It’s that time again! IVF Review Appointment

So on the 29th we had our IVF ‘review appointment’. What’s strange about that? Nothing! Except for the fact that on the 28th, one day before, 3 years ago, we had our very first IVF appointment at Nurture! THAT’S what’s weird!
Anyway, I think really this kind of appointment is for couples that have had failed IVF cycles, to go over options, extras etc. We went in and went over Evie’s birth and the previous IVF, dicsussed any extras such as endo scratch etc, and the Dr just said “right, when are you wanting to start? We can start on your next cycle if you want!” Say whhhaaat?! I did NOT expect it to be that soon!

So I’m keeping it all very quiet for now. We’ll be going for our next treatment later in the year, and as I know have quite a few followers who are friends/family, I may do drafts instead of actual posts, as i’m aware how pressured i’ll feel to make the cycle work if I have so many people asking me how I feel etc.
I hope all of my followers understand our reasonings behind this. We’re only telling close family when the treatment will begin, and I really don’t want to be tempting fate with anything this cycle.

We have received our consent forms, will be getting all of our bloods done in preparation and i’m currently pooing myself wondering if i’ll be able to work hard enough to make a full time income working from home before a potential second baby comes along haha!

I’m so excited for this. I’m so ready to be pregnant again and Evie would be an amazing big sister.

So I may be a little quiet on the IVF side this year. It doesn’t mean that we’re not having it, it may just be that i’m writing lots of posts and saving them as drafts ready to post!

So for now, I thank every single one of my friends & family who have supported us these past 3 years xx

 

A very late update. Trigger warning for anyone suffering Infertility.

Hey everyone,

I thought that i’d write a blog post to say i’m still here! I have genuinely sat down at least once a week and thought about creating a post, thinking about what to put.
I’ll admit, 90% of those posts would have been about my struggle with being infertile. I’m not going to put a bow on it and make it pretty. I’ve struggled. Jon and myself, by some sheer miracle, managed to fall pregnant with our very first ever IVF cycle. The only one that was funded by the NHS. That’s some luck isn’t it?!
When we had Evie, I can honestly say I have never been so happy and thankful in all my life. She completed us. She was absolutely gorgeous, totally worth all of the heartache and pain we had gone through for the 6 years prior. She is still our whole world. I love her so much I literally can’t put it into words. She makes me laugh, cry, smile and yawn every single day! She’s now a crazy 1 (nearly 2?!?!) year old. Her little personality is really starting to shine through. I can make funny faces and she giggles with me, she’ll laugh when I laugh, she’ll come out with some random broken sentences! And she’ll pucker up for a kiss….on her terms of course.

But….

And this is going to sound ungrateful. online bullies look away now because I odn’t need your opinions!
This is going to sound terrible to anyone who is in the same position we were before Evie brightened up our lives. But we long for another child. We have always planned for 2 or 3 children, even before we knew fertility would be an issue. I guess that has never left the back of our minds. We thought that when Evie came along the world of infertility would be left behind and we would never have to think about the awful circle of negative tests each month, and the heartache of each pregnancy announcement.
You know what? It did. Evie was so much our world that those memories faded away the moment she entered this world. But we planned to go back to Nurture when Evie was around 1 year, to have another round of IVF to use the frozen embryos we had from Evie’s cycle. A true, genetic sibling for our beautiful little girl. It’s the least we could do after she made our lives so much happier and truly worth living.
Who knew that saving money goes out of the window when you have a child?! We have been living paycheck to not even paycheck. There’s no chance we could save over £2,500 for IVF. It’s not a lot at all in IVF terms because we don’t pay for the donor side on this next cycle, but it’s a lot for anyone who doesn’t have residual income. Then there’s the fact that we may need additional drugs to down reg, or the whole treatment may come to a little extra than we had planned.
We have no credit cards or loans, and we don’t have much credit history to give us good standing ones either.

We began trying for a natural baby again around when Evie was 3 months old. We knew deep down that I wouldn’t get pregnant, but a few months I had so much hope. All of those Contraception talks by health professionals “But you know you’re really fertile after having a baby”, I guess they got my hopes up.
We quickly fell back into the infertility hole again. Every month I have sat waiting for the inevitable to happen, and to start it all again for another month. My heart has been broken on every birth and pregnancy announcement and i’ve cried about it all just as much as I used to before Evie. I sound ungrateful for what I have….i’m not. I’ve just slipped back into the infertility zone and guys, it’s HARD. It’s hard whether you have no children, or 1 or more children! That feeling never leaves like I thought it did. It never goes away no matter how ‘complete’ you think you feel. I love Evie so so much but i’m desperate to give our embies a chance at being 1 or more little humans dancing around and singing with Evie. I want to give her the brother or sister she deserves, because she’d be amazing at being a big sister.

