Tag: baby

what a year it’s been xox

It’s been a crazy year for us, with having Owen preemie on the 19th December last year ….. three or so weeks in the NICU with 2 or 3 visits a day.  Sometimes we’d drive down and home for each one, sometimes we’d stay around Penrith and go back…

When we got to take him home, it was wonderful but full on xox  Owen struggled with his feeds and settling down and had silent reflux… so most feeds backed into each other with Mummy and sometimes Daddy trying to settle him between them..  so not much sleep or down time for Mummy along with Liam being an active 2-year-old as well…

Then we’ve just been constantly sick 🙁  especially me, flu’s, colds, bronchitis…  and then I got diagnosed with an auto immune disease which explains some of the symptoms I’ve had for many years and why I’ve always had so much sickness.

To be honest it’s been tough…  I don’t mean or want to complain but this is more about explaining why we’ve been so reclusive lol, why I’ve been slow to respond to emails and messages, why I haven’t been able to post as much on my Facebook groups or blog but I also want to share so others can know they are not alone..

With the constant sickness, I’ve just struggled and as most will attest to having a baby with a toddler is demanding and exhausting.  I don’t know how I’ve done it to be honest, it seems a blur now hehehe.. I’m not sure how I’ve gotten up during the night and looked after Owen whilst so sick and tired and then often Liam would need me as well then the daytime, running a house, our investments, renovations to our house, Egg Donor Angels, setting up a SMSF along with the day-to-day stuff….

And every time I started to feel a wee bit better, I’d get knocked down again with another illness and with my auto immune disease I just seem to take so much longer to get better and then of course the boys would get it too..

And then a few weeks ago Liam got attacked by a local cat and it sliced his eyelid open… so off to our gp we went and then off to Westmead Children’s hospital that evening and sat among the poor sick children only for Liam to get the gastro days later and then Shane, Owen and finally me…

The good news is we’re on the mend yayyyy, I’ve started my medications for the auto immune disease and whilst life is still crazy busy for me/us, I’m hoping I will have a wee bit more time to spare lol…

Many I know have had a baby with a toddler and we all say “oh my” it’s exhausting and you don’t get much time…

…but  what I want to let everyone know is that in regard to Egg Donor Angels, I am here for you and if you need to talk to me, email me, PM me or just call me on my mobile…. I may not answer if things are crazy with the boys but keep trying or txt me so I know to call you back when I can…  xox

and any friends/family reading this we hope to have more time to catch up now… we’ve missed this xox

 

Happy New Year, welcome 2018 and blissful happiness xox

Gosh, what an crazy and amazing year 2017 was… we can’t believe that we’ve welcomed in the New Year with our precious boy Owen.

To go to sleep last night and wake up in a New Year without it being tinged with sadness as our dreams have come true is surreal.   Most years we’ve welcomed the year in with hope and sadness except for the year that we had Liam and this year with Owen.

There’s always some sadness with loved ones not here, for me my Mum and Scout xox  I wish my Mum could see our little family but I know wherever she is, she’ll be so happy for us.  I know most of you grieve for someone at Christmas and New Year, huge hugs and love to you.. it’s a time for spending time with loved ones and when some are missing it’s hard xox

We have so much to be grateful for but as you all know we’ve spent many years wanting a family and then a sibling for Liam.  We’ve had a lot of speed humps in our life together, Shane trying to find his daughter, my lying, cheating ex husband including three years of property settlement with a huge emotional and financial toll all because he continued to lie about our financial situation and his stupid solicitor failed to read the facts I kept sending them and so much more, infertility diagnosis/early menopause and years of IVF, breast cancer diagnosis with massive treatment and huge complications, our search for our egg donor angels, miscarriages, the loss of our 11 embryo’s, Mum’s breast and lung cancer and dementia and sadly her decline and passing… and much much more…

We feel complete and whilst I’d love to have another baby and to be a surrogate for someone else, we just can’t put my body through another pregnancy and I can’t put my three boys through it.. and I need to be here for them too xox

We are blessed and grateful for what we have xox

We couldn’t have done this without our friends and family and their love and support, especially through the tough times, you’ve been amazing and we love and thank you xoxox

Sorry that we’ve not been in touch as much and spent as much time recently but we’ll make up for it this year xox

When I started Egg Donor Angels in 2008 I had a dream to help others along this journey as we’d just started it and I’d realised were few resources available but were so needed.  Many years later Egg Donor Angels has grown so much with many Facebook support groups with people from all over the world and hundreds of babies born from local and overseas donations.  My payment and joy is knowing that I’ve provided a support network for those on the journey and when I get an email, message, text message, phone call saying that they have achieved their dream, it’s all worth it xox

All the people in my groups also make them the amazing space that they are, they provide wonderful support and friendship to others along the journey and to my fabulous admins Katherine, Natalie, Lauren and Christine, thank you, I love you and couldn’t have gotten through this pregnancy without your love, help and support xox

I wish I could wave that magic wand and help everyone to achieve their dream xox

We hope that 2018 will be the year for many of you and your family in achieving your dreams and if there’s anything we can do to help, please let us know.

