I guess we just took it for granted that we would be able to conceive. Things really started to hit home after I was licking a lens every morning on an ovulation microscope and doctors suggesting I have a gastric sleeve to combat my insulin resistance and poly-cystic ovaries as well as it being likely I wouldn’t conceive. I was taking metformin and not having regular periods either. I was 34.
Within a month post surgery, the cysts on my ovaries had decreased by over 50%. Surgeons said falling pregnant would be easy. Hmmm
I knew by now that myself or my husband weren’t the breeding stock that we once thought, and it was time to head to Perth a mere 1200kms down the road for fertility treatment.
Upon testing both of our mechanics, a hysteroscopy and some bloods our specialist let us know IVF wouldn’t be an option!! What next?
I had never heard of ICSI (Intra- Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection) which was our next step. For all of you wondering; IVF is when many sperm are left to naturally fertilise eggs on their own. We didn’t have many sperm. My husband's sperm count was … bad. ICSI was needed to manually take 1 sperm and inject this into 1 mature egg to then begin blastocyst. A process of waiting for cells to become an embryo.
From here I would need to start ovarian stimulation. This is the process of starting a cocktail of drugs to increase the number of eggs on the ovaries. Then countless internal scans to measure the egg sizes until an injection is needed to trigger the release of the eggs. Cue surgery and a waiting husband do his part.
The morning of surgery I was told the amount of eggs would be written on my hand when I woke up in recovery. They would be pleased to get 8-10 but would be hopeful. In I went.
Waking up in recovery I looked down at my hand and saw a black ‘22’ on my hand. Blinking a few times to check I wasn’t seeing 2 doubled up, I was astounded. Well at least I had eggs, now did my husband have anything to fertilise them?
Sperm were now checked and chosen by embryologists and injected into each egg. After 18 hours they were checked for signs of fertilisation. There were just 9 remaining! We had to wait 5 days for these to form embryo’s
Each day would be an anxious wait as to get a call from the lab as to how many viable embryos we had.
Day 1- none, Day 2- none, Day 3- none, Day 4- none, Day 5- 1!
To be continued...
