hopefully this will be my last entry on this  journey 🤞🏻

5th April 2021

so in april Vicky was finally in the right place to start treatment again, it’s been a struggle getting to this point but we’ve made it and ready to go again so after ringing the hospital to let them know we had a decision to make, 

the donor we used last time was unavailable this time so we had go through and try and find a new one when putting in our criteria it was only coming up with one so after plenty of thinking and time running out for us we decided to go for it, so the donor was picked and we were waiting till we got the call, after a number of emails to a gentleman who worked at the hospital we were promised that the donor will be with manchester fertility ready for us to start. 

30th April 2021 

after picking the donor Vicky made the call to the hospital to request to start treatment in the morning, usually it takes a few days for them to get back to her about starting so when she received a phone call that afternoon we knew something was wrong it turns out that the donor had not been transferred and we wouldn’t be able to start treatment until it had been transferred as you can understand this was absolutely heartbreaking for us as we wanted to get started, 

28th May 2021

Vicky made the call to start again, this time we were accepted and the donor had been transferred, after not hearing from the hospital by sunday we had gone for something to eat in manchester on the way back we got the call that when we got home vicky can start taking her injections. 

8th june 2021 

after taking the injections for 9 days we had an appointment at the hospital for vicky to have a scan to see how everything was progressing, to our surprise vicky had reacted to the medication quicker than we thought, after the scan we found out that we 5 follicles which had grown and that due to her age there’s a good possibility that there might not be anymore, ( oh by the way i wasn’t allowed in the hospital for this part i went for a run round my favourite bars in manchester) so the nurse decided that she would be taking her trigger injection that night. 

10th June 2021 

Vicky had an appointment at Manchester Fertility for egg collection after an early start we arrived  (once again due to the on going pandemic i wasn’t allowed in another run round the area) at the clinic, after an hour Vicky was taken down for the collection 30 minutes later she was out and they had managed to collect 2 eggs. 

12th June 2021 

on the 11th june we got a call that only one egg had made it through the night, usually they want to wait till day 5 of the growth but with only one they decided to transfer on the saturday (12th June) so everything went smoothly and the embryo was transferred now it’s down to the 2 week wait…

26th June 2021 

so today is the day test day we’ve both been absolutely scared to death and not slept a wink all night…the result pregnant…what a massive shock it was to us both we weren’t expecting. 

20th july 2021 

today we have had a seven week viability scan to check that everything was growing properly, everything was which was great news (we got this far before) the person doing the scan didn’t give us a due date which we didn’t mind.

27th july 2021 

our first midwife appointment it was a strange sitting in the midwife’s office i never got to go last time due to covid, i didn’t realise how much stuff we had to go through mind blowing. 

19th july 2021 

we’ve made it to our next milestone 12 weeks it’s a massive relief to make it this far i’ve never been as happy in my life to get here. 

21st july 2021 

it’s our 12 week scan day sleep has been limited for the past two nights we’ve been worried sick about it.

it was such a relief when we saw that little heart beat and the little body on the screen, even better when they started waving there arms and legs like they were having a party, 

16th october 2021

today is our 20 week scan, we find out what we’ll be having, it’s a 50/50 chance of either a boy or a girl…….it’s a Girl we are absolutely over the moon everything is fine. 

24th february 2022

so we have been having growth scans from 33 weeks every 2 weeks so see how she is growing, todays scan was our last one as the doctor said the growth has slowed down and that they would prefer to get her out, so the doctor makes a phone call to find out when the next available induced appointment is, we we’re thinking about a week later, nope this saturday 26th february. 

26th february 2022 

induced day we made our way to the hospital for our 12pm appointment, it took at lot longer than we thought to get everything started, fast forward 24 hours 

27th february 2022

after what felt an a life time, around about 9pm Vicky’s waters finally broke with a little help, so a phone call to the birth suit to see if they was any room available, by 10pm we we’re settled in ready for a long night, luckily the mother in law turned up to keep an eye on things. 

28th february 2022 

9:44am Iris Hope Pate arrives weighing 7lb, best day of our lives, she’s is what we have been fighting for the past 7 years.

just like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey over the last 7 years it’s not been easy for any of us but we made it.xx 

Mark, Vicky, Iris and Eric

🥰🥰

our journey pt4

so since my last post we’ve all been through a lot, 

we’ve both lost grandparents over the past few months which was a tough time for us both and not knowing when we were going to start treatment again. 

but in June we got a phone calling saying that everything will start moving again and to ring up on the next cycle which happened to be a week after Vicky’s s 38th birthday at the end of July.

we were told that we should be ready to start in August so we went to St Mary’s Manchester to sign our forms to start and to pick up Vicky’s medication.  