An update on Owen;, our little tiger has moved to bay 4, the last bay before being able to go home, yayyy.  He’s gaining weight and feeding well.  He just needs to take a bottle and/or breast feed at every feed and consistently gain weight to go home.  We’re now doing 3 trips a day to the Penrith/Nepean NICU, 7am, 1pm and 7pm so we’re a bit off the grid till he comes home, hopefully soon 🙂 xox

So Happy New Year to all our family and friends, may 2018 be a wonderful year for you and your loved ones, lots of love Dianne, Shane, Liam and Owen xoxox

A Christmas baby :)

so we’re almost 34 weeks but looks like our little tiger is going to be a Christmas baby 🙂

It’s been a struggle keeping my high blood pressure under control and I’ve just been at regular Dr’s appointments, scans and totally exhausted.  Last week whilst really sick with the flu/virus my gp expressed his concerns, so off to our Ob; Dr Pardey I went the next day with a hospital bag packed and here I still am waiting to see how long we can let our little one “cook” before he pops out into our world 🙂   I have pre-eclampsia so it’s just a waiting and balancing game to let tiger grow a bit more but keep him and me healthy.

I’m in hospital till he arrives and probably for some time afterwards so I can heal and they can monitor my blood pressure and keep it stable as well.  We think it’s going to be this week but…. its day by day…

He’ll probably have to spend some time in care as he’s a wee bit early so his first Christmas will probably be in a hospital but as long as he’s safe and healthy that’s the main thing.

We’ll update everyone with any news as soon as we can, thanks for your support xox

We’ve arrived in Cape Town for our new cycle xox

We arrived on Saturday night exhausted and spent Sunday just relaxing and settling in again…  After a crazy week at home in the lead up to coming here.. typical of us to have so much going on at any given time hehehe but that’s just who we are xox

Yesterday I had my lining scan and it’s looking great.. our donor also had her scans and everything is looking good, phew!

It was lovely to see Dr Matabese and Danelle at Cape Fertility again, such gorgeous people and they make this journey much easier and nicer xox

We met a couple of lovely recipients in the waiting room, a Mum and Daughter that were actually on our flight on the way over.. she made me cry when she said “I just want to be a Mummy” xox  I remember her Mum as she kept smiling and chatting to Liam as he crawled up and down the aisle on the plane… such a small world when you see people that were on  your flight at your clinic and find out that they are on the same journey.. I hope she gets her dream and hopefully she will join my groups as I think she’ll be a great support on there xox  Of course in the rush I can’t remember if they said their names, argghh I hope they get in touch, I gave them an Egg Donor Angels card so hopefully they will..

The other couple were from the USA and were doing a transfer, I’m hoping they will join my groups as well, this journey is so hard and it’s so nice to have others to chat to that totally get it xox

Tomorrow is egg collection for our donor so everything crossed… today it’s a beautiful day here and I’ve just spent a few hours on Egg Donor Angels so it’s time to do something as a family..

We’ve done most of the tourist things here but are going to do some again especially with Liam.. might go and see the white lions today, Liam will love that.. and we haven’t done that yet..

I will do a post very soon of the things to do in Cape Town and the surrounds for those that are considering coming or are coming here xox

Will do an update tomorrow as soon as we know something xox

 

So it’s been a while……sorry :(

Gosh I’m sorry it’s been a while since I have written anything, I hoped to do it regularly but a wee thing called breast cancer just got in my way.. plus all the usual day to day stuff 🙂 I hope to get back into it more soon…

Thank you to everyone for all your support and patience, I have tried where possible to approve ads really quickly and reply really quickly but there have been days where I have just been too sick to do it 🙁 and it’s also been very difficult to do it from a hospital bed.

