Profile

Lifeslurper resides in a big brown land called Auuustralia. Her early years remain a mystery cloaked in a veil of depression.

Age 42 Lifeslurper meets the vague but gorgeous Wobbles. “What took him so long to arrive?” She asks.

They make their way together in the world just fine, but are not fine to make a baby – not without some outside help. Enter ART and 2008 the year of 4 IVF cycles & one lousy big fat negative.

Lifeslurper is now 47 years old! Time for a baby is running out fast, so too is her sanity. Now it's 2011 - Lifeslurper & Wobbles have moved into top baby making gear. Donor Egg Cycles are the way to go, after a long pause to take stock after a glorious donor egg BFP & the subsequent loss. This year saw 2 cancelled FET cycles, & and menopause causing delays.

Where to from here? After 10 cycles Lifeslurper & Wobbles now await their WobblyBub who is due in May 2012 - actually make that...um....*sigh*...what's the point?

Too much to swallow?

This infertility malarkey requires us to take a number of rather wide leaps of faith. During an IVF cycle we might find ourselves willingly injecting ourselves with various synthetic hormones and other lovely scientific creations designed to stimulate our bodies into doing all manner of amazing things.

 

Of course, the honour of doing this only occurs after we have signed our lives away, by acknowledging that the clinic and doctors are not responsible for any future health issues that might be visited upon us or worse still, our future offspring and every generation thereafter, it would seem.

Continue reading Too much to swallow?

Cycleslurper I – International conversion of commonly used IVF medication names

Spurred on by Lifeslurper readers’ cards and letters, this blog hereby starts an ongoing campaign of translating international ART cycle and medication names in the hope that this helps someone somewhere along the road to finding that medication or that cycle protocol that works for them.

 

Send in any protocol or medication names that interest you. Lifeslurper is happy to sort through cycle details if can be bothered to send them in and are willing to share them. If you have any long held secret questions about medications and cycle protocols direct them here. Let us all learn something together!

Continue reading Cycleslurper I – International conversion of commonly used IVF medication names

The Pointy End

This current IVF cycle has been very low key. Very quick. Almost painless.

IVF life without Synarel seems much easier. Better still is the hope of a new fertility specialist offering a brand new protocol with lots of bells and whistles. How could an antagonist cycle with two daily doses of FSH plus 5 days of Clomid plus latter days of Orgalutran to ward off ovulation possibly go wrong?

Now we stand before that horrible precipice, where a wrong move could see us make a sharp fall to cycle cancellation. Tomorrow is that critical ultrasound and blood test. I catch the train this afternoon to be there on time. Once before, this round of testing has brought us unstuck. On that occasion it lead to cycle cancellation. I had ‘under’ stimulated, yet one follicle had managed to ‘over’ stimulate and at over 35 mm it was considered a cyst. That in turn led to months of delays and a five month absence of menstruation. What fun! Continue reading The Pointy End