A few of you know about how the online friends I made in our “May babies” facebook group, when I was pregnant with Evie, raised a huge amount of money (in complete secret!) to give us a chance at IVF one more time. I have a draft post written up as a thank you, but I keep adding to it! These girls have been there for me and each other through everything. I love them as family and wish I could meet every one of them in person ❤
On that May Babies group, there have been so many women become pregnant again. Some very soon after our little May babies were born, and some this year. Some have had devastating news on their pregnancies and some have given birth.
The birth announcements keep rolling in and as selfish as I sound, i’m literally fighting back the tears on every.single.one.  How bittersweet is it that you can feel so so happy for someone, but feel broken, angry, upset and despair for yourself.
I’m not as active on there right now. My head isn’t in the right place, I just feel every time I go on i’m reminded in some way of how different our journeys to baby are. How some are getting babies, and how, even when we have our next IVF, there may not be a baby waiting for me at all on the other side. Evie may be our end of the beautiful, choatic, heartbreaking, road of TTC. I speak in general here, not about the may group, but so many women complain about TTC for 3 months. Some 6 months. On average, it takes one year of careful timing each month to conceive. I sit and think how positive I was when I had been TTC for 3 months. The excitement, positivity and freshness just seems completely different to what some people portray. 3 months is nothing compared to our 6 years. We tried for 72 times longer than them, and ended with IVF.

I just hope they know how much I love them all! How grateful I am for the gift they have given my family, and how i’m not being absent, i’m just secretly hurting, a lot.

I say this all the time on my facebook profile, but for anyone going through anything similar to me and my family, know i’m always here. I’m someone who knows the heartbreak, knows the heartbreak of birth announcements, and someone who is more than happy to be a shoulder or an ear.

xxx

6 Months old – Evie update

Wait one minute…. 6 MONTHS? Really? Like, half a year 6 months? I’m almost certain that time has fast forward like back to the future. I’m not sure i’m ready to commit to saying that my little girl is growing up to be a big girl and that she’ll be crawling, walking, talking, arguing back and all sorts within what will feel like days.

I originally made a draft blog post, decided not to post it, then posted it to my personal facebook instead. I’m not sure why on earth I didn’t write it here in the end, but I should have!

So here it is, a little look back at our journey so far. Go grab yourself a cuppa, maybe some tissues, a nice comfy blanket too. You’ll thank me after!

2 years ago today we were told that if me and Jon wanted a child we would have to have donor egg IVF treatment. What’s more, we would only have one chance one the NHS. If our one cycle failed we would have to pay upwards of £9,000 to have another go. We knew beforehand that we would need IVF, but had no idea that a donor would be needed.

On that day for the first time I hated my cancer journey. I hated what it had done to my body and that I was still seeing the aftermath of it 7 years later.

EXACTLY 2 years to the day, our beautiful little girl is 6 months old. 6 months today! Throughout my pregnancy I worried about bonding. What if I couldn’t bond because she wasn’t considered genetically mine?
Well today I am sat with my partner in crime, albeit she is grumpy with a cold and teething but she’s here, she’s safe, and she is just perfect.
I started my business recently because realistically, we won’t have enough money to afford IVF to give Evie a sibling if I stay in a 40 hour job going nowhere fast. If that is the case, I want to be able to work from home and spend as much time as I can with our only child. I don’t want to work 9-5, come home tired and exhausted and have the ‘can’t wait until bedtime’ attitude. I want to earn money for IVF, I want to stay home with our child and I want to donate money to various charities that have helped me throughout the years. I want to LIVE life.

I am so so proud and thankful of Jon for standing by me through the breakdowns from family/friends pregnancy announcements, hospital visits, monthly negative tests and more importantly for being the most amazing father who Evie will grow up admiring. He is more of a man than most men dream to be.

And thank you to my mum for always supporting me through everything even when you don’t understand something, and for taking me to our most important consultations too. If I am just half the mother to Evie that you are to me I will be ecstatic.

