Operation; Get Skinny!!!

When I first met my husband I was tiny, of course after 5 years of TTC stress, a healthier (ahem) lifestyle, study, and shiftwork, that is now no longer the case. So while I realise that I am older now and I will probably never be able to get down to the NZ size 8 I once was, a few kg's off won't hurt at all!! And so begins operation; get skinny.

I think this is going to be a lot harder than giving up booze, caffeine and any control over my emotions.. in fact I think this may be the make or break of my marriage. I love chocolate, serious chocoholic right here, and on night shifts around 4am is when everyone breaks out the chocolate and home baking so that is going to be a true test of my dedication to the cause. I am also a sucker for dessert, as soon as dinner is done I crave something sweet. I can often get away with just having a cup of tea which is good.. but wait, shit.. I have to give those up in a couple of weeks, hmmm this really is going to be hard and I havn't even touched on the exercise part yet!!

Ah yes exercise, I figure that spending my days and nights running around the hospital and saving peoples lives *shines halo* is enough exercise for me, but apparently my figure doesn't agree. To be honest half my day is spent getting sworn at or spat on by my adoring patients (I wont mention any other type of bodily fluids for fear of gross out factor) and so by the time I get home from being the worlds doormat the thought of going for a walk or jumping on the cross trainer is like asking me to cut off my feet... actually by the time I get home cutting my feet off would probably be a relief.

Anyway, these things I am now going to have to do because we all know that maintaining a healthy weight range is beneficial to the IVF process. So goodbye pudding every second night and goodbye 4am pick me ups and resting my feet and hello to starvation and fatigue!

Oh yeah, this is going to go well!

Caffeine.... its everywhere!

The closer this cycle gets the more I have been thinking about the no caffeine thing, even when I'm trying not to I can't escape it. I was on a site reading up on the pro's and cons of selenium and in big bold letters CAFFEINE PROMOTES INFERTILITY... yeah yeah we all know, bloody crack addicts can get pregnant but in order for me to do it I have to quit drinking caffeine. blah.

Originally when told this from our fertility specialist it didn't bother me at all, too easy! I have never been a coffee drinker and to be honest the taste of it makes me want to hurl. But now that I am actively thinking about the diet changes I have to make for IVF I have realised that I am a caffeine junkie! I drink about 6 or 7 cups of tea a day, and I wont even touch on my V addiction (for fear of the mr realising just how much money I spend of giant cans of V) and as for my ultimate favourite, Coca Cola!! (not that pansy coke zero or diet coke either) well. need I say more?

In my defense, what little of one I have, I am a shift worker and my mornings start early, my evenings go late and the night shifts... well the night shifts last all night duh! So caffeine in any form (other than coffee. Blurk!) is all I have to keep me going. surely replacing it with chocolate won't do me any good... will it?

I know that there are others out there like me, a fellow infertility blogger has a number of blog posts purely on fighting her coffee addiction. Although I cannot claim to be a coffee addict like our dear maybe baby writer, I will claim the terribly unhealthy carbonated caffeine drink and ridiculous tea drinking addiction that I never even knew I had until now. Thanks IVF, you managed to find yet another flaw in my wonderfully infertile self *insert eye roll here*

Forget the meds, I reckon its living a caffeine free life that makes women doing a cycle of IVF go postal on their husbands.

Pessimist or realist?

A large part of TTC and IVF is not getting your hopes up. But when does that switch over to the land of pessimism? Now I’m a realist, always have been and so I tend to take the ‘err on the side of caution’ route most times anyway. But for some reason, even with the reassurance we have received from out fertility specialist, I just cannot see myself at the end of this infertility struggle coming out on top. I sure as hell know I’m not the only one!

We get wrapped up in basal temps, down regulating and timing all our medications. With scans and blood tests, two week waits and follow up appointments. We are already trying to find the money for private cycles before we have even started our public ones and starting our adoption portfolios so we can get them in the pool as soon as the blood tests come back negative.

So am I being cynical and morose or am I a realist? The waiting process is slowly turning me batty I can tell you that for certain

What have you done?

