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When You Have to Rely on a ‘Good Egg’
Scrambled, fried, poached, boiled – hard or soft – self contained in a little shell.
Then there’s the Easter egg, the chocolate variety – mmmmmmm.
But I’ve a lot to thank eggs for.
My own eggs let me down, my unexplained early menopause rendered them useless.
But a wonderful woman’s kindness in donating hers made me a mummy at the third time of asking, IVF wise.
Eggs also helped maintain my pregnancy to enable my daughter to enter the world.
Immune tests showed I had raised natural killer cells that would make
As if early menopause wasn’t enough, likely multiple miscarriages seemed to have been my programmed destiny.
To counter this issue, a soya and egg infusion was written into my IVF cycle medication.
The resulting little lady is now two. She’s wonderful just like the donor who made our family possible.
Our daughter had scrambled eggs on toast for her lunch today and – as we long to give her a sibling – I had a soya and egg infusion.
200 calories apparently!
We’re on cycle six now. The same
Cycle six is our first try at using frozen embryos from our fifth try. At the moment I’ve been taking hormones for a couple of days.
Today’s soya and egg drip has left me mentally and physically exhausted.
I’m focussing on the value eggs have added to my life because it takes my mind off the precarious reality of my life at present.
Planning isn’t possible when you have no control whatsoever.
Infertility taught control freak me that
So I walk on egg shells a day at a time.
You want it to work. Happily it has done for us once. But it’s not worked four times.
That hurts and I’m familiar with that pain, it’s made me a bit cynical about my chances this time round.
The hormones make you feel pregnant. Swollen boobs, twinges, sickness. You spend the two week wait taking a potent cocktail of drugs and injecting blood thinners that leave you with huge purple bruises on your tummy.
You have to remember to take the drugs on time, you can’t forget that you might be
Then after the longest fortnight ever the test comes up negative. It stings on so many levels. Emotionally, psychologically, financially.
You long to just be able to try to get pregnant the traditional way.
But I’m lucky enough to have seen a positive test after an IVF cycle and I remember that joy.
It’s that that keeps me going.
So I’m trying to negotiate my way through this month keeping my thoughts light and fluffy. Like eggs in a cake.
We have four frozen
So we’ve a few hurdles to jump and I don’t want to end up with egg on my face.
I want to end up with a baby to complete our family.
So if this cycle doesn’t work we’ll have two more embryos and one more cycle at giving our daughter a genetically related sibling.
If that doesn’t work, I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket and saying that’s it. I just can’t, not yet, here on cycle six.
We could try again with a new donor. That’d be IVF eight by then.
Although we long for a second child, at what price? When an egg breaks it’s messy.
So as sure as eggs is eggs it’s going to be a challenging month.
Light and fluffy, light and fluffy.
I step up the drugs in a few days, add steroids to the mix and I might grow a lovely moustache as a result, but that’s only happened so far when I got pregnant.
So at least that’s a silver lining if this cycle doesn’t work.
No baby, but no tash either!
Light and fluffy and positive
And with that, I’m going to hope for the best and open a bag of mini eggs.