Off to Concept again for another try at getting pregnant, fingers crossed it’s our year!
It was the 20th of June 2011 and Amber was in the waiting room at concept ready for her first insemination for the year (our 6th overall) Yep, that’s right we waited the entire first 6 months of the year until we had our first attempt. It had been 8 months since our last negative result and we felt ready after a nice long break!
We had received the last ’not pregnant’ result on the 8th of October 2010 and had been waiting until Amber had her follow-up appointment with the Doctor.
I left the last blog off around New Years 2010, not long after Ambers surgery to see if there was any problems that we didn’t know about. The follow-up appointment was not going to be until around February 2011. We had decided that since we wanted air conditioning for our house (it was a hot and horrible summer) we would have to wait to have any more pregnancy attempts. We were running low on cash and had to borrow money from the parents to even pay for our aircon!
We had the follow-up appointment and the Doctor explained that there were no signs of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or Endometriosis, that was a good thing! She said there was no reason that we couldn’t continue trying and he told us maybe we needed to consider going onto IVF rather than IUI. We said we weren’t ready for any treatments at all and money wise we weren’t ready to start IVF. We said we would get back in contact with Concept when we were ready for our next attempt.
We decided that before we had any more attempts we would pay off all of the debts that we had. We owed the parents money for the air con and had the credit card at its limit and also other debt waiting to be paid for at Concept. So we continued working, slowly started paying everyone back and just continued on in our little life together.
By mid-to-late May we were looking a little more financially stable and decided that we would start trying again. Amber rang Concept to let them know we were ready to start trying again and we would call them on day 1 of her period, the Doctor had put an order through that Amber would need to have a drug called Puregon which was to be given by Amber herself through a self-administered injection pen. Amber was to come into Concept before day 1 so she could be taught how to use it.
Amber went and got her little bag of medication and was instructed how to administer it to herself. The drug was to encourage egg growth with the hope that more than one would be produced. Amber called on day 1 and was instructed to start giving herself the injections and to then have a blood test on the 16/6/11 (day 8). After the first blood test Amber was instructed to up the dosage from 50.0 IU of the Puregon to 75.0 IU. She continued this dose until day 14. She had a couple more blood tests within this time to track ovulation. On day 14 she was asked to come in for an ultrasound to check for follicles.
According to the paper work I have the results of the ultrasound and it says that there were no follicles seen in the left side of her uterus. They were unclear but looked as though there was a 15mm follicle in her right uterus.
Amber got the results for the ultrasound that afternoon and was told she was ovulating and today was the best day to come in. She was able to leave work early to get to the insemination at 4:30 that afternoon. The sperm count was quite low and was only at 3 million. After the insemination it was back to the medication to thicken the lining of the uterus that needs to be placed inside as close to the uterus as possible. Amber once again experienced a reaction to the medication with a rash on the inside of her leg.
She continued on as best as she could and waited the long two weeks to find out if she was pregnant or not. We celebrated my nieces 4th Birthday with friends and family and were eager to find out if we were expecting or not!
On Monday the 4th of July 2011 we eagerly waited the results from the blood test taken that morning. Again we were left deflated and upset by finding out the results were ‘Not Pregnant’.
We were really hoping that after a long break maybe we would be lucky in 2011, we decided that we would go straight into the next month and try again. We really believed it was going to happen for us in 2011 so we were eager for the next attempt.
Cycle #7 (#2 for the year) started with the Puregon injections on day 2 of the cycle. Amber started with the dosage of 50.0 IU and it was increased on day 9 to 75.0 IU. Bloods were taken on 13/7, 16/7 and 17/7 to check for when Amber was ovulating. On the 17th Amber was informed that she would need to go in the next day for insemination.
Once again with work I was not able to make it in with Amber. We were used to this now but it still sucked knowing I wouldn’t be with her again!
So on Monday the 18th Amber went in and at 10AM was inseminated with 6 million little tiny sperm and now we just had to wait, but also not forgetting that Amber had to use Progesterone. Amber used this between days 14-18 but she again got this nasty rash on her leg. We rang Concept and pleaded with them to be able to use something different. They said that they had another drug called Crinone that she could use. Little did we know until we got the bill it was around $300! YIKES! She used this from day 19-27.
On 1/8/11 after a long two weeks of waiting we (yep you guessed it) – found out again we were not pregnant. We were heart-broken again and decided we would take a month off. After the reaction to the Progesterone and deciding we wanted to go on a holiday helped us make the decision to have a break for the month.
So we had a month off and booked a trip to Bali. We booked it for November and felt relieved we had something to look forward to. We also wanted to save up to be able to get grass for our front yard, the whole dirt look out the front wasn't doing it for us anymore.
We just really wanted our lives to start getting to where we wanted. We wanted our house to be perfect and we wanted a baby to complete our family. We just hoped after a month off our life would start coming together and that just maybe we would be lucky enough for it to happen for us on the next try.