Thalia's fertility journey

I know tomorrow you'll find better things

Thank you for the sympathy. Yesterday was better and today is doing ok so far. Yesterday:

• I took Junior out for his post-breakfast nap, so I got a walk. He only slept for 30 minutes but when he woke was happy to look at the passing clouds and leaves so it was quite pleasant
• We walked to the post office where I kicked up enough fuss (and enough money) that they decided to release my domperidone
• On the way home I sat in Starbucks for 10 minutes, read the paper, ate a cheese and Marmite panini and had a few sips of a decaf skinny mocha, no whip
• In the afternoon our current nanny decided to bake a cake with Pob, which Pob thought was a blast, and she also took charge of Junior for 45 minutes so I walked round the corner and sat with my book and a decaf cap in our local deli
• My mum came round to put Pob to bed as H was out for the evening. Pob loves her Granny
• Both children went straight to sleep

It was a much better day.

This morning, I got a call from that nursery school. They're very sorry they sent that letter out. They had a class full of siblings so very few places for new children. But one of the siblings has pulled out since they are moving to the country, and Pob was top of the list for a place, so, would she like it?

I feel better. I also feel conflicted as now I actually have to make a decision about whether the school is right for Pob since she will almost certainly get in to another, closer school which is a bit more relaxed. But it's good to be wanted.

__________________

I need a new title for the blog. Any ideas? I've been musing on some combo of 'evolving infertility', 'Post-post-infertility', 'Evolutionary parenting' but nothing seems very catchy or particularly witty. I've always regretted choosing the original title in a hurry on a day when I just wanted to start writing NOW NOW NOW, so I'm prepared to spend a bit more time trying to be creative this time. I don't feel right letting go completely of the infertility part, even though we won't be doing treatments again. I used to study evolution, hence that reference. The blog won't be just parenting so I don't want to major on that too much, although it will be a part of it. Your creativity much appreciated.

Bad day

Today I:

• Listened to my baby scream on and off for most of the morning while I tried to get him to nap, gave up but then could not constantly hold him but put him down occasionally to answer the phone/make myself a sandwich/eat the sandwich/brush my teeth etc.
• Dealt with some work crap
• Tried to get a hair appointment booked for the first time in 5 months, involving juggling my temperamental colourist, my hair cutter, my MIL for baby-sitting, and my own timing. Plus the salon reception
• Heard from a nanny agency that they don't have anyone else to send us who is a good fit for our position (short version of long story, the current nanny is not working out)
• Heard that the nanny we were interviewing tonight had accepted another job
• Heard that the nanny we invited back for a second interview isn't interested
• Heard that Pob has been turned down by the nursery school we want her to go to (WHY WHY WHY?? How can anyone turn us down - we are lovely and Pob is remarkable!)
• Got told by inhousepharmacy.co.uk that the domperidone I need to keep my supply going has been impounded by the post office and it's not their problem and they will not resend until the end of the week despite there being a mail strike and despite its essential nature to my life*

It was a bit of a crap day.

* Updated to add, they have now agreed to resend, but said it may take up to a month. I am buggered.

Losing it

There are several posts which traditionally show up in the few months after a baby is born. That is if you are a common-or-garden blogger like me, rather than if you are a superstar creative writer like, say, Julie, or Alexa. And even they have been known to write one or two of these. Some experiences are . To my reckoning, those posts are:

• I have a baby, he/she is the best thing that ever happened to me
• The baby doesn't sleep, what do I do?
• Breastfeeding is awful/wonderful/stressful/impossible (delete as appropriate)
• I'm so utterly sleep deprived I just [insert humorous anecdote here]
• My husband isn't helping/is wonderful/doesn't get it/I've fallen more in love with him than ever
• I'm still fat/the weight has just dropped off aren't I lucky

This post falls into the last category, and guess which side of it I am experiencing. Not hard, is it? I have quite a history with weight issues. Not exactly a shocker given the experience of others in this community, not to mention the global privileged world female population.

I'm currently carrying the 15lbs of infertility weight, and another 10lbs of post-pregnancy weight. I was actually losing weight beautifully in the few weeks after Junior was born. It was like magic, stepping on the scales every morning and watching them plummet down. I don't know how much I lost in those weeks as didn't weigh myself after the third month of pregnancy, but everyone commented on how little weight I'd gained this time and when I first weighed myself post-birth, when Junior was about 2 weeks old, I felt pretty optimistic given I was already below the weight I had been four months after Pob was born. But then the weight loss stopped. And then I started gaining again. I managed to halt the gain at only 4lbs by stopping buying my favourite chocolate biscuits, and by walking more with the pram. But that just halted the gain, it hasn't helped me lose more. And the walking with the pram has fallen foul of napping bootcamp (of which more anon), which doesn't help.

The perennial problems are two. First, that I really like food, and second that I eat for comfort. The one time in my adult life that I have been in great shape was around our wedding, and then the impetus to look my best in that huge public display outweighed the two underlying issues. Although I never really gave up on the first one, I always ate delicious food, just less of it and didn't give up chocolate, I just cut back. And exercised A LOT.

But right now the emotional eating side is strong. I've been stuck mostly in the house for four weeks trying to get Junior to nap. I suppose I should just declare defeat (although there has been some progress) and get out again. But I'm bloody minded enough to sense that things might get better and therefore to keep going. And my approach to breast feeding takes so long that the time I have to exercise at all is limited in any case (cue the bloody minded riff again). And the slots that I do have are taken up spending time with Pob, which doesn't give me much exercise as even her favourite activity - running - doesn't happen for long enough or fast enough for me to get a lot of cardio out of it.

So I'm not really exercising, and I feel hard done by enough that I'm eating more than I probably need. Not excessively, but enough not to shift the weight. And I'm getting fed up with not fitting into my nice clothes, but not fed up enough to stop myself from eating that extra bit of chocolate. I'm not sure I'm up for another search into my unconscious to work on the emotional eating bit - although perhaps it would help Pob a lot in the long run - but I am up for trying to find time to exercise, persuading H to give me smaller portions at supper, and perhaps limiting the amount of chocolate in the house. I just need to get on and do it. 

Last week I went out with some of the women from my ante-natal group (from my pregnancy with Pob, I didn't do classes again this time). One already has a second child, one is pregnant, the other two are trying. I confessed to them it was the first time I'd been out since Junior was born, and they were horrified. Particularly the one who already has two children- the second being born just a year after her first. She is somewhat of a socialite and has a very active social life and regular date nights with her husband. She was moved to write me an email asking if I thought I had PND since she was shocked at my lack of activity and lack of confidence ( I should note all these women are at least 6 years younger than me and all but one shed all their baby weight in about a month after their first children were born*). 

I don't think I have PND, I'm certainly a lot more stable than I was after Pob was born. But I am hard on myself. And I am very tired after all these months of feeding in the night. But that's normal at this stage of parenting, yes? I could definitely get out more if I made different choices about my parenting, and it's true that the morning I took Pob out to a charity party and left Junior to have a bottle with our nanny was the morning I've felt the best in a long time. So perhaps that's the key.

Hence a resolution. I'm taking Junior to a cranial osteopath tomorrow to see if that helps to settle him a bit better. Either way, by the end of this week I will be heading out for a fast walk with the pram once a day. And I will try to take a deep breath and start to leave Junior a bit so that I can do more activity and am not tied to being in the house every three hours during the day (yes I know one can breastfeed outside the house, but it's hard with my SNS set up to do so effectively and discretely, and Junior has got to that stage where he's very interested in the world around him so he feeds poorly anywhere other than my bedroom, and also I want to keep my supply up as it's very fragile at the best of times so I do need to pump regularly, and...). Doing so might mean Junior has to have a bit of formula occasionally, and I'm thinking about that. Not ok with it just yet, but I think I need a bit of my life back, as well as doing a bit more to get my body back, before I go back to work and surrender a big part of my life again. 

Cue a whole new post about mothers and guilt and whether it's just my job to sacrifice what I need for my children right now. But I'll stop here and start that one another day.

* And please don't slam them. They are lovely women who love me a lot and appreciate me, they just happen to be rather lucky in the fertility and beauty stakes. Although 'lucky' is a bit relative as one has had two miscarriages and one had horrible anaemia and couldn't breastfeed and one had premature labour and pre-eclampsia.

The end of the fertility journey

I will never be pregnant again.

Really. We have decided that we don't want any more children. The newborn stage with Junior has persuaded me that no matter how much I love my children, I don't need to be that sleep deprived again. Nor do I really want that emotional struggle with breast feeding again. If we'd started earlier, if I had that much more energy, if we even had the option of conceiving easily, when we wanted to, then it would be on the cards. But two children is perfect for us, and I can't help thinking that having three would start to get very complicated in the parenting stakes - speaking as one of three children.

Just because we don't want them, doesn't mean we wouldn't have a surprise. It's very unlikely, but it has happened to others in our community. Well, we are taking steps to remove that option. H has had the preliminary consult for a vasectomy, and has said he will make the appointment before the end of the week. He said, very forcefully, when I pushed him on whether he was happy with permanently ending his fertility, that even if he ended up in another relationship because I had died, he would have enough on his hands with his two children and would not want more. He is committed to the family we have.

We also have several frozen embryos. I can't actually remember how many, somewhere between 6-8. But they were never the best embryos from any cycle, and if we wanted to use them it would be a long and probably painful process of suppression, estrogen, trigger, progesterone, transfer, and possibly a chemical pregnancy or two before we were done. And besides, we don't want any more children. We don't want any more children.

As others have written, though, it's hard to let frozen potential children go even when you know a pregnancy might kill you, let alone because having more children just isn't right for you and your family. Nevertheless, I am psyching myself up to remove our frozen embryos as an option. We will donate them to research. There is no option that I know of to donate them to another family, and even if there was, I'm too old to be an egg donor in the UK so fairly sure that would rule us out. I'll make that call tomorrow. Or the next day. Or after the weekend, perhaps. Well, we have mentally let them go, at least.

With the vasectomy/donation double hit, we will have no other chances to be pregnant again. And I am sad about that, no matter how I think through the misery of sleep deprivation and the pain of failing again to breastfeed my children successfully. I am sad that Pob will not have a sister. I am sad that I will never again use the little white Egyptian cotton babygro with the two little embroidered silver feet on the breast, the babygro which was the first thing I ever bought for Pob. I am sad that I'll never again have that newborn on my chest, conked out between one suck and the next. I have fallen in love so hard with my babies, both times. I fell in love at different points, and it didn't preclude moments of despair and frustration at the screaming infant at a later point. But I won't get to fall in love like that again.

It's sad, but it's wonderful, too. Wonderful that I got to experience that at all. Five and a half years ago we started trying to conceive, and four and a half years ago I started writing about it. There were moments on the journey when I was convinced it would never happen for us. And then moments where I thought Pob would be an only, and mourned for her and for us that sibling relationship. But now here we are, a family of four, and those who meet us now assume it was all smooth sailing - after all, our children are only 21 months apart, and who would 'choose' that? And we have the boy and the girl that people assume must be what we wanted. We have been so incredibly lucky.

And yes, some of that luck is because I pressured and argued, researched and fought for the best treatment, the best treatment as soon as it was possible, fast, no waiting. But that's just a small part of how we got here. An important part, but a small part. Others argue and fight and research and it doesn't happen for them. I have no rationale for why it happened to us other than the weird quirks of my biology, the randomness of that sperm and that egg, and that sperm and that egg and that test tube and that embryologist and that catheter and that drug and the resulting embryo happening to hit the uterine lining just so, and find just the right blood vessel to colonise, and...

So the fertility journey is done. So what, pray, am I doing with this blog, with this blog title? Not writing much, that's for sure. But this isn't goodbye. It's my space, it's our community even if the community I am truly part of now is more naturally those parenting after infertility, with a strong emotional connection on my part, if not on theirs, to those who were in the trenches with me but who didn't make it out, whose embryos never quite found the right bit of the uterine lining. I will try to change the title to more accurately reflect my life now, but I will remain here until they consign Typepad to the dust. The blog got me through, you got me through, through infertility and pregnancy and breastfeeding and the start of parenting.