I can’t thank Nurture Fertility (and James Hopkisson, he’s still helping me at hospital to this day!) for giving us hope. For explaining everything in the fog of infertility, for the laughter, the cries and the sheer support they gave us all the way. I will always remember they day our little Evie embryo was transferred to me. We saw this tiny spec of cells on one screen and had an ultrasound of my womb on another and even with my legs in the air strapped into stirrups, all whilst in front of a man who had a big tube and all sorts of equipment lined up 🙈, we giggled, wowed, and almost cried! The amount of support is unbelievable, even as an NHS customer.

To anybody who sees this and is struggling like we did for so many years, remember that it is completely normal to feel disheartened with pregnancy announcements & it is normal for jealousy to feel overwhelming. It is normal to want to hide away and even to decline baby shower invites or meeting friends with children because it mentally hurts. Nothing anyone says or does will make you feel better, but NEVER give up hope. I really believe that my positivity played a massive part in our successful IVF.
Dreams CAN come true, no matter how far away they seem.

This is my dream come true. I feel like I am complete again. I feel like I am able to fully enjoy my life (although i’m also yearning for a sibling for Evie!). She is my dream come true, and I make it my sole mission to give her the best in life, to enable her to see the good in this world, and to make her realise just how special she is every day of her life. 
I love you so much my little munchkin xx

Newborn Must Haves

As a new mum, or a mummy that already has children and they’re newborn years now seem a distant memory, buying for a newborn is hard. Are lotions and potions necessary and how many sleepsuits will they need?!
You need to cover every aspect of their tiny little life and quite frankly, for something that eats, sleeps and poos all day they need a lot of stuff!
I have put together a list of the things I bought for Evie that really were must have items for us whilst we were coming to grips with our new titles of mum and dad.
Baby Bottles

We started off using the Tommee Tippee bottles as we got a starter pack as a present. Evie was spitting up a lot after using these and seemed to suffer with trapped wind, so I decided to try MAM anti colic. We then switched to Dr Brown’s and although she has now been diagnosed with reflux (something we would never have known about at the start), she doesn’t suffer from as much wind or gas, so Dr Brown’s, although a complete faff to wash & sterilise, have been brilliant for us.

 

Steriliser

On the subject of sterilising, you’ll definitely need a steriliser, even if you plan to breastfeed/express! You can buy a cold water one, where you just pop a sterilising tablet into clean water and away you go, or you can buy an electric one. You can even buy microwave ones, but I couldn’t bear the thought of my microwave suddenly giving up with the amount of use it would get so we just went with your bog standard Tommee Tippee electric one.

 

Nappies

“Of course my baby will need nappies, I already have it covered!” I hear you say?! This might be a bit obvious, but we really underestimated just how many nappies these little poo machines can go through in their first weeks of life. We made an effort to buy a pack of each brand of nappy we were willing to try/buy, just in case Evie had a reaction to any. Luckily, the Mamia ones at Aldi worked briliantly and they’re the cheapest, so we didn’t complain! Always buy more than you think you will need. Evie went 6 times in an hour at 5 days old and apparently that can be normal! We also found that we’d change her as she looked ‘done’ but then she’d start up again, so we were going through 3 or 4 nappies each time. So again, buy more nappies! You can always sell them on facebook etc if you have some left over.
I have no experience with cloth nappies, I was seriously considering and getting excited about (yes, I know….!) cloth nappying Evie at one point, but we have no tumble dryer and the thought of being nappy-less in the middle of winter because our fire hadn’t been able to dry the nappies quick enough put me off.

 

Wipes

There was a time when hospitals would frown at you if you whipped out some baby wipes so you had to clean baby using the cotton balls and warm water trick. Times have changed a little now and hospitals aren’t as strict. I took water wipes in my bag along with some cotton etc just in case, and the midwives even asked me if they could use my water wipes to change Evie! We’ve since stayed on water wipes as I find them amazing.

 

Nappy Cream

I haven’t really needed this yet as Evie has never had a nappy rash, but nappy cream is a must. You can use it for spots, redness, cuts etc so it really is worth getting. I bought Metanium, but I actually mainly use a cream called Thovaline. It is hands down the best cream. My mum used it on me as a baby and I have continued to use it for everything throughout my life. Ps ignore the mess of the tub of it…. its worse than Sudacreme so everything sticks to it!

