queue for the GP. He said 99% of the time this will not harm your pregnancy which was not the 100% reassurance I was looking for. No scan, no heart beat just that I had no fever or pain so try not to worry. Diet prescribed of meat, plain rice, plain pasta and jelly plus other clear fluids for 3 days....so...not only can I not face anything from that list but I feel so guilty that the baby is getting nothing of value. I finally caved and got the standard antiemetic they prescribe here which helped ease the nausea enough to eat marmite on toast without butter. Not on the 'si' list but not on the 'no' list either.


I didn't have much more D or V yesterday but woke in the night feeling crampy and noticed a pink/brown tinge on the loo roll. WHY WHY WHY. I got dressed and took N straight to the Hospital with my antenatal card. I just can't watch and wait any more or google...I need to know. It was 5.30am so no point calling the Dr or attempting the number on the back of the card (I can't even order delivery ice cream). I was convinced I'd lost everything since the D and V, I added 2 + 2. 


It was an effort to work out the system at the hospital which is virtually empty at that time of night. I finally saw a very junior, brusk doctor who started making odd calls to a superior saying I was 30 weeks, despite my card info, he finally realised. Fair enough, 30 and 13 sound similar in both languages but my lack of bump might have been a clue? All very confusing, mostly in English he examined me, cervix closed and heart beat still there...'just one of those things'. I pushed him a bit about where the blood staining was coming from, it's been gone for 3 weeks and implantation is over (previous reason). He just shrugged, said hopefully the 'bug' hasn't done any harm' and then got back to the real emergencies. I got to see the maternity unit too when I was lost...hmmm is all I can say. If we make it that far I may need to make a proper visit and find out our options for English speaking staff and patient:staff ratio etc. 


For now I'm back on 'knicker-watch' and my food and hygiene obsession. I feel like screaming I'm so angry. I know I'm lucky to make this far but we've been through so much and I'm trying so hard to get some of the experience all my friends seem to have had/are having. What if I'm still getting a little blood staining in my discharge this time next week, when I go to the UK, all the way through?! It's so ridiculously stressful to have to take a taxi across town planning how to break a miscarriage to my Mum in my head and worrying how to say the words to wake N from his sleep that something might be happening. I showed N my latest colour swatch on the loo roll to which he said 'it that it?' but nothing can calm me down.


The heart beat was a relief, always, thank god, thank god but what about next time? I have got a lot more confidence from having a clean, white panty liner these past 3 weeks than the whooshing sound on a doppler which disappears as soon as the machine is whipped away. My next scan is weeks away so I really hope this pale brown/pink tinge does not return. In the mean time this is a huge test and I just have to keep going.

Endless worries wrapped up in a hopeful bundle.

I'm still so grateful that we may get to have a baby before the end of 2011, after a second (Frozen this time) ET.
I'm so relieved too to have passed the 12 week mark, it felt like it would never happen and I spent the following week worrying about coming off the progesterone and oestrogen. I still get sudden feelings of panic and I rush to look at the clock remembering that there really are no more drugs to take after 16 weeks on the trot.

Further relief came with the booking of the Nuchal translucency USS, yesterday at 12.6 wk. I knew it would reassure me after a few drug free days but as the day approached I worried what it would show. At 35, depending what you read I have a 1:300 or 1:350 chance of Downs and other syndromes. Before these new tests I would have been offered an amnio in the past due to my age but now these non invasive, risk free tests can feed info to a computer and tell me whether my blood test and the NT have lowered my risk from 1:300 or put it up and whether I am 'high risk' or 'low risk'. Results can be very sketchy but most people do it hoping to be a comfortable way in to the 'low risk' or it can be an anxious 6 months with more tests and decisions to make. One lady in the Dec 11 Birth Group has been given a figure of 1:14 and feels she will have more invasive tests with a small risk of m/c (7%) because she just needs to know. I can only imagine how it would feel. I am thinking of her and hope she will get a quick answer. So tough.

This lady had also been told that at 1:14, she has a 93% chance of a normal healthy baby. Incredible isn't it how looking at numbers in a different way can seem so different. 93% sounds great but I'd be devastated at 1:14. I promised myself not to google but I have since and while I felt happy with 2.1 NT I'm not any more. I found posts such as 'at 2.1 it is a little high'...hmm. Plenty of sites say up to 2.8 at 13 weeks and up to 2.0 at 11 weeks so maybe these ladies are at a different stage. The big number seems to be 2.5. Anything below that is...ok but better to be lower. There are lots of ladies at 1.3 - 1.8 which would make me feel better, so much clearer. I really want that 1:300 to change to put my mind at rest about another big what if!

Of course there are many other factors, the bloods can change everything. The scan was worth every peso. The foetus has nasal bones but not clear whether they are all the right segments but that is a small hope. 4 limbs, 4 lovely chambers of the heart with oxygenated and deoxygenated blood pumping around in bright red and blue like in my anatomy and physiology text books. A symmetrical (butterfly) brain, bladder and stomach. And the placenta is front and not a placenta previa so that's good too. Nice to hear the heart beat and not just see the waveform. I got all this info in 30 seconds at the end from a rude, arrogant Doctor who I hope to see for the last time in about 12 days time with the verdict. I have to collect my blood results on Thursday and deliver to him by hand. I will of course open them and have a look.