Junior is stirring. This post didn't end up being what I thought it was going to be. But it is what it is. And I am here, now. A parent.

So. Napping bootcamp then.

You asked what napping bootcamp entails? Well, it first entailed getting in a sleep nanny who was recommended by a colleague. She came in to do one nap with us, but stayed for two given that Junior simply refused to nap for the whole duration of the first one. She gave us various hints tips and tricks to try to get him down, most of which you've heard before, including darkening the room, swaddling him, having a regular schedule, offering a dummy as a nap cue but taking it away before he is completely asleep, picking him up if he gets distressed, patting until he's calm, then putting him down again, etc. She asked us to make sure that almost all his naps for the next week would be at home in a darkened room, and to make an exception only for the late afternoon nap if we had to.

Being me, we've adhered to the plan almost in every detail in an attempt to give it a good try. The only area where I've been a bit lax is in sticking precisely to time. Sometimes I'll go 15 minutes later if he's finally asleep rather than waking him. But other than that we've been very good. And the results have been...mixed. I thought we'd cracked it when on Monday it took only 15 minutes to get him down for his morning nap, and he went down with no fuss at all, just a little grumbling, for the lunchtime nap. But then Tuesday every nap took at least 25 minutes to kick in, and the breakfast one was really screamy as well. Yesterday the morning and lunchtime naps only took 10 minutes each, and the only crying was when I first put him down, he immediately calmed down when I put my hand on him and then just grumbled and then lay quietly while he waited for sleep. But yesterday afternoon he only slept for 10 minutes of the hour's nap time, and this morning took 20 minutes again, although not much of it was crying.

So I dunno. It's been a long week, and unlike the previous not-very-successful napping strategy of putting him in his pram and walking, I've barely left the house. I'm going to give it another 3 days or so and then start to try him in his pram as well as in his room as I'm not prepared to be housebound for the next three months. I like to think this will work eventually but so far I'm not totally convinced.

Just bug me enough, and I'll write. The question is, is it worth it?

I'm not looking up how long it's been, but someone emailed and said it had been a month, so that's probably right. There is nothing wrong, I am just completely washed out with work, which has stretched into a 730-midnight kind of thing, with (most days) 30 minutes to get Pob up in the morning and an hour or so to put her to bed at night. And weekend work too, and pretty much anytime I'm sitting still not with Pob, I'm working. It's getting really old and I'm very tired, but I don't think it will let up much until I go down to 50% the week of 15 June, and stop completely the week after.

To compound my stress, the builders who are doing our bedroom and bathroom are (of course) taking much longer than planned, so we're sleeping in the attic which is 6 long flights of stairs up from where we spend most of our time, which at 7.5 months pregnant is really no fun. Plus everything is in boxes, and the boxes and everything else is covered in dust, and I want to get stuff organised for Junior but there is no space to do it. So actually I think we are considerably less prepared for Junior than we were for Pob. Poor old Junior.

We also have no name for him, which is starting to worry me a bit. I like slightly avant garde names, but H doesn't, plus Pob's names have real meaning for our families so I feel there is a high bar that we need to meet for him, too. Our shortlist is currently very uninspiring, and I feel a bit stuck about the whole thing.

Of course this is nothing to those still in the trenches. I am not meaning to whine, I'm just being descriptive. Pob is doing lots of cool stuff, including her first three-word sentence a few weeks ago - comprised grammatically correctly of subject/verb/object. When I approached her to help her with a bowl of yogurt which was proving too much for her relatively new self-feeding skills, I went to take the spoon away from her. She pushed my hand away. "[Pob} hold it!" She said. So she kept hold of the spoon and I guided her hand to make things easier. Various other things not to forget about this stage:

• Nighttime routine still working ok, but increasingly she is taking ages to settle once we put her down - up to an hour of chatting, alternating with throwing everything out of the crib and then crying inconsolably for her dummy/teddy until we go and rescue her. Part of this I think is that she really suffers with her teeth - she has been getting the first set of four molars for the last 2 months. One is pretty much through, two are peeking, and one is still under the surface after all this time. But I'm not sure pain from teeth is enough to explain the lack of settling
• Waking up earlier in the mornings. I think this is the light. We are about to experiment with blackout blinds. Currently we lie in bed and listen to "Hello! Teddy! Park! Up up up up! Park! Hello! Mummy mummy mummy! Daddy daddy! Granny Granny granny! Outside! Morning!" for about 30 minutes before she gets really fed up and starts whinging
• She did her first pee on the potty after her bath a few days ago. A bit of a fluke, she hasn't done it again, but she's very interested and forces us to read the inane potty books I bought her at every available opportunity
• We have spoken to her about a baby brother, and she has various books about new babies, but I don't think she gets even a little tiny bit what it will mean for her
• She loves loves loves doggies, and her favourite treat is to be taken out on her trike so that she is at their level and can get licked all over when they find her
• She is not interested in dolls particularly, but loves her soft toys with a passion
• When she says 'yes' she shakes her whole body to emphasise its importance
• I can see her get tense with fury as she cries when she can't do something she wants to do, but it seems to pass relatively quickly
• When she wants us to do something she reaches for our hands and pulls us along until we are where she wants us to be. Sometimes this means just walking around the kitchen/playroom for a while, a little stroll together. 
• She adores the teletubbies, and asks to watch them frequently. Less frequently we give in.
• She loves some of her local friends, when she sees them she runs around holding hands with them and giggling, offering lots of kisses and chatting away in their own toddlerese. And sometimes pushing them over and snatching their toys away, too.
• She loves apples and will eat a whole one, including the core, given the chance. Just like mummy.
• She has just discovered cake and now asks for it regularly
• She is not allergic to eggs in cake, biscuits and french toast, but still has a reaction to scrambled egg. 
• There seems to be little limit on what she will eat
• She has started to get the hang of hiding to play hide and seek, but can't bear to stay hidden for too long and always reveals herself as soon as we ask ' Where's Pob?'
  
• I don't spend enough time with her
  

Got to get back to work. I'm fine, I'm just really really tired.

Letter to my daughter

Dearest Pob

I came downstairs after my early phone call this morning to find you playing with Uncle R. You were having such a lovely time together, and he was delighted to get to see you after a few months' absence. Thank you for making him feel so welcome. You are the child I always wanted - and so much more. So much more complicated, so much more intense, so much more delightful than it was possible for me to imagine before you arrived.

I've been worried, ever since it looked like this baby sibling was going to stick around, of the effect he or she would have on you. If Sib would disrupt the lovely relationships that your daddy and I have with you. That you'd feel that we didn't love you enough, that we needed something more than you. We really really don't. I wanted you to have a sibling because I wanted you to have what I have now - two lovely brothers who share a lot of my history, who love me and frustrate me in almost equal measure, who I know will always be there for me. Your Daddy feels the same way about his brother. I don't want you to feel alone in the world, alone against unreasonable parents when you are a teenager, alone at the (hopefully long-distant) point where won't be around any more for you.

We really weren't sure a sibling was going to happen for you. It took such a long time before you arrived. But here is this potential sibling, still growing, kicking Mummy from the inside on a regular basis. On Friday, at our Gymboree class, your friend A's tiny baby sister, I, was there. You went up to her carefully, patted her face, and said "Baby!" And everyone cooed at you. You know what babies are, I wonder if you know what having one in your own house will be like.

But there was a specific part of giving you a sibling that I realise now I was very invested in. That was to give you a sister. I haven't got a sister, and despite my now very strong relationship with my brothers, I have always really really wanted one, jealous of the relationships I see my friends have with their sisters. My mother got pregnant again just after my little brother was born, and she had a termination as she felt our family couldn't cope with another baby. She told me this when I was a teenager, and I understood, although I also saw her regret and my father's regret. They both thought they were doing the right thing for the other, while both secretly wanting this fourth baby to arrive anyway. My mother told me she has dreamt about this potential baby ever since. A little girl, the sister I always wanted, although she would have been seven years younger than me. Blonde, like my middle brother, to proove to him he wasn't adopted, his secret fear based on being the only blue eyed blond in a family with dark hair and mostly dark eyes. 

So maybe I might have had a sister, in another reality. And I thought, perhaps you could have a sister, give you that very very close sibling I wanted. Because my brothers, close as I am to them now, were not easy relationships when we were younger. My 2-year-9-month-old self was desparately disturbed by the arrival of this invader baby, or so I'm told. I don't remember much about it, except for throwing my panda out of the car window on the way home from meeting the baby at the hospital, after my mother had told me (with very good intentions) that the baby didn't want my panda, he was mine. I thought "well, if the panda's not good enough for the baby, I don't want him." So I threw Panda out of the window, and my father, furious, pulled the car over, stomped down the street to pick up the panda, and threw him back through the window at me. It wasn't a good day.

I do remember constant frustration as we grew up. Me, the good girl, always helping clear the table, do the dishes, do my homework, and those boys, noisy, rough, breaking enough things when they cleared the table that they weren't asked to do it again. Banding together as soon as the little one was old enough, to make bigger noises, make fun of me and my friends, beat me in tennis and football so often that I just stopped trying to play sport, and got pudgy and shy.

So although things between us are good now, I wanted a closer sibling relationship for you. One that wouldn't take so much fixing as young adults. 

I didn't realise how much I wanted this, until the sonographer zoomed in on the gap inbetween your little sibling's legs, and said "There you go, what's that!?" And your baby sibling, my lovely, is a boy. And I cried and cried, despite having just been told that the baby is perfect in every way.

I felt so awfully embarassed at the crying. This clinic is one where people go when they have serious problems with their pregnancy. And my pregnancy is fine, my baby is fine. But he's a boy, and I had to let go of all those futures I'd imagined for you and your little sister, the images of her wearing some of those little dresses you've grown out of, the thought of you having a female ally against all those hordes of boy cousins you have.

That was a few days ago. I'm getting used to the idea of a boy. I've started to test out little sentences about my son. I've ordered a book that might help me continue to understand what I'm feeling, although I'm feeling it less and less as the days go by, as I feel him kicking me. I'm hoping we can help you have a great sibling relationship, maybe do better than my parents did with me. Maybe. And we are certainly committed not to getting you to play the role I had to play in my family as the responsible, good, quiet and helpful one.

Daddy and I have started to think again about boy's names - Daddy was convinced that your sibling was another girl. We haven't told our families yet. We want to share our excitement with them when we do, since we know both grandmothers will have moments of a little sadness at a reduction in their abilities to buy pink clothes. But I know that will be transient, and then they'll get on with loving him, as we all will. As I especially hope you will, when all that disruption in your life has started to seem normal again.

This morning when you were playing with your baby doll, I said to you that you might have a baby brother in the house to play with by next year. You repeated "baby bother" and went on playing. I hope not, sweetie. I hope not.

Another world

I just attended our quarterly group baby shower in the office. They are group events, not what I understand is the usual American-style rah-rah, just a group of mothers-to-be and already-mothers (fathers are invited too, but don't show up). Understandably, I've never been to one of these before. There was no way I was going while in the midst of infertility, and when I was pregnant with Pob I most definitely didn't want the attention and certainly not the little gift-ette they hand out, not before she was safely in my arms. Instead one of the organisers sent the present to our home after Pob had arrived, which was very kind and much appreciated.

But today I went down for 10 minutes to see one of my mentees who was there with her two month old. It was fine, low key, just a bunch of women chatting. Then they started to give out the gifts. And they tried to give me one. I'm 19 weeks people, this is not the time to give me a fuzzy bunny and a cute little yellow babygro! I've barely told anyone at work, and I'm wearing a lot of black and big baggy jackets, but I guess the rumours get around. I was absolutely horrified, and in a moment of desparation said no, honestly, no thank you, not now, and the poor woman handing out the goody bags backed off, looking a bit confused.

I know we've all written about this multiple times, but it is astonishing to me just how different our worlds are, our worldviews are. Trying to give me a present for the baby at this stage of pregnancy, the fact people tell me we're rushing it by having another so soon. "Oh, I couldn't bring myself to have another one just yet, while he still needs me so much!" said one colleague with a 20-month-old. So I pointed out that having taken 3.5 years to get to the first one, we really didn't have much option but to get going again if we wanted a second at all, and that I felt extraordinarily lucky to be in the position to even contemplate that a second baby may arrive in July. And they all nodded and turned to a conversation about finding out the gender.

