CD 48 update ( and fertility nurse appointment )

As the title suggests, I'm on cd48- another long ass cycle, but I have not been obsessing over this cycle, I have just let it run it's course without stressing about it too much. At the beginning of my cycle I was quite focused on making sure I complete a full cycle of temping and monitoring my CM. I also started using OPK's around cd15. You will be disappointed to know that amidst all the positive encouragement from you ladies,I still managed to stop temping and stop doing the OPK's. I know, I gave up and I shouldn't have. I'm just one of these people who easily get de- motivated when I don't see results soon enough. Actually I think it's more the fact that I'm not disciplined enough - or so my husband tells me. The last temp I charted was on cd30 and the last opk I did was on cd34, then I just threw in the towel as I knew it was going to be another drawn out cycle.

Anyway, I did start noticing my cm get a little stretchier and more eggwhite around cd34 and this continued for a few days, so I was thinking that maybe I'm ovulating. To be honest I should have really made sure I was temping and doing OPK's to confirm this but I was too lazy. It's also really hard to do OPK's when you get home late from work, there is no way i could do it at work either.

Unfortunately, we did not BD at all around the time that my cm appeared to be fertile, and this was due to me feeling unwell, drained, tired and hubby and I were not on the best terms anyway. By this time I was just looking forward to my appointment with the fertility nurse that had been set up at my last FS appointment back in January.

So I went to the hospital to see the nurse last week Thursday 16th feb, which was cd39 for me and to be honest i was excited to hear what she would say, hoping and praying she would just give me clomid and glad that I would jot have to undergo any invasive scans or anything.

By the time my appointment came along, in my heart of hearts I knew that I probably ovulated in the past few days and that we had missed our opportunity for this cycle, I had a very very slight tender feeling in my breasts which I only normally get when my AF is getting ready to show up.

So the nurse basically told me that my HSG report was normal and the next step was for me to go on 50mg of clomid for 3 months. She was very positive about it and said that she felt this would work for me, if not we could increase the dose. I was really happy as you can imagine.
She gave me the prescription then and there for 3months worth of clomid and also the trigger shot.

She said I could start immediately and I did not have to wait for my period but first they would need to do a scant check my uterus lining was thin, apparently you can only start when the lining is thin, if the lining is thick they can give you provera to make it shed and then you can begin. So she asked me to come in the following morning to get the scan done to check my lining. In my head I was thinking that my lining probably would be slightly thick as ovulation had happened and my period would probably come in about 2 weeks so it might make sense to wait for it. Anyway I did not say anything as there was a small chance that I could be wrong. The nurse said that once I start taking it I would need to come back a few days after my last dose to check if any eggs were maturing and to possibly get a trigger shot to make me ovulate. If there were no mature eggs I would need to come back a few days later to do another scan to check. She said I would also need to use the clearblue smiley face OPK's around that time and once get a positive to BD that morning, night and following morning. She said it must be the smiley face ones. In my mind I w thinking how I would manage to get all this time off work to come for scans without anybody knowing the Eason why.

Then suddenly I remembered that me and hubby are travelling for 10 days on the 9th march, how would we make all the appointments, so I told her and she advised that we should start the clomid when we get back. I will have to go in for a scan to check my lining and then start according to the result of the scan. I know that my period is going to come before then as my boobs are so sore and have doubled in size - hubby loves it!!!! I was right, I did ovulate when I say my CM get stretchier.

So the plan now is to call the nurse on CD1(which should be very soon) and here what she suggests, she did say that i might be able to start it while I'm away and then I could have a scan done to check for mature eggs as soon as I get back from our trip. So as it stands I don't really know when we are going to start the clomid, we will just have to play it day by day.

I must say that I feel quite positive about the clomid, even though she did say that it may take a while to have an effect, due to pcos. I have been reading loads of success stories online and they are really uplifting. Here's the link if you want to read a few.

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/pregnancy/199983-clomid-success-stories-please/AllOnOnePage

Phewww, this is a long post, I'm really sorry I should have been updating more regularly. If any of you have any clomid stories, good or bad, please share them. I would love to hear them.

Everyday I keep looking at my clomid wondering when I am going to start, but it should be quite soon.
I hope I have not missed out anything important.

Take care ladies xx

Baby dust to all

Is Ovulation upon me? Cycle 16 update

Hi guys, hope you are all well. I thought I would do a quick cycle day update, although not much has been happening-until now.

I'm on CD 16 at the moment and even on a fairly normal cycle, I would say I generally ovulate about CD20. So I thought this would be a really important week to monitor my fertility signs. I have been temping every day and my normal range is between 96.9 - 97.27 and hopefully I will see a good temperature shift. I usually give up temping if I do not ovulate by day 30 as I cant be bothered with the stressing out. I noticed quite a creamy lotion-like cervical mucus on CD13 &14 and yesterday it was stretch but not slimey like egg-whites - I am not really sure how to categorise this CM. It wasn't really wet, it was whitish and I could stretch it a little way between my fingers, but in my mind I have just been thinking that its too early for me to ovulate and it's probably my pcos symptoms playing up.