 

Baby Bath

My mum bought us a changing/bathing unit as a gift at the end of my pregnancy. It is brilliant but we didn’t use it as a bath for long. I will do a review of this in the coming weeks to explain how and why we used it at first. We then transferred to using nothing and just plonked her into our normal bath. This meant one of us had to be in the bath and the other had to wash her- totally impractical! So we bought a baby bath. Best invention ever! No more kicking the sponge back up the bath with you feet because both your arms are holding baby 🙂

 

Moisturiser

We quickly learned that Evie reacted to Johnsons products with dry skin, so we bought different, more sensitive brands. Moisturising after every bath is a must do for us as it keeps her skin nice and soft.

 

Muslin Cloths

These have been my absolute saviour. I know Evie is a little different as she spits up much more than a ‘normal’ baby, but muslins are a must must MUST have. You can swaddle (especially great in summer months when other swaddles are too warm), you can wipe up possets, you can cover yourself whilst you nurse if you are breastfeeding, you can use over your shoulder while burping, you can put them behind baby’s head on the bed so no sick end ups on your covers. Seriously grab yourself plenty of them! We got ours from Amazon and Evie has attached to them to sleep with.

 

Thermometer

There are 3 types of thermometer we need to make our lives easier in this house. A room thermometer to make sure the room shes sleeping/playing in in warm/cold enough. A water thermometer (a complete life saver when running a bath to make sure it’s the correct temperature), Then finally the usual ear/forehead, underarm thermometer for checking baby’s temperature.I may or may not have lost ours so there’s only 2 in this picture. In the first 3 months, it is usually recommended that you use an underarm thermometer to check their temperature as it’s the most accurate, but I was using underarm and ear/forehead and they were coming up around the same temp.

 

Medicines

This may cause a little contraversy, but when I was pregnant I stocked up on things like Nurofen, Calpol, Gripe Water & Dentinox because the last thing I wanted was to have a screaming baby and then have to make a trip with her down to the chemist who may or may not have some in stock. Turns out I needed Calpol for her injections and dentinox I used for what I thought was colic, then I used Gripe Water for the wind! All came in handy.

 

Sleepsuits & Sleepsuits with Mittens

I bought & got gifted a few newborn outfits and I rarely put her in them! Because of the ease of popping her in and out of them, she practically lived in sleepsuits until she was about 2 months old. Don’t get me wrong she wore a couple of outfits, but she outgrew them quicker than her sleepsuits so they became redundant.
Sleepsuits with mittens- best invention! I’ll go into more detail in my ‘Newborn items I regret buying’ post, but normal mittens were useless. Sleepsuits with mittens kept Evie’s hands covered, clean and warm.
In terms of how many, don’t buy too many “small baby” or “newborn” sleepsuits as a lot of them only go up to 7.5-9lbs (depending on where you shop). You’ll likely only get about a month’s use out of them, if that, so you’re better off buying 0-1 month clothes as they still had give in them for us when she was 1 month. I only bought about 2 small baby, about 5 newborn sleepsuits as I knew she was likely to be between 7-8lb according to our scan, and then I bought about 9 0-1 month sleepsuits too which seemed to fit her legs better as she started to grow a little. No Idea where she got her long legs from! If you have a sicky baby, or a baby with reflux/allergies, you can use 7+ sleepsuits a DAY, so in my opinion you can never really have enough of them!

 

Co-sleeper

We have the Sleepyhead (review coming soon) set up inside the Chicco Next2me. Both have been godsends. With my C Section I couldn’t pull myself up out of bed for a few weeks. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if Evie didn’t sleep in the Next2Me! Absolute torture. She still sleeps in it now at 3 months so it’s money very well spent.

 

Changing Mat

Buy 2! One for downstairs and one for upstairs. It saves carrying a big mat upstairs along with baby at bath time.

 

A Flask

Because I just don’t have time for boiling the kettle and cooling for 20 minutes when my baby is screaming! I pour a flask of freshly boiled water in the morning and it stays hot for a good 6 hours at least. I measure out some water from the flask, add formula, shake, then use some water I boiled and chilled in the fridge to top up so the water is at room temp! Job done. No wobbling downstairs at 3am and no stressed out mummy and daddy trying to console a hungry baby.

