Ovulation Induction

What is ovulation induction (OI)? It’s a form of fertility treatment that is reasonably non-invasive where you are stimulated to produce one to two mature eggs then given a trigger to release them. You then have timed intercourse (because we all love the scheduled sex amiright?!). I would probably consider this as the next step up from a clomid cycle where you are just given some tablets then told to do it like rabbits. Clomid cycles are also considered OI treatments.

This treatment is generally considered suitable for women who like me have no real great reason for not falling pregnant naturally, those who have low hormone levels or are not ovulating on their own, but have normal tubes and a partner with a normal sperm result.

So what happens?

Well for us this has been our plan:

Day of cycle	What happened
Day 1 11 Aug	Call nurses to advise AF has arrived
Day 2 12 Aug
Day 3 13 Aug
Day 4 14 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 5 15 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 6 16 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 7 17 Aug	50 Gonal F
Day 8 18 Aug	Blood test Result: change to 62.5 Gonal F
Day 9 19 Aug	62.5 Gonal F
Day 10 20 Aug	62.5 Gonal F
Day 11 21 Aug	62.5 Gonal F
Day 12 22 Aug	Vaginal scan and blood tests Result: starting to O, have sex
Day 13 23 Aug	Pregnyl trigger 8.30am Have sex
Day 14 24 Aug	Have sex
Day 15 25 Aug
Day 16 26 Aug
Day 17 27 Aug	Pregnyl again 8.30am to support
Day 18 28 Aug	Blood test

Then we are in that waiting period that all of us fertility challenged community know and love.

I decided to share our plan because a while ago Hubby and I tried to look at what this was and there were not a lot of people putting this information out there so I figured why not help 🙂

Fertility update

[Fair warning: sweary honesty may follow]

It has been awhile since I have talked about our fertility or lack there of. In fact I don’t believe I have even mentioned it since the beginning of the year.

Basically after the fail in December we were in a bad place emotionally, we were low on funds and we were both in really stressful places with our jobs. It was all crap people! So we decided to talk some time off. My anxiety has been a bit all over the place this year. I have high functioning anxiety which means people at work think I am great and then when I get home I crawl into a shell and read a book or watch TV to bring myself down from the day. It’s my process, but it was getting to the point where often I had nothing left in the tank when I got home and couldn’t even get my shit together enough to cook a decent dinner. Way too many potato gem dinners later (how good are they though!) and adding in sporadic depression related eating tendancies and an expanding waistline I felt totally out of control (not good for either condition) and wanted to take steps to rectify it.

We’ve been pretty much just trying naturally and crossing our fingers for a bit.

Step one – Fertility treatment

I got our medical records from the fertility place we were at to  pour over them looking for anything that could have been missed. We have been trying for 5.5 years and no one seems to know why we are not pregnant. When I got them we noticed that it was marked “male factor infertility” umm WTF? Turns out that the initial sperm test in 2014 recommended immediate IVF with ICSI and stated there was little chance of a natural pregnancy – we were then made to try naturally for 2 years, one cycle with Clomid. This new information combined with the fact that a counselor never called after our last failure when I was clearly in absolute sobbing pieces to the nurse on the phone, the fact that the FS suggested an ovarian drilling operation that he had done just 4 months earlier (clearly not overly interested in us to the point where he had not even read our file before we cam in for our appointment) and the fact that I felt fat shamed after almost every appointment made us realise he was not the person for us. There was also a few teary hours and sadness over the fact we wasted two years and a shitload of money on this person.

So I took to some Facebook groups and asked for recommendations. Many of them came back recommending Monash IVF, I looked into it and some of their FS’s even consulted locally (for full treatments we would have to go into a city though). From the first appointment I was happier. She re-ran many of the tests, was quite thorough, Hubby’s sperm has improved. The only thing she mentioned weight wise was to concentrate on eating habits and to ensure my activity each week included 3 x 30mins of anything that makes me sweat that I enjoy which I thought was pretty okay. When she realised where we came from she told the receptionist to book as many appointments as possible local to us as it was silly to have us come all the way in. The second meeting we had with her she made a 3 month plan for us. We are doing Ovulation Induction for one month (we have started this now), if this does not work we are doing an IUI for one month, if this does not work we are meeting again in October to then move immediately to IVF. She doesn’t want to waste time or money which is so great. Then it turns out IVF is cheaper through this company even though their reputation is as good as the other place we went through so we can afford more rounds.

