Hello Ladies, may I join the group?
I've been following and reading all of your tales, experiencing your ups and downs, but have been too nervous to wade in in case I jinxed things with my pregnancy. Well, today I had my first scan at 9 weeks exactly and everything is measuring on track with gestational age that exactly matched my calcualtion based on transfer dates, and a nice fast-looking heartbeat. Relief doesn't begin to cover it!
Here's my story: I'm 36 and DH is 46, we've been trying to concieve for the last 7 years. Just as we started exploring fertility treatment through the NHS we fell pregnant naturally, but sadly that ended with a MC back in 2019 around the 7-8 week mark. Covid put the brakes on our fertility referrals but we finally got started this year.
Problem seemed to be male factor so we opted for ICSI. Egg collection got us 7 mature eggs which I was disappointed about, but 4 fertilised and two developed into nice looking blastocysts. One fresh and one frosty. The fresh transfer didn't stick, and after waiting a month for things to settle down we decided to go with the frosty because my work schedule was getting spicy and I couldn't take time off for another egg stimulation cycle. I'm a TV Producer/Director so schedules are inflexible and I go where they send me. They don't know about my IVF.
So we had our FET at the end of June, immediately before I flew off for a three week filming trip around America. I didn't hold out much hope so imagine my surprise when in a dark motel room at 5am on my OTD, two lines showed up immediately! Sod's law it was a motel with the worst internet in the world so I had to traipse up and down the highway to find signal to call DH!
The next couple of weeks were physically intense - I was climbing mountains, squeezing through caves, and camping on a glacier. I even came back with mild frostbite in my toes! I tested like crazy throughout, certain that all this ridiculous stuff (which I do normally but definitely didnt fall within the recommended activity levels!) was going to nix this little bean. But the tests kept reading positive after I got home. I couldn't believe it!
The clinic only offered me a 10ish week scan, and after my self-referral I got my 12 week scan through (which I've had to delay to 13+2 because of ANOTHER work trip), but after my last MC I was still anxious. I decided to pay for a private scan at 8 weeks to put my mind at rest. AND then on the morning of the scan they cancelled due to staff sickness! So here we are, one week on, and I finally went for my first scan after a completely sleepless night. What if it was ectopic, what if it was too small, what if they couldn't find a heartbeat? I clearly read too much.
When she immediately saw a nice chunky little bean with a flickering heart, cord, and limb buds, DH teared up, but I was just stunned. Honestly, I still don't think it's sunk in. I'm just feeling extraordinarily tired now the adrenaline has gone! Not only that but she told us that the chance for MC is much reduced because most of the losses that happen later in 1st trimester are actually problems that have already happened before 9 weeks. I really hope that's true. It'd be great to actually start believing in this pregnancy!