 

Dummy

This won’t be for everyone. I was adament that my daughter wasn’t going to have a dummy, but when her jaundice subsided and her reflux was kicking in the crying after bottle time really wore me down. I gave in & gave her a dummy but only when she slept or imediately after her bottle (which was when she slept anyway), and she seemed much calmer for it. She still only has her dummy when she’s going to sleep and it still helps with her reflux. Win win! She uses the MAM dummies and won’t really take any others.

 

And last but not least….

Baby Monitor

Whether you prefer breathing monitors, non-video, video or wifi monitors I really think that it is a must have item. We live in a tiny 2 bedroom house but if we have any fans on, water running, washing machine on etc we cannot hear Evie if she’s moaning upstairs. We have a video monitor and although it’s a faf to prop up on my pillow every day, it’s worth it.

 

So those are the items I felt (and still feel!) I couldn’t live without in the first months of having Evie. This list will surely grow as she starts weaning etc, so i’ll be doing an update in a few months time when we have properly start weaning her.

Change of name

Hey everyone,

So I thought that I would do a little blog post for my subscribers to let you all know that this blog name will be changing. When I started it up, I thought it was a good name and because it was a little personal blog just for me really, I didn’t put much thought into it-Whoops! Now i’m a mummy & my hopes for the blog have changed slightly, I don’t feel it completely suits what i’d like my blog to be about.
I will do another blog post to update you all on the new name once it’s all finalised and i’m happy, but I will still continue to post on here under “ababyoneday” until I change the name.

Here’s to a new beginning!

Back to reality- Infertility & HRT

Yesterday I had what I thought was a routine appointment to have a scan of my bones to check for osteoporosis. I was wrong.

It was a consultation with funnily enough the same Dr who runs my fertility clinic Nurture- James Hopkisson. He’s always really lovely, he knows his stuff and you feel you can always talk to him about anything. Last time I saw him was when we had been referred for tests just before Nurture. I had my hormone levels checked and he said that I was entering the menopause again and that normal IVF wouldn’t work as the drugs wouldn’t stimulate my ovaries enough, so if we were to go down that route it would be donor eggs. This time, I felt like there was no messing around. He basically said, a letter is going to my GP to prescribe me HRT & to give me regular check ups to manage my tablets. I needed a blood test that day to check my FSH,LH, oestradiol, thyroid,calcium & vit d. No idea why the calcium or vit d? But I didn’t argue. I also need the bone scan asap. He asked if we had any embryos frozen, like he was confirming that we have a back up for future rounds.

I am gutted. I haven’t had chance to see if my body will go back to normal! It’s literally like “right you’ve had the baby now straight onto HRT” going off the blood results from before IVF. I’m day 3 of my first proper cycle since Evie was born, so my body has kicked in naturally and I thought that would count for something, but obviously not. We were looking forward to spending the next year ‘trying ‘ & saving then going back to Nurture if we weren’t successful. Easing our mindset into it rather than going head first into a wall like we did last time.

Overnight I have literally snapped back into my old thoughts. I’m jealous of any pregnant woman & I’m jealous of the parents who haven’t tried. I am in no way ungrateful for Evie. She is the most amazing thing that has ever happened and I would hate to think of her not being my partner in crime anymore. She is my life & I live every day to see her precious little face I really do. But I was looking forward to trying naturally. I want the excitement couples get when they go “oops I’m late, better test!” I want to be normal. I loved IVF, I loved the control it gave me over my body, which I haven’t had since I was a child. The appointment yesterday made me realise that I’ll never really gain that control back. I’ll never be a ‘normal’ 24,25,26 year old. I’m going through the menopause again. Nothing can stop it. My body has given up just like my other consultant said it would. The tablets I stopped taking when I was 16 I have to take again, every day, for the rest of my life! I know that although I’m regular it doesn’t mean that I can have children, James said before that my egg quality are quite possibly really bad. I just can’t get my head around being menopausal and still having normal, regular cycles! Previously when I was on HRT I was very irregular. Before IVF I was regular (even with weird blood results) and now I seem to be too. 

The basic end line of this is that I don’t think I’m ready to close that part of my life yet. I’m not ready to give up. I want to hope for the next year and if nothing happens I’ll hold my hands up & admit that I need the HRT & IVF. I am hoping that my blood result come back ok, and that somehow he phones me to tell me not to take the tablets. I have had no hot flushes, no mood swings, nothing. I usually know if I need to go back on them by my mood. I actually went to the dr to say I needed them again previously, so I just don’t know what to think. Hopefully my results are ‘normal’ and he’s wrong.

