Silent Sunday: Complete

IVF #3, FET #3: Baseline Scan

May the Fourth was obviously Star Wars Day but this year for us it was something a little more important. It was also Baseline Scan Day.

It's probably not quite as exciting as Star Wars Day, but it's a pretty important day in the frozen embryo transfer process because it's the one which tells you whether you're ready to start the next lot of meds. Last year when we did our second FET it didn't go quite as planned and we had to postpone everything by a week until my body got itself in gear. And that was why I was feeling a bit nervous about this one.

I suspect this was why I didn't sleep too well the night before. We had a very early start (ten to five, ouch!) before the usual trek (car, boat, train, bus) to the hospital. Thankfully this appointment was at 9am so the journey was a little more relaxed than the last one.

I knew that this appointment would be for the baseline scan but I wasn't sure whether I would need to have any blood taken. It's ironic that when you're having an internal ultrasound, also known as the dildocam owing to its strong resemblance to the sort of thing you'd normally buy from a shop like Ann Summers, it's the blood test you look forward to the least! I guess that means I'm pretty used to the process by now.

It was the usual process. Summoned from the waiting room by a nurse (who was very friendly but I can't for the life of me remember her name now). She remembered us and asked about the island and our journey.

Mr Click got to have a nice little chat with her and her assistant nurse, I on the other hand was given a drape and sent off to the bathroom to disrobe from the waist down. Then it was up on the bed, legs in the stirrups and time for the close encounter with the scanner.

The baseline scan checks what's going on with your womb lining. The Prostap injection aimed to shut down my body's hormones and put me into a menopausal state. I had been told to expect a bleed some time after the jab and my body was a little bit slow to respond. Eventually, twelve days after the jab my uterus went into self-destruct mode, and it did such a good job that my lining measured a mere 3.2mm.

Last year it was still too thick at this stage so we'd had to wait another week for it to thin out some more. This time I got the go ahead to more on to stage two, Progynova, also known as HRT.

As of this morning I'm taking three of these little pills each day which will be doing their thing to plump up my womb lining for the next couple of weeks before I head back to the hospital to check my lining is scoring over 6mm.

Meanwhile, towards the end of next week my Prostap jab will be wearing off but we obviously don't want to risk me ovulating or my hormones getting any funny ideas about doing their own thing, so that's where the Suprecur nasal spray will come in. This is actually the same stuff I used as my trigger injection before egg collection (except that was injected, whereas this will be snorted).

Whereas the pills are taking once a day at roughly the same time, the nasal spray is far more exact. It has to be taken at 7am, 12pm, 6pm and 11pm each day (I actually count myself lucky here, I've seen some clinics instructing it to be taken every six hours - 6am, 12pm, 6pm, 12am - which is easier to remember but a lot easier to miss a dose). The really good thing about snorting the stuff at those times is that I get a hell of a lot of reading done trying to keep myself awake until 11pm; one of the Progynova side effects is tiredness.

Once we'd gone over all the meds, stowed them away in Mr Click's bag, confirmed what was being taken and when, updated all of our paperwork, and set a date and time for our return appointment, we were free to go.

By the time we go back I'll have been popping and snorting for two weeks and a week respectively. Fingers crossed we'll get a good result on the next scan.

Birthday Shopping

Last year on my birthday we headed to Dunoon as I was right in the middle of down regulation for our frozen embryo transfer and didn't feel like travelling too far afield. This year the down regulation for our current frozen transfer has started but we're not as far through it yet so we decided to follow our usual plan of heading to Oban for my birthday shopping trip.

Oban has a special place in our hearts as the first place Mr Click and I lived together (for a whole six weeks while I was on a teaching placement) was Appin and on a Friday or Saturday we would head into Oban for shopping and Chinese. I love the collection of charity shops there and we have our routine down to a fine art.

It meant a fairly early start for a Saturday (6am! Yikes!) and we headed off the top end by about 7:45am. We had planned to listen to music from Spotify I'd put onto my phone but we couldn't get the phone to connect to the car we were in, but we'd brought CDs so it was all good.