I also have been doing OPK's, but I have only done it 3 days because I get home from work so late and sometimes I forget, sometimes I forget to stick to the peeing guidelines-lol!!!
But I remembered today and I got what I think is a  POSITIVE opk.

I wanted to be sure it was a positive , so I compared it to the one I did on CD13

What do you guys think? The one on the left is cd13 and the one on the right is today, it looks quite a bit darker doesn't it? But it does not stop there, I had some Clearblue smiley face OPK's that I use for back up (they are waaaaay too expensive to use everyday, especially with my long ass cycles) so I decided to test with these too.

WOOOHOOOO, SMILEY FACE!!!!!!!

I actually can't believe this, its almost too good to be true - but enough with that attitude. My DH will not be able to come up for air for a few days - we are gonna catch that lil eggy.

I know that when you have pcos, your body can play tricks and gear up for ovulation and then not ovulate, so I am well aware of this but I choose to remain positive and treat it like 100% ovulation.

Wish me luck this cycle guys.

TMI Alert - Cervical Mucus Analysis

Hi all, hope you are all enjoying the first day of the year.
DH and I are keeping it quite chilled today, and it got me thinking a bit about the things I want to improve on for this year. One of those things is analysing my cervical mucus. Some women seem to be so on top of this, but I really do struggle. I think I don't produce a lot of it to begin with so it is hard for me to monitor it without making a conscious effort to do so.

The three primary fertility signs are-
1.basal body temp
2.cervical mucus
3.cervical position

I generally suck at the other two, so I am going to try and focus on noting my cervical fluid. "Cervical fluid is to a woman what seminal fluid is to the man." Since men are always fertile, they continuously produce seminal fluid. Women on the other hand are only fertile the few days around ovulation, and therefore only produce the substance necessary for sperm nourishment and mobility during that time. Basically, sperm can only survive the fertile cervical mucus that is present around a woman's ovulation.. So the pattern is supposed to go like this-

• after AF there is generally no CM present, 
• then after some days you should start to notice sticky CM that could also be describes as pasty, tacky, crumbly. gummy, springy, or even cement like - its also usually white or yellowish.
• it then becomes more creamy, like a lotion, it may feel milky and smooth. It is usually quite wet, moist, gooey, or cold.
• soon after it should become slimy and slippery and resemble egg whites - it will stretch a few inches between your fingers, also it will be wet, lubricative, or even humid.
• immediately after ovulation you may notice nothing at all or a dry sticky CM

Some of you may have seen this already, but if not this will help.

So in my case, I have been trying to be more aware of these transitions, and I am planning to focus more on this, this year.I have heard somewhere that if you have PCOS it may not be so simple to read, as you notice eggwhite CM and do not eventually go on to ovulate (why does everything seem to be so difficult with PCOS?) In my last post I mentioned that I had notice a more fertile CM and was hoping that it means I ovulated - but who knows, at cd64 i'm clutching at straws here.

If any of you have any experience of this, I would love to hear about it, please let me know if this helped you in your journey at all. I have read about women who said they woke up swimming in eggwhites, they BD'd and a few weeks later, they were preggers.

Take care, and baby dust to all.

1st Fertility Treatment Appointment

Hi guys, how are you? Hope you're all well.
I love it how I'm speaking as if I have so many followers, I don't have any yet, I'm literally writing to myself - wishful thinking I guess. Anyway, back to the point of the post.

So 23rd November was the big day that I had been waiting for forever (6weeks actually, but it might as well have been forever). I was really excited but nervous at the same point. Even though my case had been taken up a notch, at least I was in the hands of the people who could help me to make this pregnancy happen. Upon arriving I saw many women who were pregnant already which filled me with a lot of hope. I signed in and was given a few forms to fill in, my OH too. After about 10 mins or so a nurse called us into her office to check my blood pressure, height and weight (59kg, I have gained 4kgs in this marriage-not good). She checked over our forms and said they were fine. The forms were basically to find out if you had been pregnant before, how regular your AF is, history of STD's, alcohol and drug intake, all that kind of stuff.

Then the consultant calls us into her office, the first thing i noticed was that she had a wall of photographs of babies(I'm assuming that she helped to conceive)-this was quite reassuring. She looked over her notes and said "so you have pcos", and I was like excuse me, she then said " well look, your an educated woman, it doesn't take much to see that your periods are highly irregular and your blood tests show that some of the hormone levels were higher than normal." I almost burst into tears because although I had often thought that I may have pcos I had never been labelled as someone with pcos. My doctor had told me that all seemed fine (she was really vague) previously and that I would probably just need help to ovulate. She asked me a bit more about my cycles and stuff and reassured me that I was still young and healthy and getting pregnant should not be too difficult. She said the next step would be have a few diagnostic tests done, so they would have a clear picture of what was going on inside my body.

