1998 1999 - Fertility Treatment

We arrived home from Australia 2nd September, would you believe the clinic rang me up the next day to tell me they could start treatment (funny it was right after the holidays eh?) and would I come in the next day so that they could go through everything with me. I was supposed to be starting my job that day so I had to ring Brian (who would be my boss) and ask him if he minded me popping out. The next day I started work. Linda started me off until it was time to go to the clinic. I sped down to the clinic, in fact I couldn’t get there fast enough.

It was decided that for the first month they would try without any drugs at all. Instead, around about the 11th day of my cycle they would check my vaginal mucus, which would give them an idea of when I was about to ovulate. My period was actually due very soon so he told me to ring the secretary when my period arrived and they would schedule an appointment for me to come in so they could check my mucus. This I did. I went back to the clinic three times for them to check my mucus. Eventually the day came for them to do the insemination. I was so excited. I kept thinking this might be it, I could be pregnant! I knew a girl who had undergone IVF, luckily she had fallen pregnant on the first try, her advice to me was to not think about it so much. She believed that focusing on something else had been the key to getting pregnant. I couldn’t do it. It was all I thought about. Needless to say that when my period arrived two weeks later I was so upset. I drove to work in tears. Everyone at work knew of my situation and that we were trying for a baby. They didn’t know the whole picture, just that we were trying. Just to make matters worse that day I could overhear Dom on the phone with one of the clients debating what name they were going to give their baby when it arrived. I felt like he was rubbing it in. Of course he wasn’t.

I phoned the Doctor a day later to inform him that my period had arrived. This time they were going to force my ovulation. This meant that on the 11th day of my cycle I would have to go to a different part of the clinic and have a blood test so that they could check my hormone levels. After this I was to go for a scan. This is where they insert this, what I can only describe looks like a dildo, up you. In the afternoon I had to ring for the results. The results either being, make another appointment in two days time to do the blood test and scan again or go to a nurse to have an injection of HCG (this forces ovulation) and make an appointment for the insemination. I had to go back and do it all over again before I was able to go to the nurse for my injection and hence the insemination which takes place after 36 hours of the injection but within 48 hours.

When my period arrived two weeks later I wasn’t quite as upset as I had been the previous month. Steve actually seemed more upset than I did. I phoned the clinic and we went through the whole rigmarole again; blood tests and scans until eventual insemination. Again, it failed. We were now at the beginning of December and funnily enough the Doctor decided to skip a month, you don’t think it was because the Christmas holidays were coming do you?

My sister in the meantime had another baby boy.

That Christmas I told Steve that it was about time that his parents knew what was going on. Steve said that he couldn’t be the one to tell them so I told him to go out whilst I told them. To say that she was upset would be an understatement. She kept saying that she wasn’t upset for herself but upset for us. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had been upset for herself. Steve was her child that was married and so she looked to us to give her grandchildren and now that wasn’t looking likely either.

1999 arrived. The first day of my period arrived and I phoned the clinic and off we went again. In the meantime the bosses in the office had decided that they wanted to change the computer system completely. At that time they worked on a DOS based telex system. It was archaic. They wanted to move onto Windows and more than that they wanted the whole office to be networked. Being as I was computer minded they asked me to oversee the task, get quotes from different firms etc etc. I was also being given more responsibility and because of this I stepped up my hours. I now worked four days a week with time off of course for going to the clinic. This fourth lot of treatment failed once again.

In February we started the fifth lot of treatment and I also re-started my OU. This year I had decided to give up law and go back to computers. I did ‘An Object Orientated Approach to Computers’. Because I was working during the week, this meant doing a lot of study in the evenings and a lot on the Friday that I didn’t work. The treatment failed again.

When I phoned the clinic in March to tell them my period had arrived, they called us in. This time they told us they were going to up the ante again. I would be given more drugs to stimulate my hormones. This is what I think goes along the same lines as IVF. From the third day of this cycle I had to go to the nurse every other day to be given a shot of drugs. The drugs were of the type that could produce multiple births, Steve was scared to death. He needn’t have been, it failed.

During this month Linda gave birth to very healthy little boy, named Louie. I was nothing but happy for them – honest. Linda had had a very difficult birth; she had to be given a general anaesthetic and then a caesarean. For the first few days after the birth she could barely move. On going to see them the day after she’d given birth she said ‘never again’, and she hasn't!

April saw the change over of computer system in the office. The new computers were installed side by side the old ones so that I could train the employees in Windows and in the new software. I had been given training first and then with dummy records we practised using the software until we went live. It meant I was spending a lot of time in the office, sometimes working until 8pm, then coming home and doing my studies. I was getting quite tired. On top of all this the doctor had forgotten to give me the prescription for the drugs I needed for our next treatment. It was decided then that we would do it as we had before with just the HCG injection.

The office went live. We switched from the old DOS system to the new Windows network system within an hour. It actually went quite well. A few teething problems maybe but nothing we couldn’t fix. On April 19th I had to go and have my HCG injection with the nurse. I left work at 4pm and got completely stuck in a traffic jam (the Monte Carlo open was on). I absolutely panicked that I wouldn’t get to the nurse in time. I did, with only a few minutes to spare. My insemination had been booked for 10am on 21st April. I went, I was inseminated and told to lie back for 20 minutes. I didn’t have time to wait. I lay for about two minutes. In this time I thought to myself that there was no way I was going to be pregnant this time round. If I couldn’t get pregnant when I was given all those drugs I certainly wasn’t going to be pregnant when they’d forgotten to give them to me. Besides I was needed at work. I got up and left. For the next two weeks I didn’t even think about being pregnant, I didn’t have the time to think about it. For the first time since treatment had begun I didn’t buy a pregnancy test, mainly as I didn’t believe for one minute I could be pregnant. It wasn’t until the Friday 7th May over two weeks since my insemination that I had time to stop and realise that my period was actually late. I went and bought a pregnancy test. I did it during the day, waiting for that line. It didn’t appear. I put the test down on the table and it wasn’t until an hour later I glanced at it with the sun shining behind it. There was a line there. It was faint but there was definitely a line. I went straight out and bought another test. It was positive! I couldn’t believe it. When Steve came home and I told him he said ‘congratulations’!