When TTC you try to fill your time with things to keep yourself occupied and sane. Here's my list

I completely changed careers. I went from managing bars and night clubs to studying full time towards my bachelor of health and science with the plan to cut down to part time or take a break and come back to it when we got preggers (HA!) of course it's safe to say I completed my degree full time to become an RN and specialized in Emergency and Trauma nursing. I am now a few weeks off finishing my Post Graduate certificate and moving on to my post grad diploma.

I planned our wedding and we tied the knot in December of 2008.

Had major knee surgery which put me on my back for over 3 weeks and in a wheelchair for 8, I wasnt able to return to work for 14 weeks and even then it was on light duties.

Went on an amazing weeks holiday in Rarotonga this April which was just what I needed!!

I have watched a huge number of my friends have babies all around me, one of them has had 3 since I started TTC!!!

We have spent the last year and a half planning our house build and it is now full speed ahead, our new house already has walls! lol lots of things to plan and do to keep myself occupied with that one.

Thats just a small amount of the bits and bobs we've been doing.

So my question for those of you who are also riding this infertility wave, what have you done to keep yourself going?

Aunty Wino

Isn't it funny how the thing we want most in life.. those adorable little miracles, when not ours, can ruin our lives?
Ok so 'ruining our lives' is a little melodramatic, but they sure do add a bit of pressure. Take for example this coming Labour weekend... we're going camping. Camping is our absolute favourite thing in the world to do and why not? it's relaxing, fun, you have all the benefits of the great outdoors along side any luxury items you might want to drag along with you. For me its my wine glasses... now the mr doesn't think I need two different types of wine glasses for camping but I say to hell with it, I enjoy drinking wine out of the glass it is meant to be drunk.

Anyway, I digress.. This Labour weekend we are going camping with a few friends, remember my post 'operation new baby'? yeah... them. Also coming along will be my friends partners kids, one is 5 and the other is 2 and my friends sister and her husband who have a one year old. So you can see where the 'ruining of lives' comes into play.

Now don't get me wrong, I love this baby to pieces, surrogate 'aunty' right here. I just don't know how I am going to cope for 4 days of basically living with him, and the hundred and one other kids that will be there.

Also this will be my last weekend for indulging any form of alcohol and caffeine as we have made October our cut off date for these.

Something tells me I am going to turn into that aunty who sits in the corner and is always drunk and reeking of stale wine.

The big positive

An old friend of mine has just announced on facebook that she is pregnant... very very early pregnant, think still has 5 weeks until the end of the 1st trimester. She's not the 1st I've noticed doing this lately. This got me to thinking, do people really announce these things so early?! or is my cynical infertile brain and uterus just so badly messed up from this, for want of a better word, "journey" that the thought of not having a gazillion blood tests and doctors visits to confirm before announcing it terrifies the crap out of me?

Fertile Positive: test once, positive, tell everyone.

Infertile Positive: Two week wait, pessaries (ick), check toilet paper obsessively, tune body in for pregnancy symptoms, get every pseudo symptom known to man, pee on multiple pregnancy tests, take basal temp daily, blood test, positive! hold breath and dont get hopes up, disbelief, anxiety, more blood tests, nerves, fear,sleepless nights, tell nobody.. spend the next 3 months waiting for it all to get taken away again.

The cold hard facts

Approximately 10-15% of couples suffer from infertility. Multiple studies have shown that women undergoing IVF treatment experience high levels of stress, depression, and anxiety. To add to that lovely tidbit, studies show that there is a strong correlation between depressive symptoms and retrieved oocytes, the higher the depression score the less the oocytes. Awesome right?

So, get depressed as a result of infertility and the circus involved in IVF and you will end up with less embryos?!? fan bloody tastic.

But wait there's more, women with higher depression rates and anxiety have much lower pregnancy rates in general. Oh and then there's the study that shows that women who cope poorly with stress during fertility treatment have a much higher rate of miscarriage during their 1st trimester.  Wowsa

Lets not forget the data that shows women who are successful with their fertility treatment are much much more likely to suffer from postnatal depressive syndrome, and something that has been reported to me from fellow infertility sufferers is that during their pregnancies women who have had to rely on fertility treatment to become pregnant often feel guilty when they are feeling unwell and wanting to complain during pregnancy and also feel like they can never complain when going through the many sleepless nights associated with a newborn.

So basically we're screwed.. it really doesnt matter which way you look at it.