In this environment, with women I mostly know, unlike the conversation at the posh hotel a month ago, I felt able to talk at least a little bit about how this kind of event looks from my perspective. In general I think this is the right strategy, although it does result in that moment of awkwardness. But surely you don't have to have been through the not-too-terribly-traumatic experiences that I have had to feel awkward about getting a present for the baby at 19 weeks pregnant? One of our colleagues last year lost a baby at 22 weeks, she spent this year's pregnancy constantly tense and anxious. Many of the women there know about that experience. If you're Jewish, for starters, it's culturally inappropriate. And shouldn't that thought cross people's minds?

I'm both fuming and a bit upset. Not very upset and quite understanding that this all came from a place of wanting to do the right thing. But it wasn't, and I hope it won't now happen to someone else.

42 years ago today

My mum insists he was in there with her for most of the time, but at some point clearly he saw fit to put his feet up and read the paper...

It's been a good day. Not a milestone birthday, but a happy one. Pob enjoyed unwrapping the presents. Some colleagues sent me some flowers. Most of my RL friends (ALL my RL friends actually) forgot, but lots of you on facebook remembered (or were reminded) so thank you for that. I do love it when people remember my birthday!

Now I'm off to eat cake.

Lurgies

I got ill on Christmas Day. One of those things where various diseases have been floating around me all autumn, including Pob having multiple colds, but it takes being on holiday for me to get ill with one of them. I've been in bed on and off since the end of Boxing Day, just managing to drag myself into the shower yesterday morning when I couldn't stand it any more. I stretched to doing a load of laundry, one sink of dishes and emptying the dishwasher after my shower before collapsing back onto the sofa. Poor H has been on single parent duty, although we managed to get my mum over to help today and she was great - looking after me as well as Pob, bringing soup and magazines and delicious juices, and making the bed for me. H is pretty good at single parenting but less good at knowing how to look after me - he hasn't even felt up to cooking, which is his usual care-giving role in our family. I think it's end-of-year ennui for him.

The lurgy has meant we skipped on our usual trip to the cold north for New Year. I am sorry, but I couldn't face the travel - it's really a long way and not a straight forward journey. I don't think this will be a banner New Year for us - H has bought a lovely bit of steak to cook tomorrow, but I don't have a big appetite right now and it will just be the two of us with sadly no fireworks over the bay to look forward to. No doubt I'll be in bed at 10. Which is fine, just a little bit of an anti-climax. I wanted to have a lovely break as a family, so this is a lot less fun.

I'll be 13 weeks tomorrow. Hard to credit that things are going ok. I know I shouldn't write that, as cue for disaster, but this is really pretty uneventful so far.

More interesting posts to follow I hope as I start feeling a bit more human again.

Feed

Thanks for the comments about my feed. It turns out the problem was the post with the funky characters in the heading, it messed up a lot of feed aggregators. Who knew? Turns out swearing straight is better for your feeds than covering it up with symbols. I'll be more straightforward in future.

%$£@$%£

Well, I was going to write a post about economic melt-down and goodness me how the US senate needs to pass a that bailout bill, or I was going to write a thoughtful post about secondary infertility, but then I got my period this afternoon, so now I'm just going to write a pissed-off sad post about how much I fucking hate doing this trying to get pregnant thing again. Consider yourselves forewarned.

We've had seven tries at getting pregnant since I started ovulating again, including the IVF cycle. None of them have worked. And not surprising. I'm 41 and 3/4. I obviously wasn't Mrs Fertile to begin with. The endometriosis seems to be under control or gone but who knows if that's really true. It's not surprising. And it hurts a lot lot less than it did when we didn't have Pob. But it still hurts. Mostly it hurts on the day I get my period and the few days after, and the days when I have to make excuses with work. It hurts because somehow conceiving Pob made me feel invincible, that I had paid my dues and life would just go on from here, infertility remembered but not recurring.

But the dues are back and need to be paid again. I'm not one of those women whose infertility is cured by getting pregnant. I'm not an old lady miracle of fertility. I'm just a woman of a certain age whose fertility is crashing and whose chances of conception are vanishingly small each month.

That doesn't stop me hoping. I have a calendar written out at the back of my work notebook and every so often during the day I peruse it. I know the pattern of my period days. I know what 40 weeks from the start of each period would have been. I know my ovuation days and when it would be reasonable to pee on a home pregnancy test. I never get there because my period arrives beautifully, regularly, reliably and depressingly at 12 dpo pretty much without fail.

The hope is silly because every time I have been pregnant, I've known by about 8dpo. So if I don't have any signs by then, it's not our cycle. But each time I wake up on 12dpo and there's no blood, I hope. I look at my little black book and remind myself when 40 weeks would be. I day dream in the off moments during the day. And then sometime around tea time, I go to the loo. I wipe, and there is a pink smear. And I know its all over again.

Today hurt worse than the other recent periods. Because it's cumulative. Each month it feels less and less likely that we will get lucky again. Every month it hurts that bit more. And in this month, it brings us to the start of our fifth IVF cycle. I really don't want to do IVF again, but I really do want Pob to have a sibling. At the same time as I also struggle with the fact that I'm not spending as much time with her as I'd like, and having another baby wouldn't help that. But her having a sibling is what I think is right for her in the long run. I might have to revise that opinion in the end, but for now I'm sticking to it.

Sticking to it means injections again, injections and frustrating phone calls with the clinic, and scans and hopefully retrievals and embryos, and another week of sitting there, looking at my little black book, feeling worried that the potential baby would have a crap birthday (end of July, who's ever going to remember?), at the same time as knowing it won't work, and we'll be into 2009 and I'll be 42 and honestly why on earth are we still hoping. We got so lucky once. Others get lucky more than once, but increasingly I think once was all our luck in one go. It was wonderful wonderful luck and every day it gets better, but it made me greedy for more. I thought we'd get lucky again. Increasingly it looks like I was just that bit too optimistc.

Sweet people

Thank you everyone. I'm doing ok. Our holiday hotel is not quite what we expected (rather more of a resort than a secluded upmarket beach place, but very nice with it), but we are having a lovely time in the wind and the sun. Pob has charmed everyone in the hotel with many shouts of "Dad DAD dad DAD DAD!" As well as lots of crawling after dangerous or forbidden items, and even more smiling and waving. She's developed a very cute habit of shrugging her shoulders up to her ears and grinning and giggling simultaneously. She does it when she sees her teddy, when she thinks something is funny (not much rhyme or reason to what she thinks is funny), or when we are laughing at her. It's a virtuous cycle.

I am doing ok. I was pretty sad on Monday, sadder than I thought I would be. The thing that really made me cry, however, was having to wait 35 minutes at the clinic for my bloody blood test. Which takes about 90 seconds once someone calls you. It's not as if there were lots of people waiting, just 5 or so in line in front of me when I arrived. And plenty of nurses, just none of them taking blood, for about 25 minutes. Somehow the utter injustice, as well as the stress of trying to get into work early so I could leave early and do Pob's packing before she went to bed, just got to me and I ended up in tears when the nurse who finally called me in then asked me if I had permission to have my blood test on day 13. What was I going to say at that point, no?

Anyway, I knew it would be negative, even while I sort of hoped otherwise. But really, Aurelia aside, my internal instinct, my sensing based on vague symptoms, and the pee sticks, have always been true before, so there's no particular reason to doubt them now. And they were spot on.

What's next? Of course, sod's law, I'm travelling over the days I will probably ovulate this month, so we're unlikely to have another miracle. We'll see Dr Candour on the 28th for a review. The question is whether it's worth doing another fresh cycle given how crappy my eggs turned out to be this time, even while there were a lot of them. H thinks we should give fresh one more try. I dunno, I've lost faith in my eggs somewhat. I've ordered some DHEA, will give that a try and at the very least, we will do a frozen cycle in October - September is just too busy with work for it to be realistic. We're down but we're not out.

Will write more when I get back from holiday. Thank you again for your lovely messages.

The baby is fine, mummy will need some time to recover

As caused you much hilarity on my last post, all was fine. Pob had a hard time going down at bedtime, and got quite upset when we weren't there when they got back from the park at lunchtime today, but other than that she was happy and chirpy, did lots of walking (supported by Granny, I hasten to add), lots of standing up and cruising, lots of chatting and plenty of crawling.

The party was lovely. My friend really had thought of everything, and turns out all her friends are nice - from 4 or 5 major parts of her life, we by no means knew each other, but everyone got on and had a good time. "There are no assholes here," exclaimed one colleague after the first hour. We had afternoon tea on the lawn, drinks in a different part of the grounds, dinner outside with a huge barbeque, dancing and dessert inside the lovely dining room. I wimped out around midnight due to a rather frustrating stomach upset (must have eaten something that disagreed with me - odd because usually I have the iron constitution). H partied on with cigars and whiskey until 130 or so. So no nookie, which would have been nice, but a fun evening nonetheless.

We had a good time. I missed her. A lot. Last night I quite enjoyed being without Pob for the early evening. I was free to have a long soak in an 'infinity bath' (ever seen one of these? very funky. It had underwater glowing lights as well), then shave my legs, then have a shower. Then sit around with my hair wet and cool off a bit while watching my current favourite programme. Then dry my hair. Then sit around a bit more. Then get dressed, and choose my jewelry and my shoes. It all took nearly two hours and was most enjoyable. It was also good to sleep through the night and into the morning - although we both woke at 6, we managed to sleep until 8 before finally getting up (time for my injection, anyway).

But the rest of the time, I would have been happier if she had been with us. Yesterday afternoon, having tea on the lawn, in front of this beautiful hotel, in the very uncharacteristically glorious sunshine, I wished she was there, crawling around on the grass and telling us what she thought about it. This morning at breakfast another baby was shouting 'nananana' (meaning, give me more scrambled egg, daddy), and I imagined her shouting 'upupupup' at my mother, demanding more toast. It wasn't a horrible feeling, it was just a sensation that I would be happier if she was with me.

We arrived back at my mother's just before Pob woke up from her nap, and it felt wonderful to go in and get her when she started to stir. She was pleased to see me. She showed it not with big grins, but by hanging on for dear life for the first 15 minutes after she woke up. She was also pretty screamy for the rest of the afternoon, not sure if it's connected or not. She's happily asleep now despite it being 26 degrees in her room, so I imagine by the end of tomorrow she will have forgotten we ever left her.

So everyone concerned had a good time. My mum had a lovely time, although she did take the opportunity this afternoon to drop in a few more comments about how she thinks we overfeed Pob (more on this in another post. I am a bit worried about it - Pob has shot up to the 95th centile for weight (75th for height), and I don't quite know what to do. Anyway, more in another post). But it was good. And I'm glad we're back.

Blogging, or lack thereof

I'm really doing rubbish at posting. I'm doing great at writing long posts in my head. Just last night, between 0130 and 0330, when Pob and I were both up, I wrote several posts. One about sleep and my increasing desperation. One about the US democratic nominee. One about a recent UK TV programme about childhood. One about sleep again. One about Pob's development. One about food, my weight, my body, my lack of exercise. Another one about sleep.

Yes, none of them sound particularly interesting, do they? Not surprising since my brain is pretty mushy these days. I simply can't remember words any more. Took me a while to call up the word 'oblivious' last night at dinner. I said 'obtuse' instead. Which really doesn't mean the same thing, but at least shows my brain works at some level since it got the first letter right. I was with a friend who is in the middle of a bad love situation. It's really bad love. It's been bad love for a while and I wish it was over but she says he is the love of her life despite the fact he is never going to be there for her in the way she deserves, so she keeps on plodding on. She is a very loyal person. We've been friends for 22 years now so I think I can say that with some authority. We've all given up being anything other than quietly supportive, but it's hard sometimes not to rant and rave about how she needs to look after herself.

