Leading up to the start of IVF was pretty daunting for me. I had never been to hospital, had a procedure or really needed anything more than a visit to the local GP.

So this month-long wait was interesting, I was constantly feeling anxious and a ball of nerves and I knew that I needed to come up with a way to concentrate on something else besides the loud ticking of the IVF alarm clock.

So I did the only thing a totally rational person would do, I planned my wedding. By this time Brad and I had been engaged for almost 12 months and had done nothing to start wedding prep.. Having a global pandemic raging around the world had a lot to do with it but also we were half thinking that any time soon we could be pregnant, so perhaps it wasn’t the right time to be getting married.

This is one of the hardest things about the infertility battle; the constant waiting. You feel like you can’t plan anything just in case and all this does is put your entire life on hold.

I rang Brad at work, told him my plans and said, “how about we get married in 12 weeks?” He was on board because we decided to keep the wedding small and intimate, just our closest friends and immediate family. This was because we didn’t want stress and also if a lockdown happened we would still be able to go ahead as we were under the guest cap.

So I grabbed my laptop, emailed the only supplier who I knew I had to work with – the photographer -and I got the dates she was available. 1 full afternoon later and the wedding was basically planned with the only jobs left for the following day including confirming the venue and having lunch with my besties.  the following day

Well those plans went out the door at 2am the next morning…

I was woken in the middle of the night feeling like I needed to go to the toilet. I won’t go into too much detail but nothing would work! I thought I was just having another flare up of my endo so I went to go back to bed. It was then I realised I was bleeding but I wasn’t due for my period and even though I have endo I was extremely regular down to the time of day I get my period; something was happening. My first thought was I was pregnant and miscarrying which was terrifying. Then the pain hit. My whole body started to shake and within seconds I was drenched with sweat, and I was losing the ability to see or hear. I knew I was about to faint. I got myself off the toilet and went to sit on the floor in case I did faint, but I didn’t make it. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor with one hell of a bump on my head.

After a moment I grabbed my phone and rang Brad, he was asleep in the other room as he was supposed to get up for work shortly and doesn’t like to disturb me. I told him I needed to go to the hospital.

Quickly he raced in to see what the hell was going on and I explained what happened, and moments later we were off to the hospital. The pain this whole time was excruciating and I felt every turn and bump on the 15 minute drive there. I was lucky it was a very quiet night in Emergency, although as soon as I said I was bleeding, in pain, and could be pregnant they had me in a wheelchair and back being seen by a whole lot of staff, they weren’t screwing around.

I finally found out what was going on, I had a major cyst rupture. I was relieved to find out it was that but terrified it could happen again.

A couple of hours later after pain relief, blood tests, ultrasounds, and lecture on going home and resting, we were out of there. Back to bed, for the next few days. Wedding planning was going to have to wait and later that day I found out the start date for our IVF would have to wait as well! It was time to let my body heal and not start pumping it full of drugs that could bring on another cyst rupture.

Guess we are waiting another month…. Infertility sure teaches you how to be patient!