Here it goes again! 

Update on reflux, Drs & Nutramigen- Cows Milk Protein Allergy

A couple of days ago you may remember that I posted about Evie’s eczema & reflux getting worse not better, and that I was considering starting her on Nutramigen feed to see how we get on. Now before I go any further, bear in mind that I have been to the Drs 6 times about this & phoned them 8 times as it stands currently.

So yesterday was our appt with the dr I have regularly seen, this time about Evie’s eczema. He’s now started talking to me as if I’m making it all up or thinking there’s more things wrong with her than there is. So he calls Evie’s name and as we get up I catch a glimpse of the “what’s she here for now” look he’s passing at me. So before we get sat down I’m already riled. He goes on to explain that a lot of children get eczema and it comes and goes blah blah and I talk about how the creams aren’t working. He asks me to show him so I pull her worst arm out. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing there! A tiny bit of redness that could be passed off as happening when I took her arm out. He grimaced and said “oh it’s Sod’s law, will always happen when you cone see us”. Then it clicked… I changed her formula to Nutramigen 2 days ago!! I explained what I had done and that Evie hadn’t refluxed at all that morning, and he said some children have cows milk intolerance some have an allergy but that most will grow out of it-brilliant news Doc but I’d already read about that! He then says “if the reflux and eczema etc keep settled down that’s great we’ve got to the bottom of it” wait WHAT?! I genuinely just heard “we”!!! So I’m now sat there wondering what miraculous part in Evie’s diagnosis he has played. None mr Dr! There’s no ‘we’ in this at all darling it’s more ME against the Drs! So I let it slide and mention how expensive the Nutramigen is & he still goes on about how some children are atopic and some just get eczema. I tell him that I want a prescription for the formula and he hands me one in promise that we re-assess in a month. Fine with me!

Fast forward to an hour later, when the Dr I saw last week organised the health visitor to come round to ‘support me at home’. Turns out she reported I had low mood! I never once mentioned anything and was laughing and joking in there….so I’m confused! So anyway the HV said “I had a detailed look through your dr notes before I came, as we always do before we see a new mum. I was confused by what the dr put about low mood as you’ve not once gone in about yourself, it’s always been Evie and her reflux/eczema/sneezing etc” so I said “I’m shocked she’s put low mood….” And explained how frustrated I was and that I had to put Evie on Nutramigen myself to see if it helped. She then looked like she’d seen a ghost and said “it’s funny you’ve done all that yourself….this form I have in my hand is a cows milk intolerance/allergy assessment sheet. After looking at your notes, seeing eczema and reflux that isn’t better with gaviscon pop up made me think intolerance immediately” so WHY OH WHY did the Dr not put two and two together but the health visitor can?! She praised me on my pro-activeness and how much I’ve fought for help and said that she has never known a mum who has gone off her own back to change her child to that formula. She didn’t even know you could buy it over the counter! She handed me the completed form and said that Drs like it when that’s been filled in so I’ll take that to my appointment in a months time.

Here’s a list of some of Evie’s symptoms

• Reflux (which is no better with gaviscon or carobel, or any upright position. We’ll get sick up no matter what and up to her next feed)
• Sneezing. Many times a day.
• Sounding like she has mucus at the back of her nose/mouth, as if she’s getting over a cold.
• Unsettled. She sleeps through the night but tends to toss n turn and can’t get comfy. She’ll only take 1 or 2 20 min naps in the day if that.
• Explosions when it finally happens. Ill say no more.
• Eczema which isn’t getting better with ointments.
• She has to suck on everything and could only get to sleep with a dummy since she was a newborn.

I can’t count the times I’ve been told that I’m a first time mum by Drs. Every time I hear those words I have learnt that I’m going to be fobbed off within the next 10 seconds. Abort the nice mummy persona and level it up to “don’t even try to go there or I’m physically going to chop your  arms off, then your legs, then maybe head” persona.

What I’ve learnt from not being listened to….

1. If there’s one thing you always do as a mum, make it be to trust your instinct. Evie’s jaundice was getting worse and I got fobbed off by the midwives as a first time mum and was told ‘that’s normal’ and she ended up in hospital very poorly the very next day. Now this.
2. Drs have a budget for prescriptions so don’t like giving them out. If you have eliminated everything that could help but hasn’t, demand they humour you and give it a try
3. Don’t go to one certain Dr at Cotgrave….he obviously knows nothing about children. I praised him and would only go to him before all of this!
4. Mother always knows best
5. There are Drs out there who would sooner call you a hypochondriac mum than actually listen. Don’t take it lying down.

