IVF Journey: 12w3d 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 an update on how this pregnancy malarkey is going.

Yesterday I was sick for the first time during my pregnancy. As you know I’ve felt sick a lot of the time but never actually been sick yet, so that’s new. And weird to start at a time when it is supposed to be easing off. It is the tooth brushing that did it. The last week or so brushing my teeth has made me feel close to sick but I’ve just assumed that I wouldn’t be as I haven’t been before. It isn’t the gagging or the brush in my mouth, I think it is the build-up of froth in my mouth – they do say you produce more saliva when pregnant. I’ve tried spitting some out but yesterday it was just too much. I tried sitting down then lying down to ease the vommy feeling but no, I clearly needed to actually vomit. So I did. Urgh.

Even so, there is no doubt that I feel better on my current anti nausea drugs (prochlorperazine) than I have on the previous ones. My mind is clearer, I’m more myself. But I’m still getting a few hours of nausea each day. This nausea is more manageable and less all-encompassing than it has been before, but it is also unpredictable about when it might come. Being tired certainly makes it worse, as does brushing my teeth. What I want to eat is still limited although I continue to be able to keep anything down. Strong smells or hot smells (i.e. food, the shower) really bother me. I’m still seriously exhausted and can’t do much at all without being completely wiped out. On Friday I had the 12 week scan… then had to go to bed at 9pm. That is a good four hours earlier than my usual pattern. And I’m just physically drained. This is having a real impact on my wellbeing, I feel quite down and hopeless and I can’t imagine feeling well enough to enjoy anything. I’m dreading Christmas – all the food and food smells and not knowing if I’ll be able to manage to join in anything, even the most low key things. So although I feel much better, it is still sufficiently bad to limit my activity and make me feel completely miserable.

I don’t believe the nausea will go away. As I have said before the early onset and the fact that my Mum had it throughout make me think it won’t just pass. I think I’m hugely sensitive to HCG (the pregnancy hormone) and although HCG levels in my pregnancy will have peaked and should now be dropping they will only drop as far as a base level at which I already felt pretty rough when I went up through it the first time. So I expect to keep feeling sick but would be delighted to be proved wrong.

However, I am hopeful that I’ll feel less exhausted. They say that comes around week 12-14 when the placenta is grown enough to take over the functions I’ve had to accommodate in the first trimester. If I feel less tired I can deal with the nausea better, and indeed the nausea is less extreme. So that would be great.

In other news.

I’m going to get my flu jab now, which is recommended as pregnant ladies are in the ‘at risk’ group. I’m susceptible to flu and certainly don’t want to have to have it without strong cold&flu drugs, so I’m keen to get the jab. I haven’t gone and got it before now because I’ve barely been out and not felt up to it. So hopefully that’ll be uneventful and I won’t feel crap afterwards as some people have told me they have.

You can’t tell by looking at me that I’m pregnant yet, in fact I’m 2kg lighter than when they did the embryo transfer. Not too worried about that. It means there is space in my clothes to grow a bit. I usually wear dresses over leggings, so that stuff should do for a while to come yet.

We’re feeling pretty positive now that we’re going to have a baby (as compared to not allowing ourselves to believe that). We’re tentatively talking about baby names and nursery decoration and general parenting ethos ideas. We’re reading the book that the NHS gave us. We’re making decisions about things baby-related. We’re announcing the good news to people.

The idea of having a baby is really exciting, I just want to get past this feeling hideous so I can enjoy that.