Firstly, thank you SOOO much to everyone for all your well wishes and thoughts yesterday and the day before. Your messages of support really mean the world to me!
We had all our preliminary blood tests, DH's analysis and my ultrasound done yesterday and a counseling session with the IVF psychologist which was emotional, but essential. The ultrasound was amazing. It was the first time I have had an ultrasound done properly by a specialist unit and also right in the middle of my cycle. I hadn't planned it that way when I booked our hospital visits a few weeks ago, so it was amazing that it worked out so well to be right at ovulation! I had lots of healthy follicles (9 good-sized on my right ovary alone, and plenty on my left - yahoo!) and she could see that I had ovulated the day before because the follicle that had ovulated (on my right ovary) lit up like a Christmas tree (woop woop!). I knew that I had ovulated the day before, as I had had all the signs, and therefore it was amazing to have confirmation of this. I also had a really good 'peri-ovulatory' lining. 'These are all indicative of optimum fertility' - were her exact words.
DH was in the ultrasound room with me (his first time) and he found it fascinating too. He joked saying 'well, we'll have to go home and get jiggy with it then' and she nodded her head vigorously. Not that this has made any difference for us in the last two years, but miracles can and do happen all the time :-)
I also want to mention here, that I strongly believe that my amazing session with my acupuncturist on Monday was also a big factor in the results of the ultrasound, so thanks AW!
So whilst absolutely elated by all this news, I walked out of the room feeling extremely confused. The first words out of my mouth were 'why the hell are we here if I'm supposedly so fertile?'. However, the fact is that there may well be another physiological problem like the sperm being unable to penetrate the egg wall or the cilia in my Fallopian tubes not working properly or one of many other things that may be affecting our ability to conceive.
I walked into the counselors office and the first thing I said was 'I'm so confused, I don’t know if we should give it another 6 months before trying IVF' and promptly burst into tears. But after a lot of talking through everything, we decided that it is ok to get help and we are not failures. She said it is completely and utterly natural to grieve giving up the dream of conceiving naturally.
I also realized that for a long time, I have been blaming myself for us being unable to conceive and thinking it's my fault because I am not 'relaxed' enough. She said after all I’ve done i.e. the NLP counseling, the acupuncture, the yoga, the excellent diet, the daily meditations, the wedding planning course - that I’ve done everything I can to 'relax' and live a balanced life and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself - her exact words were: 'you are only human after all'.
I had also irrationally been thinking that my DH thought the same thing and was blaming me too. For the first time in ages, I had the guts to actually ask him outright whether this was true. He openly said that he didn't believe this and that he agrees there could be an undiagnosed underlying problem which is the cause of all of this. I can’t tell you what a relief hearing him say that was!
We both came out feeling a lot more sure of our decision to go with the doctor’s advice and go ahead with the process. The temptation is always there to 'just try naturally for another 6 months' in the hope that a miracle will happen. But we just can't sacrifice more time (and personally I can't handle the emotional distress anymore) and so we've realized that it's totally ok to get help.
So yes - we are tired after a big day, but a huge amount more calm and reassured.
As always, I'd love to hear all your thoughts and I look forward to catching up on everyone's blogs in the next couple of days!
