Our First IVF cycle... full of drama of course (July 2013)

Our First IVF cycle was back in July 2013, but i remember it like it was yesterday.  It was an experience that we really can't forget, and a month that would test our marriage and our strength as individuals! 
Going in we were very naive,  we had the illusion that we would be that lucky couple that got pregnant on their first IVF cycle, if only we knew then what we know now!
It started like a normal cycle, i was on an antagonist protocol with 100iu's of gonal-F and ganirelix. Being my first IVF cycle and the fact that i have pcos i was started on a low dose of FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). I had a scan 8days into starting injections and my body had really responded. I had over 45 small follicles growing none of which were big enough for egg collection (i was incredibly uncomfortable so I knew something wasn't right).  The meds made me sick, I had constant headaches and nausea and found it hard to sleep. Ohhh and the hot flashed man those weren't fun!!

My ovaries were the size of oranges :(

My FS (fertility specialist) suggested that we keep going with the 100iu's of gonal-F and re scan in 3 days. We kept going with the meds over the weekend and returned on the Monday for a scan, more bad news!! 20 new follicles had grown so i was up to 65 follicles now and even more uncomfortable. We were told we would need to trigger with a different med and freeze all untill my body had recovered. We were really upset as we still thought that that was our BFP cycle!

  My lucky socks on egg collection day.

Egg collection day arrived and i was really scared, i had had a panic attack the night before and was really tired and disheartened with how our cycle had gone so far. When i woke up in recovery i looked down and saw a big 25 written on my hand... they had retrieved 25 eggs!!!!!! :) hubstar was ecstatic when he was allowed in to see me, that moment plays in my mind every day i could see how proud he was of me.

  Waking up and seeing this was amazing, all of our follicles were small so we didn't expect any eggs to be retrieved let alone 25!!

Egg collection was really painful and I basically slept till the next morning. And then we got the message that our 14 out of the 25 eggs had fertilised and were to frozen that day!! Wow 14 bubsicles waiting for us.... we started to think that things might work out and that in a months time we would do a FET and get our BFP... again we were wrong!! What happened next would baffle scientists world wide!

 Fertilisation report 

In my next blog will be about our FET and what went wrong!