Well it’s true that pride comes before a fall. Having 15 eggs harvested we felt fairly confident that that was that with the hospital visits, apart from those needed for reimplantation. The eggs have to go through various stages, and we knew we would lose a few at each stage, but with 15 we felt we’d reach the end with a few to spare.

Our first call from the geneticists was to let us know only 13 eggs were viable to be fertilised – still a good number. Then 8 became fertilised, that felt like a big drop. Only 5 developed to the blastocyst (cell forming) stage… OK getting a bit worried. But the real hitter was when I got the call to say only one had developed well enough for them to successfully take a genetic sample and freeze the embryo.

Firstly, with a 50/50 chance of the embryo having PKD, only taking one embryo forward already seemed risky. But looking into the future we knew we wanted more than one child. We were hoping to have several healthy embryos from the process so, once we had to pay for the IVF ourselves (NHS will only pay for the first child), we’d have ready selected embryos to cut out a chunk of the cost. Plus it would mean I didn’t have to go through the hormone cycle again. But one embryo meant whatever happened we’d have to start all over again.

And then three weeks later we got the call that the embryo had PKD, so now we’re back to the start.

I wouldn’t mind as much if we could book back in at the hospital next week, but even though we found out in August that we needed to restart, the earliest appointment we can get is in March. That’s a lot of wasted time.

More frustratingly we need new appointments to re-sign our consent forms, and an appointment to talk to our consultant, both of which seem a waste of everyone’s time to me.

At the end of the day we are lucky to get to go through this process at all, but it’s just so incredibly slow, with so many unnecessary appointments and processes. Still, finger’s crossed the next lot of embryos have a little more umph to them, and a little less PKD.

(I couldn’t find a picture of a load of embryos so here are some jellyfish instead.)