Thalia's fertility journey: hopefully more comedy than tragedy

The gift

When I started this blog, there were about 20 blogs in my blogroll under 'you are not alone' and only 5 or so in 'been there, done that'. My rule was that if someone had already had their children, or was already pregnant, I didn't add them. I wasn't in a place where I could stand that. I made an exception for bloggers like Grrl, Julie and Tertia, who had been part of the small group of bloggers who had inspired me. But it was a small list - those whose infertility journeys had been successful but who were important enough to my own journey that I added them to the list of blogs I checked up on at least on a weekly basis.

Over the last 2.5 years of blogging, people have gradually moved from my 'you are not alone' list through 'on their way' to 'been there, done that'. And I've gradually added more to the front of the pipeline, but look at the 'been there, done that' list now, it's longer than the 'you are not alone' despite the fact I almost never add people straight into the 'been there, done that' category. It's a fact of our community that people move on - into the other categories, and/or they drop out. The few people who've stayed in the 'you are not alone' group for the whole of the last 2.5 years or at least most of it, are some of those I feel closest to - Millie, Pamplemousse, Jen, Julianna, Kay, Manuela, Flicka for example. Their tenacity and ability to deliver support to others despite all the utter crap they've had to deal with is a real testament to their strength - and the strength of the community we're part of. I don't believe that there's a reason why some of us don't get to move categories. I don't believe that the statistics mean it's inevitable. Even among the approximately 200 blogs in my infertility lists, we aren't big enough to be statistically meaningful group. It's just shitty bad luck, and if wishes were able to be made manifest, it wouldn't happen. In fact, that category simply wouldn't exist.

I add people less frequently to the 'you are not alone' category now. Somehow I'm less good at knowing what to say to those starting on their first clomid cycle or IUI. I can't bear to dash their happiness sometimes, their belief that in just getting going things will be ok. They might be, and then again they may not. I don't want to be death's head at the feast, making life harder for those who haven't got to the point of cynicism yet. I hope they don't have to get there, and then I move on to the next blog.

It's been extraordinary to me to move my own blog through those categories. It took me until about 20 weeks to move myself into the 'on their way' category. Even then I kept not finding it when I scrolled through bloglines. It didn't occur to me to look there. Tomorrow, please please it all goes to plan, I should be moving to the 'been there, done that' category. Of course I won't get round to moving myself til I get home from the hospital - which won't be til Monday at the earliest, but officially it's time to move. It's an extraordinary feeling. I'm not sure I can do it justice. It feels right to be doing it with Kath, with Amy, and with Carol. It feels wrong not to be doing it with more of you. It's absolutely awe-inspiring. It's making me so very happy and so very apprehensive. I'm terrified and I'm overjoyed. I have no idea what tomorrow will feel like but I feel ready for it, despite the piles of paper we didn't get round to sorting out.

Tomorrow, all being well, I get to meet my daughter. She's been a long time coming. I don't know what she looks like, but I already love her. I know that will change tomorrow although I don't know how. I know there will be really tough times ahead, tough in ways I can't imagine now. But I also know that there are ways through them and it will all be worth it. I cannot forget for a second how extraordinarily lucky I am to be here. To get to meet her is the most extraordinary gift. I don't deserve it any more than anyone else does. It makes no sense that I got this gift, but/and I'm so terribly thankful that I did.

Countdown to Pob: the cleaning/baking stage

H is quite a tidy person. I am not. I've never been tidy, much to the despair of everyone who tried to bring me up. My form of tidying is to do a complete blitz so everything looks perfect, then gradually let it slide for a while, say, six months or so. I'm happy to have piles of books lying around the place - who knows when I might want to read them? I'm ok with piles of papers, it means I know where to find what I'm looking for. Being untidy does not mean I can't find stuff. Except maybe earrings. My passport is always in my handbag, given the travel I usually do, so that's easy. The kitchen is always clean, I don't like washing-up sitting in the sink.I also do plenty of laundry. But papers, books, magazines, clothes that don't need washing, cosmetics, jewelry, are slung around the house in what seems to be a fairly random manner.