Final nail in the coffin for the old FS was when she gave us the Gonal F script I said to Hubby we would have to find a way to make it in to a place 30mins away to get it that afternoon, she asked why we would go there and I said because the other FS had said it was the only pharmacy that would stock fertility medication in our area. She said that was ridiculous and incorrect and recommended we call Chemist Warehouse (1 block from my work) – she was right – they were amazing and had it for me the very next day! I was SO F*#@ING MAD at the other FS. They gave us no option as they sent our scripts directly to that pharmacy, obviously they get a kick back from using them. We had to do all sorts of running around and leaving work early (using leave time or making up hours) to get our stuff from that pharmacy. HOW RUDE! I just couldn’t even.

Anyway… Hubby and I have talked about it and how mad we are. We are both very glad that we have moved on. I know people have got their miracles from the other FS and if we had we probably wouldn’t be as upset about these things, but damn it is a hard pill to swallow. So now we are going to move beyond our madness, I like this lady FS much more. I think she actually knows what it is like to have to watch everything you eat. We have decided to shed our bad experiences and concentrate on the positive journey we believe is ahead of us with this lady. I really liked that she asked both of us where we wanted our journey to go next and then gave us her opinion of what she would like to try, but then the ultimate plan of what we would do was made all together.

For anyone out there afraid to shop around, just don’t be. If you have any doubts or just want a second opinion on whether there should be anything else you should be testing just do it. Your current FS doesn’t even have to know you have done it. Try thinking of your FS as your employee, this really worked for me and it is accurate, you are paying them to provide you with a service.

I think step one has provided plenty of information so I will leave it here and work on step two another day 🙂

How are your journeys going?

 

The Unleashing

I have just finished reading The Unleashing which is Book One in the Call of Crows series by Shelly Laurenston. I have not read any of Shelly’s other publications so this was a new author for me too. I got this book through my local library’s Overdrive account.

I was drawn to the book not just because of the cover (hehe), but also because I have always enjoyed Norse mythology and was very intrigued by the idea of the Norse clans in a modern setting.

I actually really enjoyed this book. It was full of very strong female characters, I read a review that said they were not believable… I am guessing that reviewer was male because I have absolutely met women like that 🙂 I am a sucker for fiction that displays women in a strong light. I like it even more when they do not swoon at the first glimpse of abs. The story centers around the journey of Kera and her growth and discoveries about herself and her world. She’s strong, doesn’t take crap and the main love of her life is a pit bull she rescued off the street after it had been dumped for dead after being used in a dog fight ring… who wouldn’t love this girl?! Obviously I am totally biased as soon as a rescue dog became involved. My dream would be to buy a ranch where abused dogs are rehabilitated and given a second chance so I was hooked as soon as I read this part.

I liked the character of Ludvig as well, wasn’t sure I would at first, but he definitely grows on you. In fact all the characters do. It can get a little chaotic trying to keep them straight as there are a lot of characters running about, but it is not too bad.

I didn’t realise that the book was part of a series when I chose to read it which is a bummer because I will have to search for book two as my library does not have it. The end was a definite cliffhanger and I wasn’t expecting the book to end there. Just all of a sudden people were making statements and overtures and I was thinking to myself ‘huh, that’s weird, this is wrap up talk, but there’s so much more plot to work… oh it’s finished…’ the wrap up was a little to abrupt for me, but I think I felt that way too because I wasn’t ready for it to end.

Goodreads says there are two more books in the series. I would definitely like to check them out. I just like giving fair warning to anyone interested in reading that they might be committing to a series hahaha.

What are you all reading?

Rescue Kittens

Our lives have been super busy and irrevocably changed recently.

At the beginning of June Hubby and I met beautiful twin girls who were up for adoption. A couple of weeks later we learned that they still had not found a home because separating them would be too traumatizing and people didn’t seem keen to adopt both of them.

So we met with them again and we just knew that our big home was exactly what they needed. So I would like to introduce you to the newest members of our family Persephone (Seph) and Athena (Thea).