I won't go on about the sleeping, but I will say that I am now utterly conflicted about what philosophy to follow.  I find it inherently hard to believe it's 'good' for my baby to be left to cry for any length of time, or that she needs to learn that we won't come in the night when she cries. But also I do really need to sleep - H and I both do - and taking her into bed with us - the sure fire way to get her back to sleep with minimal pain - only results in one or both of us not sleeping as we curl around Pob and she periodically bashes us in the face or offers us her dummy. So I dunno what to do. It's been 4 months since she's slept through the night (and when I say that, what I mean is from 11pm or so til 7 or so). I'm very tired.

Aside from the sleeping at night, she is beyond wonderful.

Men are weird

H is currently jumping up and down and punching the air. He seems to feel a very personal sense of accomplishment. But they won because the other team missed a goal. I don't get it.

Ah well. Best leave them to their manly fantasies, eh?

Irony

 Nanny: My mum wants to come and see Pob. She's very excited.

Me: [puzzled look]

Nanny: Yes, she'll be uncontrollable when [boyfriend] and I have kids

Me: [non committal grunt]

Nanny: Of course it won't be easy for us. We will need treatment to get pregnant

Me: [enquiring grunt]

Nanny: Yes, I have polycystic ovaries and [boyfriend] has low sperm count

Me thinking: Blimey, I managed to hire the infertile nanny. Who knew?

Back to the peesticks

About 2 weeks ago I noticed some signs of that lovely EWCM, you know, that stuff which means you're fertile. So I peed on an OPK, and after 3 days it turned positive. We used the opportunity to have some nookie on the relevant days, and then I got ridiculously excited. I seemed to have lost the infertile protective shield of pessimism. I knew it was a small chance, but I started to think about what it would be like to have babies 16 months apart (and was terrified at the prospect).

Those of you who have been around for a while will remember that I have known each time I was pregnant. The pullings and tuggings in my abdomen were utterly diagnostic. So I've been waiting for those tuggings, and a couple of times I've thought maybe, but in general my abdomen is just starting to feel heavy and full, as it does before a period.

Today is roughly 10dpo.I know it's early, but Pob and I are about to fly off on our travels, so I peed on another stick. And after three minutes it stared back at me. Snowy white. Although it's early, when I was pregnant with Pob I got such a strong positive on day 13 that I'm pretty sure I would have at least seen a whisper of a line on day 10. So the whiteness combined with the lack of clear symptoms means I'm 99% sure it's over.

I'm not really surprised, but I am ridiculously disappointed. I saw this cycle as another potential for a miracle baby, one conceived despite my endo and my age. I felt that if we got pregnant now, it would mean that infertility no longer had any hold on us (although I was also prepared for the terror of wondering if I'd miscarry again). Now that we've failed this cycle, I somehow feel we're right back in the middle of the drama, the waiting and longing and losing and all that sadness. That we're in for a year of not succeeding before we decide Pob isn't destined for a sibling.

Believe me, I know this is ridiculous. That I was ridiculous to hope, and that it's ridiculous to have lost all hope because it didn't work. But that's just where I am. It's an hour before we have to leave for the airport. We're packed, Pob is napping and I'm a bit sad.

Well goshdarnit

I missed my bloggiversary. Three years and three days ago I started this blog. It seems a very long time ago. My early entries are, well, not good. Too self-conscious a tone. Plus I was so perkyturdish about our conception efforts. Embarassing, but at least my writing improved as I just learnt to simply type and not worry about the persona I was trying to portray, and stopped trying to write like other bloggers did and just wrote as I thought.

The world obviously looks very different to me now. But I don't know what I would have done without this blog. Thank you for being there with me. There's very little I could type which could properly convey the extent to which this blog and this community have sustained me. So I'll just say, thank you.

Mother's work

I'm feeling thrilled at our recent successes with feeding, at the same time as finding it a little bittersweet. It's wonderful that we finally seem to have the hang of breastfeeding, but sad because it will have to at least reduce, if not stop completely, when I go back to work.

Thank you for your comments on that latter point, by the way. I will try to keep up with one or two breast feeds a day once I go back to work, but given the uncertainty of my hours, the fragility of my supply, and the occasional need to travel, I'm not convinced it will work. My mother is convinced it's very important for me to try, however, as she worries that Pob will get depressed when I leave her. I'm constantly fretting about  my decision to go back to work in May, but so far not enough to change the decision and leave going back until the end of my alloted year of (unpaid after 4 months) maternity leave. I'm going back in May not because I have to financially (although we'd have to move to a smaller house and change our lifestyle rather dramatically if I chose to quit completely), but because it's going to be harder and harder to get back into the swing of things the longer I leave it. Relationships with customers move on, and after a year I would be very out of touch with the work we are doing with my customers.  In addition, if I don't go back in May things will start to slow down for the summer and I might end up sitting around twiddling my thumbs for a couple of months which would be bad - frustrating for me as well as bad for my evaluation next year. So on balance I think it's the right thing to do to go back in May. What I might do is go back part time, which would give me at least one weekday with Pob, even if that day might have to change from week to week so that I can be responsive to my customers' needs.

This indecision on my part is making hiring a nanny difficult. We've seen one great candidate and I've spoken to another good-sounding one on the phone, but since I can't confirm if I want them full time or part time, it's a bit hard to hire anyone. Plus of course in reality I don't really want a nanny at all, so I'm being very very good at procrastinating at setting up appointments to see candidates.

I love this baby so very much, I really really don't want to leave her. At the same time as I recognise that I'm very good at my job, that I often enjoy my job, and that my having a rewarding job will bring something to Pob that she wouldn't otherwise get, particularly as she gets older. Not to mention the financial benefits it brings to our family. I'm being pulled in two different directions and I'm still two months away from going back.

Book meme - UPDATED

I've just written a very ill-natured post that I've thought better about posting, at least for now, so here's something a bit less inflammatory. Here's a book meme from Ceci n'est pas un blog via Oro. And now with extra context. This meme seems to have started some time in October, and is based on the top 106 books marked as 'unread' at Library Thing. Hence the somewhat random nature of the list. I guess people don't read Jane Austen but they do read Hemingway? Here are some others who have done the meme, to give some kind of a blog trail. It's been rather like Chinese whispers, the nature of the meme, its origins gradually lost as new blogs picked it up.

Books are in bold if I've read them, in italics if I started but couldn't finish, and struck through if I couldn't stand them. Now with asterisks for those I've read more than once. One asterisk is one repeat reading, two askterisks are for multiple re-readings.

**1984
The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
*American Gods
*Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : A Memoir
Angels & Demons
*Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
**Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
Catch-22
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
**The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
*David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs and Steel: The fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian: A Novel
**The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
The Inferno
*Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : A Novel
*Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
Mrs. Dalloway
The Name of the Rose
*Neverwhere
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
On the Road
The Once and Future King
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Oryx and Crake : A Novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
The Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Three Musketeers
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
**Treasure Island
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
*War and Peace
**Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry Into Values

I wasn't surprised to find out I do fairly well on this. It's a combination of having been a shy, bookish child with a father who readily supplied books when I was much too young for them (the Tin Drum at 11, anyone?), plus having done English A-level (school leaving exam at 18 in the UK, you only study 3-4 subjects for the last 2 years so there's plenty of time for each subject), plus the book group I was part of in Philadelphia - which inflicted the AWFUL 'Confederacy of Dunces', and 'The Fountainhead', on me. 'The Fountainhead' was the only book for bookgroup I never finished, I hated it so much I subconsciously left it behind on a plane so I COULDN'T finish it, and thankfully I couldn't make the meeting where bookgroup discussed it so I didn't have to own up. HATED it.

I feel  bad at some of the classics I haven't read. Vanity Fair, Gulliver, Don Quixote among others. I don't feel bad about not reading Ulysses. I don't have the brain power to attempt any of those at the moment, and envy my friend C who just did jury duty, and used it as an opportunity to start reading Trollope, who I've never even attempted. She's a more serious reader than I am. She got me going on a bunch of less obvious classics when I was 18 and about to go to India for 6 months. She acted as a reading consultant and I went to India with around 30 books, most of which I got through and which really changed my life. 'War and Peace' was one of them but she also got me to read 'The Raj Quartet', 'A Room with a View,' and 'The Spire', among others. I think that 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray' was one of her suggestions, too. I'll have to dig up my journal from that time and remnd myself of the other books on the list. It was a transformative six months of reading for me. She also more recently gave me 'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell, the author of 'Cloud Atlas', telling me she thought it was rather better than his more famous book, and I loved it.

I've never heard of "The Historian" or the 'History of the US' book. Why is that last one a classic? Is it a classic just if you're American or for the rest of us, too?

I remain frustrated at the non-finishing of "Les Mis". I was reading it on a bus travelling around China when I was 20, and left it behind at 4am when I had to scramble to get my stuff together when I was told by the bus driver that we'd arrived at the town I was going to. We hadn't, it was some other random town and I ended up wandering the streets for a while until I found another bus station. And then I found I hadn't got my book with me, with just 80 pages to go til the end. It wasn't possible to find another copy, in the wilds of southwest China on the backpacker trail, and by the time I was back in Europe it didn't seem right just to dive back in 7/8ths of the way through, I thought I'd need to start all over again. I've never had the heart to pick it up again.

Scenes from the last week of pregnancy

I've finally taken the time to figure out how to load my bloglines links into the blogroll on typepad, so that the links are up to date without all that annoying manual editing that is involved in maintaining typelists. I feel ridiculously proud of myself. Apologies to those of you whose status was frozen for about a year while I couldn't be assed to do anything about the typelists. This does mean that password protected blogs will be listed without you knowing that they are until you click on the link. Sorry but that's just beyond my skills to fix!

I have two things left to do for work. I've been not doing them all week. What do you reckon - denial or laziness?

H and I need to move furniture so that our living room doesn't look like we just moved in. We can't find anyone to help. This is bothering both of us.

I now own a breast pump and some herbs for promoting milk production. And 4 bottles. And 2 nursing bras. And nipple cream. And a nappy bag (diaper bag). I'm afraid I chickened out and got one that H would be ok to carry rather than the very funky ones I kind of liked. This one is nice and practical. And 3 changing mats (one for each floor of our house). And...some baby clothes. There's a lot of kit involved in this baby thing, no? Although I haven't bought maternity pads yet. Must do that.

My blood pressure is still 110/65 as of Wednesday. So yah boo and sucks to all those who cast aspersions on a pregnancy at 40 and its risks. Although I have finally had to take off my wedding ring. It feels odd without it. I keep going to fiddle with it but it's not there.

I went to see some paintings yesterday. I bought one of this artist's paintings back when I got my first ever bonus from work. The paintings are exquisite and have only become more so (the jpgs really don't do them justice. The point about his work is the brushwork - tiny, tiny strokes with exquisite detail. If you're in London I highly recommend a visit). I really really wanted to buy one, but the artist has won a couple of prizes in the meantime, and he's gotten pretty expensive. And H really wants to try to pay down the mortgage. Which is sensible. So I didn't buy one. But I really really wanted to.

After looking at the paintings my erstwhile best friend and I had lunch. And wandered the shops a bit. By the time I got home I was so tired I had to lie down on the sofa before I could make it upstairs to change my clothes. I'm terrified of what real sleep deprivation feels like when it shows up, umm, this time next week?

Unhelpful

I don't think Bob Crow has it in for me, personally, but it felt quite a lot like that both yesterday evening and this morning as I fought my way onto a bus to get home and then into work again this morning. Really not what I needed at nearly 37 weeks, and with increasingly less willingness to work. Plus my office was heated up to sauna level, despite me having complained about the temperature on Monday. Plus some asshat external company I'm working with sent through the programme for the conference they want me to speak at on Thursday, only they've left my name off the programme. Given Thursday morning is the doctor's appointment at which they'll scan me and decide whether or not to try an external version, and if they do an external version I don't reckon I'll be in good enough shape to go to work afterwards, I'm pretty tempted to just blow them out. One of my colleagues (who they did put on the programme) will substitute instead. Bastards.

Yes, I know no one is really out to get me. But they're annoying me anyway.

