IVF Journey: 11w2d pregnant

This is my IVF diary. My husband and I have been trying to have a baby for four years now, and have a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility'. We have finally reached the top of the waiting list for IVF - a form of assisted conception. I'm blogging about what happens as it happens, as a kind of therapy for me and as an awareness raising exercise of what IVF is all about.

So I think these new prochlorperazine drugs are the ones, I do feel better on these than anything else so far.

They are an interesting drug – you can take them for dizziness (up to 30mg/day), nausea (up to 30mg/day), anxiety (up to 40mg/day) and schizophrenia (up to 100mg/day).

I am taking three 10mg doses a day at 8am, 2pm and 8pm and that is seeing me through almost nausea free. I’ve had to cut up the pill strips into daily allowances though, otherwise I’ve not been sure if I’ve taken the 8am ones or not due to still being mainly asleep at that point of the day.

I’m still exhausted though, and pissed off. I can still only really do one thing per day before feeling completely buggered. I’m still nauseated by thinking about food or smelling food and am not really eating normally. Still not really up to socialising. Worried about whether I’ll ever be able to go back to a normal working routine.

I also feel generally a bit gross on these pills too. Not sure how to describe, sort of like if you’ve recently had food poisoning and all your insides feel icky and wrong and you feel sorry for yourself.

Some people who know I’ve been sick have very kindly text me and asked how I’m doing and I don’t know what to say. There’s the honest approach – to say I feel better but still awful, miserable, annoyed. I want people to understand the truth of the matter. But I also think it doesn’t help if I’m too honest, it makes the recipient feel bad and also it sounds like I’m exaggerating which I think probably has the opposite of the intended impact.

I also still feel endlessly guilty about complaining about pregnancy nausea as an ex-infertile.

But urgh, I am so sick of this, and so frickin miserable.

In other news the last couple of days I have noticed that I look a bit different round the middle. I wouldn’t say it is the ‘thickening’ that people talk about, and in fact I’m still 1.5kg lighter than when they put the thing in me. More it is that I am creasing in different places to usual, like some bits that were usually made of fat or skin are no longer just fat or skin but have something else under them.

It is the 12 week scan on Friday. I’m nervous about that now. Nervous about fetal abnormalities and especially about silent miscarriage – the possibility of the baby having stopped growing but still being in there. Hopefully not.

The idea that this could all still be for nothing - that we could be thrust back to square one and have to decide if we can face IVF and pregnancy nausea again - scares the shit out of me.