H likes things to be tidy. Funnily enough, he leaves some of his stuff lying around, but he can't see it. So, for example, his clothes are always in the laundry basket or put away - he doesn't leave piles lying around. He generates much less paperwork and smaller bookpiles than I, but both are in their official places in his office and by his bed, respectively. On the other hand, his golf clubs, skis, walking equipment, and rucksack quite happily sit out for months before he notices. Behind our sofa is the disassembled pile of poles that was a mobile clothes rack in his old house. It's been there four years. He says he can't get rid of it as it belongs to a friend. But he asked the friend last year if he wanted it back, and has heard nothing. Which I think means it's time to get rid of it. But he can't quite do it. But he can nag me to take spare computer cables back to work, throw away old books etc. I am a packrat, he wants the house more minimalist. It's give and take.

A fit of tidying has come upon me, however, and today I have cleaned out the cupboard in our living room where H has been throwing any of my stuff he didn't want to deal with for the last 4 years. I've been putting in there the presents I buy for unspecified children so that I'm never caught short when there's a birthday that H has forgotten (he has 3 godsons and no idea when any of them were born, not to mention his 2 nephews). It was quite a treasure trove. I found a lot of beautiful editions of childrens books, which I've now just decided to keep for Pob. Plus a couple of pairs of pink tights that must have been meant for one of my goddaughters, but which would never fit now. Plus a pair of dinosaur pyjamas that might fit in a couple of years. They've all gone up to the room which will be hers. I also discovered the spare orders of service from our wedding and some photographs I ordered for various family members but didn't distribute. There are spare light fittings that came from my old house but don't fit here, and a box full of stickers that I collected when I was about, say, 13? Yes, I already said I was a packrat. And I'm not ashamed.

Having generated one bag full of rubbish from that exercise, I then turned to our bedroom. I've been gathering stuff I couldn't find a home for on top of my chest of drawers for a couple of years now. A bunch of travel equipement - bose headphones, spare travel plugs, selection of teabags. A few piles of books, although these were totally overshadowed by the massive piles under and around my side of the bed. Did I mention we are chronically short of bookshelves?

Anyway, there's nothing terribly interesting about what I found. Some has gone to the charity shop, some for trash and some has been tidied away. The room looks much more habitable, and I feel happier about having people in and out. Now I just need to tidy our kitchen/living room area a bit further, and we'll be ready for visitors.

I've been preparing for visitors by baking, too. I've baked 48 muffins in the last 2 days - some blueberry, some banana/pecan and some date/orange/bran. That's filled the freezer with stuff we can easily eat for breakfast without much effort. Plus I made a couple of New Year honeycakes which means we can offer people something with their cups of tea. Although I made the mistake of making the cakes with chestnut honey, and I'm not convinced that the bitterness of that honey works with the way the cake is supposed to taste. I bet no one will say so, though. I am intending to make some of Nigella's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies tomorrow, as they freeze well and will give us something else to feed pepole with.Then I hope I'm done. H has already made quantities of Ragu, roasted tomato sauce for pasta, a couple of lasagnas and some chicken soup for the freezer, so we definitely won't starve!

Anyone think we're nesting?

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?

Antenatal classes: fun for infertiles

As I sat and had lunch with some of the women from my antenatal class on Wednesday, I was struck again by how different their experience of pregnancy has been. They are all younger than me, although one is approaching my elderly status by being 38. At least 2 of them are in their 20s. Three of them have confessed to me how they got pregnant the first month they gave up birth control, and one isn't really sure when she conceived as she was still on the pill, just perhaps not taking it as regularly as she should. That doesn't mean they aren't lovely and supportive and fun to hang out with, but sometimes I feel the raging heat of jealousy come flooding through me as they tell me of their experiences, as I listen to them talk about number 2.