but this time it’s going to be really different as Vicky is to isolate from the day of her Covid test which was on 7th August until the treatment had finished which works out about 7 weeks.

so we’ve got everything crossed this time and praying every night that we get the miracle we both want.

vicky went for her scan on the 26th august to check that everything was going ok, it was, she had a thick uterus lining which is what they want so we are ready for transfer on the 2nd september.

the transfer was a success we are on Day 4 at the moment so it’s just a waiting game.

on the 14th september we did a pregnancy test and it was positive 

at the beginning of october we went for our 7 week scan as a precaution which comes with having ivf  and everything was great, we managed to see a strong, steady heartbeat.

fast forward to this week 22/10/2020 

a few days ago Vicky started losing symptoms so we booked in for an early scan at a local company to check everything was ok.

on having the scan we found out that the baby wasn’t showing the size of a 10 week baby but 8 weeks 5 days and she couldn’t find an heartbeat.

the earliest appointment at BGH was 2:30pm friday (but since were under Saint Mary’s we didn’t realise that we could use Wythenshawe Hospital,) couldn’t wait and we got an appointment at Wythenshawe hospital to find out. Vicky had to go for the scan by herself due to Covid you can’t understand how hard it was for her to do this.

the Heartbreaking news was confirmed that our baby had not survived and we had had a miscarriage at 8 weeks 5 days the only we explain how we feel is empty and lost.

in the coming days Vicky would have to pass the pregnancy, we went back to Wythenshawe on the sunday to start the process which would run on into the early hours of monday morning. we had arrived back home after nearly 12 hours at the hospital when the stuff the nurses had given her had started to kick in and we made a call to BGH where the pregnancy was passed which vicky had to do all by herself as i wasn’t allowed in the hospital and had to go home and wait for a call to pick her up and bring her home.

on the monday afternoon Vicky had to go for a scan to see if everything had gone. 

i really can’t put into words how devastated we are 💔 

thanks for all the flowers and text messages we received from our loved ones over them days  

6th November2020 

 it should have been our 12 week scan today it’s been one of the hardest days 💔💔 

just to let you know we will never ever forget you Baby Pate 

😘😘

our journey continued

since my last post https://markp83.blogspot.com/2019/06/our-journey.html

we have had a pretty tough time really finding, out that the operation i had never worked was absolutely devastating. 

3rd july 2019 

we had appointment to see a counsellor to talk to us about what other options we had and how we were feeling about things. we have to admit it was a rough time for us but it has made us even stronger.

 

in between this we had to sit down and pick which Donor sperm we wanted to use 

16th July 2019 

we went to a presentation about Donor Conception and ivf which gave us a good insight of what was going to be happening over the coming months. 

24th July 2019

 we went to see a doctor who explained to us what was going to happen next where we signed consent forms for us to start the next part of the treatment.

on the same day Victoria signed forms to starts treatment for ivf using her eggs and a donor sperm. 

8th August 2019 

we had a meeting with a nurse to discuss the medication what Victoria would be taking. (by this time we had been transferred to Manchester Fertility) on her next menstrual cycle she had to ring asking if she could start taking injections for 5 days then another injection on top of that for another 6 with blood test and scans on the 8th then every other day, on the 12th day she had to take a trigger injection which set us up for what was to come next. Injections started on the 20th september 2019

2nd October 2019 

after all the injections we had to go to Manchester Fertility Hospital for egg collection, they managed to get 9 eggs which was for someone our age was very good so then we had to wait to see how many had survived the process for a Fresh Embryo Transfer, in the evening Victoria started taking her progesterone pessaries which lasted till the test day 1 in the morning and 1 evening.

7th October 2019 

we found out that we had 3 survivors 1 which was to be implanted and 2 to be frozen, we had 1 implanted on the day, 

during the wait Victoria started feeling cramps in her stomach but after a week they disappeared. 

18th October 2019 

test day unfortunately it was a negative test. offered counselling but declined as we just wanted to know why it hadn’t worked but no one could tell us.

22nd November 2019 

we had a follow up appointment with an embryologist to tell us what will been happening next which was to start again but this time it wouldn’t be as intense but we would have to wait a couple of months. They said on paper we had had the perfect ivf cycle which made it even more frustrating. 

we tried to ring up in January but we had to wait for victoria to get her smear test results so we could go ahead.

February 2020

Victoria rung up to request to start treatment again this time she was taking oestrogen tablets 3 times a day, then on the 28th we had a scan to see how things were going, everything was perfect. 

6th March 2020

today was transfer day, they rung us in the morning to tell us the embryo was thawing perfectly and would be ready when we got there, we were taken into the threatre to start the process. victoria started taking progesterone pessaries again.

