What’s next?

Christmas and New Year’s are over, I am healed from the OHSS and egg collection surgery, and we’re eager to keep on going!

But what comes next exactly?

If I wouldn’t have gotten sick, they would have done a ‘fresh transfer’ of an embryo a few days after the egg collection surgery, and I might have been 1.5 months pregnant by now. I’m not, which feels fine most of the time, but sometimes it still hits me what could have been. I know it was naive to hope for it to go that perfectly, but of course we had hoped for exactly that – all the luck in the world…

All of our embryos were frozen instead and now it’s all about getting my body healthy and ready to be a good home for one of them. Once I am, and at the right point of my cycle, then they’ll defrost one of the embryos (I can’t help but imagine them doing this in a microwave!) and put it back.

This means that we need more appointments, more trips into London, and more money.

Despite our earlier negative experience with the UZ Gent, we considered shipping the embryos to Belgium and continuing here because it would make a lot more sense financially. At this point we have spent a small fortune on the Eurostar alone!

I contacted the UZ Gent and was told that:

-It would have to be done ASAP, as they’re no longer allowed to transport embryos after Brexit happens.

-We would need approval from a therapist again. (SERIOUSLY? These are our embryos, made from my body, how can anyone still deign to tell us we’re not allowed to have them?!)

-They couldn’t guarantee they would be able to defrost our embryos in Belgium as different techniques might have been used to freeze them in the UK.

We were pretty discouraged after hearing all of that.

I have always felt uncomfortable with their way of working, and I really don’t want to risk losing the embryos after spending so much effort to make them. It is a huge risk to take just for financial reasons… They had promised to discuss our case internally though, so we waited for that.

I got a call later telling me that because of our open sperm donor they decided to deny us treatment.

So yeah, that makes it an easy choice! We can’t be treated in Belgium, so we will stay in London and continue to support the noble Eurostar economy.

We have made an appointment with ABC clinic, and hopefully we will hear more there about how my body is doing, whether we’re ready to keep on going, and when we can schedule a frozen embryo transfer.

Come on 2019, we want this!