This is an essay, but I have to put my experience out there. This may all be coincidence, she may not have an intolerance (although she probably has!) but if I help one other mum get the help she needs then this post has done its job.

Special Delivery!

So anyone who follows me on good old Instagram will know that I received a letter in the post today that I would consider to be up there on the special radar!!

I was going to keep this to myself, not even tell Jon (which I’m still not going to do haha!) but I applied to the HFEA to get the unidentifiable information of the egg donor we used to conceive Evie. I have been toying with the idea since she was born & I the other week I just thought you know what I’m just going to do it. I won’t let Evie know I have applied for it (so that she can apply herself if she wants to) and I won’t tell Jon about it either.

Well, I was delighted to find out that she had left a personal message, something I had hoped she had left for Evie. I won’t go into full details that she wrote about her condition but she was told she couldn’t have children. She knows the pain we’ve been through and knows the heartbreak month after month. And the best thing of all? She’s had 2 children, a boy and a girl. She then decided to be sterilised and donate her eggs to women like me. To know that this woman has done so not just because she gets a bit of money, but also because she knows the pain infertility causes….that is just so so selfless. 

If Evie applies for the identifiable information when she is old enough and ends up finding this amazing woman, I would have to ask if I could spend just 2 minutes with her thanking her for all she gave me. She’s given me a life I thought I couldn’t have, one that I longed for from the moment I was told I couldn’t have it at 16 years old. I’m forever in her debt.

This might not be the big wow everyone thought if you saw my Instagram post, but I have waited to see this information for so long, to see the reason behind her donations and to finally put my mind at ease.

I urge anyone who is considering egg donation to go ahead and enquire. I won’t lie, it will probably involve doing things you didn’t think you would do, and of course your time will be taken up for a month or so with a few appointments for scans and blood tests, and then the egg collection day, but to even consider doing this is such a selfless act. I can’t imagine how it must feel to know that you have potentially given a couple a chance of having their own family, such pride and happiness. 

Bye bye pics! A lesson to all mums

I am THE unluckiest person in the world. If you ask anyone that knows me they’ll tell you. Before I got with Jon his luck was okay, nothing really seemed to go wrong. The moment he got with me his luck went downhill! I am actually like a bad omen it’s crazy.

Anyway….back to the aim of this post. My was restarting itself over the period of a couple of days. I didn’t think anything of it & I was going to back it all up etc when I had time this week. It was one of those ‘I’ll do that when I get 5 mins’ things. Well. about a week ago it restarted itself….and got stuck at the apple logo! Seriously! I won’t go into detail….but it was done for. I was trying to fix this stupid phone for 11.5hours straight. No food no drinks, feeding Evie and playing whilst doing it. I tried everything but in the end my last hope was a clean reset. All.my.pictures….gone. GONE! My last back up was 27th April. Evie was born 10th May! I have lost everything. I have salvaged a few pics and vids from Lifecake, Instagram, Facebook etc but I am currently trying to forget the whole situation happened so won’t talk about it anymore…. but I take this as a lesson.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, MAKE TIME TO BACK YOUR PHONE UP! I’ll be doing it 3 times a WEEK now. And backing up to 3 different places. Too many precious memories and videos and pictures to lose!

 

New Direction

I have decided that i’d really like to make my blog something more. It’s always been my ultimate goal but I never felt I had any content until Evie came along…. then when she did suddenly my life revolves around this gorgeous little person and time on my laptop becomes very sparse! We’re getting a routine going now so thought it would be the ideal opportunity to begin blogging more. I’d like to grow it and include new things rather than just my rambling because lets face it…. we can all babble a lot sometimes!

I am hoping to do a review of some baby products one by one. Some that we have been using and then i’ll be buying some that I would like to try, I am also hoping to start some subscription boxes that I can also review each month too.

I’ll be incorpating my instagram a little more with my blog, so i’ll be notifying of any new posts via Insta and will be giving sneak previews of upcoming posts on there too. I’m really looking forward to getting my teeth into something I have been wanting to do for a long while. If you wish to follow me on instagram, my username is Marisha__x, or I also have it linked on my home page on here.I tend to post lots of pics of Evie along with my mums dogs and of course Bella the cat 🙂