With the money for our next round of IVF sitting in the bank, we called up the clinic in November and told them we were ready to start Round 2 ASAP. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know we were in an extremely fortunate position to be able to afford this, and sadly this is not the case for many people going through IVF. But we’ll talk about money another time.
The clinic told me if my next period fell between a certain range of dates then I would be put in the next batch ready to go for a January round. Huh?! That’s only two months away! Less than that really, because as it turned out, my period came on the very first day of the next batch of dates, and I was promptly put back on The Pill again, ready to get my body clock in time with the clinic’s calendar. In a way, this was so much better not having the time to get worked up over everything all over again. Especially with Christmas right slap-bang in the middle of it all, January would be here in no time.
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| We were secretly going through our 2nd IVF round at Christmas - so naturally we had to have a pineapple ornament for our tree! |
I didn’t have any appointments with the clinic this time, and instead they sent me my protocol and prescription for my new drugs list in the post. I didn’t need to have the injection training again, which worried me slightly. I was on a new stimulation drug – Menopur – and I had no idea how to mix and administer it! Thank god for YouTube, who made it look like a doddle.
I was allowed to source my drugs from wherever I wanted, so being self-funded this meant that I could shop around and find the best prices for our prescription. Now, you know me – I love a bargain! And this was no exception. I scoured the internet for various fertility drug sites, started compiling yet another spreadsheet to compare costs, and got to work saving money! After this extensive research, I believed that Asda Pharmacy was actually the most cost-effective store, as they support IVF patients and don’t charge tax on their IVF drugs as an incentive. We ended up spending just shy of £500 in total (relatively cheap, when we were advised it would be around £1,000!), but shopping around wasn’t without its pitfalls. Obviously, a general pharmacy like Asda don’t specialise in fertility drugs, and they didn’t include any needles, syringes, or sharps bins in my prescription. When I returned to them to ask where they were, they couldn’t even tell me which ones I needed, or how many. It was extremely frustrating – and this was all in the week leading up to Christmas... I had to get my drugs sorted, and fast! Eventually I returned to the hospital pharmacy, tail between my legs, to explain what’d happened and requested the missing bits. The woman behind the counter even had the audacity to say to me, “next time, make sure you just come here!” Umm – hopefully there won’t BE a next time, love!!
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| Our drugs haul looked slightly different this time, with some scary-looking new drugs I'd have to mix myself! |
On New Year’s Eve 2018, I took my last contraceptive pill ready to start my Down Reg drugs on New Year’s Day. I love order and organisation, so the fact that we were starting again on the first day of the first month of a new year was just music to my ears! And if all went well, we’d be finding out if it worked right around the time that our babies would’ve been due – and the anniversary of our grandparents’ deaths. I needed this to work not only for our sanity, but for our families’ sakes. They needed good news as much as we did.
We changed things up this time though, and – with the exception of a few managers at work – didn’t tell anyone we were going through it all again. Not even our parents. I just couldn’t handle the amount of messages the last time, even though I know people mean well and they just want what’s best for us. But after sending the hundredth text saying “thank you, that really means a lot!” it just got frustrating and I had to unplug from life. I know people want to support us, but I found that it had to be ME to say the first words if I wanted to talk about anything related to IVF. If someone else brought it up first, I clammed up and mumbled a vague response. It would catch me off guard and I didn’t know what else to say except I was “fine”.
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| Having a cuppa in my favourite pineapple mug, ready to start another round of injections! |
So, we went ahead exactly as we had done last time – two weeks worth of Buserelin injections, and then back to the clinic for my baseline scan. It showed up a few tiny follicles already, but they said it was nothing to worry about and my lining was less than 1mm, too. All was seemingly okay.
I then started my new stims drug – 150iu of Menopur – two days later. This freaked me out a bit, as after my first baseline scan I started my stims that very night. Surely, I would be two days behind everyone in the batch and things would look smaller than normal on my follicle scans? But I had to trust in the doctors and know that it was just because they were pacing everybody in the batch out. I researched Menopur to see why the doctors might’ve decided to change my stims, and it seemed the general consensus that while Menopur usually produces less eggs, the quality of them should be higher than normal. Again, I didn’t question their protocol and just went along with everything.
Two days later, I started the Menopur injections. And let me tell you, those YouTube videos lied and trying to administer them was like something out of a Carry On film. You are given a vial of powder which you have to mix with a water-like solution, then draw it back up into a syringe and inject. But the parts were so fiddly and no matter how many times I watched the YouTube video it just didn’t make sense to me!! In the end I finally got the hang of them, but my god what a difference to the pre-filled Bemfola pens I had on my first round?!
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I went through the same motions as Round 1. I went to my scans to measure how well my follicles were growing, and in a way, it was annoying that I had the ultimate person to compare myself to... ME! I would meticulously look at my results vs. The last round, and was disheartened to see that with every scan that my follicles were smaller, there were less of them, and my lining was thinner, too. What the hell was going on with my body this time?! Again, the doctors reassured me that things were fine and to not worry – my numbers still looked good. I asked them if it was worth increasing my dosage just to give me a little boost towards the end, but they didn’t seem fussed and just told me to carry on like normal.
All too soon, it seemed like we weren’t just slowing down in growth, we were coming to a complete stop. In general, our clinic usually scans the woman three times before she should be “cooked” enough to come in for egg collection. I ended up having five scans, and by the end of it... it wasn’t good news. After plugging my body with six weeks’ worth of The Pill, and then four weeks’ worth of various injections, my body was just not playing ball. The clinic advised that I could continue with the cycle if I really wanted to, but the likelihood was that we would go through egg collection all over again and maybe get one good egg. Their advisement, though, was to pull the plug – they were officially abandoning IVF Round 2.
Gutted, hurt and angry was an understatement.
KEB x
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