I love a good long car drive. We chatted, sang along to the music, admired the houses we were passing, kept an eye out for wildlife and tiny lambs. The journey was as much a part of the trip as the actual shopping expedition.

As usual we stopped off at a cafe when we arrived for a spot of breakfast (and after a one hour, forty-five minute drive, the loo) and then got down to the serious business of shopping. Often when I go charity shopping I'm heading out with a particular purchase in mind; new work tops, a particular book, board games, whatever. This time I didn't really have anything in particular other than a vague idea that I wanted to buy more knitting books.

Sadly, old knitting books were rather thin on the ground. There were a couple of old 1980s jumper books, which aren't my thing, and lots of odd patterns pulled out of magazines which were rather jumbled and none of them were especially 'vintage' or for toy patterns so I gave them all a miss.

I'd mentioned to Mr Click that I'd like to get some funny DVDs to watch after our frozen embryo transfer and we hit the big time in the first shop we went into with Pirates An Adventure With Scientists, The Tale of Despereaux, Miss Congeniality and Practical Magic. The latter two are old favourites that I've been wanting to pick up for ages.

I gathered a fairly impressive collection of books over the course of the day as well. I spotted The Life of Pi in one shop for about £2 and decided against if as I knew I'd be able to get the Kindle version cheaply, then found it in the last shop we went in to for 50p. I took that as a sign and grabbed a copy of it right away (along with two other cheapie books).

We also did a nice big shop to fill up our cupboards with goodies. Then headed back to Inveraray for sweets and takeaway to fortify us for the last leg of the homeward journey.

So now I've got to squeeze another seven books onto my bookcase (which I only rearranged a few weeks ago). But I had a brilliant day out and it was the perfect way to finish off my birthday.

Thirty-One

This time last week I was having a fantastic day celebrating my thirty-first birthday. It was a very good day and the beginning of a very good weekend.

Mr Click loves presents, regardless of whether they're his or someone else's. We'd set the alarm for 7am which I thought meant we'd have a leisurely wake up, breakfast and then do cards and presents. Mr Click had other ideas though so we did the cards and presents before breakfast.

Now I threw a slight spanner in the works the week before my birthday when I did that thing you really shouldn't do so close to a birthday. I bought myself stuff.

I wasn't expecting anyone to pay attention to my ramblings about knitting needles so treated myself to a set of the KnitPro Nova interchangeables, plus 3mm and 3.25mm needle tips to go with them. They arrived the Sunday before my birthday and are a thing of beauty:

But back to my birthday. There were two distinct themes between my presents; knitting and Fantastic Beasts. I'm actually thinking about buying a Niffler knitting pattern so I can combine the two!

Not pictured is the dreamcatcher that my Nan sent me, as it's currently hanging in my window, waiting for me to give it a nudge and set it spinning again.

I was already expecting the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film. While the Hobbit films were coming out, each year I knew I would get the latest film on my birthday, so when Fantastic Beasts came out it seemed like the logical birthday follow on. What I wasn't expecting was a reproduction of Newt's notebook (going to need to find a really special use for that one) or the book which I had mentioned to Mr Click in passing about the making of the film not realising he was actually paying attention at the time!

My above mentioned knitting needle shopping spree sort of messed up my Mum's birthday plans for me, but she's awesome so she recovered well.

I've been collecting Jean Greenhowe's knitting pattern booklets for the last few years and I only had ten more left to get. My Mum sent me over half of the books I needed (I've since ordered the last four). I spent a very happy birthday afternoon organising them by date of publication. It's the little things that keep me amused. I fully intend to knit something from each pattern book and ultimately hope to knit EVERYTHING!

My in-laws were responsible for the Art of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them book. I'm yet to explore this one but having skimmed through the artwork in there, it looks beautiful.

It was a lovely relaxed sort of day. We watched my new film, had homemade Chinese and I spent most of the day knitting. And that was just the first half of my birthday, the second part came when we went shopping at the weekend.

But more about that tomorrow.

Currently...

Getting...
... back into the swing of regular blogging.

I had a great time taking part in the A to Z Challenge this year and unlike previous years when I tried to stick to my regular posts alongside the A to Z ones, this time I just focused on the A to Z ones. Now it feels a little weird going back to posting about stuff like book reviews and my knitting, but also kind of nice as well, like when you get back to a routine after some time off.