The emotions, balanced they are not

I'm always an emotional person. What I feel is written on my face most of the time. If something touches me, I cry easily and often copiously. I still remember dissolving into uncontrollable sobs during a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the RSC when I was about 19 - it was something about the hollowness with which the Capulets and Montagues delivered the lines that vow that these deaths have changed the way they feel about each other that meant I was beyond comforting. My mother was rather embarassed, as I recall. I did the same thing at a performance of Billy Elliot 18 months ago, although of course at that point I was mourning the negative IVF cycle we'd just had as well as being empathetic with Billy's lost relationship with his mother. There are too many incidents to count. And it happened again last night.

I'm not entirely sure what set me off. In one sense, I'd had a good and productive day. My mother wanted to take me shopping for the baby, and the day our diaries meshed was yesterday. I arrived at Peter Jones and immediately felt very ambivalent about being there. My mother suggested we take a basket and start filling it, but I struggled to pick one up. "Ill just look around first," I said. This took a while and eventually she started to get impatient. I resigned myself to picking up at least a few things. I bought nipple pads and cream, barrier cream for the baby, a pack of muslins, 2 nightdresses (apparently easier to change nappies in the middle of the night), a pack of vests, a hooded towel. Stuff we need, stuff that isn't too personal, doesn't cost much. We looked at moses baskets, cribs and other furniture but nothing was terribly exciting. After a poor lunch we headed down the road to a shop that I knew carried some furniture a friend had recommended. It was totally worth it - fantastic service and great looking furniture. The choices were hard. We liked things from different ranges, and I couldn't decide on what kind of colouring I wanted. It took maybe 2 hours to decide and to buy some serious stuff, including a few more bits and pieces, like swaddling blankets and a baby healthcare kit with thermometer, nail scissors etc.. Mum kindly paid for the 2 big pieces of furniture, a crib and a wall storage unit including a wardrobe. I bought a glider that I had not known I wanted until I sat on one in the shop and immediately felt better, relaxed and comfortable.

I spent most of the time in that shop on the verge of tears. I didn't cry, but I kept wanting to. I tried to get H to come down as I was really struggling to make a decision. H wouldn't come, he was suffering from a hangover and probably couldn't face leaving the house. It felt like a big deal. It's not, I know it's not, but it felt like one.

Part of the problem was that three years ago, before any of the drama, I had come across some hand-made children's furniture while surfing the web, and set my heart on it. It costs a small fortune, and it seemed we would never need it so I put it out of my mind. Recently a friend whose baby is now a year old had recommended another brand and actually it looks remarkably similar to the hand-made stuff but at a fraction of the cost. So I'd had this image all through the journey of how the eventual nursery would look, and now perhaps I could create that look. But when I saw the stuff in the flesh it was quite big and chunky, and looked best in a very dark wood that I worry will overwhelm the room. So I dithered and paced and wished someone would just tell me what the right answer was. After much thought I decided to go with the dark colouring, but kept fretting about it. I still am. I may change my mind, who knows.

We capped off the day by visiting a third shop to comparison shop the furniture, desparately trying to find something to eat and failing, and then going back to Peter Jones to try and find curtain fabric and fabric for the chair. We were knackered by then and I was starting to feel a bit feeble I was so hungry. I tried to get mum into a taxi home but she wanted to come back with me. We walked in the door at 1900, to find H feeling a bit sheepish and worried about me. I downed a bit of cheese and a huge glass of water and started to recover slightly. We made mum a cup of tea and I started to really really wish she'd go home, I wanted to collapse on the sofa but didn't feel I could. I also felt emotionally tense. It was a huge deal, suddenly having all this baby stuff in the house, and I felt both stressed and ridiculous about being stressed that I'd bought the wrong furniture.

Eventually while mum was encouraging me to show her other bits of furniture on line, I snapped and said something along the lines of "I just can't make any more decisions about anything this evening, I've just had enough." At which point she stood up and said "well, I'll just go and wait outside for a taxi, then." So then I felt terrible and asked her to please stay, and she started telling me how awful I'd made her feel, and I just lost it. Started sobbing and couldn't stop. I tried to articulate why but I'm sure all that came out were snippets of stuff along the lines of "still don't know if we'll have a baby" and "don't have the right stuff" and "if you get upset by this, how are you going to be helpful after I give birth and am even more emotional and tired." (mum has promised to come and stay after the baby is born to help, and swore blind that she was the right person for us because I could be horrible to her with impunity and she wouldn't mind).

Mum left after I calmed down somewhat, but she was clearly upset and I spent the whole of the rest of the evening on the verge of tears despite H's attempts to cheer me up. I don't entirely understand why I found the whole thing so stressful. Yes, buying stuff for the baby is hard, but it's also wonderful. It's exciting to be choosing curtains for a nursery, isn't it? Shouldn't I be excited and happy rather than stressed and freaked-out?

I wonder if my tension is because the nursery is a signifier of what we've gone through to get here. That I finally get the furniture I've always wanted but it's not really the right furniture - is that about my worries about being a mother? Some of the stress is undoubtedly because my relationship with my mother is always stressful, but most of the day was actually ok. I feel bad for ruining it. I feel stressed about whether it's really right for Mum to come and help after the baby is born. And most of all I wish I knew how to make it all better.

This was going to be a post about the emotions of infertility and how they've changed, but I think that will have to come in a follow-on post, this is enough already.

Finished

Let me know when you're ready to talk about the boy wizard. I'm not going to spoil it. I guess I can write that I think it's much the best book in a while, less rambling, more story and some good character development. I enjoyed it, even though I feel wrung out right now. And I really want to talk about it but H hasn't read it and won't read it so I'm counting on all of you.

Retail therapy gone mad

Well, as you can tell by the presence of this post, I bought the Mac. H will be delighted so I don't feel too awful about spending that much money. He can't access many websites from his work laptop so he regularly borrows mine to find what he's looking for, which irritates both of us. And a Mac with all the lovely imovie-type software is just the ticket for that increase in photo taking and home film-making that we hope will start sometime in September. It's really silly to buy one here when I could have bought one in the US for half the price. But I'm not doing any more long haul travel until the baby can come with me, as a separate person, so if we want a Mac any time soon we have to pay UK retail prices. Ouch.

It's been 8 years since I've regularly used a Mac, but my love for them has in no way diminished. They've only grown more beautiful, not to mention faster and with better software. Just touching this MacBookPro is making me happy. The brush against the metal, the resolution of the screen, it's all, just so yummy.

Sorry, lost myself there for a minute.

I now need a bunch of technical help. I managed to download Firefox but it doesn't seem to have loaded properly - it's sitting on the desktop as if it's a separate disk. I downloaded Acrobat but Firefox doesn't recognise that it's there. Any ideas? I also can't turn off the underlined links thing in Firefox - I think it makes things look very messy so I always turn it off in IE.

Although I haven't had the relaxing day I had planned, I did go and spend an entertaining couple of hours (I had no idea how long I'd spent til I got home) in West London's new foodie mecca. It's a very seductive place. I don't usually get to do the food shopping as H has us set up with a weekly delivery of an organic veggie box, and he picks up the other stuff we need himself at our local providers. I'm a very bad food shopper. I buy what looks good with only a small care for what we might actually cook with it. So I've come home with very exotic items, like soft tortillas and salsa, some oven roasted tomatoes and some fresh heirloom tomatoes the like of which I've never seen in this country before; and some simply extra delicious items, like British organic strawberries. I do have a plan. I'm going to roast some corn-fed organic chicken thighs with lemon and basil for dinner, and eat them with some new potatoes and asparagus. I've already snacked on some edamame. For dessert I'll have some of those strawberries with cream. Then for H tomorrow night, not that he deserves it, I'll make a butternut squash curry with chicken, ginger, chard, and thai red curry paste, and we'll have roasted peaches for dessert.

I'm feeling a bit crampy now but I'm hoping it's the passenger settling down after a busy day. More water is on the horizon, and I need to start cooking. Tomorrow I'll get on with relaxing.

This time last year

This time last year, I thought I was pregnant. If we take Saturday 13th of May as a year ago, I didn't know for sure, but I was, in my own words, scarily hopeful. I had suspected that I was pregnant for a few days before that. I'd never been pregnant before, to my knowledge, but I knew that this felt different. That those uterine tuggings and pullings I was feeling were like nothing I'd ever felt before. I didn't want to believe it until I knew, but it was hard not to hope.

The following morning I eventually took a pregnancy test just after 4am. And it was positive. I have rarely been that happy in my life. I woke H up, we laughed, we cried. I wrote you all a long post, and I went back to sleep for a while. It was a wonderful feeling.

It didn't last. On our wedding anniversary I still believed it, but the weekend before our 6w scan I stopped believing it. I didn't feel pregnant any more. My boobs shrank. I 'knew' I was no longer pregnant. It didn't end then, but it ended 2 weeks later.

That baby would have been born about 3.5 months ago, or about 1 month into this pregnancy. There was nothing wrong with him genetically, we don't know why he didn't make it. But he never got as far as having a heartbeat.

It's hard to think about him now. In all the discussion of whether the baby of this current pregnancy is a boy or a girl, and how I felt about that, I did think about him, but found it too hard to mention him in the posts. If he had survived, I wouldn't have had this pregnancy. I wish he had survived, but I also don't wish this baby away. I had a dream early in this pregnancy, I can't remember if I typed about it or not, and I can't remember the details now, but it involved 2 babies, or being pregnant with twins, and being told I could only have one of them. In the dream I screamed and cried, but in the end I had to give one up so the other could live and thrive. It seems pretty bleeding obvious what that was about, no?

I know I'm lucky. I got pregnant 3 times in 8 months, after all, that barely qualifies as infertile, even if 2 of them were through IVF or FET. I know I'm lucky in that nothing seems to be wrong with this pregnancy or this baby (but remind me to tell you about our Friday night trip to labour and delivery when I get the chance. Short version, nothing's wrong, but it felt wrong enough to get checked out). I know I'm lucky in so many other ways. And I'm not saying I'm suddenly too sad to appreciate what I've got. I haven't woken up this morning and felt suddenly bereft. I'm still so very excited about this pregnancy. I miss him but I'm happy to be pregnant with his sister. It's the usual mess of feelings that we all walk around with every day. We're happy to be pregnant but worried what it does to our community and how it will make our friends feel. We're relieved that the failing pregnancy is finally over, yet we are still grieving the loss of the baby that didn't get to be. We're thrilled to finally be submitting our home study, but a part of us still mourns the biological children we lost. None of it is easy, none of it is straightforward, but we're all just doing the best we can to get through it ourselves, and to support others as they suffer, too.

This morning I'm remembering my son who didn't made it. 

Why oh why?

Now I'm bleeding and it's red, not brown. Apparently only a few hours of happiness are allowed at point in this pregnancy. We're not going to casualty because I know that as of 1030 this morning everything was fine, and there was no blood in the uterus. I will call OB in the morning to see if we can come in and he can perhaps do an internal exam and see where it's coming from. But it does suck. It would be nice if things could just be straightforward for a while.

Another day, another reason to procrastinate

Thank you so much for yesterday. We got through it in one piece, and having cooked a lovely meal, even if the chicken and rice were both a little overcooked (now usually I KNOW that you don't cook the rice for as long as it says on the packet. Why did I have to forget yesterday? And I know that that chicken dish is delicious but LOADS of work, why do I forget that every time? Remind me next time that even though Nigel says an hour in the oven, 40 minutes would be fine). My trifle was a triumph, so much so that the wife of one of my colleagues asked if she could take a picture of it before we dug in. And she doesn't like deserts.

I spent the evening feeling somewhat tense. I have vague occasional cramps. Nothing close to "Oh I'm miscarrying," but enough to make me tense. If I wasn't bleeding I'd have written them off as just stretching etc. No gunk overnight, and I used the progesterone suppository anally to see if that would help. By an hour after getting up this morning the gunk was back. It's good that it requires gravity to descend, but I still wish it would stop.

