Well... another 6 weeks or so has gone since I updated this page but I have been very busy reading other blogs and following the journeys of some amazing women.
I'm off work today through until Wednesday next week seeing as I have my first powerlifting competition on Sunday and today we made the exciting first step on our journey to becoming a family.
Now I know I've talked a lot about me but the main focus of this blog is going to be our attempt(s) at PGD IVF which includes diagnosing certain genetic conditions before the embyros are implanted to prevent them from being passed on to your children. Our reason for doing this is because ALS lost his mum to Huntington's Disease about 7 years ago now and may well carry the gene himself. He doesn't want to know if he has the gene but also doesn't want to risk passing it on to any future generations so by using PGD, not only can we protect our children but we can do it in such a way that we don't find out if he has the gene or not - so many things can go wrong during the IVF process it's not uncommon to not get any suitable embryos even without the HD gene being tested for.
Anyway, we went to see his GP this morning to ask for a referral to a Clinical Geneticist who will help us to apply for NHS funding for the process. The rules generally are that you get 3 funded attempts but only if you have no living children from the relationship (and other certain criteria relating to age, smoker status etc.) so if it works on our first attempt we'd have to pay for the IVF if we wanted to try for a second child - but it's still amazing that they're willing to help us protect our future family from this horrible disease and give us a good chance at it.
I'll explain more once we know more about the process but the idea we've been given is that it can take 1-2 years just to get the funding in place and we want to be able to start trying for babies once we're married (hopefully in February next year) and in our new house (hopefully in October this year). So we have a lot going on at the moment and it doesn't feel significant but we have made a MASSIVE step today - which was surprisingly easy. The GP pretty much said straight away that he'd write up a referral and we'd get an appointment through the post... we'll wait and see but ALS always seems to have far more competent GPs than myself so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
If by some miracle it does happen quicker than we'd imagine and we get the funding in place this year, that's great and we can just delay the IVF cycle until next year in the comforting knowledge that we don't have to worry about applying for funding.
I'm sure to some people this doesn't sound like a lot but with the HD gene in the family we have to start preparing to have a baby a long time before we actually want to have one. We can't just one day decide that we're ready, stop contraception and get going so it's nice to be at least a tiny way into that journey :)