Catching up...
on the comments on my A to Z blog posts.

I'll probably be doing this until the end of May because I'm trying to visit each blog as I go. It means that when you've got five comments on your blog that ends up taking about an hour to get through them because I like to read the comment, reply to it, visit their blog, read a post, and then leave a comment on it.

I've also had a pretty busy April and it's shaping up to be a pretty busy May (in the space of eight days I'll have been off the island three times!) it's kind of crazy.

Reading...
... All. Of. The. Things!

I feel like I've been missing my reading mojo a little for part of the year. Reading anything seemed to be kind of slow going, but in the last few weeks I've been reading anything and everything and powering through it all.

I don't know what kickstarted it, rearranging my bookcases or getting my new Kindle or whether it was something else, but I'm really enjoying being able to get lost in my books again. Just as well because I acquired another seven paperbacks over the weekend!

Watching...
... The Two Ronnies and The Dukes of Hazzard.

We finished watching 24 this week and I've requested light-hearted, funny TV viewing while we do the frozen embryo transfer. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that women who were entertained by a comedian (or was it a clown?) for fifteen minutes after transfer had a higher rate of success than the woman who didn't, so I want fewer explosions and dead bodies on my screen while we have this go.

The Dukes of Hazzard is our pre-bed viewing. It's funny, you know what's going to happen and you can tune in and out of it without missing too much. And then I picked The Two Ronnies this evening for much the same reason. Sure, we've seen them before, but that's part of what makes them feel comforting and safe.

Are you recovering after the A to Z Challenge? Are you getting back into something you've not done for a while?

Books 40 & 41 of 2016: Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien & Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling

With the end of the A to Z Challenge we can return to your normally scheduled blog posts, which means that for the first time in over a month, it's time for a book review post.

Way back in September last year I picked up a book which I'd actually been given some time previously and it had sat on my bookshelf waiting for me to get around to it.

Image from Tolkien Library

That was a single volume edition of Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien. The latter is a collection of poetry which I've read before, the former is a short story about the titular Farmer Giles and his adventure which involves a dragon.

I've read The Adventures of Tom Bombadil many times before but Farmer Giles of Ham was entirely new to me. It's actually one which I'd been hoping to get my hands on for a while but I hadn't yet found a copy of it. Until a friend saw it in a charity shop and knowing me as well as she does, bought it without even asking whether I needed it.

I actually feel like I need to reread the first half of this book. I don't know if it was because I was just reading it in dribs and drabs every now and again so I didn't get a continuous run at it, or if it was just because the story was brand new to me, but I found it a little tricky to follow at times. I think I'd do better taking the time to sit and read it for a while, rather than the odd page here and there as I did.

I love Pauline Bayne's illustrations. Her illustrated poster of 'Bilbo's Last Song' hangs at the bottom of my staircase and I look at it each time I come down those stairs. I thought her illustrations for Farmer Giles were like the pictures you get on tapestries.

As always, my absolute favourite part of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is 'The Mewlips'. It's dark and creepy but conjures up such vivid imagery for me.

I still think the poems sound best when they're read aloud. You get a better sense of the rhythm of them than just read silently.

I followed this up with a Rudyard Kipling ebook which has been hanging around on my Kindle since virtually the time that I figure got one, Rewards and Fairies.

This is a collection of stories and poems. The stories follow a couple of children who meet a fairy called Puck who introduces them to a number of historical characters. These are interspersed with little poems.

I found this a tricky read. The children would meet 'people of the past days' who would then tell them stories, so you've got a story within a story going on. At times I found it a little confusing about who was speaking and whether they were telling a story of the present day or the past.

Although the stories were quite nice, I actually preferred the poetry in this book over the prose. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the stories. To begin with it reminded me of a sort of cross between Enid Blyton (specifically The Faraway Tree, since they were meeting new people each time they met Puck) and Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I would have liked to know a little more about the historical people the children were meeting and the eras they were from. I got the impression that I should have known who a couple of them were but I just didn't have a clue. Perhaps I would have enjoyed their stories more if I'd understood their backstory.