It’s been a crazy 2 1/2 years, since my diagnosis, I have had a mastectomy, FEC90 chemo x 4 sessions every 3 weeks and that was crap (nausea, vomiting, exhaustion, mouth ulcers, lack of appetite, hair loss and much much more), I was admitted for a week plus to hospital for low white blood cell count and infections after this first chemo, then I had to have a port put in as my veins collapsed in my arm and they couldn’t get a vein for the chemo, I then had another chemo taxol weekly for 12 weeks and that too was crap 🙂 (absolute exhaustion to the point I couldn’t walk or move, I lost my toe nails and my finger nails went extremely brittle, I lost feeling in my toes and fingers and it’s still as bad today which potentially no fix in site.. and again much much more), then I did radiation every weekday for over 4 weeks and that gave me a lovely tan, well actually really really bad sunburn with blisters… I also started a therapy called Herceptin through the port for a year as I was HER positive, I then had my reconstruction and 5 weeks later was rushed to hospital with massive infections and pain and subsequently had to have the implant removed.. then about 4 weeks later the wounds opened up and I had two lovely holes in my side where I could see inside myself :)… so my specialist got me to have them dressed daily for weeks, then sent me to Prince of Wales hospital daily for hyperbaric oxygen treatment to see if that would heal them, that was fun from Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains on the morning train to Central railway station then by bus to Randwick and back home again in the afternoon… when that wasn’t working after 12 weeks, they did a CT scan to find that I had Osteoradionecrosis, a rare condition where the radiation and infections had caused the tissue and skin and some of my ribs to die… so they I had to have a lat dorsi where they took skin, muscle and tissue from my lower back and pulled it through to my front to give that area circulation and skin to heal…. but wait there’s more 🙂 so then once that was healed I had the expander put in, another surgery, and then they inflated it slowly to stretch the skin out and then finally about 7 weeks ago I had the implant put in… so we are on the home stretch, yay!!

Sorry a boring lot of detail and I am sure I have forgotten lots of extra treatment and stuff…. but that’s the quick snapshot 🙂 of course there were weekly/daily specialist appointments, lots of pain and exhaustion and so much more…

So the great news for me is that my egg donor angel did another cycle whilst I was still going through treatment and we have 11 snow babies on ice waiting for us.  I have just had full scans and yes am cancer free, yayyyyy, we are full steam ahead on doing a cycle and a transfer.

This Tuesday I have a d+c to clear my uterus of all those nasty chemo drugs and other chemicals… then my body will heal whilst we go away to Melbourne to visit family and once we return we will do our first transfer, sometime around the end of September.

It’s been a long, exhausting and emotional journey for us and I hope that our dreams will now become reality and this Christmas I can celebrate knowing that the next one, we will have our own family.

So what about you?? I have had lots of wonderful news whilst going through all of this of babies being born through couples meeting their egg donor angels through here and lots of couples and egg donor angels currently going through the process.  Some sad news where the cycles haven’t worked or the couples have decided to not continue looking 🙁

I am soooooo very excited, every week this site is growing and more and more wonderful egg donor angels are placing ads or contacting couples offering to help, when I started there were so many of us looking and not many angels…. but now we are getting the word out there about egg donation, infertility we are getting many more successes., thank you to everyone for this and please keep spreading the word xox

I was in Springwood at my local shops the other day and typical me, found any opportunity to talk about egg donation and Egg Donor Angels and infertility, that I was chatting to a shop assistant and she said if she had know years ago after having her children, she would have donated her eggs…

But the most important message I had for her was to be aware of her daughters fertility and as they get into their thirties to get themselves checked out and if they aren’t ready yet or haven’t found the right one yet, freeze their eggs…

When we are young, we are told “don’t get pregnant”, “go on the pill”.

At school, we learn the basics of reproduction but no one teaches you about infertility and its conditions and how age affects it and how our fertility starts to decline after 35…. I am not saying all young women should get pregnant or have babies earlier, everyone is different and each person needs to do this when they are ready… but I want every girl/woman to totally understand how it all works, the issues and even the simple thing of how ovulation works…

Well that’s it from me…I would love to hear how you are going..

xoxox

The Big C!