It also doesn't mean they haven't had some tough times being pregnant. One woman had a big bleed (onto a seat at the theatre) at 12 weeks. One woman threw up everything she ate for 4 months (including on her wedding day, see 'forgot to take the pill', above). One woman needed serious surgery in about month 3 of the pregnancy and so underwent general anaesthesia and subsequently needed a bunch of painkillers. She was assured by her caregivers that this wouldn't harm the baby, and was regularly scanned etc., but I'm wondering if there is any coincidence in the fact that she went into labour at 32 weeks, was stopped by terbutaline but then gave birth at 36 weeks to her very petite (5lb) daughter. The mum, of course, was back in her size 2 (US) jeans at our lunch yesterday. And was very sweet about it but of course I am dead jealous. Not that I've EVER made it into a pair of size 2 jeans. Her baby is very very sweet and very tiny. Funny to think that our Pob is probably already bigger than this tiny girl. Her size certainly gave pause to the two women who have been told that their babies are probably around 9.5 lbs right now...

They call me the guru of the group. Whatever someone asks about I have some kind of answer. I've talked about all of you in vague terms, "a friend of mine in the US said...", "a friend who had twins recently...", etc. They're not really that curious, they've found it easy to rely on what I say. I got an email just before H and I went to the cinema on Sunday asking me how to time contractions, which I thought I'd better respond to - turns out she was just checking. I don't mind this role but I can't help thinking they must find me annoying sometimes. But it seems to be something they genuinely like. And anyway, now that one of us has given birth, and a second is going for a c-section tomorrow, I'll no longer be the expert on some aspects, that's a relief.

The oddness I find in being part of this group is partly a social issue as well as an issue of different experiences. Most of them gave up work relatively early in pregnancy, certainly by 34 weeks. About 65% don't intend to go back to work. Their husbands are investment bankers and others of that ilk, so they don't 'need' to return, despite their obvious achievements in their careers so far. In a way I'm jealous of that, too. I love my job, most of the time, but it is very demanding. It also pays extremely well. H's job doesn't. If I stopped working, we'd have to sell our house and move somewhere smaller. That wouldn't be the end of the world, but it's a serious change. I'm also not sure it would make me happy - I've worked hard to get where I am today. But then, last week as I ate a peach, I thought about giving Pob little bits of peach next summer to mush up, and perhaps even eat, I realised that on many evenings I might not be home in time to give her supper. That doesn't feel good.

Don't worry, I'm not about to make a decision on work right now. I'm lucky to have good maternity benefits - I'll get paid for about 4 months, then I can take up to another 8 months off. The intent is to go back after about 6 months but we'll see how I'm feeling.

Anyway, back to the maternity group. The strangest part of the experience was not the different experiences of my new friends, but the behaviour of the instructor at the first class. The instructor went round the room asking us our names, any details about our pregnancies, our intended date of stopping work, what we were doing for exercise, what we were worried about. I was about 2/3rds of the way round the room. Before me came many of the women who had already given up work or would do so by about 32-34 weeks. One woman owns her own interior decoration business so she explained she'd keep going as long as she could, and the instructor barely commented. Then I went. I mentioned the fact this was my third pregnancy, that I'd had a small bleed at 13 weeks, that I was doing regular pregnancy yoga, and that I was intending to work to somewhere between 36 and 38 weeks, but would go as long as I could since I was the primary wage earner in our family.

And then the instructor launched into me. I got a diatrabe including the threat, "if you keep working you've got a much higher chance of premature labour, and if you have a preemie they'll end up in special care", and a lot of "given your age you should be taking things easier." And a "what's really important here?" It lasted about 5 minutes. At the time I wasn't upset so much as bemused. And a bit puzzled by the statistics she quoted. Turns out that the only studies which show any links between premature labour and women's occupations are for women who do heavy manual labour, and as my OB pointed out, you can't separate the effects of heavy manual labour from the low socio-economic status of those women. So he was not worried about me working. And the berating I got wasn't justified at all.

For the few weeks after that class I had regular dreams that I was in labour, giving birth to small babies, who usually got mixed up with other people's babies. I didn't feel too disturbed by the conversation, but clearly my subconscious did.

I never raised my discomfort - nay, outrage - with that conversation with the instructor. I should have done. Perhaps I'll still write her a note. It certainly made me doubt any other statistics she quoted at us. But then I was never attending the ante-natal classes for the education, I knew I could get that elsewhere. I was attending to meet a bunch of women who were sharing one part of my experience with me - albeit not the whole scenario. I was also attending because the often cited 'best breast feeding expert in the UK' teaches one class there, and I was told it was well worth learning from her and having the access to her once the baby is born.

