You cannot fail if you don’t give up!

A month goes by pretty quickly and before we knew it we were ready for another try. On 31/8/2011 Ambers body gave us the OK for our next attempt. Lucky Number 8? We will see! We had complained to the nurses and doctor that the Puregon injections did not seem to be doing their job – Amber was still only releasing one egg. The whole point of this medication was to encourage more eggs, the cost of everything was adding up and we were annoyed we were paying money for medication that was not doing anything.

They increased the dosage of the Puregon to 75.0 IU (previously 50.0 IU to start with) and Amber started that on day 2 and continued until day 12. After 3 blood tests within that time frame the nurses instructed Amber to increase the dosage to 100.0 IU, she had to do this from 12/9 – 14/9 (days 13-15)

On 14/9 Amber was instructed to come back the next day for insemination. I was very lucky to be able to have the morning off work and could go in with Amber. I was so happy I could make it in with her, We worked it out that this was something like the 4th time I could go in with her. I thought it was a good sign as number 4 is my lucky number!

We went in that morning (15/9/2011) and I was feeling really good about it all. We met a new nurse this time and I liked her instantly. She was chatty and friendly and made it all a fun experience. She had known we had been around for a while and was eager to get Amber pregnant. She even told us what the sperm count was, we had never been told before and she was surprised that nurses hadn’t previously told us. She said that the count was at 13 million and that was a great number.

She was all prepared to go and then asked if I wanted to do it? I was like… Whaaaat? She asked again if I wanted to put it in, she would place it where it needed to go and I could do the rest. I was like SURE! It was so strange having her right there with me while I did it. She covered everything up and did what she needed to do and let me press the syringe. I was so happy that she let me do it and of course, I thought, well this one will definitely work then! She reminded Amber to stay laying down for 15 minutes and then let herself out. She wished us good luck and was off.

We walked out with the biggest smiles on our faces. We had had some great nurses but this one instantly became a favourite. When we went back to work I told everyone how cool it was that I got to actually do the insemination (well kind of). Again for the two weeks after Amber needed to insert the Crinone Gel each night until the pregnancy test. On 30/9/2011 Amber had the pregnancy test, once again we found out while at work that (we should be used to this by now) we were again not pregnant. Of course, we were upset again and had amazing support from our work friends.

We went straight into attempt #9. We were becoming less and less excited about it all and no longer felt confident that it was ever going to happen for us. Day 2 meant the Puregon injections needed to begin. This time around Amber was told to start on 100.0 IU and ended up staying on the dosage until day 12. On day 11 (11/10/11) Amber went in for an ultrasound to check the follicles. There were none seen in her left side but in the right side, they detected two. The insemination date was on day 12! This was a short cycle – I am guessing the medication helped it along a little.

I remember I was at work for this insemination and I think if I remember correctly Amber got to have the day off. The sperm count was at 5 million today and Amber said she had a new nurse she hadn’t seen before. I remember Amber laughing and telling me later that she actually thought this nurse was a little bit good-looking, I was disappointed I never saw what she looked like!

Two weeks later as usual we were nervous through the day and I remember I was going with two of the girls after work to hold their hands while they got tattoos. I was just hoping we got the call before I left work that day. I can’t remember but I have a feeling we got the call while we were at work, again we got another negative! I felt bad leaving Amber that afternoon to have fun with my friends while they got tattoos. I didn’t get home until later that night (around 7:30 – 8 PM).

We had already been talking that if we got another negative result that maybe we did need to start looking at IVF. Amber desperately wanted to have a baby and so did I, but I was also worried about the money side of things. We knew it would be more expensive but didn’t know much about the exact costs and I said to her I didn’t want to get sucked into having too many tries and being way over our heads in debt. We said we would make an appointment with the Doctor and Concept to talk with them about the costs and if that’s what we should be looking at doing. We both couldn’t agree on how many attempts we should have and had decided we should just wait until we had met with the doctor and nurses.

We decided that we would get in contact with them and then set up appointments and just go from there. We did say to each other that we first wanted to finish paying off our debts, get grass for outside and enjoy our Bali holiday before any IVF attempts.

While we were upset that things were difficult for us, we were very much looking forward to our holiday!