January 2020: A letter landed on our doormat and it read ...
"You have been ACCEPTED for IVF please can you and your husband both attend in February for further scans and another semen analysis."
"Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." (Romans 15:7)
I needed to go for yet another internal ultrasound and Nick needed another semen analysis check.
We are now under one of the best IVF providers in the North-West and finally we feel like we are getting somewhere.
Another letter arrives and my appointment is during half term, bonus: I don't need to miss work for this one. We attend together, at first we take a wrong turning and have to go back to find the correct carpark.
We go through the hospital grounds and start to see signs for COVID this way ➡️ and random tents around. At this time, mid February 2020, not much was known about this disease and life was still fairly normal.
We enter the main hospital building and head for the scan suite. We are surrounded by expectant couples, slightly inappropriate, but I am positive that things are heading in the right direction. The scan goes very similar to most other times. The ultrasound lady seems happy enough. A week later Nick attends for his check up again. Then we are told to wait as we should get an appointment within a month with the IVF gynaecologist.
18th March 2020: Boris Johnson announced to the nation that schools will close that Friday to help stop the spread of Covid 19. The whole country goes into a full scale lockdown and I only attend school on Fridays to begin with to work the pod of roughly 5-10 children.
Needless to say we did not get an appointment within the month. But as we were in the middle of a global pandemic, that could not be helped.
Now let's jump to July 2020 and we have a video consultation with the IVF hospital about what our scans and checks found and what the next steps for us were.
We log onto the hospital's version of "zoom" (something similar, but more secure) and we wait for feels forever to be let in, in reality it is only around 20 minutes. Firstly we talked about my scan and they have found an abnormality with the shape of my womb. My womb is actually heart-shaped instead of triangular-shaped. When this happens it means that the wall of the uterus could not have met at the top, hence the dip. Dr S told me that they would like to do a uterine cavity wall scan to establish whether I have a gap in the lining or not. If I do, I need surgery to fix this before proceeding with IVF.
Secondly we move to Nick and his semen analysis. Dr S explained to us that when they perform this analysis they check for three qualities: sperm count, motility and morphology. An average man's sperm count has 15 million per millilitre, Nick's is around 9.5-10 million. Motility is speed and movement and morphology is their shape and size. Nick's are of normal motility.
Therefore she concluded that, should my next scan come back clear we should be very successful candidates for IVF. We would have a 30-40% success rate, which is pretty high in IVF stats. Our funding means are only allowed one round on the NHS, but that involves multiple embryo transfers. She also informed us that they would go with the ICSI form of IVF. The consultation comes to an end and we are positive that this is the right path for us.
"The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but all should reach repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)
Mid August 2020: I attend the IVF department for my uterine cavity scan, I am slightly nervous and apprehensive as I don't know what they are going to find. Here I meet another gynaecologist and she knows everything in my infertility history: I do not need to repeat myself. She undertakes the scan and when it is done gave me the opportunity to take a photo of my womb.
Once fully dressed again, she explained her findings and that the slight dip in my uterine wall is nothing to worry about and we can proceed to the next stage.
Excellent! More prayers answered. "The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." (1 Timothy 1:14)
We have to wait 3 weeks for an appointment to come available. The next day we received a phone call to say an appointment has become available within the next week. They will send the paperwork out to us and we will need to complete it before attending the consultation.
At the meeting we go through all the paperwork and sign all the legal bits and consent forms. Then we wait to meet one the IVF nurses. She is really friendly and answers all of our questions. She fills out more information in our IVF folder. She takes my blood pressure and calculates my BMI, after taking my weight. She gives us a brief explanation of how the injections work and all the other medication required for the next stage of IVF. She gave us the prescription. This would normally be the end of this part of the consultation. However this was not any other normal year. COVID has impact on the IVF process. We were told that we needed to self-isolate from Day 8 of my injections to the confirmation of pregnancy or not. I worked this out to be roughly three and half weeks if everything went well.
We are both sent for blood tests downstairs and I have to pay for my prescriptions that will be delivered within the next week or so.
Wow at least everything is moving really quickly now. I could be pregnant before then end of this year.
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
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