Owen came home and he’s put on weight…

Asking the Dr’s if Owen could come home
Coming Home

On Sunday the 7th of January, a very hot day in Penrith, the Dr’s approved us to bring Owen home, yayyyyy

They loved the written note on Owen’s crib asking if he could, thanks to one of the fabulous NICU nurses for writing it xox

We were so happy to take him home but he’s still so tiny and hardly fits in his capsule, we’ve got the straps on the smallest setting!  Of course nervous as well.

It was nice not to be going to the hospital several times a day but then came the 3 hourly feeds 🙂 all worth it though xox

 

We had to go back a few times every couple of days to get him weighed and checked and each time he put on weight, though the first weigh in only a little but he’s now 2.10kg or probably more as that was at the last weigh in.

Our two boys xox

Liam is great with him, really gentle most of the time and gives him kisses, too cute!  Though he gets boisterous and not so gentle with Owen or with us.. but he’s very good and at night when we put him to bed he blows Owen a kiss goodnight in his bassinet… he melts my heart xox

We’ve not done much with him home, I’m still sore and exhausted and my blood pressure is still playing up a bit, more to do with now not being pregnant and getting the medications right and in line with my bp coming down and righting itself.. some huge headaches with this ride but hopefully the high bp was pregnancy related and will right itself soon.

 

Owen and Great Nan

Owen is growing and we did introduce him to Shane’s Nan the other day, she’s 98 and doing well considering and she got to cuddle him lots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The great team that helped us to get our two boys xox

(photo of Dr Matabese from Cape Fertility to come :))

Owen and Dr Merchant (our local GP, he’s amazing)
Dr Pardey and me xox
Sarah and me (Sarah was our reg Ob for Liam and delivered him for us and now works for Dr Pardey, she’s gorgeous xox)
and here’s the gorgeous Maree, she was our reg Ob with Liam’s pregnancy for the most part and she with Dr Pardey delivered Owen, and is also amazing xox
Cheryl at Balance Medical, did all my blood tests and has been along for the ride xox
The lovely Simone and Cheryl at Balance xox
Its a hard life at 4 weeks xox
4 weeks old
Happy Family going home

 

Well I think that’s our family complete for us, though we might consider adoption in a few years or maybe fostering… I don’t think i can put any of us or our team through another pregnancy, though I did give Dr Pardey, Maree and Sarah a scare by saying I wanted to be a surrogate, and yes I’d love to do this but again I can’t put my family through another complicated pregnancy.  Whilst another pregnancy might be much easier like it was with Liam there’s no guarantee so that’s it for us xox

We are considering on-donating our embryo’s in Cape Town at some point, we just need to get through the next year or so and we’ll start this process xox

So as soon as I finish breast feeding Owen, I’ll be back to see the lovely Prof Kefford to do a check up and probably start Tamoxifen for a few years to keep that big  C away…

Gosh I can’t believe we’ve done it, phew and yayyyyy it’s a bit surreal still and after so many years and so much heartache it does seem like a dream.

Now to focus on our boys and helping others achieve this…. thanks again for everyone’s support and help along the way and we hope we can continue to help others to achieve their dream.

Lots of love Dianne, Shane, Liam and Owen xoxox

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

D&C all done, yayyyyy

Great news, my d&c has been done, my uterus is clear of all those nasty chemo drugs…. now need to see my reconstruction surgeon on Monday as I am still in lots of pain from the last surgery and I shouldn’t be, hopefully it’s just my body overwhelmed by all the breast cancer surgeries and treatments… 🙁

We are still working towards a late September embie/snow baby transfer…. now I’m getting excited, but a bit nervous as most of us know that it’s not an absolute…
Off to see my wonderful TCM & acupuncturist Kathryn Taylor tomorrow, have been seeing her for years and she’s fabulous, gosh she knows just about everything about infertility. She’s been away for a while so I’ve been seeing her locum but it will be fabulous to catch up with her tomorrow…

Would love to hear how you are going with your journey xoxox

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