For now it's time to close google, I've overdosed on reading about NT and antenatal tests and have a mini book in my head. Maybe if my Spanish was better I would introduce the idea of patient information here, a little booklet perhaps...imagine!

ILCW virgin

Hello...I'm 35 and living in South America, missing England and planning on having my first baby here in December following (ICSI in January) a FET in April. I avoid naming the country or city I live in as I have promised my husband N that this blog is very private (not easy to find on Google) but I will say it's the land of steak and Malbec and of course Tango, so now you know. It would be lovely to hear from anyone at any stage of treatment, pregnancy or parenthood.

I think I need to create a post like this for people to find when the visit my blog after I leave a comment on their blog, presumably mentioning ILCW so they know they are invited to follow/read/comment on my blog?? Bit confused my this part... 'Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments.' So then I pick 5 different blogs each day and leave a comment them? Not sure what it means by return one...reply if I get a response perhaps? ...we shall see, if not I will have worked it out by next month.

The odd one out

I've always felt like the odd one out, my upbringing was quite unusual. It started to work in my favour when I reached my late teens, I then went on to embrace it. Now, this feeling, can trigger a lot of insecurity. Not being able to conceive without reproductive medicine (as a couple) has resurrected a lot of dark feelings and memories. Throw in living abroad with a poor grasp of the language and everything feels foreign.

My 12 week scan was every bit as special as the others, more reassuring to see real moving limbs than the little 'grey shrimp' with a flickering heart this time. It felt a very personal moment despite the dildocam and I requested N's presence too. This was his first glimpse of the tiny one but also of my legs in stirrups and I think  that made it extra surreal for him. I had to also request a fuzzy image which the Dr downloaded to a memory stick and emailed. I think here people wait for the next scan, he seemed surprised at my requests but I couldn't bear to leave again without a real picture of the mysterious goings on inside. I decided to not see Dr P at the lovely fertility clinic any more but at the normal place, even though both are covered in our health plan. I will still be the bumbling foreigner having everything repeated 3 times at the reception desk for the amusement of the waiting room but I hope this will restore some normality.

I am now one of 20 people on a private FB group that branched out from BC. I'm the only one who didn't 'whoop whoop' after my scan, I just added a little note that all was well on an old thread and sent some personal emails to my Mum, sister and a friend. I don't feel 'whoop whoop', words that I know express excitement online like LOL means 'that's funny'. It's a bit like speaking in Spanish, I don't really feel I'm saying what I feel. I feel really protective too about our news. I feel like I'm not ready for any announcements either. I know if I did 'whoop' on BC or FB that no one would mind as I don't mind when they do...it's just it feels so alien to me. I have felt very nervous coming off the hormones too and that is holding me back a little. It just feels strange that the other 19 people who have all conceived with similar difficulty are choosing baby names, buying baby clothes and discussing breast feeding. My mind wanders back and forth from now until December and all the things that lie ahead. I'm just still taking small steps, smaller than most it seems. Interesting find on BC, I searched a few things on the regular 'December 2011' group and came across a thread called 'Has anyone else not announced yet?'...there were many women in week 12-20 who were hiding in floaty tops and still hadn't got used to the idea that they really were pregnant, let alone that a baby was on the horizon so I felt more at home there for a while.

Homesickness

Most of the threads I am finding information on these days are about shopping and the general order of antenatal care in the UK. The postal service here doesn't work...no exaggeration so I can't order anything and most things you buy here, clothes for example, are made here and are very poor quality at a high price. Food is what I am missing most. While I'm strong believer in eating what a country does best when you are on holiday it's different if you live abroad. N made a trip to Mauritius recently and managed to find bacon and baked beans. Incredible. Even when I have spent time in Bangkok, Hanoi and Hong Kong to visit friends I have found a better selection of food. Expats took me to local cafes doing a full English or a nice Italian style pizza when you need a change and of course the traditional food is so great. I always want to return home for Marmite though and N managed to make a dash to a big supermarket in Johannesburg on his way back to South America with find 3 jars. This is keeping me going. My last empty jar ended up being kept because I couldn't accept it was truly empty and I sketched and painted the final scrapings, several times.

I feel so far from home these days. It's 6 and a half weeks before we return for our annual visit and I will be eating as much asian food, spicy food, fish, humous and chocolate without anti melting agent as I can. In place of cold white wine which I must avoid I will enjoy squash that is not 'red/orange/yellow fruits flavour' and doesn't come in the form of powder, cranberry juice and a wonderful selection of tea. This country does have the best meat and red wine in the world (in my opinion) but that's the last thing I want at the moment. Marmite on toast, with butter NOT cream cheese, a twix and a cup of decaf earl grey would go down a treat!