Pregnancy - The Early Days

The thing about finally getting pregnant after infertility is you’re simultaneously in a state of disbelief, excitement and terror.   You’ve spent years waiting to get to this point and consequently can’t possibly let yourself believe that what until now you’ve believed might be impossible has actually happened. 

After the embryo transfer in IVF there’s the infamous 2 week wait – for me it was actually about 12 days – where you have to wait to take a pregnancy test to see if the embryo has taken.  This is naturally torturous, wondering if all the injections, tests and pain will have been worth it.  I was incredibly blessed that I only had to do this once and the outcome was good, I can’t imagine how it must feel to have that wait and then get a negative result, my heart really goes out to those ladies.  For me this period of time was in a way overshadowed by being so horribly ill, in pain and ending up in hospital.  I felt also that being ill put more pressure on the wait because I felt so terrible I wasn’t sure I could ever bare to have another round of IVF.  I feel differently now, in hindsight I would go through that again without a second thought in order to get pregnant, but at the time it was hard to keep that perspective.

For Matt and I the 2 week wait was cut short by a day, I warned Matt that along with my other bloods they’d being checking my HCG (pregnancy hormone ) level and that they might just come and drop the results on us and I was right.  The night before we were due to test the Dr and the ward Sister came in, I think their exact words were “It looks like you are pregnant.” I can’t remember what I said, I don’t think I said a lot, I don’t think I really took it in.  I just remember when they left climbing out of bed and sitting of Matt’s lap (which wasn’t very easy in my fluid filled, bloated state) and hugging him and not saying anything, I remember Matt shedding a few tears. After the hideous, scary week that we’d had it was suddenly all worth it, somehow it didn’t matter how awful I felt anymore.  Feeling a bit better that evening we ventured down to the canteen, all I fancied as a celebration however was a bottle of apple juice and a new puzzle book, not how I would have imagined celebrating the news!

 

We still had to do the ‘official’ urine test from the clinic the next day and for both of us it didn’t seem entirely real until we’d done that.  Matt came into the hospital early at about 6.45am before work. I remember doing the test and then going to sit on the bed, putting the 3 minute timer on my phone and waiting before going back to get it from the bathroom.  It wasn’t quite the moment I’ve imagined so often over the past 3 ½ years because obviously we’d been pre-warned but still, there it was, that 2^nd little pink line that I had wondered if I would ever see.

Worse than the 2 Week Wait

 

That moment you’ve imagined so long is amazing but it’s really just the beginning of another agonising wait which in many ways is even worse that the original 2 week wait. You have to wait another week to take a further test to confirm the result.  Then you have to wait until you’re 7 weeks for the clinic to do an early scan to make sure that the pregnancy is viable.   It’s horrible waiting for that scan because part of you wants to jump for joy but there’s this horrible part of you that knows that there’s a chance that you’ll go for the scan and they’ll tell you the devastating news that they are unable to find a heartbeat and the pregnancy is going to fail.  I was a little bit luckier than many people in a way as I was having regular bloods to monitor my OHSS and they also checked my HCG meaning I could see that this was going up nicely as it should in early pregnancy.  In other ways however the after effects of the OHSS made the wait more difficult as it gave me a lot of pain in my lower left abdomen which meant got myself a bit worked up that the pregnancy might be ectopic.

First Scan Day 

When you go in for the scan they naturally talk you through “I might not be able to find it straight away, give me a few minutes to have a look…” etc.  I could see the screen however and quite quickly I could make out the little heartbeat, I can remember half crying half squealing, “I can see it’s little heartbeat!”  It’s a difficult moment to describe. After so long of wondering if it was possible, wondering if my body was even capable of getting pregnant to see that little miracle right there is beyond words. It looked much like a little jellybean or a monkey nut, we’d already been referring to the baby as jellybean so that’s just stuck.  I could have just sat there all day and looked at that little beating heart. 

7 week scan, 10.3mm long

 

 

More Waiting, Less Eating 

 

Of course as soon as you’ve had one scan been reassured the fear creeps back in and you then become fixated on the next scan.  I had a midwife appointment at around 9 weeks, this was the initially ‘booking in’ appointment which is a pretty dull series of form filling but yet it will felt ridiculously exciting.  It felt almost wrong to be going for a midwife appointment as if I was going through somebody else’s life, I couldn’t possibly be allowed to go for a midwife appointment, I felt like I must be just being ridiculous as if the midwife was going to turn round and say to me,  ‘I’m sorry you really shouldn’t be here.’  Once this appointment is done you’re then sent a date for your ’12 week’ scan, mine actually turned out to be booked for  13 weeks which is perfectly normal but still disappointing as I was just desperate to see my little jelly bean again.

This period of the pregnancy was pretty hard work. I wasn’t actually vomiting but felt nauseas almost all day, every day for a few weeks. I felt desperately hungry but at the same time I really struggled to find anything at all I fancied eating. I survived mostly on potato waffles, fish fingers, dry granola and oranges.  I felt so rough and tired and was having at least a couple of naps a day.  It was difficult to separate the early pregnancy symptoms from the after effects of the Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome,  for example the exhaustion I was feeling was probably a combination of the two.  The nausea also made it difficult to get over the OHSS as I’d lost weight and a lot of fitness while I was ill but struggled to eat anything to get my strength back.   

