A Question of Embryology
September 1st, 2009 by Ruth 1 comment »Prior to embarking on this IVF cycle we had a chat with one of the embryologists at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where our frozen embryos are stored. We currently have 6 embryos frozen, four of which were frozen immediately on fertilisation, and the remaining two which were frozen at two days old. We wanted to get some expert guidance on what strategy to take with thawing the embryos. After a long chat with the embryologist we decided that our best approach would be to de-frost all six embryos, and try to grow them to the five day (blastocyst) stage. From a batch of embryos that size, you would typically expect one, maybe two, to grow to blastocyst stage. We would only implant one blastocyst (thus nicely avoiding the risk of twins). Any other good quality blastocysts could be re-frozen.
We liked this approach as it allowed us to find out all about the quality of all our frozen embryos, with no risk. If any didn’t make it to the blastocyst stage, they never would have done, whether grown in the culture or transferred back into the womb.
We went in to our local hospital this morning for an internal scan, to make sure my body was ready to receive an embryo, and everything looks fine. According to our plan, our embryo transfer date is next Tuesday, 8th September. I asked our nurse what the next step of the process is.
“Well, Liverpool will call you on Monday to confirm you still want the embryos thawing, and numbers”
“Hang on, if we’re growing them to the 5-day stage, won’t they need to start the thaw earlier than Monday?”
“Oh no, if the embryos take longer to develop than expected it’ll just delay the embryo transfer date”
“But we go on holiday on Thursday!”
So I contacted the Liverpool Women’s Hospital again to find out what was going on. And they confirmed that my cycle has to be aligned to the age of the embryos. So whilst Tuesday would be fine for two-day-old embryos, if we wanted them to grow to the blastocyst stage we’d have to do transfer on Friday.
When we’re on holiday.
Bother.
Cue a lot of discussing of options with the embyologist and with each other, with the final decision being that, rather than paying the fee to cancel this cycle, and ensuring that we still get our holiday, we’re going to go back to the more traditional approach of defrosting just two embryos for a two- or three- day transfer on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.
The reason we’re both frustrated about this is that if we’d known at the start of the cycle that this was how the embryo transfer worked, we’d have been able to control my cycle to make the dates work better with our holiday. That is, after all, rather the point of doing a medicated cycle rather than trying to fit around my natural cycle. As it is, it feels like we’re trying to make a last minute decision that may either lessen our chances of a successful pregnancy, or increase our risk of twins. Neither of which is a good thing.
So, we’re progressing. With a rather bitter taste in our mouths.
New Episode: S2E028
August 8th, 2009 by Ruth No comments »Just Relax S2E028 now available on iTunes and our website: http://justrelax.mevio.com . This week we have so much stuff to talk about that’s going on in our lives! We talk about what’s going on with Catherine and how we’re getting on with trying for a second baby as well as a bunch of other stuff. Music this week is by Ben Folds.
Just Relax S2E028 – No tea for you!
August 7th, 2009 by John No comments »just relax, it’ll happen! : Just Relax S2E028 – No tea for you!
It’s the cutest thing in the world when she…
August 6th, 2009 by John No comments »Something I’ve learned since becoming a parent.. the cutest thing in the world is a moving target. I remember thinking it was the cutest thing in the world when Catherine first smiled. And then when she first started to crawl, when she was just figuring it out, that was the cutest thing in the world. And then when she started pulling up on things, or when she learned to wave to people, or when she started to say “daddy”. Right now it’s the cutest thing in the world when she tries to say long words by breaking them into bits. A few nights ago I pointed to an elephant and asked Catherine what it was called. She said, “ele”, which has so far been her word for it. So I tried to get her to say the whole word by breaking it in two, “ele” and “phant”. I asked her to say each one separately, which she did – she’s very good at reciting what you say to her. Then we put them together and she did it! There was a big gap in between the words but she said it, “ele … phant”. Proud daddy moment… And now she’s doing it all the time. Tonight I said to her after she grabbed a towel, “you stole my towel! You nicked it. You purloined it!”, and what do you know… “pur … loin”!
Can’t wait to see what’s the cutest thing in the world tomorrow!
Adventures in Solo Parenting
August 4th, 2009 by Ruth No comments »Some friends of ours are getting married later this month, and this weekend both the Stag and Hen “do”s were arranged. John was invited to the Stag, and I was invited to the Hen. This gave us the inevitable logistical problem of arranging to both be out in the evening and making sure there was someone to look after Catherine.
We have some very good friends who live about 15 minutes away from the venue for the Hen do. They have two little boys, aged 6 and 3, and are one set of Catherine’s guideparents. They very kindly offered to allow Catherine and me to stay with them – I could settle Catherine to bed there, and then head out to the Hen do.
Things were complicated slightly by the fact our friends were in Portugal last week, and only due to land back home at midday yesterday. When I couldn’t get hold of them by 4pm I started to worry, and I thought everything was going to fall through. Thankfully they called me about 15 minutes later – their plane had been delayed and they’d only just landed. They were insistent that it was still fine for Catherine and me to stay, so we both set out. We stopped in at our local supermarket to pick up a few things for our hosts (having just got back from Portugal I thought it was only polite to turn up with some milk, bread and other necessities for them).
I’m pleased to report that everything ran smoothly. We arrived, and Catherine sat quietly with the boys watching television whilst tea was cooked. I managed to assemble the travel cot on my own, and got everything ready. The three kids all had tea together, and then it was bedtime. By this time it was a little later than Catherine’s usual bedtime, and she was very tired. She went to bed and to sleep without a murmur. This enabled me to get out and have a fun time at the Hen do without worrying about anything.
What a long way we’ve come from the first few months of her life, when I didn’t want to be left alone with her at all!
