Kerry's OHSS Experience

I experienced OHSS during my first cycle of IVF in 2006, As I said in my story my first cycle was text book, It went so smoothly and I was a little young and nieve.I never really thought about what was happening to me and my body I just went with the flow I didn't know what was going on really anyway. So anyway I had my egg retrieval on the 26th April 2006 and collected 15 eggs,On the 28th we transfered 2 embryos with no problems. We went back to our caravan to relax for a few days but on the Sunday late morning I had the urge to goto toilet but regardless to how much I wanted to pee it just wasn't happening, Within half an hour of this i was on the floor in aganising pain in my tummy my husband rang the IVF unit out of hours service who told me I had to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Well the ride to the hospital seemed like forever I was in the back of the car screaming in pain and my tummy had swollen so much so that when we arrived at the hospital they wanted to take me upto the labour ward as they thought thats what was happening. I was taken to the gyne ward and lots of test where done including and most inportantly input and output of fluids, Yes I had to pee in a jug and measure it, It turns out that I was suffering from OHSS my tummy had swollen so much due to fluid leaking from my overies from the follicles that they had retrieved 4 days earlier and it was collecting in my abdoman and pressing on my organs and bladder which is why I couldn't for the life of me pee. I was kept in hospital for about 4 days to continue monitoring my input and output and also some pretty strong pain relief, I was finally allowed home when my output matched my input as this shows the condition was improving. Over the next 2 weeks we waited for our pregnancy test day to come and we was over joyed when it showed positive, I still had to rest a lot because I was still in alot of pain from the OHSS and still had another 3 weeks to our first scan. On our first scan all was well with the baby a healthy heartbeat was visible but so was 2 very swollen Overies and 4 lutheal cyst 10cm in size each so no wonder I was in so much pain, As the pregnancy progressed the pain eased and the swelling became a baby bump but even at my 12 week scan my overies was 4 times the size they should of been.

This is me at 5 weeks pregnant with my second pregnancy,

as you can see I suffered from OHSS again. PS I hate this photo but had to share it so you get an idea of the swelling.