I found this whole period very strange.  I’d waiting to be pregnant for so long I felt guilty complaining that I felt so unwell. I kept saying to my husband “I am happy, but I just feel so rough.”  I felt like I wasn’t allowed to complain because I was so incredibly blessed that the IVF had worked but at the same time I just felt like the ill feeling would never end!  In time things gradually started to improved, the nausea wasn’t so constant, it was more just in the mornings and then eased off throughout the day, I gradually got my appetite back and could eat more things. The only things I’ve really stayed off are cooked tomatoes (yuck) and even things that contain them like pizza, chocolate and tea.  It’s a very weird to be off tea and chocolate because these are 2 of my favourite things!  I hope my taste for them comes back quickly after the baby is born because I’m not sure how I’ll survive being a new mum without tea and chocolate!

Scare

 

I remained on progesterone pessaries until 12 weeks.  Around 10 weeks when giving this I started bleeding, initially it was probably around a tablespoon of bright red blood. I just remember saying out loud “Please God no,” running down the stairs and shouting at Matt in tears “I’m bleeding.” I knew that bleeding is quite common during pregnancy, I know more ladies who’ve had bleeding that those who haven’t but all this goes out of the window when it’s happening to you.  I felt like everything I’d hoped for, dreamed of and waited for for so long was about to disappear. I felt in a complete panic, in that moment a whole future of horrible fears rushes into your head. What would happening if I was miscarrying, how would I cope with having to go through the whole IVF process again after how ill I’d been the first time, how was I going to tell my parents who were so excited about being grandparents, I was just in a complete and utter panic, hyperventilating and crying.  Matt was absolutely amazing! He must have been terrified but he stayed calm, sat me down, calmed me down and looked after me.  There’s been a number of ladies from my church who’ve been praying for me for a long time and throughout all the IVF as well as my bible study group and my first thought was just to get them to pray so Matt contacted them for me. 

It was 7 o’clock in the evening which made things difficult.  I knew that if I went to the hospital they wouldn’t do anything overnight unless the bleeding was heavy enough to cause major concerns. I did ring the NHS 111 number and a nurse rang me back but they just confirmed this advice (NB: Of course it’s different for everybody and if you’re having bleeding I would always recommend seeking medical advice).  All I could think was “how am I going to get through the night,” I couldn’t possibly imagine getting any sleep at all.  Matt managed to calm me down and fortunately the bleeding didn’t last too long. I managed to get some sleep overnight but woke every few hours to have that horrible moment of having to see whether there had been any more bleeding.

After a whole night without any more bleeding I was feeling a bit more hopeful but was desperate for a scan to reassure me.  I managed to get a Doctors appointment for 9am but unfortunately they couldn’t fit me in at the hospital for a scan until 9am on the Sunday morning 2 days later.  I wasn’t annoyed about this level of wait, it seemed reasonable in a sense given that the bleed had been relatively short lived and wasn’t ongoing.  I probably would have managed to wait that long if it hadn’t been that I was going to see most of my extended family that weekend many of whom knew about the IVF and who I’d been intending to tell about the pregnancy. The thought of being there for the whole weekend with them not knowing and worrying was horrible so I decided to pay for a private scan at the clinic where I had the IVF.  I was feeling much more optimistic about things now but was still terrified and I remember sitting on the floor in my bedroom having a good cry that morning before pulling myself together for the scan.

When we got there for the scan there was still another horrible wait to be called in for the appointment then while she went through the paperwork it felt like forever. Eventually though we got to the scan and almost as soon as she got it up on the screen she said in a very jolly voice “well it’s doing gymnastics in there”!  The sense of relief to see that little baby wiggling around was immense, the scan wasn’t cheap but I can honestly say it was the best £80 I’ve ever spent!  It was amazing to see how much it had developed in 3 weeks since the last scan.  She couldn’t find any reason for the bleeding or any evidence of it meaning it was likely to be just a superficial bit of irritation to the cervix, perhaps for the pessaries.  It was an immense relief, I could have stayed and watched it wiggling around all day.  It was kind of laying on its back so you could see its arms either side.    

After paying for the private scan and feeling reassured I phoned up to cancel the NHS one as I didn’t want to take up a space that somebody else could use but the nurse said “don’t worry, keep this as well,” which was probably sensible as it meant they’d be a record of it on my medical records.  So in the end we got to see the baby twice in 3 days which was amazing.

2 scans around 10 weeks

 

Starting to Feel Human Again

 

As time went on and I approached the scan at 13 weeks I started to feel a lot better and was eating more normally. I also started to notice my body changing and around 10 weeks and had to give up on wearing my normal jeans undone and change to maternity jeans. The relief of putting them on and being comfortable was amazing! I did seem to show quite early from around 10 weeks, my theory is that because my muscles had all been stretched when I was ill and swollen with the OHSS I showed earlier than I would have otherwise. I didn’t mind though, I love my little bump and I struggle to walk past a full length mirror without stopping to have a look at it and I’m always showing it to Matt and going “Look!!!” It’s just so exciting to finally be here.

13 Week Scan

 

Lots of people told me that when they went for their scan the clinic was running late and that they were so bursting for the loo by the time the scan came it was a bit of a close call.  Consequently I was a held back a bit on the drinking immediately before the scan. This then meant my bladder wasn’t full enough and I had to go away, drink more and come back after 20 minutes, I didn’t mind really though, it meant I got to see the baby twice (they could see it the first time they just couldn’t do the measurements).  Everything was looking good on the scan and you could see it having a wiggle around and moving its arms and legs. I keep saying this but it was just so amazing after all that time to finally be there, having a scan and seeing our little baby. I don’t think I need any final words, this says it all…