Krazykatgirl

Hi everyone thanks for your messages yesterday I had an unsettled night but didn't have to wait too long as I got a call this morning with the news, the kids were screeching in the background and the reception on the mobile was terrible cutting in and out but the gist of it is that 7 out of my 8 eggs have fertilized so we are very pleased with that result - so far so good but realise they have to grow now to make it to PGD.

 Does the worry ever stop no it does not but we have a day free tomorrow where we do not have to go to the hospital and aren't waiting any news so we are off to the seaside for the day to make the most of it.

My injection of clexane and the crinone gel can be done first thing in the morning so that is good as don't have to come back to do that.

so we are now praying that our darling little embies are growing and growing and are healthy for us - please send all your positive vibes that they will be good I am trying to be positive but as you all know it is difficult not be scared when there is so much at stake.

Good luck to everyone else as well and as soon as I have any further news I will update everyone.

Take care love Karen xxx

Hi girls don't know if many of you remember me but I am writing this upon resting after egg collection. So far since stopping the BCP NOTHING has gone to plan! ( I now know why it is a roller coaster!)

I was going to the Jinemed in Turkey but ended up swopping at the last minute to another hospital in Turkey but that's another story ( PM me if you are looking at Turkey and want to know my reasons why )

Firstly my AF did not turn up very quickly after stopping the BCP it turned up 6 days later which put me miles behind as that meant instead of stimming for 10 or so days in the UK I ended stimming for only 3 days then arriving in Turkey on Tuesday the 27th May. It was just as well though as my follicles ( although only 6 - 8 ) had grown very quickly and were at the stage where I needed to have the ovulation suppressant ( Cetrotide as on short protocol ) on day 4 of stims which  may not have been picked up in the UK as the plan was to have a scan 5 days later then the first one. This could have meant that my eggs got too big too quickly which is not good.

I had a scan everyday from arriving in Turkey - on the first one the top doctor said she could see six follicles and two smaller ones which they hoped would catch up, on subsequent ones they said they could see 5 or 6 so I was a bit downhearted.

The main reason being that my DH has a dogey gene that we also have to exclude on top of the usual abnornals with PGD and we knew that at least a third would be abnormal due to that alone. The top doctor said with that many eggs and my DH translocation we might not have any normals at all let alone a girl - however due to losing my baby boy last year we had already decided that if the only one was a boy although we would have dearly loved to have got our little girl if the dogey gene was excluded then we would transfer that one back although it seems we will be lucky to have any normal at all and that's if the eggs fertilize tomorrow because my DH sperm is lets say at best not good.

The second prob we had was that by Friday we were done stimming ( only 7 days ) and everyone was really worried that I would ovulate prematurely in the last couple of days - infact they don't usually give you scan or bloods after the HCG injection which I had Saturday night but they did one yesterday on Sunday to check the eggs were still there and I spent the last couple of days sweating and praying that they would not pop by themselves though I knew it was a reality because they were 24,22, 21 an 19mm etc. They said my eggs were not all the same size either which is not ideal.

Last night I spent praying they would not go overnight and also that they would be mature because my oestradial levels do not match with the numbers of eggs and they said yesterday to rest because it had gone down rather then up so I am now absolutely terrified that not many are mature and lets face it with not too many I really need as many as possible to be mature to have a chance of even getting some embies in the first place.

I was told today after egg collection that they had eight eggs which I was really pleased about but they could not tell me today how many were mature - I always thought that they could tell you on the day of egg collection how many mature though I know you have to wait to know how many fertlized for the next day. Can anyone confirm whether you can tell on day of egg collection or is it normal to have to wait?

 So my roller coaster ride continues and it has been very bumpy so far - I wasn't too bad straight after egg collection but am getting sore now so suppose I should rest now.

Please pray for mature eggs and that they fertilize to give me a chance of pregnancy even if it isn't a girl one I now know for certain that I would take another little boy if I only get that chance or if there is more then one healthy one and it's a boy and girl I will take both - I hope I am in that lucky position of having something to transfer.

 I had to pay today on egg collection and have spent a fortune so far but have realised that I would rather get a BFN then nothing to transfer.

please send all your postive vibes for my little eggies and DH spermies.

Good luck to everyone else whereever you are on your journey - it is certainly not for the fainthearted is it but I am glad to see that for so many of you your determination has paid off.

Take care love Karen xxx

Well for the first time in well years I am actually eagerly awaiting the arrival of AF once the last pill is chomped tonight.

I mean I can't actually get on the roller coaster till she does can I?!!

I have scans booked in readiness for CD 2 to be Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I hope though that CD 2 is Tuesday.

This is because if it is I will have enough drugs to last me till I arrive in Turkey on the 27th May if I stay on the same amount.

I have had to order the bare minimum of what I need because drugs are hideously expensive here and much cheaper in Turkey. ( about £160.00 a day so do not want to over order if I can help it )

But there is a risk I will be flying by the seat of my pants if they up the dose on Friday - Turkey is two hours ahead and my scan is booked for 10.15am on Friday 23rd May.