No matter how many times you or the docs said to me yesterday, "it's brown blood, it's ok," it was still a miserable time. I realised, and regretted not acknowledging more, that I've often felt happy and optimistic over the last few weeks. That 9 week scan was really miraculous, seeing arms and legs and wriggling for the first time. And the scan 10 days ago where I heard the heartbeat. I walked out of the scan room each time in a daze of happiness. And yesterday we got a shocking reminder that it could all get taken away from us, and the happiness quotient went down considerably, even though I knew after the scan that it was just a minor setback, not a major disaster. So I regret not relishing the happiness more. I resolve that the next time I get my happiness back I will immediately write a post to capture it for all time, no matter what happens subsequently!

I'm taking the opportunity of an unscheduled morning (well, till 11) to stay at home for a few hours and just chill out. I feel very naughty. Given I'm supposed to be in NY for a meeting on Friday afternoon, and then in Florida on Monday evening, I guess it's ok not to feel too guilty. Given what happened yesterday I'm fairly sure I'm going to bail on one of those trips, probably the Florida one as it's an internal conference and not really essential to my job (although bailing is frowned upon). The smart thing to do would have been to have had a weekend in NYC, do some maternity clothes shopping (hah!)  since the exchange rate means that basically everything in the US is free right now, and then fly down to Florida on Monday, but yesterday the top restaurant in the world (well, in the UK anyway) called and said that they had an unexpected cancellation for Saturday lunch, did we want it? I've been on their waiting list for months as it's H's birthday next week (HELP! I have no presents for him what shall I do?). I'm not about to turn that down so I've grabbed it. I could I suppose let H take his dad or something, but it seems a shame to lose the chance to have a marvellous meal just because of the flying issue. Must think more about that one. Or just make a gut decision sometime tomorrow.

Of course tomorrow is the nuchal etc., and at the place we are going to they will do CVS straight afterwards if we come back high risk, and if we decide we are prepared to take the risk, which I'm still not sure about, particularly after the bleeding episode. If we do go for it there wont be any flying anywhere. Which would be a relief.

We had a lovely holiday...

Play nice

Guys, I'm going to do what Tertia does when there is a big barney on her blog. I expect you to treat all persons who might be reading this with respect. Let me be clear. I like and respect my doctors tremendously - all of them. Yes, I am angry about what's happened in the last week, but you can be angry with people you care about, and that's where I am (and no, I'm not just writing that). Please remember that they are people too, and may well be reading this. I don't want them to feel worse than they may already feel. I'm sorry that my last post was so drama-queeny that it's set some of you off. Please don't. It's ok to write that you're sad that I've stopped posting here, and that you are angry about it, but it's not ok to let rip at the doctors. I totally appreciate the support, but it's also making me feel horrible as I contemplate that I've led you to feel that way and it's not fair, you're only getting one side of the story. You don't know them, and none of us have a really good understanding of what it's like to walk in their shoes, or what caused Dr Candour to raise the issue with me on Friday.

I've tried to be fair in what I've written over the last week. I'm sure it's coloured by how upset I was, but I do hope that I've been clear that there is an issue both ways here. I wrote about stuff in a public space, I got found out. Yes, I had kept it all anonymous, but then I made the mistake of posting somewhere which compromised that anonymity. And quite understandably, my doctors took the initiative to respond to that. Come on, have you all resisted the opportunity to read that file on your boss's desk? Or to flick through your sister's diary? And those are more private than this blog was - anonymity and privacy are not the same thing. Let those of us who are without sin cast the first stone....I think the only person so far here who could do so is my husband, who has consistently not read this despite knowing about it and me having left posts up on the screen a few times when he's been using my comptuer.

Yes, I think Dr Candour could have done something differently on Friday, but he didn't, and it doesn't mean he's a bad person for not having done so. And who am I to tell him now to behave? He was doing a totally justifiable thing in trying to protect his staff. I might do the same thing if a customer was upsetting my team.

OK? I am at fault here too. And so please please don't let me play the matyr. And please be respectful of the others involved here. They don't get a voice on this blog, so let's respect that and be grown-ups.

A one-sided negotiation

I've obsessed about it. I've written endless letters to Dr Candour and Dr Condescending about it. I've written lots of posts about it, but in the end I cannot post or send them. It's all too difficult. I cannot bear the idea of having upset the doctors, at the same time as I am angry at them for having disrupted this seemingly wonderful, supportive, safe space.

I do understand why what I wrote upset people, I am able to empathise with what it's like to read snarky stuff about yourself. I had the experience of being handed a reference about me during an interview, and being asked to explain why it was so negative. It's shocking, and it sucks, and it was very hard to recover that relationship subsequently (although I didn't raise it with the reviewer - I was 21 at the time and would not have known where to begin). But after the initial shock had faded, I wish my doctors had been able to return to the blog, and read all the good stuff, about how much I like them as individuals, and how much I value their expertise. About how lucky I am to have been referred to that clinic in the first place. And to empathise with why I might have been writing in that snarky, selfish way in the first place. I do still feel positive about the clinic in that way, regardless of what's happened in the last week, and regardless of our three failed cycles.

That's all I'm going to say in editorial on the situation (boy it's hard to stop myself). Thank you for all those emails that told me I had nothing to be ashamed about, encouraging me to keep posting. It meant a tremendous amount to me, but I just can't post in the way I used to, and if I can't, this blog seems a bit pointless. I started it so that I could say whatever I liked, whenever I liked, without fear of who was reading, and that's no longer true.

I have decided to stop posting here, at least in the short term. There is going to be way too much going on in my life over the next few months, and I cannot bear the idea of having to constantly second guess myself in what I write here. The most important thing in my life is getting pregnant, and keeping on posting may jeopardise (perhaps has already jeopardised) my relationship with those who are in charge of getting me pregnant. When you look at it like that, how on earth could I justify continuing? I tried to wait until I was less upset to post this, but sadly I'm still upset, as is H, but I felt I had to make a decision, to clear the air, if nothing else.

Please do keep in touch, you all have my email address, that won't change. I will still be in the blogsphere, but this blog will go quiet. Thank you all for everything you've given me. It would be nice to know that the world as a whole recognised the strength, the power, and the humanity of this community. And it would be nice, as many of you said, to know that a few doctors here and there found it helpful to know what it was like to be on the other side of the dildocam. Maybe they do.

Avoiding the issue

So much stuff going on in my head, so little confidence in what happens if I write it down. Thank you so much for all the emails over the weekend, it has helped tremendously. I'm stil not sure what to do next, and very nervous about writing about it. So I'm playing safe today and just responding to projgen's tag.

Mountains: Are not my friends. I think they are beautiful, but the steepness scares me when trying to ski down them, and I'm not really fit enough to walk in them, so I mostly just look. My husband loves them and would like to spend more time in them, so I must try to do better. Of course, in the UK they are more hills than mountains...

Ocean: I think this word would have been more evocative for me if it had been 'sea' rather than ocean. We spent a lot of holidays by the sea, and my brothers and I competed to be the first to shout: "I see the sea!". When my parents lived in California I found it hard to adjust to calling the local expanse of water the Ocean. I love being by the sea, the sound of waves etc., and in particular a deserted beach in Northumberland during winter. Nothing better to give you a sense of where you fit in the universe.

Music: I love to sing, but don't do it often. What I really like to do is to sing loudly to songs I know well. This means musicals, mostly Sondheim, Dar Williams, REM, various bits of 80s music, the Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, The Nields, Ani Di Franco, Furniture, and that's enough listing. I listen to classical music while I work, although I cannot listen to some of my favourite pieces (Rachmaninov piano concertos, Bach) because they are too distracting.

Zen: What I'm not. I have tried. I learnt to meditate, but never managed to achieve that deep state of relaxation that I'd heard so much about. I am not someone who finds it easy to just let go and let things happen to me. I want to make stuff happen the way I want it to be. Yes, I guess that spells 'control freak', but at least I know myself for what I am. One of my colleagues is on a mission to make me more Zen, so I will continue to try, but I'm beginning to suspect that I should just get on with my character as it is.

I won't tag anyone else as I'm such a bad responder to these things, but here are four words if you feel like playing - just leave me a comment saying you're posting about it.

Privacy, Trust, Research, Beginning

Why do I blog?

Yes, I know, not quite the post you were expecting, but something has happened which I need to blog about before going through the details of the consultation yesterday (answer, yes you are now a patient with poor prognosis, no we don't think you need to give up yet, decision probably a frozen cycle in November after a month of zoladex, because they won't let me do another fresh cycle before Christmas because my ovaries won't have recovered enough by November, and they close over Christmas).

It turns out that my doctors have found my blog. That they found it is my fault, because I posted a link to my blog from a message board site that is just about the clinic, when I was trying to dispose of my drugs. So that made the connection, I don't think it's possible to connect the two otherwise, although stupidly I have told Dr Candour that I blog in a couple of previous discussions. Ironically, I didn't even know about that message board until Dr Candour told me about it. *sigh*. I've asked the moderator of the board to delete my profile and all posts so that this doesn't happen again, but of course the words "bolted", "horse" and "stable" come to mind. I'm not sure what to do next, as of course now the privacy of this site has been violated and the whole point of having a pseudonym and not telling anyone in real life about the blog is partially gone. At least it wasn't my family who found it, and I still think it's incredibly unlikely that they ever would. They don't read blogs or message boards,Thalia isn't my real name, and I've never used the real names of anyone I mention. Nor does anyone in my family know that I even have a blog.

I was very upset when Dr Candour told us this. I was upset initially just because he told me how upset the doctors are about what they read. Apparently they printed out some bits and showed it to him. I can see how I might have upset several people if they read stuff I'd written about them here. I feel terrible that I have upset some people I respect, and some people I really like and appreciate tremendously, because I wrote something thoughtless, sarcastic, unkind and unfair. Some of the stuff is exaggerated for effect, or just plan snarky. Some of the stuff is pretty accurate, but I'm sure still would hurt my feelings if I read it about myself. Some of those doctors do have things I think they could do better - I don't rescind any of the comments about how unhelpful they can be sometimes when you ask for details about what's going on, for example - but the way to give them this feedback was not for them to read it in the middle of a post about my appointment that day. Indeed after the crappy IUI experience I wrote a long letter of feedback to Dr Candour, which I thought he took appropriately seriously - certainly things like them telling me test results got better after that. Equally when we've had good experiences I've been very careful to tell Dr Candour about that, too, as it feels only fair. So I have given feedback through conventional channels when I've been able. My concern is that the doctor who is most upset is my favourite doctor, who I've mostly written good things about, but also some snarky things that I totally see would upset me if I read them about myself. Those things don't represent the total of what I feel about our interactions, but they are out there, nonetheless.

Of course some of what I wrote is unfair and unkind, it is totally slanted by the mood I was in that day, what was happening with my cycle, and my need to occasionally write something a bit snarky to vent all the misery that is infertility, as well as to entertain you. I'm an unreliable narrator of my own life, just as everyone is. I'm sure my husband would not recall the details of some of the discussions I've reported on here in the same way that I reported them, and I'm sure he would be terribly hurt by some of what I've written about his ED. Similarly I'm sure the way I write about a particular wanding appointment is not the same as the memory of the person who did the wanding. That's the point of the blog - it's personal, it's mine, and it's whatever I want to write. The so-called anonymity of blogworld meant that I have - or had - no obligation to be kind to the people in my life in what I wrote about them here, despite what they deserve. That's why I started a new blog when I started writing about infertility, as my old one was known about by a couple of my friends. I cringe to think what my sister-in-law would feel if she ever read on here about how I felt about her pregnancy, or how I feel about my littlest nephew, born 10 months after our wedding. I love my sister-in-law a great deal, and I've also said that here, but I bet if she read it it would be the thoughtless, unkind things that would stick with her. The things that I think but would never say in real life. And in many people's real lives, there would be no need to ever write that stuff down. But I've had the worst two years of my life in the last two years, and the way I have dealt with it is to find a place where I could sometimes be my worst self with no fear of causing hurt to the people I love, most especially my husband, who knows about this site but doesn't read it because he knows that I need to be able to write stuff without the fear of how he would feel if he read it.

