Photos of dogs as have nothing else to write and am bored whilst anxiously waiting....

The 2WW (which isn't really a 2WW) is starting to play more on my mind now. I've been lucky to have been busy with work and traveling, but now I'm back working from home, I can feel the insanity starting to brew in anticipation of this Sunday's test results...

The 2WW has absolutely flown by, but I have a feeling that the next few days will make up for it as I can feel the day's getting gradually longer with Saturday no doubt feeling like a week!!!

In the mean time, I feel it rude of me not to introduce our other babies, Fogg and Fergus our dogs! They missed me loads when I was away I am guessing as they are practically stuck to me like velcro. If only they knew the sleepless nights that not just us but they will be in for when all goes to plan, they're moody little men at the best of times and I'm sure they'll make their displeasure known!!! :)

They absolutely hate waring any form of clothing, so I'm sure they'll appreciate someone else being dressed up and not them!!!

5 more days of waiting.....

Just under 2WW :)

Well, we had great news that 12 of the embryo's all excellent quality were cultured to the blastocyst stage! this was wonderful news....we transferred 3 top quality blasts on friday 1st October and had 6 good quality ones left for freezing! We are now in the 2WW, well it's not officially 2ww its about 10 days as the embryos are older....role on next sunday! Please stick and lots of baby dust our way! Your very wanted little ones :) How cute are they already??

Embryos

We have just had some news from Dr Shivani. We have the following embryos that will be allowed to culture until tomorrow, so it looks like a transfer might take place any time soon!

10 x 4 cell grade one embryos

2 x 4 cell grade two embryos

This is almost exactly the same number of embryos we had in Thailand, but the quality at this stage is much higher. (We had about 11 embryos, but only a couple were grade one off the top of my head. )

So this all looks very positive and a definite improvement on our last attempt.

All being well, it looks like the joy, angst, optimism and anxiety of the 2WW might very nearly be upon us!!!!!

Will update tomorrow as soon as we know more....

Egg Collection....

How nice it feels to have some good news for a change!

We have just found out that we have 29 eggs, 26 are mature and all are good quality, horray!

Very much looking forward to Tuesday when we will know how many embryos we might have...

Will update soon....

Egg Retrieval Day Approaches...

Firstly, MASSIVE congratulations to all of those who have recently welcomed their children into the world there are so many in the last few weeks, and hopefully many more to come. Those of us who are on this journey will hopefully have this joy to come one day soon!

Feeling very lazy on the blogging front, fortunately we are both so busy with work it is a welcome 'mind occupier' and we cannot believe that we are nearly at egg retrieval day! We had a minor delay due to a small medical issue with our ED, but all seems to be resolved and we have been updated that egg retrieval will take place on 25th or 26th September. Absolutely looking forward to finding out all the vital info that follows... and fingers very tightly crossed for some good embryo's!!!!!

We are finding it quite hard to believe that the 2WW might soon be upon us. Thank goodness for a busy workload that will hopefully be a good distraction, although it is impossible not to feel anxious.

Anyone who has read our older posts will know that a huge amount of stress from our previous attempts came from how bad we felt things were handled and information (or lack of it) was passed on. All we can say is that Dr Shivani and her team do an amazing job of keeping us well informed and supported. We never have to ask a question as information flows so freely and clearly you feel you get the answers before needing to ask the question!!! This is the polar opposite of our experience in Thailand, and exceeds our expectations!

Everything feels so much in order and in control, it's actually quite hard to know what to write, especially when there is nothing to complain about (in which case I could have banged on about it all day)!!!!

Will post soon when we have the results of egg collection and fertilization....

Start of a new journey...

Today, we are in Delhi, after a couple of blissful weeks in Italy relaxing and planning out next step on our journey to parenthood.

So many people have recommended Dr Shivani at SCI in Delhi, it was obvious to us that this is where we should take our journey following our stress and disappointment in Thailand! And we are so happy that she agreed to help and work with us.

Today, we had the pleasure of meeting Dr Shivani! I can't stress how different (in the best possible way) and positive we feel after meeting her. Given that the Doctor in Thailand did not even speak English, we feel like we achieved in one morning at SCI what would have taken weeks of unanswered emails and ignored phone calls in Bangkok!!! But now I guess is the time to put behind us past grievances and focus purely on the positive experience and optimism that we feel we will enjoy with Dr Shivani in Delhi!!! She also has a great team behind her, and info is never short or thin on the ground. For us, the not knowing and waiting is the hardest part, but quick and thorough answers make it so much more bearable, it's impossible not to feel good about where we are at right now.

Because of work, we have only been able to come to Delhi for 2 days!!!!! We will be donning our tourist hats tomorrow on a day trip to the Taj Mahal before a late meeting at SCI then on to the airport. Such a shame that we can't spend more time here :(

Delhi is not how we expected at all, beyond the visual chaos we feel surprisingly chilled, and everyone we've met is so unbelievably friendly it feels like the Truman Show!

We were lucky enough to have the exact egg donor we had our heart set on and we gather that she will be having her period in the next few days. We are looking at a embryo transfer mid-September which doesn't feel too far away, and we are sure given how busy work is it will absolutely fly by, praise be!!!!

It seems that there are a lot of recent or imminent births at SCI which is obviously fantastic news, at the same time it reminds us of how far we are from our dream, but hopefully being here in Delhi brings us one step closer.