The pharmacist who holds the rest of my prescription is not local and needs to know by 1pm whether I need more meds then he will send them by special delivery for Saturday.

What will I do if they don't arrive - well I would be in trouble as it is a bank holiday of course on Monday 26th May just to make my life much harder. However I asked my GP to write me a seperate script so we can make a mad dash to London where someone might actually have it in stock.

See why I pray for a CD2 to be Tuesday 20th May if the worse comes to the worse I will be 150iu short of Gonal F if the meds didn't turn up as would be in Turkey in time to get my evening drugs - think I can live with that.

Of course I might just be getting ahead of myself here worrying about that when I have to worry first whether and when AF will arrive and if I pass muster on the enormous amount of blood tests they want done before I get the permission to start those chilled stims in the cooler!

By the way I know have commited a non returnable total of about £2200 to date for drugs/flights/accomodation without even knowing whether we are going to get this off the ground in the first place but this seems to be par for the course!

I booked the flights a few days ago and the flat tonight and I must admit to starting to feel abit excited about it all.

Next update the arrival of the good witch in my case.

Well the last few weeks have been spent finalising everything and trying to get everything to fall into place.

Well they didn't and there was a mess up with me collecting my drugs from the Portland to start my stims to go to Jinemed.

Well that didn't work out so I made a decision based on gut instinct to swap hospitals at the last minute. ( still in Turkey though )

NOONE I know has been there but as gut instinct tells me it is right for me then I am going for it and as I have felt at peace over the whole cycle since I swapped I know it is the right decision for me.

I have been in close contact with them over the last few months and have found them to be proffesional at all times and the patient relations person is lovely.

 It is more hassly from the point of view of I have to get my own monitoring and my own drugs but they came today and are now sitting in my fridge waiting for some action!

The only thing is is that this hospital asks for FSH, progesterone, LH and  oetradial bloods on CD 2 before you start stims and there is a risk that if these are out of range I won't be able to start which will be a nightmare since I have booked my flights and apartment.

I can't see any reason why they might be but you just never know in this game.

OMG less then a week to D day if my period starts next weekend - mmm that's the other thing my period has to start - what if it doesn't I mean I haven't been on the pill for years and wonder whats been happening in there.

Anyway next update when more to tell or show!

Hi I'm Karen. Growing up with four brothers and no female relatives I always dreamt one day of having my own daughter to do all the pinks things with that got overuled by the majority in my childhood home.

I met my husband Clive when I was 27 and he was 28. I'd always had gynie issues with cancer of the cervix when I was 18 which luckily they caught early so was cured and then endometriosis when I was about 21 which was on the ureter so could not be removed but was treated with drugs.

Endometriosis can be helped by pregnancy so we were told to not to wait to try to just get on with it in case there was a fertiliy issue. How true that turned out to be but not in the way I imagined.

We got married in the June 1997 and started trying September that year.

I was overjoyed when I found out I was pregnant in January 1998.

However I lost that baby and five more over the course of the next eighteen months or so.  We eventually got refered to St. Marys miscarriage clinic where it was discovered my husband had a balanced translocation which meant when TTC could result in a baby not compatible with life, but to complicate things further I found out that I had a subtle blood clotting disorder that would result in miscarriage if untreated. This could however be treated with baby Aspirin which I have to take the minute I see the BFP.

So you'd think by the time I realised DC no 1 was possibly with us for the long haul I wouldn't care what I had? Wrong I still wanted my baby girl ungrateful person that I was.  I had an amnio because of DH dogey gene which gave me the good news that baby was healthy but also the news that baby was a boy.

I was upset as Id dreamed this might be my daughter but it was my first and maybe if I was lucky I might be able to have my daughter next time.

 My son was born and all my disappointment went when I saw him for the first time - he was beautiful and he was MINE. After all the trouble I'd had I did feel truly grateful for the gift I'd be given at long last.

I got told by  a consultant when I said that I would like another that I'd hit the jack pot once and with DH dogey gene I'd never have another one.

Anyway I cried and cried but it made me determined that someone else was not going to dictate my life.

I fell pregnant for the second time with a healthy baby. Baby  never cooperated at scans and the operator used to say can't see any boy bits so my hopes were high.Eventually quite late into pregnancy at 30 + weeks DC 2 revealed that he was all boy.

I have to say that I was completely devastated but equally felt guilty for wanting a girl when I'd been lucky to have another healthy baby.

It did take me a few weeks to come to terms with it but maybe because I'd had time to get my hopes raised up. I had also tried shettles but circumstances meant that the attempt ended up being a perfect boy one I realise with hindsight knowing what I know now about swaying

Still he was born and same thing he was beautiful and he was MINE.

Anyway third time lucky well I wasn't going to leave it to chance I was going to sway this time to try to get my DD but properly this time thanks very much.