Congratulations to Simon and Jana
July 28th, 2009 by Ruth No comments »Our friends Simon and Jana from Nipper News are pleased to arrive the safe arrival of their son. He caught them by surprise, and arrived slightly earlier than expected (33 weeks), but is doing well.
Huge congratulations from all of us at Just Relax!
PhotoWalkthrough on One Minute How-To
July 23rd, 2009 by John No comments »For those of you that don’t know I, John, also produce a regular photography based video podcast. In that capacity as photography guy George Smyth has been kind enough to ask me a third time if I’d like to contribute a segment on his show – One Minute How-To. His show offers weekly tips on a variety of interesting subjects, each being a very digestible minute or two long. Quick, informative and fun. Well worth a look. Check out my latest contribution on How to shoot panning shots and be sure to subscribe to George’s show.
Out of my parenting comfort zone
July 23rd, 2009 by Ruth 1 comment »One of the things I have found the most difficult since having Catherine is getting out of the house, particularly anything that involves long car journeys and/or staying away. This was probably brought on in the very first weeks after Catherine was born, when I tried so hard to throw myself into the “new Mum” thing – going out to NCT get-togethers, music classes, massage classes, and everything else I thought a new Mum should do. I got more and more stressed as Catherine spent more and more of her time outside of the home awake and unhappy. After one particularly unhappy NCT coffee afternoon, where I spent the whole time literally holding the dummy in Catherine’s mouth to keep her quiet, I decided something had to change, and I battened down the hatches, and got a proper daytime routine in place.
Part of the problem was that Catherine really doesn’t nap well outside of her own bedroom. She’s always slept shorter at nursery than here, and I’m lucky if I can get 30 minutes out of her in the car. And when Catherine doesn’t get enough sleep, she gets grotty.
It’s taken a long time for me to start learning how I can “flex” Catherine’s routine when needed, and as she’s grown older she’s become more willing to be “flexed”. And I’ve been really pleased that we’ve managed to start getting out and socialising again – I’ve missed everyone!
This weekend we hit two major milestones, things that I’ve thought we ought to try doing for a while. First of all, on Friday night we went over to Austin and Lynne’s new house to see it, and have a takeaway and play some board games. Originally John’s Mum was going to babysit for us, but she didn’t feel well enough, so we were stuck with either not going, or taking Catherine with us. So we stuck the travel cot in the car, packed Catherine’s travel Grobag and set out to see what would happen.
Catherine was an absolute darling. She enjoyed the cook’s tour of the house, and tried to chase Austin and Lynne’s cats. She spent ages washing her hands in the handbasin (the latest, Lady-Macbeth-type obsession!). She was later than usual going to bed, but we tried to stick to our bedtime routine as usual, and bless her – she went straight to sleep in the Pickles’ spare room!
Come midnight and time to go home – she scared us a bit by waking up very easily, as soon as we walked into the room. She was then wide awake for the whole car journey home, but when we got in and put her in her cot she rolled around a little bit, but then went back off to sleep. What a good girl.
The next challenge came on Saturday – a two-and-half hour journey to Birkhamstead and it back for a friends’ daughter’s second birthday party. Any long journey that we have done like that before has been when going on a week’s holiday, and we’ve taken slowly, trying to fill the whole day, with a good stop part-way through. Not possible in this case. One the way down we tried setting out before lunch in the hope Catherine would sleep a little first, then we could have lunch, and perhaps a full tummy would send her to sleep again for the rest of the journey. She fell asleep quite easily in the car, did her traditional 30 minutes and then woke up. Thankfully she was happy to sit quietly for a bit, so we got a good chunk of the journey under our belts before stopping at a service station for lunch. She ate well, enjoyed a little roam around the services, and only had a small whinge when we put her back in the car. She didn’t sleep again, and I had to sing with her when she started getting a bit fractious, but we managed to make it to our friends’ house.
Again Catherine slept like a dream. Again she was slightly late to bed as there were fun party things going on, and we all ate late, but she went to sleep without complaining, and slept right through. We didn’t take the baby monitor with us, as John thinks I should learn to live without it. We slept in the room directly above Catherine’s, and we would have heard her if she’d yelled, but I set my alarm for 8am to be on the safe side, as these days she tends to wake up and play in her cot until I go in to her, and I wasn’t sure I’d hear that. I slept soundly until rudely awakened by my alarm, and as I was getting dressed one of our hosts knocked on the door to day she thought Catherine was awake – there were some shuffling noises coming from her room. What a good girl.
Coming back we tried things slightly differently, and ate lunch before setting out. I wanted to see if Catherine would sleep longer than her 30 minutes with a full tummy. Sadly not, but she was tired enough to sit quietly in her seat until we stopped at the services on the M6 toll. Cups of coffee for me and John, a slice of cake for Catherine and we set out again. Again, whilst she didn’t sleep, she was good as gold, and we got home without any yelling from any of us 
So that’s two new things to add to my list of stuff I know I can do. It’s liberating to think we can go somewhere for an evening and get Catherine home and back into bed. It’s great to think it is now feasible to visit some of our further afield friends and family.
My next challenge is to try all three of us sleeping in one room – I’m still nervous about that one…
Free at last
July 22nd, 2009 by John No comments »Paul Rogers wrote:
Dear John, I hope you are well. I am seeking an Oracle DBA/Developer contractor for an inital 6 month engagement in Manchester. My client is a leading NW organisation.
John Arnold wrote:
Hi Paul. I’ve not been on the job market for 9 years and I’ve repeatedly asked your organisation to remove me from your database. However I might be tempted to reconsider if you sing me a few bars of All Right Now.
Paul Rogers wrote:
Apologies, but I can ensure it will be “alright now” as I have sent your details to ensure you are removed from the database, so you will be “free” from hassle by not recieving future mailshots.
