The meeting - part one.

I should explain that I grew up in a small village (well town now, but when I grew up we didn’t have quite so many new houses and Range Rovers) just outside Nottingham. I also went to University in Nottingham. I do like the area but I do feel as though it has a tendency to draw me back when I would perhaps like to be somewhere else. Take University for example. I studied Broadcast Journalism. A fairly new course, it was available in Nottingham or Bournemouth. I liked the idea of the seaside and my sister was in Southhampton so I thought it could be fun to go to Bournemouth, but all those nice advisers that guide you through the UCAS forms as they were then, said resolutely, ‘Nottingham is the best course, it’s industry recognised and you will be extremely lucky if you get in.’ Makes it quite hard then to say you’ve chosen a stick of rock and deck chair over journalistic brilliance, so I chose Nottingham. All my friends packed their cases and went off to a life of student digs in glamorous places such as Oxford, Manchester, Leeds, Hull  - ok I realise that is stretching the glamorous bit – but none the less their adventures started in new cities, mine was 15 miles away from Mum and Dad and frankly, dull. Anyway, my advisors were irritatingly right, it was the best course and I did do quite well out of it.

Fast forward quite a few years and here I am back in Nottingham to start another milestone in my life, IVF. Dr HK IVF had said a couple of weeks earlier, in tones I had heard many years before, ‘There are two centres you can do this, New York have a gold star lab and are fully proficient in the process and have very high success rates. Or there is a place in England you could go to. Have you heard of Nottingham?’ Have I heard of a place called Nottingham? Just call me Robin Hood. Not to be put off, I immediately and vocally voted New York; I could see myself and our son walking around Central Park, amusing the locals with our very British accents and being signed up as the next Piers Morgan (ok that’s ridiculous) while my husband made a name for himself as a banking Guru on Wall Street.  Interrupting my day dream was Dr HK IVF who went on to say, ‘The Doctor in Nottingham is the pioneer in this treatment, the world leader. He trained the guys in New York, so they are good, but he has the best lab and why would you go to someone who had been trained by the best when you can have the best?’ or words to that effect. Exit New York stage left, hello Nottingham. But every cloud and all that, Mum and Dad, or Granny and Poppa as they would be in this role, were nearby and we could stay with them and they could help with the little fellow. Having not ever been able to rely on Grandparents as we live in Hong Kong, my first experience of being able to share the load was this trip, and I really do have to interrupt the flow at this point and say thank goodness we did chose Nottingham. When the going got tough and I needed a moment, Mum and Dad stepped in and took control, our son thought he was a King and had the best holiday ever, and I allowed myself to be looked after by my parents. We hadn’t even got as far as discussing the actual treatment but I knew that if we did go ahead, there would be no way I could do it in New York, I needed my Mum and Dad as my husband would be in HK for most of the slog having to work. He was happy knowing that while he couldn’t be there to hold my hand, Mum and Dad could. It also made me realise that our baby hopes were our whole family’s baby hopes, I can see now how hard it is for my parents and my mother in law to see our struggle. Being a mum, seeing your child or children go through difficult times is just unbearable, at any age.

So, here we were, not in New York, in Nottingham meeting our doctor for the first time. First things first and I had to have a vaginal scan. Not something I would ever put my hand up for, in fact when I had our son, I was more terrified of having an internal than I was of giving birth. I am a prude and I do not in any way like lying on a bed, legs akimbo while some stranger puts a phallic shaped object in a place I like to keep private. I also have a brilliant ability to be wearing odd or holey socks on such occasions; which adds to my deepening embarrassment. On this occasion it was two nurses who were doing the deed, one a trainee (brillant). They were incredibly kind, ‘have you had this done before?’ Oh yes, just about a billion times,  mainly to tell me my baby is no more,  to confirm my infertility is a first. You can see my mood was darkening and I was beginning to panic. We all fell into an uncomfortable silence and the probing began. The nurses wanted to see the state of my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries and count the follicles on each ovary, which would give a good indication of how many eggs we might get. Or not, seeing as I had decided it was all a waste of time. It took forever to get there, first of all we got to a junction, turn left to left ovary, right to right ovary, but there was an obstruction. Retained product from my last ERCP. That’s nice. A visible reminder of the reason we are here – my babies don’t survive. My eyes prickled a bit so I started making jokes, which bless them they laughed at when I am sure they were really thinking, ‘we’ve got a right nutter here.’ We finally got to the left ovary and the nurse began counting. This is where the IVF handbook would have come in handy as I had no idea what she was counting or why. Luckily she explained that she was counting follicles, and God love her said ‘oh that’s nice, you have 11 on this side.’ I didn’t say a word. She then did a quick detour around the retained product and started on the right side. ‘Wonderful, you have 12 on this side. You have very nice ovaries, they are a bit small but all good.’ Pardon? You said wonderful? What does that mean? Well, they explained, that’s a good number of follicles which should lead to a good crop of eggs. Que?? (In total Manuel from Fawlty Towers  style – seriously – I do turn into a total idiot in times of stress) But I have a lower than low AMH – this cannot be right? I told them my ‘score’ and they too looked puzzled, it was indeed odd to have that score, my history and these ‘nice’ ovaries. Not to worry, they said, forget the AMH score, this is good so far.

Honestly I could have cried, but I still had the undignified process of getting off the bed in just my socks and a woolly jumper, if I had started crying they may have felt compelled to hug me and that would have been highly awkward. A week of thinking I was infertile and our IVF dreams were dashed, and one cheeky probe into the hub, and all is well? I resolved to ask Dr UK IVF as soon as we were in his consulting rooms, but for now it was a mad dash back to the waiting room to tell my husband the good news. And to find out how he’d been doing…

Our IVF centre in Nottingham is rather nice. We are paying privately to have this done, and its sweet the effort they have gone to to make us feel at ease. They have lovely coffee, every magazine you could hope for (including Good Housekeeping which is my absolute favourite), nice newspapers for the men and a whopping great plasma screen TV which sadly let the side down as it was showing Jeremy Kyle. Still, it was as comfortable environment as you could hope for, given the other 4 couples and I knew we were here to have our bits poked and for the men, to produce a sample. Schoolgirl smirk. Honestly, neither my husband nor I know why we smile at this part of the process in a very childish manner but not at my internal scans, but we do. I trotted back from my scan to convey the good news about my nice ovaries, but there was no sign of my husband. He must be doing his sample. While I waited, the room filled up with men who I had not seen when we first arrived, they must have been whisked away to 'perform.' I was gratified to see that they all came back with a small grin and their wives struggled to keep a straight face too. I realise we were all probably behaving in a very adolescent manner, but sometimes its the little things that keep you going. I settled down to Good Housekeeping and then my husband came back, smirking a little. This is not his blog so I won't reveal the details of his part of the appointment, but all was well. He was delighted at the ovary news, we giggled nervously at the first chink of light in the process, and waited for our name to be called.