1. Transvaginal Ultrasound- to be done between day 2-5 of my next AF. This is basically an ultrasound using a probe through the vagina so as to have a much clearer picture of my uterus, ovaries, and Fallopian tubes. I think they want to see how many cysts/follicles I have on my ovaries. I believe you should be able to see the dead follicle in which the egg was released from, if indeed I did ovulate. The disgusting thing is, that I will still be on my prior while this is done, that totally freaks me out.

2. Hysterosalpinogram (HSG)- to be done between day 7-10 of my cycle. This is an xray of the uterus and Fallopian tubes to check the tubes are clear and there are no blockages. They insert dye through a catheter into the uterus and use an xray machine to see if it has dispersed clearly through to the end of the Fallopian tubes. I have been reading up about this, I think it may be painful.


So I need to book both of these tests once my AF appears, which I have no clue, I think I'm on cycle day 40 already, with no signs of AF showing her face.
The consultant booked a return appointment for the 18th January 2012 to review the results and decide the next step. At this rate, there may not be any results to review. Fingers crossed for AF then, I never thought I would be saying that.


So there we have my journey so far, I'm just waiting for my AF to come so I can have the 2 tests done and get them out of the way. I'm really hoping 2012 will bring me the gift of motherhood.

What has your journey been like so far? Have you been diagnosed with PCOS? Have you had a transvaginal and or HSG? I'd love to hear your experiences.

..........Part 2

Hi there, I hope my first post was not to boring for you - not that anyone has read it yet, I will be so excited when I get my first subscriber as I have not told any friends or colleagues, just my mother-in-law (she's amazing).

So let me continue. About 1 month after my doctor appointment I went to have an ultrasound and some blood tests. The u/s was a good experience as it was good to actually see the insides of my body and it was actually commented that I had quite a few visible cysts but it could be due to the fact that I am preparing to ovulate. It was not painful, just a bit uncomfortable as my bladder was so full. My blood were tested for LH, FSh, prolactin, and some other stuff I can't remember.

2 weeks later I went back to my doctor for the results. She said my blood work was reasonably normal and the ultrasound came back fine - she was so vague it was annoying. She told me to de-stress and it would probably happen naturally. I forgot to mention in the last post that she told me to get my DH to get a semen analysis done also, so by this time we had the results for this too, and once again, all was fine. In my mind I was thinking "so where does this leave us now" and what will we do now. She told us that she would refer our case further and that we should receive a letter about what to do next. Her advice was that I probably would need something to help me to ovulate.

So I was waiting impatiently for this letter to come - I am not lying when I say I did not receive anything for over a month. The stress and the anxiety was getting to me so much that I just decided to call my doctor and have her withdraw the referral. I had quite a lot of other things going in my life at that time and did not want the added stress. I decided to take the viewpoint of "it's probably not the best time anyway, Gods's time is the best time" that phrase can be so convenient at times.

Fast forward 5 or 6 months and we decided to play the game again with a more prepared mindset. I got my doctor to put in the referral again, to which she obliged, and then we waited patiently for the letter. I decided that I would use the time to learn more about fertility and my body. I read blogs, books and all sorts. I started taking the prenatal vitamins amongst other things ( I will share my experience of such in later posts)and started charting with fertility friend. After about 3wks I got a letter from UCHL from their reproductive medicine unit asking me to book an appointment with a consultant. I called and got an appointment for November 23rd 2011, it was about a 6week wait (thats the Nhs for you, but at least it's free).

In my next post, I will go into details about that appointment, but basically that's where were at now. Sorry if this was so long, I was trying to keep it concise, but I know some of you may want to know the details, I know I did. I read so many blogs trying to find out how my experience with the consultant would be.

What has your journey been like so far? Anything like mine? Also, please feel free to ask me any questions - maybe I did not explain something very well. I am new to this blogging thing and not so tech savvy. If you have any suggestions on how to make this blog a better reading experience,I would be happy to hear them.

Take care and God Bless xx

And so the story begins.........Part 1

Right, I will try to make this as short as possible - so as not to bore the hell out of you on my first post. My DH and I got married almost 2 years ago now and although I always romanticised about conceiving on my honeymoon night, we both knew that would not be ideal (after spending all our money on the wedding). So we just decided we would enjoy our marriage and begin by "not trying, not preventing" if you know what I mean. However I had noticed that for more than a year before the wedding my periods were extremely irregular (once in 3months was pretty usual), so I went to see my doctor and told her the situation. She said it was nothing to worry about. We continued with our strategy.

9 months down the line I decided to go back and this time tell my doctor that I wanted to have a baby, and so my periods need to be checked out - she said that usually I would need to wait for a year of ttc but because of my irregular periodS she would proceed with investigations. She told me it could be polycystic ovarian syndrome (pcos) but tests would need to be done in order to confirm it. She referred me to Royal Free Hospital to get some blood tests and an ultrasound.

Stay tuned for part 2......