18th March 2020

test day unfortunately it was another Negative test at this point we started to wonder what we were doing wrong. 

9th April 

victoria was not feeling herself and taking it bad so decided to get in touch with a Fertility Councillor to talk about the situation and felt a lot better after the talk. 

23rd April 2020 

so at the moment we have no idea when we will start treatment again with the current situation with Corvid-19, we know people have their struggles in life but this is ours but we will continue to stay strong and battle through until we can go again as to when we don’t know. 

thanks for reading

The Pates.x 

our journey

last year i wrote something on request of our doctor telling us to make a people aware of the situation we are in and the operation that i had when i was younger which caused the problem(http://markp83.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/in-december-2016-me-and-wife-made.html?m=1)  but since then me and my wife have numerous test and scans done on us internal and external ones. 

since January 2018 Victoria had to get her BMI down from 32 to under 30 (which she has smashed after starting the couch 2 5k one year ago) as we would not have got the NHS funding until then, she was also advised to start taking Folic Acid and Vitamin D daily, before that she had a 2D pelvic ultrasound and then was booked for a 3D pelvic ultrasound in the following april, the results for the ultrasound were fine.

for me i was found to have a azoospermia. i was then booked in for a Hormone profile, Karyotype, CF gene mutation testing and Testicular Ultrasound, i was also advised to change my lifestyle and healthy eating including 5 a day fruit and Veg.

our next appointment was to find out the results from my ultrasound which showed an irregular outline on my right testicle the left one was normal, which resulted in me going for a sperm prep test to see if we would be successful enough to go for either IVF or ICSI. 

after getting the results of the sperm prep test we found out it showed no sperm so i was booked on to the waiting list for Surgical Sperm Retrieval and booked in for a Y chromosome micro deletion test aswell. 

in our next appointment on the 19/03/19 i signed a consent form to go ahead with the operation and then i signed declaration forms for us to have treatment for either IVF or ICSI. 

in the same appointment we also found out that i didn’t have the Y chromosome that was needed, he also mentioned that he wanted to do some research on me to see where the problem was as he has not seen this before. 

so today 19/06/19 2 days after my operation i’m in a little bit of pain and black and blue down below and yesterday we had it confirmed that we will get the results of the operation on friday afternoon 🤞🏻🤞🏻

in december 2016 me and the wife made an appointment at the doctors to see if we could get an answer about why we couldn’t conceive a baby. after the appointment i was sent to Burnley General Hospital to do my 1st seman sample which i did in January 2017....

March 10th 9:30am was the day we had our next appointment the news we got was life changing.

so we were made an appointment at BGH to see the fertility specialist Dr Nethra on Friday 21st April 2017 were i had to do 2 seamen samples which came back with the same result 0 count which we got on 31st July 2017 so after that we were made an appointment to go to St.Mary Hospital in Manchester on 2nd October 2017 where the wife had to have a scan and i had to do another seman at  the end off October we received our next appointment letter to see one of the country’s top specialists Dr Akhtar for the 25th January 2018 at 9:30am, we arrived for appointment not expecting much to find out in which direction we go in.

during the appointment the wife got the news that she has a very low egg count and her uterus was a different shape which made it even harder for us to conceive now.

so after a long conversation with doctor it all comes down to that when i was about 9 years old i was sent for an operation called Undescended Testicles (which is a condition where a child’s testicles are not in their usual place in the scrotum) which at the time the team of IVF specialists back then would not know what damage it would cause in the years to come, so yesterday the doctor mentioned that if the operation had been put off till my sperm was active we could have extracted some sperm to freeze for when i was ready to settle down and start a family (Mum and Dad it’s not your Fault)

so the Doctor has told me to change my Diet as from today to eat more fruit and veg and more foods which contain more natural zinc to build up my sperm and booked me in to do another sample test which is on the 6th April and the wife is booked in for a 3d scan so the Doctor can see what shape her uterusis and we’ll have a follow up appointment on the 21st June, where we will discuss what the next step we take in our life.there is a a big possibility that they will need to operate on me where they will try and extract seman before it gets to where it’s supposed to be in my body.

i’ve been asked to right this story by my Doctor to try and get people to be aware off whats happening in the world and to get people who are suffering from Undescended Testicle that  if you are at the age of 16-18 years old they can extract what is need and be frozen for when you are ready to settle down and start a family of your own the percentage of men who are suffering infertility in the world is now at 40% which is a lot so please if you know anyone who has the condition please plead with them to go and see their doctor about it they can do something about it. this blog is not written for sympathy but to simply raise awareness of male infertility.

thanks for reading