So, having had a chance to think more about this, I'm not just upset because I have upset people I care about and respect tremendously, but also because I feel violated. It's like someone went through my private journal. I know it's not like that - I put this stuff out on the internet, there was always a chance that someone I knew in real life would find it, and I'm being very unfair expecting to have the upside of the public side of this blog without any of the concomitant downside - but that's how it feels. I don't know what to do now, as my ability to write about what's happening with the clinic feels tremendously compromised. I could go password protected, but then all the effort I go to to learn about the science and share that with you guys has limited utility, and the chance of some new person finding this and being able to benefit from zoladex, for example, is also limited. I could start up again with a new identity and reform my links to this community, but that feels odd - I have good relationships, albeit electronic ones, with some of you already, and I don't really want to start building this community from scratch again. Or I could have a second blog which is password protected, where I write about the stuff I don't want the clinic to read...no, that just seems awkward.

I'm also upset because it's knocked Dr Candour onto a somewhat lower pedestal. I'm not sure why he raised it with me at all. Think about it - situation before he raised it, several upset doctors. Situation after he raised it, several upset doctors plus a very upset me and an angry H. I can't take back what I've already written. He didn't want me to raise it with the doctors directly so that I could apologise (I'm going to ignore that). He raised it, he said, because it affected the nature of the doctor/patient relationship. Of course it wouldn't change how they treated me, he assured me.

On reflection, that statement confuses me. How does it change the nature of the doctor/patient relationship? Because they now know what's going on in my head while they're wanding me? Because they know that I think about them as real human beings, with strengths and weaknesses like the rest of us, rather than impersonal doctors, rather better than the rest of us? Because they know rather more about my life than they'd like to? On that one, well, that's really not my problem, I didn't ask them to read the blog! Because they now know I can be mean and nasty in an unjustified and uncalled for way, and that will affect how they feel about me at the clinic? But that would mean it would make a difference to our treatment, and he said that it wouldn't...

So I'm a bit confused. I know the doctors asked him NOT to raise it with me, but he went ahead anyway, so he must have a good reason. I'm going to have to write to him to clear this up, to understand what he wants me to do differently. Probably he'd rather I didn't blog at all, although I'm sure he won't say that as I'm sure he'll feel it's not really up to him.

In deciding what I do next I need to work through why I blog in the first place.

I blog because it is impossible to share how awful this experience is with anyone in real life. I do have a colleague at work with endo so bad she decided against IVF and is adopting from China. I do share a lot with her, but not to the extent of detailing wanding experiences or egg collection stories - she's not interested in those details. Yet those details are important parts of how those of us online build intimacy and understanding with each other - not to mention sharing coping strategies. So I blog because you understand me in a way that no one in real life ever can, except possibly H, because you know the pain and you know the indignity and you know the stress and the complexity of what we are experiencing. And I'm glad I don't have to inflict that on people in real life. They don't get it, and I wouldn't have as rewarding an experience sharing with them. I blog because I don't see how I would have got through the last two years without the support that you offer. I blog because I've got to get out all the shit that is in my head, or it would drive me mad. I blog because perhaps my life as I wanted it to be is going to end, and I have to have a way to process that, and your perspective on my processing helps me see things more clearly. I blog because it's good for me to get stuff out there rather than sitting and fretting. And sometimes, but perhaps infrequently, I blog because I want to help someone else not have to relearn the stuff I've already struggled to learn. So yes, most of why I blog is about me. It's mostly selfish, and mostly very very subjective. It's not about concern for my family, although I feel a lot of concern for them. It's not about my love for my husband, although sometimes that comes through. It's not about a fair and accurate portrayal of my doctors, although it is sometimes about my experience of working with them.

It never should have gone further than that, and oh how I regret that it has. I regret it because I upset people I respect. I regret it because for me it has taken the shine off a doctor who I think is tremendous in many ways. I regret it because this no longer feels like a safe space for me.

Having worked through all of this, I think in the end I will be able to keep blogging as I have done with just a few changes. I will probably limit the snarky comments about the doctors and nurses, but I won't - I can't - promise to never say anything unfair again. Sometimes my experience is different than yours, and on here it's my experience that counts. But if the people at the clinic want to read this, then they need to understand that it's not meant to be fair or kind, or even respectful, it's meant to be helpful to me. Although maybe I'm kidding myself. The thought of writing something like: "Dr Gorgeous's earrings were so pronounced today that I was worried they were going to dip into the ultrasound gel," knowing that she was going to read it, is fairly horrific (and NO I've never written that, nor experienced it, so don't go getting upset about it).

I am not going to make any decisions while I'm still so upset.I'll think about it more over the weekend. I'm turning comments off as I don't want you guys to write things in the comments that would upset the doctors if they are still reading. If you want to discuss this, please email me - the link is on the top left.

Ask again later

I'm in a bit of a funk about the appointment with Dr Candour today. I had a full-on anxiety dream about it yesterday, which included an appointment with Dr Condescending that never quite happened due to her being overworked, but did involve a long period sitting in an office with her with a bunch of other people who apparently couldn't go elsewhere; potential options on what we might do next, prepared by H on scrappy bits of paper and laid out by Dr Condescending for me to pick up and react to (I reacted very badly to the donor egg one); H disappearing to train with some soldiers over lunch, and me getting cross because he wasn't there to talk to Dr Condescending with me; A man conking out while sitting round the edges of Dr Condescending's office, and it turned out to be because she'd given him heparin when she shouldn't have done; us ending up at Dr Condescending's house where her husband walked out in a bad mood and she told me she was 2 days pregnant; me suddenly realising that it was 16:15 and we were late for our appointment with Dr Candour. I should add that in this dream Dr Condescending didn't look like she does in reality - she was fatter, for one thing. My shrink told me that if you dream of someone but they don't look like they do in reality, it's because you're conflating other people with them. I think I might have been adding myself into Dr Condescending in this dream, since the fatter bit would make sense, plus her hair was more like mine.

I wasn't even going to record it, since I know how much you aren't interested in my dreams, but once I started typing it all just spewed up onto the screen, sorry. I am not going to over-interpret it, suffice it to say I know I'm anxious and this didn't help calm me down.

I'm anxious because I'm going to ask some questions about donor eggs, and our chances of success, as well as the more mundane things about when can we cycle and should we do Zoladex again. In fact, here's the list I prepared and emailed to Dr Candour last night - anything missing?

• We want to do another IVF cycle as soon as we can. How soon is that, given that we are trying not to let the endo get out of control?
• Should we do zoladex again? One cycle probably isn't enough for the endometrium re-setting (I know he doesn't believe in that, anyway), so it's really just to keep the endo under control, and since I've now had 4 un-suppressed cycles since my last lap (2 IVF, one post miscarriage, one now), how much effect is the zoladex still having?
• Given the 4 cycles with estrogen floating around, should we do another lap, even in the absence of an indicative endometrioma? (although who knows, I may have one by now)
• Should we do a frozen or fresh cycle? How good are those embryos we've got frozen, really?
• If we get a good number of embryos again on a fresh cycle, shouldn't we be attempting blastocyst transfer? How good is the discrimination at day 2 really?
• Does the HFEA restriction re number of embryos transferred drop on my birthday exactly (13 Jan), or is there some leeway? How much?
• Are we kidding ourselves, and really we should be thinking about donor eggs now rather than later?

I'm also anxious because I'm remembering Julie's mantra from a post ages ago where she talked about what she wished she'd known, and one of the entries was: "If you've had three failed cycles, switch clinics. No matter how much you like your doctor, they aren't working for you." (I'm paraphrasing as I can't find the entry). I don't want to switch clinics. I like the atmosphere at ours, I trust Dr Candour and Dr Condescending, I like that I can email and get answers to science questions, that they know me, that it's convenient to our house, that they are non-profit making, that they designed a protocol just for me. And they did get us pregnant. Once. 

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that I am being an idiot. As I've mentioned before, there is a clinic in the UK which has double the success rates of anywhere else in the country. I know they screen on FSH, but I would pass that screen (assuming it stays where it's been for the last 2 years). Dr Candour says they also do ET at the clinic next door for patients with crappy prognoses, so that those numbers don't show up in their stats. He is a man of integrity, so I don't think he's making it up, but still their published figures haunt me. I also know that they are much harder to work with - they don't tell you what's going on, you have to go in every day for bloods etc., and they don't give appointments so you can sometimes wait for hours (hard to do with work), sometimes you have to come back in the afternoon (similarly hard with work), etc. Plus they push ICSI and IVIG on you, at more expense. But the success rates, how they call to me. A colleague at work got pregnant there, twice - with her son, and then with her twin boys, having had five failed IVFs elsewhere, so she is pushing me to go to them. I don't want to, but I think I'm being stupid. That's not a very good combination.

To clear up a couple of questions from the last post. We can't just suddenly switch to DE, there is a whole procedure to go through and donors are very hard to find in the UK, although I understand that my clinic has a good list and that the waiting time is not too bad (it can be years). So there is no question of doing half my eggs and half donor, for example. Second, Dr Candour doesn't just uniformly suggest five cycles, he suggested five on the basis that three completely negative cycles would lead him to suggest we stop, but we've had one pregnancy so that improves our chances, hence the additional two before he'd figure we were SOL. The reason that doing additional cycles delays adoption procedures is that in the UK, social services demand that you have stopped any kind of treatment before you start the adoption process, and some  even demand a six month wait time, to ensure you have mourned your biological children and let go of that (not sure six months is long enough, but there you go). So while we are still pursuing treatment, there is nothing we can do to initiate adoption. 

I can't help feeling that we're coming to the end of the runway, with no take-off in sight. Yes, I know we had a short-lived pregnancy, but many people have that and never get pregnant again. Yes, I   know my FSH is low, but I still don't stim easily. Yes, I know we produce good looking day 2/day 3 embryos, but who knows what they look like at day 7 or later? And I will be 40 in January. 40.

Let's see what happens this afternoon. I will probably be unable to post until later this weekend since we're heading off to see friends for the weekend, and not sure what their internet connection is like. I'll update when I can.

Relentless foward motion

Yes, I've been somewhat absent. I've had good days and bad days. I've read a lot of adoption blogs, from the beginning (sorry if you thought I was a weird stalker in your stats). I've started the adoption post, but haven't had the chance to finish it. I've been quite busy at work, partly so that H and I could bunk off early on Thursday and take Friday off - a conspiracy which H hatched with my assistant, and told me about Wednesday evening.

It turned out H had booked us into an amazing restaurant just outside London, which also happens to be a hotel. We had been there for our first Valentine's day together. This time we stayed in the most utterly glamorous room (a fish tank in the wall between the bathroom and bedroom, a steam room in the bathroom, a walk in closet with automatic lighting, a view over the countryside, sugared almonds in a laquer box on the coffee table). We ate a lot of extraordinary food, both at dinner and then the following morning for breakfast, and later tramped through the countryside for hours, miraculously missing the rain that's been chucking it down here for the last few days. H even climbed a fence to go and pick me some apples on the edge of a wood. It was very romantic.

We had a long talk about where next over our lovely dinner. H really wants to do the last two cycles that Dr Candour recommends, and until we've done those, the UK adoption agencies won't even talk to us. He is also keener on donor egg than on adoption right now, as he feels the experience of being pregnant and knowing the baby from that first moment are an important part of parenting, and one he'd like not to miss out on. I'm not convinced that donor egg would do us any good, since we seem to be making perfectly lovely embryos, but they just don't want to stick around. Plus I think donor egg would be hard to do, there aren't exactly donors coming out of our ears, and all my friends are too old. More on this when I've worked through the adoption stuff a bit more in my head.

It was a good conversation. We are good at talking about this stuff. It made me feel, well, not optimistic exactly, but empowered, like we have options. Sadly within an hour of getting home I was feeling very down again. Something about the grim reality hitting home. Another week til our appointment with Dr Candour, probably another two months minimum before he'll let us into a new cycle. Our house is a mess - months of building works that were supposed to be minor but have dragged on and found new problems. I'm still fat. Work sucks. You get the message, I'm not going to bang on about it here.

