Why crying is good for you

After the failure of my IUI last Friday, I cried all day until there were no more tears left. I woke up with red rimmed swollen eyes next morning, feeling tired, sad and drained, but in other ways much better. It was as if those tears had cleansed away some of the pain.

Today, my blogger friend Therese, has a wonderful post on the healing power of tears and outlines seven ways in which a good cry can heal us physiologically, psychologically, and spiritually. Her list is based on Jerry Bergman’s The Miracle of Tears and I particularly like the points about crying lowering your stress levels, elevating your mood, releasing your feelings, and my favourite – building community.

Check out Therese’s post – it is a good read and next time you feel like giving full rein to your tears,  go right on ahead – it’s good for you!

This is the hardest part

Earlier today, I said that the hardest part of this journey with trying to conceive is waiting, waiting each month to see if a miracle has happened and you are pregnant. You spend those two weeks trying not to get too hopeful, but nevertheless hope bubbles up – you allow yourself the luxury of  a few moments spent working out the due date and you picture yourself holding your longed for baby in 9 months time. You keep on hoping..right up until the moment your hope dies.

My hope died again this afternoon when the cramping and spotting turned into a full on bleed and I couldn’t pretend it was implantation symptoms anymore. My period has come and the IUI has failed. I want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.

I should be ready for this shouldn’t I? I shouldn’t be sitting here typing through my tears. I shouldn’t be feeling this aching emptiness again as another month of trying and failing to get pregnant comes and goes. Yet here I am doing just that.

I don’t know how it can be any other way. You invest so much of yourself mentally, emotionally (and yes financially) in each attempt at assisted conception. Not only did I have the IUI procedure, but I also had acupuncture to help with the implantation and went for a hypno-fertility session where I visualised implantation taking place and held onto that image right up until this afternoon.  You have to believe, you have to have hope, but when it doesn’t happen, it takes such a toll on you emotionally.

How do we keep going on this path? I am finding it really, really hard right now and you know what, this isn’t even the hardest part of it all. The hardest part is when your miracle happens and you conceive your baby only to lose him again.

The waiting is the hardest part

Just heard an old Tom Petty song on the radio, The Waiting and the words of the chorus have stuck in my mind

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you see one more card

You take it on faith, you take it to heart

The waiting is the hardest part

Well I am not sure that it is the hardest part of this whole process, but it certainly isn’t easy. The closer I am getting to the end of the 2-week wait, the more anxious and nervous I get. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself what will be will be, I still count down the days, one day hopeful and excited, the next stealing myself for disappointment, not to mention googling and imagining all the early signs of pregnancy I know off my heart at this stage.

I’ve been having dark spotting and cramping over the past few days, and although I read that only 4% of pregnancies experience this as implantation bleeding and pain, I am clinging onto it as a hopeful sign.

And now we wait…

Home from the clinic. Bit stressful – a few minor problems and at one point, I didn’t think the procedure was going to go ahead, but after a bit of delay, we had it done.

I’ve just been reading through what I wrote after my last experience with IUI and I am feeling very different this time. When I left the clinic this evening, I felt a huge weariness come over me. It was such an emotional time last year after the excitement of the successful IUI, the thrill of seeing our baby’s heartbeat, and then the devastation of miscarrying our little baby boy. I just feel a weariness at what is ahead. Either the IUI will result in a negative result in two weeks time, which will be a huge disappointment, or it will result in a pregnancy, which is of course what I want, but then I have to face the possibility of going through another miscarriage again.

I think it’s just hit me how really scared I am and how hard this fertility road is – it requires huge reserves of resilience, courage and emotional strength and just at the moment, I seem to be all out of that.

And it’s game on

Had the scan today. Butterflies started about an hour earlier and got increasingly more fluttery as we had to wait in the clinic for our appointment. I was trying to steal myself for doc saying that I didn’t have any nice juicy follicles but a nice big one emerged…only one, but he is happy to go with it.

So, it’s game on for next Tuesday afternoon!

On the road again…

What's Willie Nelson doing here?

What has Willie Nelson got to do with a fertility blog??

Well, all week I have had this line from a Willie Nelson song going round and round in my head

I’m on the road again

Yep, I’m back on the fertility road again. I have dusted myself off after last year’s heartbreak and all week I’ve been doing my Gonal F injections and sniffing my Suprecur nasal spray. Tomorrow I go for a scan at the fertility clinic to see if the injections have worked and if I can go ahead with an IUI.

I feel excited, I feel nervous, I feel hopeful, I feel anxious, I feel..lots of things..but one thing I know for sure…

I’m back on the road again.

A new direction for fertility in Ireland

I am so excited about today’s post for several reasons. Firstly, I haven’t blogged in quite some time and I wanted to wait until I had something positive to write about before I did again. Secondly, I am excited to introduce you to two professionals who I sincerely believe will make a difference to fertility in Ireland.