It actually feels good to be blogging again, as we know that when we do, things are happening!!!

Bad news again and back to square one... horrible!

As the title suggests, we today received bad news. Although we don't have full details from the Doctor, we just had a message to say that our SM had an ultrasound and the MD says she will definitely have her period any day soon. We don't know if the hCG levels dropped or increased, but can most safely presume that there was no visible gestational sac at 5 weeks and 6 days.

I think we definitely need to look to India, we feel very much in the dark in Thailand and are not sure that it would be wise to continue our journey there.

We blew all of our savings on 2 attempts in Thailand, and now we have to find an affordable way to vigorously pursue our dreams of parenthood. Like anyone, we could save over a few months, but the sense of urgency and desire is far too great.

Does anyone mind letting us know what clinics they are using? We feel the urge to contact clinics as urgently as possible. Any names and contact details would be massively appreciated.

We have to pursue our dream, albeit with a heavy heart from todays very sad news.

If you prefer to send a private email, it's michaelallton at hotmail dot co dot uk (not com dot uk)

Thanks everyone x

Good news and bad news...

We had an email this morning to say that the hCG level was tested yesterday and is 1014 (last test was 412.3 on Friday) so this is a fairly strong increase which we were hugely excited about.

However, the SM also had an ultrasound last night but it shows no gestational sac. Looking at dates, the SM is 5 weeks and 1 day pregnant, and good old Doctor Google says that the gestational sac might not be visible until 5 weeks and 4/5 days, with the hCG level being at least 1100.

We are short of this is both areas (hCG level and length of pregnancy) so the Doctor has arranged another test and scan for Saturday 17th.

It's such an emotional dilemma, but we just have to passionately hope that the hCG level is too low and that the SM needs a few more days of pregnancy to actually see a gestational sac. Or we might be blindly ignoring the real fact that this isn't looking too good. Either way, we know that Saturday will bring a more definitive answer, and just hope and pray that everything's ok.

It's going to be a long 5 days until then...

In for a very tense weekend of waiting...

On a bit of a downer today, the SM had her first blood test last Friday and her first hCG level was 133 for 10 days post transfer. We were very positive about this as the previous SM's first test result was 70 and it doubled before we were told the bad news.

The agency in Bangkok dealing with the hospital are absolutely useless. We had to push them to make sure she had another test today as they had not informed us of any more that had been scheduled. (The agent used to have a great Thai assistant who was on top of everything, but she is on leave, now it's a total shambles and I even had to explain to the agency manager what hCG levels are and what they mean, I was shocked he didn't know!!!)

Today's result was 412.3 after a week. Because the hospital/agency tell you nothing, it feels like we have to google most things, and the general 'web consensus' seems to be that the level should increase double every 2 days. It's certainly not the rise we hoped for, and seems to have risen 40% every 2-3 days rather than 60%... I'm no doctor or mathematician but we're not sure that these numbers are at all encouraging...

Her next test is on Monday, and now we have a very anxious weekend to see what the next reading is. It's so hard trying to remain optimistic and positive when any information we find suggests that this is not a good sign. Deep sigh...

Suppose we have to be as strong and practical as possible. If anyone has any thoughts, please do share them! Please don't feel you have to be positive-only, anyone's thoughts about what's happening hCG level-wise would really be appreciated!!!

Cautiously Pregnant...

FINALLY, some progress and some news to post!!!

Since the first SM miscarried, we have been on an incredibly frustrating journey.... the agency found a 2nd SM, and when it come to the transfer date, for some very odd reason, the Dr in Thailand decided that she was not suitable for transfer as she did not respond to the Progynova. However, this was reassuring that the hospital would not 'waste' valuable embryo's on a transfer they did not feel would result in a viable pregnancy. We then had to wait to find a new SM. Being British, we absolutely needed the agency to find a single or widowed SM, and there are very few in Thailand, so it has taken a long time to find new SM's.

They finally found a 3rd SM who was very keen. However, when it came to transfer date, she said she wanted more money!!! This naturally created huge anxiety, as in one sense, we presume that (as bad as I feel saying this) 90% of the SM's are only doing this for the money. In one sense, we thought 'well it's not much that she's asking for' but the agency encouraged us to wait and find a new SM as although they rarely have any issues with the SM's, they said occasionally they have 1 or 2 who use their pregnancy to extort more cash and paying more cash now would set a dangerous precedent... we decided that it was best to wait for a new SM.

We was quite prepared for a very long wait, and were incredibly surprised when the agency got back that same day and said that they have a new single SM who's period was only days away...

We had a message on Saturday from the agency saying 'Congrats' and the new SM is pregnant!!!!

However exciting, we are trying to be as calm and patient as possible. The agency are TERRIBLE at giving the information everyone expects and deserves. We have been given no hCG level, and calls and emails just don't get us anywhere near the info we need! Her second bloodtest is on Wednesday, so we are (A) hoping the first unknown hCG level was encouragingly high, and that (B) Wednesday's level will have increased dramatically!!!! Fingers incredibly tightly crossed...

Hopefully some more much needed info from the hospital will help deal with the conflict of anxiety, excitement, fear of bad news, hoping for the absolute best that we dealt with before.

Will keep you all posted......