When they first came home

For my Husband it was love at first sight. I loved them, but 4 furbabies is a huge commitment and I just wanted to make sure that we were making the right decision for the girls. Yes we had the space and money, but time and patience, did we have enough? I realised though that we are full of love and that at 3 months old the girls had known nothing more than the insides of boxes being poked at by people who weren’t going to take them home and make them part of their family. We could do that for them… and we have.

It took a few days for them to spend time out from under the couch. Though they loved having the top of this gym to escape to as the puppies came to terms with their new sisters.

The girls have basically doubled in size in just a month. They now allow us to actually pick them up and hold them and are HUGE lovers of pats. They didn’t purr when we first brought them home, but now we have a regular purr soundtrack in our household.

Miss Thea enjoys sitting with Mum on the couch now

It took them I think 2 weeks to realise that there was an upstairs. They now LOVE going up there and tearing around the place… in the middle of the night. They were pretty keen on getting into our bedroom at night which wasn’t the worst thing… until Seph started climbing the curtains!!! Bad kitty.

They are both very adventurous now. Very hard to tell apart as they are almost identical even down to their white markings. Thea is slightly smaller with a thinner tail, but they have completely different personalities. Thea will run all around your feet wanting pats and flop and present her belly the second you look at her like you might pat her. Seph is big on the rubbing against legs, bags, corners, arms etc. to facilitate the patting she wants which is all the time hahaha. Seph is also the one who has figured out she can jump onto the kitchen counter and drink the remnants of my cup of tea, then there was the time she tried to jump into the bloody oven when I opened it. Naturally her craziness has made her Dad’s favourite hahaha.

Basically Seph goes where she pleases and now believes that the new dog bed we bought before we adopted the girls belongs to her. She stretches out as far as she can to show there is no room for anyone else and doesn’t even like her sister joining her for a nap. To be fair I did situate it where it would get the best sun 🙂

Here’s our boy Sam reclaiming the bed for a short time this weekend to sit next to me while I had my morning coffee 🙂 

The dogs are mostly okay with the girls now. Thea LOVES Sam and every morning she runs up to him and makes him pat her with his snout by rubbing herself under his chin. She will often then roll onto her back and present her belly to him. One day she will figure out that he cannot pat her hahaha. She also jumps around and over him inviting him to play… he just looks at me like “WTF Mum!” like any older brother with a toddler sister in play mode hahaha.

So our world has been very full of cleaning, playing, retraining, bringing out of the closet (figuratively and literally), giggling at antics and all sorts of other things lately.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of the newest additions to our family 🙂

Burned

WARNING: There are some spoilers ahead. Short non-spoiler version: This was a good follow on from the other novels. Found some surprises in here. There were things I liked and didn’t like. Was interested very much in how she developed Dani’s character whilst hating it at the same time.

This book seems to be receiving some serious flack in some of the reviews I have read. I was pretty happy in general with this book. I didn’t tear through it as much as the other books in the series for some reason, but it certainly wasn’t the travesty that people are making it out to be. There were parts of it I loved and parts not so much, but the likes far outweighed the dislikes.

In general this was a good installment in the series and I am looking forward to the next one. I still LOVE the world building in this series. There were a couple of completely new areas that we visited with the characters and I could completely construct a visual in my head thanks to Moning’s world building. Her descriptions of the Crimson Hag are just spot on and at times made me cringe, they could possibly give someone nightmares haha.

The characters interacted well and I still love the arguing between groups and the banter that goes on. We saw more of some characters that have so far been mostly in the background which was great and I liked the development of Lor’s character very much. I also appreciated getting to know more about the Nine and finding out about some of Ryodan’s much protected secrets.

-WARNING – BIG SPOILER – SKIP THIS PART IF YOU WANT –

I loved the character of Dani from the other books, I was a bit put off with the changes to her character. I knew something was coming with her because it felt like this was the way we were going with some kind of hidden personality. I was just disappointed when Dani disappeared right at the beginning of the book and I guess her character was so full of life that I really felt the loss in the group. Especially when she was replaced with this next gen Dani/Amazon warrior with the personality of a paper bag. I struggle with this because I love Dani, but at the same time it was such a clever development.

I’m glad I finally got to read this book. It has been on my TBR pile for some time (like you know… since it was published haha). Looking forward to getting hold of the next one.