There’s no easy way to start this post, so here goes… 4 weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now I have always said cancer scares me but just never thought it would be me. We had just said goodbye to a friend on the 27th January to cancer, she lived with us for over 3 months while renovating her house next door and then within two days of moving into her dream home, she was diagnosed with cancer. It was in her bones, her lungs and her breast and they didn’t know which was the primary and which was the secondary and which one to treat.. sadly she fought it for a while but her body was riddled, goodbye Nellie, you are missed…

We spent the last four months of 2011 doing our donor egg cycle and two transfers where sadly we miscarried. At the same time I had a really bad flu and had a some symptoms that I put down to the IVF drugs. I mentioned the scab on my nipple to my GP at the appointment I had with her re my flu and first miscarriage and she said to come back…. I went back in December about it and another issue and she looked at it, said “hhmmm, it’s probably the IVF drugs” and dismissed it. In the meantime I had googled “scab on nipple” and nothing came up, discharge, leaking etc came up but not this one.. so I thought it must be the hormones and trusted my GP. About 6 weeks ago I felt a huge lump in my breast and immediately booked into my GP to get it checked out. She said let’s do an ultrasound, I said what about a mammogram, she ummed and erred and then did the request. On the day of the scans, I knew they had found something being a Friday I had to wait all weekend, and of course when my GP was calling me Monday morning for an appointment to discuss the scans/results I knew that it was bad news. She said it appears to be DCIS, which was a better one to have…. sadly when we got to meet with our cancer surgeon 10 days later it was worse than that. It was high grade DCIS and invasive breast cancer and probably in my lymph nodes.

So here I am at 1am in the morning with only 9 hours before they operate and do a mastectomy on my right breast and remove all my lymph nodes. Sadly I say a fond farewell to a part of me that makes me I guess a woman but the learning I have is that it’s not me, what’s inside is me. I will start chemo in about 4 weeks for a few months or more where I will lose all my hair and probably grieve again, silly but it’s part of the process….. and then radiation most likely. So this speed hump is putting a pause on our dream of a family but it will not stop us from achieving that dream…

So I now have some work to do, hopefully get some sleep and then up at 6am to get ready for another journey in my life… will post again soon with an update…

Cherish your dreams and make them a reality… xox

Ok… Deeep Breaths

Woke up this morning with a brighter outlook after yesterday’s appointment.

We saw our IVF Dr and after this round of blood tests and ultrasound, he say’s there’s nothing that should stop us from having a successful pregnancy, yay!! Some minor immunity issues but when we do our next cycle, he will give me something to help that.

I still have to do a uterus biopsy, was meant to do it yesterday but stopped my progesterone pessaries last week as they came from a different compounding chemist and I had a reaction to them 🙁

He said my donor has good ovarian reserve for her age, looks like she got my share for the family 🙂

So it’s looking like sometime in March, my donor has a few commitments over the next month or so and we need to get everything sorted at the clinic as well as my biopsy to cover all our bases.

Since the last miscarriage, I stopped talking about having children, it was just too hard and even if I did, it wasn’t “when we have children” or “our children/child” it was “if”. Last night I felt I could have the dream again, might take a few more times to get there but…..

Re this website, I am getting some great feedback thank you xo And thank you to those of you that have advertised and that have enquired about being an egg donor angel xo

As some of you know or have read, I used to charge a small fee to advertise on the site but I have stopped that as I only had a few people willing to pay and in turn I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on advertising for a donor for them. As much as I am passionate about this, I can’t afford this kind of money, sorry 🙁
… so I dropped the charge on my site and now I just promote the site and the potential recipients where I can, the only cost to me is my time and that I am not earning money from my business when doing it, if that makes sense?!
In doing this, the potential organic egg donor angels to the site has reduced and the site is mainly attracting the ones actively searching for this.

I would love your feedback on the site and in particular costs, would you prefer it to be free or would you consider paying a fee to advertise on this site, where we can then pay for advertising for your search for your egg donor angel?

I personally in my own search for our egg donor angel paid for ads in many places. The one thing I wanted was a quick and immediate response and something that was quick and relatively easy. I know we all have busy lives and for some of us it’s harder to get online, scouring the internet and sites posting and responding to forums and conversations. While this approach is free and offers some fantastic support networks however it is also very time-consuming. Yes we are focused on realising our dream of having a family but sadly life must go on with or without this dream and importantly we need incomes to pay for the dream as well.