It seemed to take me ages to get through what was otherwise a pretty short book. Insomnia helpfully got me to the end of it.

#atozchallenge Reflections 2017

We've made it to the end of another A to Z Challenge. Well done if you're made it to the end (either blogging, reading or a mixture of the two).

First of all, how I feel the challenge went?

I swithered a bit on which theme I wanted to use for the challenge. I knew I wanted to do it with a theme (because I've found that easier in the past) and I was fairly certain that I wanted to do it about infertility and IVF. The last week of April is Infertility Awareness week so it seems like the right time of year to write about our attempts to start a family.

But I was kind of in a different place this time around compared to the last two times I've blogged about the process. This time we'd just completed a fresh cycle of IVF and had to do a freeze all due to hyperstimulation. We had nine embryos in the freezer and I was feeling such a strong pull towards them, I couldn't get them off my mind.

I've always planned to write letters to my children, right from day one, and so that's what I did. I sat down and gradually crafted 26 letters I'd like my child to read some day, to learn about how they came to be. And along the way I hoped to educate others about the IVF process.

And that's what I did.

It was strangely cathartic to write. It's a strange feeling, finding yourself so connected to something that is essentially just a bundle of frozen cells in a freezer in a Glasgow hospital, and yet which has the potential to be so much more. Writing these letters gave me something to channel that energy into and yet still remain focused on the end goal.

I think that in terms of the theme, it's been my favourite one yet.

Of course, the big thing about this year's challenge was the change in format for sharing your blog and posts. The massive, unwieldy Linky List is no more. Instead each day there was a separate blog post for each letter. People responded in the comments with links to their posts for that day's letter.

I'll admit that I was slightly apprehensive about this approach, but I felt like it worked well.

In terms of posting my own links, I followed the A to Z Challenge page on Facebook, initially intending to comment or respond to posts but ultimately that became my reminder of when to post my link to the day's post. As I wrote my posts and scheduled them ahead of time, I just saved a draft email with the HTML link already formatted for each day. It was just a question of copying and pasting from that email, regardless of whether I was on my laptop or doing it from my phone.

I often ended up in one of the first twenty to post but I wouldn't say I saw more traffic on those days compared to the days when I was one hundred or more down the list. I think I probably got more traffic from commenting on other people's blogs and visiting the blogs of people who visited me.

Most people formatted their entries on the posts really well, so it was easy to click the link (or highlight the link and visit that way). I would probably have seen more visitors if I'd given more of an explanation of what my posts were about. Instead I simply marked it as 'Letters to my Embryos' and then the title of my post for that day. I wonder if people skimmed over it because I didn't give away much about what it was, but by the time I realised that I'd written (and so formatted the links) for most of my posts and I was too lazy to go back and change them.

I was a little more selective with the posts that I read this year. If the link didn't take me to the actual blog post, I tended to ignore them. If I was met with a great wall of text (I know, ironic considering this blog post), unless it was something that captured my attention, I tended to move on to the next one. Despite having internet access at home now, my time is still kind of limited, so I had to be economical with my time.

Google+ also kind of proved to be the bane of my life with people leaving comments on my blog posts. In some instances it took three or four goes to find their own blog to leave my own comment. It's made me more aware of the need to leave my link on every comment I make to make sure people can find their way back to me.

As I said, the lack of the list worked quite well. It was still a little easy for blog posts to get lost in the midst of all the other comments so I think it might be a good idea in the future to come up with some sort of coding system that people can tag their comments with so that you can CTRL+F to find blogs that meet your interests.

Alternatively they could perhaps do a spotlight at the end of each main letter post to highlight some of the posts from the day before. If there were maybe five posts highlighted some blogs might get a little more attention that they could otherwise miss.

At the moment I'm still getting caught up on the comments on my blog during the challenge. I fell behind early so I'm still visiting and commenting on everyone's blogs. I'm going to carry on reading and replying, and hopefully I'll be able to work through the Reflections list as well so may come across some challenge themes I missed on the first go round.

And maybe I'll even join in next year. Hopefully I'll have a real little person I can address these letters to by then!