Long time, no see. It's been a big and busy two months since we spoke last.
May was egg collection month. Which means surgery, lots of $$$ spent and a massive medication regime. The result was 12 eggs collected. 11 that were mature enough to be inseminated ICSI style and 10 that fertilised overnight. 6 lasted the distance to 5 day old blastocysts. One was transferred on Mother's Day and the other 5 became our frozen litter of blastocyst babies! A fantastic result that was double our first egg collection back in 2011 which resulted in 3 embryos, that were implanted in 3 consecutive months and heartbreakingly never led to pregnancy or babies. This time around, one to implant and five frozen backup babies is an amazing result and we are ecstatic with that number.
Unfortunately on the 24th of May we found out that the embryo that was transferred, didn't take. A fourth unsuccessful transfer, we were understandably devastated. Our IVF specialist wanted us to take a month off, so my body would have time to recover from all the drugs I had taken. I was not looking forward to that. Sitting idle when it comes to IVF sends me
June was a last minute trip to Japan. On hearing of our sad news, our friend Donna said through tears to my Mum 'Can we get her a kitten?', and Mum said no... but later that day turned to me and said 'I think you and Adam should go to Japan'. We jumped at the suggestion and the opportunity. The next day I renewed my passport and booked us tickets and a week later we were in Japan. With only one week to plan our trip, Adam did a spectacular job. If you want to get technical, it really could be called our honeymoon! Having never got the chance for a real one due to Adam's work commitments back in 2010, and going through IVF in 2011/12, we had resigned ourselves to not being able to go on an overseas holiday for a long and indefinite period of time. We have always wanted to visit Japan, and had we been able to have a honeymoon after our wedding, Japan was first on the list. We have always been intrigued by the place. We love Japanese anime (massive fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion) and any Studio Ghibli film. We are big fans of Japanese food, and I desperately want to learn how to prepare crazy cute bento boxes (see my list of resolutions here).
Truth be told, our whole fertility situation has been getting me down. Multiple people have commented about the stress that seems to be taking over my face. Two weeks in Japan, was unexpected and exactly what we needed. We had an absolute ball and took over 3000 photos. Over the next three posts I will take you on a photo journey through our experiences of Osaka, Tokyo and Kyoto.
Sayonara and see you soon!
xx