I would love your feedback on this, either comment on this here, or drop me a line at diannej@eggdonorangels.com.au

Here’s to 2012 being the year of realising the family dream for any of us on that journey xox

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Here’s to a new cycle………

This week we start a new cycle, exciting but nerve-wracking as well! Thank goodness I am feeling much better, the nasty flu has gone yay…
I have been seeing my wonderful TCM and Accupuncturist Kathryn Taylor since the miscarriage. Both of us are quietly confident that this one will be the one.. fingers, toes and just about everything crossed it is…
What truly amazes me again is just how many people have been through IVF. Every time I talk to someone about it, they have done IVF, know someone etc… How outstanding that the current Govt changed the rebates for IVF almost 2 years ago. How is it possible that they can think its not necessary and the Doctors and clinics are not reducing their fees, so the only ones that are hurting are the couples going through IVF. They have made it out of reach financially for lots of couples. They were also quite sneaky in changing the rebates for donors. If you use a donor, you only get a tiny rebate, prior to the changes your donor made the claim and got the full rebate same as the person doing an egg retrieval cycle. We paid almost $10,000 for our donor cycle and only got back $1,480, yep that’s right! If you do a cycle on your own, it’s approximately $7,500 and you get around $3,000 to $4,000 back….. I even rang Medicare and questioned the description on the web site for that claim and she checked with the assessors and they confirmed that it was right. No reason as to why. Not sure why we are discriminated against for doing a donor cycle. However I do plan to write to the Health Care complaints Commission about it and put in a formal complaint about it.

There are so many unjust causes I wish I had money to fight for them including Child Support Agency and IVF recipients.

Anway off my soapbox now.. time to take the doggie for a walk, now it’s cooled down here…

Take care and baby dust to those of you that are dreaming the dream and thank you to those whom support us going through the journey.

xox

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Where do I start…..

Hi everyone,

Sorry it’s been a while, it’s been a rather hectic few months.  We renovated a house, were going through the process of starting our Egg Donor Cycle, had work commitments, went away for a well-earned break (I worked throughout the holiday but still relaxed!) and had the usual day-to-day stuff going on.. you all know how it is 🙂

So where are we at?…. well we did our first cycle with our Egg Donor, yay.. we ended up with 6 snow babies, we had 2 transferred and have 4 still on ice.  That was about 8 weeks ago… the day after we came home from the cycle I came down really sick with the flu and for the next 6+ weeks, couldn’t do anything but get out of bed to do work for my clients and then go back to bed to rest.  During that we found out that we were pregnant, we were so excited and as you do when you are an IVF’er, were a bit nervous, then got excited and started to plan.. sadly a few weeks later I miscarried the baby, my HCG hormone levels started to drop and within days I miscarried.  It’s an awful thing and my heart goes out to every couple that have gone through this, apparently 1 in 3 women have a miscarriage, some don’t sadly know, they just have a really really bad period.  For over a week I battle the bad flu as well as the extreme pain of the miscarriage and in between dealt with the sadness of it all.

But the one thing that keeps us IVF’ers going is the plan, what’s next… as hard as it is.  So my plan is to have a period in about 2 weeks and then start a new cycle and fingers crossed, lots of hope and prayers, this one will stick and we can tell the world that we are going to be a family.

An update on my website as well, I have removed this cost for the time being. I have spent thousands of my own money creating this site and paying for advertising for previous ads but at the moment going through our own journey and with work commitments, I have decided to remove the charge to advertise on this site for the moment… Good Luck with your search for your Egg Donor Angel and we will keep you updated on our journey…

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Update

Ok, so I have been a bit slack, I am just not very good at “blogging” and we have been away for our holiday.

Had a great time, we relaxed, stayed in lots of free campsites, over half the trip was done free camping.  Some of the rest stops we camped in were just great, one of our favs was about 24kms out of Longreach.  There were dirt tracks behind the main rest stop area that you could park in, light a campfire and look at the stars – it was just wonderful, oh and we had mobile phone reception, not that we really had time or used it that much 🙂

We got all the way to Darwin, through outback QLD and up the main highway, stopping at some of our favourite places, Mataranka, Daly Waters and Litchfield.  We swam lots and the warm weather was wonderful.  At Litchfield, Wangi Falls were closed due to the high rainfall and the late wet season but we found a couple of new places to swim, one was Walker Creek – WOW.  We bushwalked about 3kms to get to it, it was a plunge pool at the bottom of small cascading waterfalls and we swam with fish and water dragons etc.  It was just wonderful.

We have been back a couple of weeks but it’s been rather hectic, catching up with stuff which we are still doing but getting there.

The most exciting news is that we have started our donor cycle – Yay!  I am calmly excited if that’s possible 🙂  The trip away gave me some time to truly think and reflect and let go of my demons and regrets, so now I am ready for this journey and the next phase of our wonderful life together. 

I love Shane very much and so glad that we are doing this together, he is a wonderful person.  I love my donor and can’t wait to also share this exciting journey with her xox

Will keep you all updated, thanks for your support, thoughts and wishes xox