I decided to do lots of freq BD a c/o and lemon douche. With all my fertility issues from the past I thought it would take a while ( the other two had taken 7 - 9months)

On the third month of trying I got my BFP. Id had a two day c/o, lemon douche and a lots of BD!!

So I started obssessing over gender. However when I got to my nuchal scan there was a prob - I was told 1 in 26 chance of a chromosonal prob and with DH dogey gene it just freaked us out totally.

I had a CVS which told me the baby was fine chromosonally and again it was a boy.

This time however after sweating about whether I might have to terminate although there were pangs about not having a daughter I got over it very quickly and started to look forward to meeting my little baby boy.

However I had been told that sometimes a large fold if not a chromosome prob can sometimes be an issue with the heart and that was tucked away in the back of my mind so I just wanted to get that 21 week scan over so I could fully relax.

I will never forget that scan - it changed our lives forever that day. Our darling baby did have a very serious heart defect - Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome ( Basically the left side of the heart has not developed). We were given three options - to terminate, to go to birth and let nature take it's course as without intervention he would die or opt for three high risk open heart surgeries.

There was never a doubt in my mind - I remember going to the fetal cardiologist for specialist confirmation of the condition and saying to Clive if there is any chance for this baby I want to take it.

I didn't give birth at my local hospital I gave birth in UCH London to be close to Great Ormond Street Hospital so my baby could be blue lighted by ambulance to intensive there so that he could have his first open heart surgery within hours of birth.

However when Joshua was born he was not as stable as they hoped he had caught strep b which is dangerous and life threatening for any newborn let alone one with such a serious cardiac condition.

He had to go straight to UCH intensive care to be ventilated - I barely had him in my arms before he was whisked away by doctors and nurses literally running down the corridor with him in the incubater with them bagging him up to maintain his stats.

Within an hour we were told that GOSH were picking him up immediately as UCH wanted them to take his care as they were the specialists.

Joshua did not have the first surgery for a week as he had to recover from the serious lung infection that he had unfortunately caught.

Unfortunately Joshua ended up being in hospital for most of six months with a brief period of just over a week being at home but I knew he was not right and sure enough he had to be admitted back to GOSH suffering from severe heart failure and bronchiolitis ( again a serious condition for any child let alone one with a heart condition ).

Joshua had many invasive proceedures and two further open heart surgeries, unfortunately complications set in after the last surgery and he died at the age of six months old March 8th 2007.

When Joshua was alive I can honestly say I was cured of gender disappointment - I just absolutely loved and adored him he was a very special baby and couldn't wait to get him out of hospital away from that environment to show him how a normal life could be. Allthough there were close calls once he got over them the doctors told us they thought he would make it so we had dreams of him being at home with us and his brothers and I didn't wish for anything more.

If he had lived I know we would not have had any more because he would have taken some looking after I don't know if the longing for a daughter would have come back I just know that when he was with us all I needed was him and my other two I felt complete.

However I have found that the longing for another baby after losing one is intense but this time I could not bear the thought of having a boy even more although noone knows more then me the value of a healthy baby - it would have felt like replacing him and he was my baby boy I could not risk that.

So just over a year ago amongst my intense grief I started looking into swaying in a big way again. I found BC USA, Tamara and TBM!!

My goodness have I given it a go I have tried every version of everything if I could have gotten hold of the things I needed here in the UK for high tech at home I would have done that instead!!

My DH sperm count is not great and I think all the lowering, Lime TBM and lime douches have just been clobbering the lot!!

Each month when I have gotten a BFN it has been like losing Joshua all over again.

I kinda got to the crunch a couple of months ago that I just could not bear the BFN every month but had got locked into the swaying.

I started taking an interest in high tech saying couldn't afford it, my dogey Dh gene, my age etc (40)  but I knew if I gave up swaying then if we were lucky to have another baby it would defiantely be a boy and by the time we got to where we could do high tech next year I would be well onto my 41st year with even less chance of it working.

So I have decided to take the plunge and if all goes well will be cycling in Turkey early June.

The odds are stacked against us with all of the above because with my age, DH dogey gene at least a third will probably be affected  but if we don't get any healthy girl embies we are prepared to put the healthy boys ones back instead.

It might sound mad but at least we would know they were free of DH dogey gene and the other common chromosome probs such as DS etc.

I don't know if I can have another baby naturally and I know after losing Joshua and not having gotten pregnant for a year I would rather have another boy baby now then no baby at all.

The fact is if we don't succeed then at least I can't regret not trying for my DD as if IVF fails completely we are back to normal TTC no swaying at all because I just can't do it any more and I am scared now that if I leave it much longer and continue swaying I would not have a baby at all.

However if we do succeed there is an advantage in that Joshua's condtion which we are at higher risk of happening again is almost 70% more common in males then females so it does reduce the chance of that happening again a bit which only can be a good thing.

So this is how I have reached this stage to have the courage to do IVF/PGD.

thanks for reading my story if you have got that far and I will start updating my journey to Turkey soon.

I wish everyone else success in pursuing their gender dream whatever road that takes.

Take care all love Karen xxxx