Hi, my name's Alison, I'm about to turn 39, and have been on quite a journey in the last 12 months.  This blog is not only to help myself, but hopefully it can help others who are on a similar journey, even if it's just to feel normal as quite often when you join the fertility treatment club, suddenly normal becomes something only dreams are made of.

So my story begins 12 months ago, after giving up my part-time job to be a full-time mum to my daughter we decided it was a good time to start trying for our 2nd and last child.  After all, how hard can it be, it only took me a few months to fall pregnant with Amelia at the age of 35 so surely it will be the same as then, it was only 2.5 years ago.  Oh how wrong I was!

2nd month in and I get that 2nd line on a home pregnancy test, wow cool!  1 day later, all hell broke loose and I miscarry.  Damn......disappointed but not too peturbed to get back on the horse so to speak and try again.  I wait a month as recommended by the GP and try again.....a couple of months goes by and I get another positive test, 3 days later, same again.  OK so now I'm starting to think something isn't right, not to mention my cycles are getting shorter by the month.  Dr Google (who I spend a lot of time consulting these days even though I know all it does it make me feel worse) tells me maybe I have a luteal phase defect caused by low progesterone and given my age I decided to get myself an appointment with a Fertility Specialist.  All the while thinking I don't need them how ridiculous but let's humour this........hmph again how wrong I was.

Cut to November, I visit the FS, get put through a myriad of tests - I think at one point I gave 22 vials of blood in one go!  Out of interest they run an AMH test to check for my egg count levels, imagine my shock when it came back at 1.1.......put it this way, for those who don't know much about AMH levels - they like to see it 16 or above so yes, 1.1 is not good.  My first tracking cycle indeed showed a progesterone issue, in fact, my body was practically not producing it at all in the 2nd half of my cycle so it was absolutely no wonder I didn't hang onto the previous 2 pregnancies.  So, easy fixed you say?  So I thought, well we're 6 months down the track and I'm still trying to understand it myself.

December I decided not to do a tracking cycle with the clinic per se as it was Christmas, the specialist was on leave and couldn't see me again until January so just thought we'd give it a go on our own.  Christmas Eve I start having signs of the wicked witch visiting so thought I was out for the month, rang the clinic, they told me to come in on Boxing Day just to check my progesterone levels anyway to see if I was on the right level of supplements - gotta love the bum bullets as I have come to call them.  Queue in next shock when I call for results, pregnant!  So a couple of weeks of every 3rd day having blood tests to track my levels, a few ups and downs in progesterone levels and the stress of numbers starting out so low things seem promising as I start to feel a little nauseated - not a nice thing as I suffered all day nausea with Amelia but I looked at it as a positive sign, only to have a scan at 7 weeks to be matter of factly told by the sonographer that quote unquote "there is a heart beat but it's not good so I wouldn't go shouting it from the rooftops if I were you".  Devastation hits, I spend the next week crying while I wait out a follow-up scan, which then showed no improvement, told to wait again, go back a few days later and my little bean had gone. 

A month goes by, I take a break to recharge mentally and physically and 2 months later I'm pregnant again.  Right from the start this time I felt more positive - well as positive as one having recurrent miscarriages can be - HCG levels were great, rising as they should, progesterone was where they like to see it, the 6 week mark comes and I wake up ready to go to the clinic for my usual blood test and I have a bleed.  Immediate panic sets in, the clinic doesn't seem too concerned, "this can be quite normal in early pregnancy" and send me off for a scan a week earlier than planned.  Nervously I attend the same clinic, with the same sonographer (which I was dreading) this time with hubby in tow, but thankfully there's a heartbeat and it's much better than last time - still a little below normal in her opinion but everything I read said it was within normal range for gestation.  But, yes but........there is also a large subchorionic hematoma next to the sac, in fact, it was the same size of the sac and while she told me 40% of pregnancies have these larger ones come with higher risks.  Awesome, of course nothing could be simple could it!  She tells me to expect more bleeding, take it easy and no lifting (not easy with a 2.5 year old) and to come back in a week for a follow up scan.  So I turn up, feeling fairly confident given already my belly was growing - the progesterone however I think is the main culprit for the bloating and the fact I was dealing with all day nausea, at times quite bad, plus great hormone levels and the like.  I was too scared to look at the screen at first but when I did I was so relieved to see a little heart beat flickering away.  I actually said oh thank goodness I see a heart beat......to quickly be told, yes there is but it's dropped down to 85 the embryo is showing very minimal growth since last week, I'm sorry but this isn't looking good.  O M G are you kidding me!  Again!  So now I have been told I have to go back in another week and there's nothing else I can do until.......well the heart beat stops.  So here we go again......awesome :o(    This brings you up to date with my story so far, I hope I haven't bored you all too much and that you join me in my journey updates and hopefully this story will end well, I want to believe it will, but right now, my hope is fast diminishing...................