IVF Journey: 24w3d 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.

I didn’t get a huge amount of sleep in the hospital. Several reasons. One was that I had to have my blood pressure taken at 12.15am, then 4am, then they woke us up at 7.15am. Another was that I was on a mixed antenatal and postnatal ward and two of the women had newborn babies in with them so there was a bit of baby crying. Mainly though, it was just very light. And not as comfortable as my own bed.

I had to ask for some anti nausea medication, as I hadn’t taken mine with me.

The husband phoned up the hospital in the morning and tracked me down, and arranged to come in and visit around 9.30am with a view to driving me home. I was so pleased to see him, I was quite bored and lonely and overwhelmed. He brought my PJs and phone charger and clean underwear and a banana, all of which were welcome.

The doctors came for ward rounds perhaps 10am, and decided I could go home but would need to go on a daily dose of the blood pressure pills and would need to come in again for a check on Friday.

So I was to be sprung out of hospital when the prescription was written and we waited a bit, then the husband went and enquired further. He was told it would be perhaps 2pm when I could leave. I suggested he went to work and I’d be alright to hang around and make my own way home. But then he did a bit of negotiation with a midwife and arranged to take me home immediately and for him to come back and collect my prescription later. This meant he could drive me home then go to work for lunchtime, I could be in my own bed catching up on sleep and TV, and the hospital could have their bed back. Win win win.

I’m struggling with all this, with the relentlessness of it and the inconvenience. I just seem to keep being too sick to be able to have any sort of normal work or personal life. I worry for health reasons on my behalf myself and on behalf of Kipling. I worry about the unpredictability of it, how it is bound to keep happening, and how I’ll find it hard to make plans and commitments in the coming months. It concerns me how early in pregnancy this has happened and what might be yet to come. I’m not sure if maybe I should give up work sooner rather than later as it is becoming increasingly hard to fit it all in. I want to throw an ‘it’s not fair’ tantrum. I’m so envious of women who have a straightforward pregnancy. I’m finding it very hard to deal with.