Jordan and I have been trying to a baby for a couple of years. We were told prior to my surgery that there might be some issues because of scarring following the surgery. We were trying for about two years before we decided to go to the GP and talk to them about it. We decided to try for a bit longer than the normal year before getting help because we were aware that my body had been through a lot, even after surgery I was still on steroids for a while which can affect all sorts and so we decided to wait a little bit longer than they averagely advise. This was personal choice, so it might be different for everyone.
We initially went to the doctors to talk about being able to see what support was available. The doctor that we saw was lovely and spoke about doing the initial testing and then referring us to Bourn Hall which is the local fertility clinic to us. They talked to us about a number of things, how long we had been trying, any previous children, any medical conditions that we had and anything within the family. They talked to us about our jobs and made the decision that they were happy to refer us on to the next stage. Jordan had to do a test for his sperm and then I had to do a blood test to ensure that there were no major issues that were obvious to sort out.
After a rather strange experience for Jordan at Kings Lynn Hospital, his results came back. Now, we made the silly decision to google what they meant. Most of his results were absolutely fine, but one result came back as not usual, I think it was the Morphology. Now on googling, this told us all kinds of things and we started to worry about it however (spoiler alert) when we actually talked it through with someone, they explained that it wasn’t actually that bad. A lesson learned to not google the results when you have no idea what most of the terms mean and you are not an expert in the field.
My initial blood test result was also a bit of a fail within all the planning. They were trying to test my serum progesterone levels to ensure that I was ovulating properly. Now this test needs to happen on the 21st day of your cycle I believe, however as there are a million bank holidays in August, we could not do it on the 21st day. We booked it for the 23rd day which I was assured by the doctor would ‘probably’ be alright. Anyway, my serum progesterone then came back as low which is a bit of a problem. When I had the follow up appointment to discuss the results, they just wanted to do another test to ensure that this was not an incorrect result. We did the second test and all came back normal and so we were on to the next stage. We were told to wait to hear from Bourn Hall and so the anxious wait began.