I'm struggling with the time of year. The new year makes me think of my grandmother, and miss her more than I do all the time anyway. I don't think I believe in Gd any more, not sure I ever did, and the rituals of religion, which I used to use as a way of creating a time for spiritual reflection in my life, don't hold the same pleasures they used to. I don't really want to reflect on the last year, all the good deeds left undone, all my sins lined up in front of me. It was bad enough while I was living through it. And looking forward with optimism to the next year also seems like too much to bear. What will there be but more of the same? Why is this the third Yom Kippur I will have sat in synagogue, hoping for a different status next year? But still, I've made our pre-fast meal, and in a minute I will go and shower and put on clothes suitable for synagogue. I can't keep away, despite not knowing why I'm going. Perhaps I'll know when I get there.

Just another everyday sadness

Oh the joy of needing to compose a new category. Any suggestions? Post IVF#3: Continuing the death march? Or Post IVF#3: Lalalalala I can't hear you? Or Post IVF#3: If RW is still 35, then so am I?

Yes, you can tell, I'm not exactly over this yet. The weekend showed me this pretty clearly. First, I went to Tescos on Friday afternoon to get some cake-making ingredients. I went fully armed with an ipod on full volume, but it didn't manage to block my visuals of hundreds and hundreds of small children who were having fun with shopping. And chatting, and crying, and asking: "Why?" and whining and all that good stuff, but still, no matter how much their parents would rather have been without them at that particular instant, I still wanted to be with one of them. Or two or three. Getting emotional in the organic fruit aisle, not really recommended.

Then we went to a friend's birthday lunch on Sunday. We thought we'd timed it right so we'd be able to walk in, say hi to our three good friends who would be there, then deposit our chocolate gingerbread contribution, then leave again sharpish. When we got there, our birthday friend was alone with just one other couple and their two (adorable, blond, slightly suntanned) children. We sort of know this couple who are perfectly charming but not close to us and not people we really needed to make small talk with this weekend. Not quite what we'd planned. We ended up staying for over two hours while people slowly trickled in, until just after lunch was served and one of our friends showed up, then making an almost indecently fast exit, with the excuse that we needed to get back to our builder. Yes, the builders are still in, and in a desperate attempt to finish one of them was indeed working this Sunday, we weren't lying to our friends. In fact, it was a good thing we left when we did, as the builder was slightly forlornly sitting on our bottom step smoking when we got back. Anyway, the lunch was very stressful all round - making polite conversation is really not my thing at the moment - and I was glad to be home again, even sans gingerbread.

I was thinking about the grief yesterday. And this morning, and most of the rest of my waking hours, actually. I was wondering why this pervasive sadness was back again, when getting a negative after a cycle isn't really as bad as having a miscarriage, no matter how early that miscarriage was. And I realised, because I'm so bright that way, that the sadness is back because this isn't any different than the grief of the miscarriage. It's all one big bit of grief, which just goes on and on and on being sad. Perhaps the last post I wrote should have offered me one ginormous clue that that was true, but what can I say, I guess my brilliance is taking a back seat to my sadness right now.

So yes, I'm really sad. My life is just coloured a peculiarly unattractive shade of grey all round. I don't really like my job, even while I recognise that I am bloody lucky to work for a company that has such good benefits, and pays me so well, and offers me interesting and challenging work, well, at least some of the time. Because I'd really rather be home, looking after a demanding and generally unresponsive infant, I don't get much pleasure out of my work. I'm fatter than I'd like to be, again, yet one of the few things that does make me feel better is cooking and eating delicious food. To the extent that I'm seriously considering whether a local deli would sell some of my cakes and cookies. At least that way I could get the satisfaction of making them without H and I and my work colleagues being the sole so-called beneficiaries. I'm guessing that as soon as this stuff is for sale to the general public that I'd have to follow all sorts of health and safety guidelines that my kitchen probably doesn't comply with, so it's probably not an option. But right now I do think it would make me happy. Cooking=nurturing=love, isn't that right?

Of course H is very sad, too. I think we, and the world, often forget how sad our men get. H has dropped little things into the conversation recently that have been quite illuminating. Things like: "Don't you hate it when we see so many babies on the way to the gym?" And "Let's not go to the wetlands centre today, it will be full of families." And he had to go out into the garden yesterday after a few minutes with the happy couple and their (adorable) children. I followed him out and he said: "Thank you, that was a signal that I needed a hug. But look, the baby's following us!" And indeed, the (very cute) baby was crawling in a very determined manner towards us. H also has a thoroughly violent reaction every time I turn to something like 'baby story' on the TV - not that I do it very often any more, but, as I'm sure you recognise, sometimes that masochism just kicks in. He always asks: "Why are you doing this? Why are you making yourself feel worse?" I just protest that actually in that instant it's ok for me to watch this programme, but I think now that I've been missing the point. It's him who can't bear to watch those programmes, not just me.

It always shocks me when he comes out with those kinds of statements. He's such the strong, kind, silent type that I imagine him, sad yet stalwart, just getting on with life. Those little sad comments give me a clue that he's holding a lot in so that he doesn't upset me. He continues to want to protect me, to look after me and make me feel better, so he doesn't burden me with those feelings that he has. But he has them, nonetheless. So I worry about him. Not much I can do, but I worry about him.

I've been thinking a lot about adoption. And getting very scared, and wanting to talk to H about it, but he's not ready. I'll write a proper post on it soon.

Thank you again for all your recent support. You've been fabulous.

Lighter, tighter, and ready to go

I am back, I am scanned, my ovaries are quiet, my lining was thin,my FSH is at 2.3 (2.3?? Must be the zoladex), and I have injected 300mIU of Puregon. Along with all that excitement I've been to the launderette (our basement laundry room is currently being rebuilt due to extreme leakage whenever it rained previously), been to the supermarket in the pouring rain, and made my husband a delicious lunch of cheese and pickle sandwiches with a beefy cup of builder's tea (just what he wanted), myself a watercress and rocket salad with cottage cheese, spring onions and tomatoes, done some work, been to the gym and am awaiting supper (a takeaway curry, H has been pining). Not bad given we only landed back at Heathrow this morning at 705am.

So there you go, that's my news, that's all you came for, right? No, really? Ok, I give in. Yes, we had a lovely holiday, thank you. It had good points and bad points, but all in all it was worth the extortionate amount of money we spent. I've been to this hotel twice before, as a single woman. To be honest, H was a bit nervous that it would all be a bit girly, as it has a reputation for being a place to go and recuperate, with a spa, a focus on healthy mind and a healthy body, and a considerable amount of spiritual therapy as well. In the end H had a great time, doing lots of Thai boxing and throwing himself into punishing workouts in the gym, as well as attending a stretch class every morning and swimming in the afternoon.

He even enjoyed the food, which is all delicious but also designed to be low-fat and low-calorie. To be honest, some of the food is more successful than others. Wheat-free pasta just isn't that nice and why a chef with all the skill of this guy, with all the wonderful Thai flavours he has to hand, even bothers to serve it up for a main course lunch choice once a week is beyond me. Buckwheat pancakes at breakfast, though, are delicious, as were his chocolate sponge cake, and the passion fruit sorbet - some western-type foods do work well in his cooking. Best of all, though, were the more eastern-based dishes, such as the Thai-inspired salads available at lunch, the pad thai, the salmon glazed with red curry, and a miraculous gingered lentil dahl, served with a lid made from naan. The dahl plus naan offered a total of 289 calories (all the food is marked for nutritional content) - I have no idea how he did that, but have asked for the recipe so if I learn anything interesting I will share.

As you know, my back has really been painful over the last year - since I basically started sitting on my butt during IVF#1. The physiologist I saw on day 1 suggested a programme of water fitness and pilates, so I did that along with my daily massage, as well as some sessions in the gym, lots of swimming, and the daily stetch class. They warned me off yoga because of the focus on forward bends, which are very hard for me and could strain the back further. I was relieved to find that I was able to exercise hard despite the Zoladex. I had thought that the fact I got migraines previously on this drug when I got dehydrated would mean that working out hard would have the same effect. It didn't. My guess is that the migraines were more related to lack of sleep than to lack of water, and sleeping was something we did well. I also read lots of books, had some good (ish) nookey, and met some very interesting people.

The consequence of all this exercise plus the healthy eating is that I am MUCH more flexible, although still in some pain (it's going to take more than 2 weeks to cure a lifetime-long back problem), and I am 3 kilos lighter, as well as 2 inches smaller on my waist. My hips, of course, have hung onto most of their fun coating of lard, but I am now only just under 1 dress size larger than when we got married and about 8 pounds heavier. Given I lost about 25 pounds during the year before we got married, and dropped 2 dress sizes, I feel a lot better about where I am now than where I was before we went away - it was so frustrating having shaped up so well and then let it all go to seed again. I had fun trying on clothes when we got back from the clinic this morning, and found I could fit into all but one pair of jeans comfortably, and two suits I haven't been able to wear for a while. There are still a few suits I bought just after the wedding that are too tight, as well as some of the clothes I wore on honeymoon, but this is a bit positive change. I wish I could keep up the losing weight and shaping up, but I feel that trying to work at that through a cycle won't be a terribly good idea. Not to mention there is of course no way I can do that much exercise while working! My aim therefore is to not gain weight or lose any flexibility during this cycle.

The physiologist gave me a pilates-based routine to do every day to continue to build strength and flexibility. The one thing I am slightly nervous of is that I remember various discussions about how strengthening your abs during stims is not really a good idea - anyone kept up a good exercise regime during a cycle and want to comment?

I have lots of ideas of things to write about, but am already getting stressed about work where all hell is breaking loose, just because I've come home. It's like they saved it all up for me, just to welcome me back. Oh how I long for that lottery win.

It will take me a while to catch up with all of you, so please forgive me while I do so.

Thalia is out of Blogworld. She will respond to your message when she returns

So sorry to leave in the middle of this interesting discussion, your thoughtful comments have given me much food for thought. I may or may not post something from holiday if I feel the urge, but don't expect anything til I get back on 21 August. I'm going to the suppression scan straight from the airport! I'll miss you all desparately, and apologise in advance for all the milestones I'll miss while I'm away. I wish you two joyous weeks.

Vignettes

Work is kicking my butt this week, so this will be just a brief snippet of a few things I don't have time to blog about properly.

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I saw the lovely Kath on Sunday. How jealous are all of you? She is just as lovely as you might expect, although, Kath, I have to confess that I wasn't expecting you to be so tall and gorgeous and glamorous. Not sure why, but I just wasn't. She also, dear readers, looks as if she's about 25, damn her. We had a lovely afternoon, wandering around central London, sitting in the park on deckchairs, visiting an art exhibition, and having a proper English tea. The conversation varied from our spouses, to linguistics, to how our hair was behaving in the weather (not), and, of course, to reproductive issues, and then on to parents and siblings and stroppy journalists. It was lovely to meet a new friend in person. Thank you, Kath, for making that long train trip.

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Did anyone see that press conference last week with Mr Bush and all those babies? It was one of the most yet another cynical piece of political positioning. It made me almost apoplectic with rage. Yes, those babies are all very adorable, and I for one don't want to deny them their current existence on the planet. But GW's statement that "how could we have thrown away these children in the name of research?" made me want to scream. How many people are living with Parkinson's because stem cell therapy isn't available to them? How many researchers are trying to understand the causes of cancer and struggling because they can't do the experiments they think are necessary because the materials they need aren't available to them? How many children are dying from childhood genetic disorders that we don't yet understand, whose treatment could be advanced by investigations with donated embryos? It was one of the most breathtaking examples of only presenting one side of a problem that I have EVER SEEN. Phew.

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The nurse from the IVF clinic called me yesterday - this is our new form of IVF orientation appointment now we are old hands. Her first question was: "Is Dr Candour ok with you starting so soon after, umm, what happened in June?" I heroically refrained from saying, "No, I held a gun to his head as he filled out the form and now I come to think of it you'd better head over to his office to make sure he's managed to untie himself." "Yes," I said, instead, "he's given me the zoladex injection so we are already underway." Wasn't that nice of me? I'll get my reward in heaven, I know.

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I know there was something else I wanted to blog about, but it's gone now, so that will have to do.