Counselling was not something I was looking forward to. I understand its something that is compulsory for anyone receiving donor sperm or eggs, but can’t help feeling a little bit miffed that we have to go. I’m pretty sure counselling isn’t offered to women who get pregnant through a one night stand, so why should we be forced to sit through a session to check that we fully understand the consequences of our actions? Thankfully, it was nothing like that! It was more like having a chat with someone you’re sitting next to in a waiting room. It wasn’t the interrogation I was expecting. All in all we spent about an hour talking about all sorts of things, she gave us some information about the fertility friends website and pointed us in the direction of some books that may be useful if we were interested. The counselling was completely free and gave us the opportunity to do the last of our Christmas shopping in town, not a wasted journey at all!
Whilst I was there, the nurse gave my a private prescription so I can source my own drugs. The LWC charges £1350 and after checking a few websites and calling a few supermarket pharmacies, I decided to opt for the pharmacy I deal with at work (I work in a Doctor Surgery) they kindly offered my the drugs at cost price, which altogether came to £966. almost £400 cheaper then the LWC!
For those who are reading this and perhaps going through the same as me, this is what I have ordered:
Suprecur (buserelin) 5.5ml x 2 vials
Gonal F 900iu pre filled pens x 3
Ovitrelle 250mcg x 1
Cycolgest Pessaries x 3 boxes of 15
The nurse also explained to me that I will be on ‘long protocol’ so they would wait for my next cycle to start, then 21 days after that I would start the injections. I’m still a bit fuzzy with all the dates, as soon as they mention injecting myself, I tend to get a bit light headed! The start of my cycle was actually a day earlier on 24th December, so i guess I will be ‘Down regulating’ from about the 13th January. I’ll be getting a letter through the post soon, so that will give me all the info I need to know.
The final and probably most important thing to do, is order our sperm! with the excitement and extreme illness of Charlotte and I over Christmas, we seem to have totally forgotten about our swimmers! We have decided to stay with the Danish Sperm bank, but switch to a different donor. We need to select the donor with the highest amount of swimmers. If the sperm and the egg don’t meet in a petrie dish the doctors will perform ICSI, meaning they will select one single solitary sperm and inject it directly into the egg. Either way, as long as a few embryos are created we will be happy!
alloallo
December 28, 2012 at 12:29
Good luck getting started with everything! We had the counselling appointment and I think it makes sense, there are a lot of implications to raising a child conceived via donor egg or sperm that sometimes people don’t think about. That being said, we’d already spent a LOT of time thinking about it by the time we got to counselling so it felt a little redundant.
itsmekatielou
December 28, 2012 at 12:34
That’s exactly how we felt, we’d spoken about every aspect of it ourselves, it just seemed pointless talking to someone else about it too.
lesbemums
January 2, 2013 at 18:19
Hey there! Just thought I’d pop along and have a peek at your blog. It’s great!
I’m really happy to see things are going ok – if it helps I downloaded an app called “fertility friend” which helped to tell me when I am due to ovulate going on the data I enter (temperature, period dates, cervical fluid, etc.) which helped me as I have odd cycles. Once I found my cycle I then took ovulation tests.
It’s really spot on and as long as you enter the data daily (I have my temp taken at the same time every day) it’s excellent.
We found our donor through Pride Angel as we simply couldn’t afford a clinic or similar and although it’s probably a bit more stressful as long as they’re decent they should be willing to go get the relevant tests done.
Good luck!!
K (lesbemums)