Aisling Killoran of Accomplish Change Clinic is a certified Hypnotherapist and Psychotherapist specialising in helping mums and dads conceive.  She follows the unique HypnoFertility™ programme which is a multi-faceted hypnotherapy programme used to help and support and facilitate natural conception and the medical process for women undergoing IVF, IUI, ICSI, and other medical procedures. This is a powerful, precise programme that supports the entire fertility process and is tailored for each individual for optimal health and wellbeing.

While Aisling can’t promise you will get pregnant, I can personally testify that what she can do is help you to achieve the best state of mind/body connection conducive to pregnancy.  I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Aisling to anyone who is looking for a holistic approach to fertility.

And speaking of holistic approaches, Aisling has written a post this week on her blog about ReproMed Consultancy Services, a Fertility Clinic in Sandyford, Dublin that is worth blogging about. This service is run by Mr Declan Keane, Consultant Embryologist, with 18 years clinical experience and who is licensed/accredited by the Irish Medicines Board, UK Health Professions Council and European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology as a Senior Clinical Scientist.

Aisling met with Declan, earlier this week and on her blog she writes that she found him to be “a genuine sincere man full of integrity and passion in helping couples to conceive.” I confess to knowing a little about the man myself, as three years ago, he helped me produce a patient information booklet on breast cancer and fertility and he was wonderfully helpful then. Anyway, I got my own chance to speak with Declan yesterday and I share Aisling’s views. I too am impressed with his patient-centred approach and believe he is going to make a real difference to couples looking to conceive in Ireland.

If you are interested in learning more, check out Aisling’s blog, which incidentally is updated regularly with some great posts on trying to conceive.

What’s been happening…

Well, I have held back on writing this post but now today I feel that I want to record what is happening…for myself and also for those who are on the same path as me. Last Tuesday, 18 days after the IUI, I did the HPT and to my utter surprise it was positive. It is hard to believe that our very first IUI worked. I did it at 5 am in the morning, and I allowed myself a few hours of happiness and excitement until I got up. Since then, I haven’t allowed myself any of that earlier happiness or excitement and to be honest, I am distancing myself as much as possible from this pregnancy, which is why I was reluctant to post on it.  I guess it is a way of protecting myself should this pregnancy end in a miscarriage..although to be honest, I suspect I am not really going to be able to protect my heart from breaking again.

Instead of working out the due date, as normal expectant mothers would do, I’ve worked out the possible dates of the stage that I lost my other babies. I am already anxious and fearful at the thoughts of the approaching 8-10 week stage, and I feel so guilty about the anxiety and detachment, also knowing that is hardly sending the right signals to the baby developing inside me now.  And as one of my friends said to me last week, it is happening right now..right now I am pregnant…but it is so hard to trust the truth of that, when the fear of another miscarriage looms over my head like a big dark cloud blocking out any happiness at this momentous turn of events.

And the waiting goes on…

Still another 11 days to go and I am driving myself crazy. Spent all weekend, googling early pregnancy symptoms and convincing myself I had some – headache (check) cramping (check) sore boobs (check) nausea (check) fatigue (check). Of course all of these symptoms are also my regular PMT signs and so I am swinging from convincing myself I am pregnant and telling myself it is PMT. If DH tells me one more time to stop thinking and just wait and see what is going to happen…..

How do you cope with the 2WW? And how do you prepare yourself for the worst if it doesn’t work out? I can’t face that possibility and yet DH keeps saying I have to prepare for it now.

Wishing..and hoping..and dreaming…

And so it begins…the (almost) three-week wait..and I am not exactly renowned for my patience…

The IUI went well yesterday..not at all as stressful or difficult as I had feared, thanks to the very competent, informative and kind nurse who performed the procedure. I have always had more faith and trust in nurses than doctors and once again, this has been proved true. They are so much more approachable and empathetic. She was great at explaining what was happening step by step and she encouraged me all the way with “you are doing really well” words. I felt a little mild cramping but nothing particularly painful. It is uncomfortable but the wonderful nurse really helped me feel relaxed and in control.

DH was right beside me holding my hand and I felt like we were really doing this together. I felt we were very close and connected as we sat together -it felt surprisingly intimate, despite the sterile setting. Afterwards the nurse left the room for about 15 minutes, so we had that time to hold hands and put all our energies towards wishing the best outcome for the procedure.  I lay there feeling very emotional and doing a visualisation for conception. I felt a lot of emotions..excitement, anticipation, hope, joy, longing and gratitude for the procedure and for all the good wishes from friends..I am so grateful to those of you who may be reading this, who have shown me such great support over the past week – thank you!

After we left the clinic, we went for a drive and had some lunch in a lovely picturesque place by the sea. We stopped off at a beautiful old church and lit a candle as a symbol of hope and faith on our way home. Later that night, we did our own IUI – the natural way – so if this works, who can tell whether it will have been because of the procedure earlier in the day or our own lovemaking later that night. Not that it matters, as it really didn’t feel at all like I had feared..a clinical detached experience – I am just so grateful that science can offer hope in this way to couples who are experiencing difficulties conceiving.

And so now it begins…the wait…for either my period to come or if not, the pregnancy testing – I have to wait 18 days after the procedure before I can test. Eighteen days!!! Why, that’s almost three weeks…how will I last that long???