Hello Hello

I've been debating what to post about the past few days. It seems that every time I have an appointment I come back to my blog and post a massive word vomit of emotions. Probably not the nicest thing for people to read but I suppose it gets it out of my head.

I had my appointment with one of the nurses at the IVF clinic on Monday. I'm still trying to get my head around everything. It was a total information overload.

I walked away feeling more knowledgable about the IVF process, but sad that this may be something we won't be doing anytime soon. And that hurts.

Knowing that we have come all this way and having to stop is absolutely heart breaking. Every time I think of this I want to cry. It just doesn't seem fair that our finances are dictating whether we have a family or not.

We are looking into options to fund an IVF cycle.

Firstly there are medical finance providers that you can obtain low interest/no interest loans from but of course its more debt to add to our collection. And there's not a guarantee that they will loan us any money anyway!

Secondly, I am looking into accessing our superannuation money. This seems like a complicated process but I have read about a few people who have achieved this for the purpose of IVF. To me this is a better option than going into more debt, although it lowers the amount of cash we will have available on retirement...but we have plenty of time to add to it really. DH was a bit concerned about trying this, but as I said to him it doesn't hurt to look at all the options.

My last option is something that was brought to my attention yesterday by one of the nurses. She called me up and told me that the clinic is looking at giving out financial hardship assistance to help a couple get an IVF cycle in before the end of the year. She couldn't give me the amount of discount we would receive from this, but she seemed to think it was substantial. She asked me to write a letter outlining our circumstances and get it to the Nursing Coordinator before Thursday.

I wrote the letter last night, tweaked it this morning and emailed it off. Now all I can do is wait and see what happens. To get a discount off the upfront costs would be amazing and to get a chance to have an IVF cycle before the year is over...well I don't think I have to say how excited we would be if that were possible!!!

So I'm not all doom and gloom. There are a few little rays of hope shining through..but sometimes its hard to see them for all the clouds!

I know I have whinged about Facebook before and the evilness of pregnancy and birth announcements...but in the past 2 days I have been hit with 2 more pregnancy announcements. Ouch!

The first was not an announcement as such but more of a extremely long update about this particular lady (someone I went to school with) having spent 5 days in hospital and it turns out her body doesn't like being pregnant...or something to that effect. Now I was quite shocked to hear about her being pregnant again. Her first has just turned 1 and from the thousands of status updates about how much she loves her daughter or how clever her little girl is etc etc, it seems she is a loving mum. BUT when she is not posting about her daughter, her posts are a constant run down of not having any money, not having a place to live, having to move rental properties and then more about not having any money. I am not exaggerating either..she status updates sometimes 3-4 times a day and her 2 topics are daughter or whinge about lack of money etc. There is nothing else.

So I have to wonder why on earth she is having another baby when it seems like they can't afford the one they have. And then of course it gets me thinking about the whole fairness thing...we have a house and stability and can afford a baby, yet we can't have one because the costs of IVF are so extreme. Yet she's onto her second.


The 2nd announcement was yesterday. I flicked onto Facebook and the top update was "insert name" is growing a human! Complete with picture of her 12 week scan. Mmmmm....This is another girl I went to school with who is also onto her second child. First child is from her now ex-husband and this child is the new partner. Awesome!

I think the majority of girls I have on Facebook from school are either pregnant or mummies. It's like a slap in the face everytime I get online lately as there seems to be another announcement or a flood of cute photos. SIL is on count down mode now. I think it's about 7 weeks until she is due. She keeps posting photos of herself holding other people's babies. Apparantly several of her friends have just given birth plus her SIL has also just had a baby. Then  another girl from school has just had her 2nd so there is an influx of newborn photos she has shared. It's enough to make you cry...or scream...or smash a computer screen.

It's times like these that I hate the powers of Facebook that connect you with everyone. It just magnifies the heartache and anger I am feeling about our situation. Even writing about it all makes me feel sad.

Time for some cheer up music and an end to this post. This song makes me want to get up and boogey!

'Kiss With A Fist' -Florence & The Machine