Gent's a Go

Yesterday afternoon Flo and I headed off to Gent's University Hospital for our scheduled appointment with the fertility clinic. The journey turned out to be quite treacherous, since we're currently suffering from heavy rain and strong winds in the Netherlands, so driving conditions were pretty tricky!

After giving our history and medical background to the trainee doctor, we had a good, long chat with the fertility doctor. She was very frank with us. She said that, taking account of all the information that she has, she is inclined to agree with the opionion of the doctors at Voorburg that our chances of success are less than average. However, she went on to say that we're still young and we have time on our side and that she would not recommend stopping at this point unless we either can't afford to continue or don't wish to subject ourselves to further stress that is inevitable with the treatment.

She agreed that Flo appears to be what is referred to as a "poor responder" to hormone stimulation. In order to have a reasonable chance (30-40%) of the treatment being successful, Flo needs to produce about eight eggs during the treatment cycle. Since Flo only seems to be producing about four or five, this straight away reduces the chance of success. However, given that we have been successful in the past up to placing the eggs back, she thinks it is worth continuing.

In Belgium, it's standard practice to have six fertility treatments sponsored by the government, giving an overall rate of success of over 90%. In the Netherlands, the government only sponsors three attempts, giving an overall success rate of around 80%. This alone gives the Belgians a much more positive outlook on fertility treatment and they are far more willing to continue treatment for longer. As a result, the Belgian hospitals are far more relaxed about success rates and are not phased by league tables (showing which are the most "successful" fertility clinics in the country).

The doctor thought that our chances of success were around 20%. However, after the trainee doctor examined Flo with an ultrasound scan, around seven or eight follicles could clearly be seen (along with another small cyst on the left side), which was encouraging so early in her cycle. So it appears that Flo's fertility cycle is a little bit tempremental, peaking and troughing. Therefore, the timing of the treatment could well be critical and so it will likely be worth us waiting until Flo appears to be in a peak before starting an ICSI treatment.

The Belgian doctor advised that, given that Flo does not respond well to stimulation, there is very little risk of her hyper-stimulating. She therefore advised using the full dose of hormones and very small doses of down regulating drugs. Interestingly, she was very suprised that our last treatment was cancelled by the clinic, since, given that it was obvious that Flo was a poor responder, it would have been worth continuing the treatment for another week since delayed responses are often observed in women with conditions similar to Flo.

So, the bottom line is that they'd be more than happy to treat us in Gent. However, it's quite a drive, so it would be easier on us if we could at least have some of the ultrasounds done at a local hospital. Ideally though, we'd prefer to continue treatment at Voorburg. With the additional insight and confidence that they've given us at Gent, we're looking forward to returning to Voorburg to see if they propose continuing with us and to see if they are prepared to be flexible with the treatment that they offer us. It's strange, but, given the experiences that we've had and from talking with a few informed people, we seem to have formulated our own idea of what treatment we want. Unfortunately, doctors don't like being told what to do and don't like their conclusions being questioned... least of all by their patients!

Well... let's see what they have to say when we return to Voorburg next month. At the very least, we now have a plan B. Personally, I'm now much more confident and enthusiastic about continuing to chase our objective to have our own child.

We finished the day with a nice meal at Grade, a restaurant featured in one of Flo's magazines. The food wasn't anything special, but the ambience was nice and the company was excellent! It gave us time to unwind and debrief one another of the day's events.

Panorama: the baby-making boom

There is a program about IVF on television tonight. Panorama is a current affairs program on BBC and tonight they examine claims that some couples are being sold over-priced, unproven and unneccessary treatments. It is on BBC one at 20:30 English time, so 21:30 Dutch time.

Curtains!

At last, out curtains have arrived (well, most of them). No more card board boxes in the windows, no more neighbours spying on us watching TV, just a warmer, friendlier feeling house!

Here's a couple of the pictures of the big doors at the back of main room, showing the curtains open and then closed. The curtains are made from linen and so are quite light, which continues to let in lots of light during the day, but should be sufficient to stop people spying on us during the night (I hope).


The lounge is where we've really been missing some privacy, but that should now be rectified. The curtains should also make the room feel much warmer and cut down the draughts caused by the window (but will still need a new TV Flo!).


And finally we've got rid of the boxes that were acting as curtains in the bedroom. The room feels much lighter and bigger now!


Just need to pain those pipes (and all the windows come to think of it).

The remaining curtains should be ready at the end of the month. Cool... it's got me excited about finishing the house again now! Can't wait to try out the curtains in the lounge tonight...

Happy New Year!

First of all, appologies for not adding any posts for the past few weeks... it's not because we don't care or that the novelty has worn off, simply a technical problem with Blogger, but I won't go into the technical details.

Fortunately, my smart, techie wife sorted it out today... after scanning through the internet she found a reference to try something that she hadn't done before and made one last attempt to sort the problem out... and it worked!

So, time to catch up on what's been going on over the past few weeks! First of all, we got our new kitchen counter top installed just in time for Christmas!


It's looking nice and new and shiny in the picture above, but already after a few weeks of use it is inevitably covered in scratches and marks... but this just adds to the character and soon it will look like it's supposed to look like that!

Also just before Christmas, we had some blinds installed in the upstairs bedroom, upstairs hall and bathroom.


The upstairs bedroom has now become the guest room, so the installation of the blinds was just in time for my parents coming over from the UK and visiting us for Christmas. They arrived the Saturday before Christmas, which was just in time to help us prepare for a large Christmas Eve dinner, with Flo's parents, her two brothers and their families... fourteen people in total! So the kitchen was put through its paces and to feed so many people we bought a huge 8kg turkey! Turns out that this was more than big enough, since we're still eating turkey curry now! We did a quick calculation last night and figured that we're going to get about thirty meals out of that bird!


We think the party turned out well... we enjoyed it at least and hosting dinners like this is exactly what we had in mind keeping the space at the front of the house big and open... one of my friends that saw the house for the first time a few weeks back commented that we have the perfect party house! We just need to make an effort to host some events over the next couple of years... the next one should be the house warming!

For Boxing Day, we took my parents to the Lucent Danstheater in Den Haag to watch the Kirov Ballet of Saint Peterburg perform The Nutcracker! We weren't so keen on the first half of the performance, but the second half is breathtaking and was well worth the visit. It felt like a very special way of spending Boxing Day evening and we felt very privileged to see the performance. We'd certainly recommend going and seeing it, if only for a spot of people watching, since there was certainly a large cross section of the people that attended!

Christmas turned out to be pretty busy this year, so by New Year we treated ourselves to a quiet night in, catching up on the second series of Prison Break whilst drinking champagne and eating fresh sushi from Simonis in Scheveningen (where my parents enjoyed probably the best fish and chips in the Netherlands on the day that they departed back to the UK). At midnight we ventured out into the street and watched the local inhabitants put on a loud and quite spectacular fireworks display on out little plein down the street.

So all in all we had a very pleasant and memorable festive period, so much so that heading back into work took quite some effort! But things are about back into full swing and both Flo and myself seem to be as busy as ever! But there's plenty to look forward to in 2007...