The ante-natal classes have done their job. I have a bunch of fun women to hang out with, and, all being well, in a month all 13 of us will have babies and will be able to share the experiences of their first few months. I'm sure that as some of them get pregnant again I'll have more pangs of jealousy, but I think I can bottle it and look to this online community to give me what I need in that direction. They are lovely, kind, sensitive women who just haven't been through what I have to get this far. They appreciate my situation is a bit different and they are not insensitive to those differences (most of the time). I feel quite lucky to have them.

Part of me can't help thinking, though, that a class of pregnant infertiles might have a better time together. No need to explain why you still have morbid thoughts about still birth, even at 38 weeks pregnant. No need to explain why, at 32 weeks, you haven't even thought about what the nursery is going to look like. Plenty of opportunity to discuss worries about whether our bodies will fail us again. Lots of opportunity to discuss the latest findings of Dr Google. Or do you think we'd all wind each other up too much?

Oh well then

Today was a series of small pieces of data, woven into an answer by a very impressive woman OB/GYN. Once we'd heard the story,there was no other answer but that this baby will be born by c-section. But it took a while to get there.

Part 1: the scan
The consultant sonography doctor confirmed that the baby was breach, with her spine down my right side. Her head was a little higher than I've been feeling her recently, which I wasn't surprised about since she tends to move up at night, and sink gradually down the right side as the day goes on. He, again, did not see the fibroid that the two women sonographers I've seen during the pregnancy have noticed, measured and commented on, the one down by my cervix (note - signalling!). I wonder if this is perhaps he doesn't want to go digging down into my pubic bone, which is what it takes to visualise that fibroid. The good news was that everything looked good with the baby. Her growth is on track, the level of amniotic fluid looked good, and he even pointed out she has quite a bit of hair - on the ultrasound it looked like feathery extensions of her head into the fluid!

Part 2: Dr OB
We saw Dr OB briefly for a urine and blood pressure check (110/70, still good). He then directed us to go and see Dr big picture, who would review our notes, scan etc., and help us make a decision about whether or not she would attepmt an external version. I confessed I didn't hold out much hope it would work, since this baby has been in a very consistent position for over 6 weeks now, and he confessed he felt the same, but thought we'd all regret at least not giving it a try. So back we went to the other bit of the hospital to see Dr big picture.

Part 3: Waiting
Before Dr Big Picture could see us, we needed to have the baby's well being assessed. So I got strapped into a fetal monitor device in the day care unit, to measure her heartbeat. She was not Miss cooperative, and kept moving position after the monitor was placed on my stomach. After a while we found a position where mostly the monitor could pick up her heartbeat, but even so about every 2-3 mintues an alarm would go off as the machine stopped hearing her, and I'd have to reset it. She also got hiccups, which was quite entertaining. The heartbeat varied between 165ish and 120ish, mostly around 140 which is what I've measured with the home doppler pretty much throughout the pregnancy.

After about 20 minutes they took pity on me, agreed she was clearly very healthy and extremely wriggly, and took the monitor off. However, it then turned out that Dr Big Picture had been called into an emergency, so we'd have to wait. So we waited. For quite a long time. About an hour and a half maybe? Pob kept making quite major movements, waves of baby moving under the skin of my stomach, as if to indicate her displeasure at all this messing around. She succeeded in getting into a position which actually just hurt me, so I was getting quite grumpy. Not about the wait - an emergency is an emergency - but just about being uncomfortable.

Part 4: The answer
Dr Big Picture eventually showed up and was terribly apologetic about the wait. She took us back to an exam room, and started going through the file. She read this morning's report first, then flicked through my maternity notes. And said "ah, fibroids. When Dr OB told me about you last week, he didn't mention fibroids." (Note: more foreshadowing!!). She then started reading through the other ultrasound reports - the ones from 27 weeks and 32 weeks where the fibroid was carefully measured and commented on. She got me to tell her about the laps and hysteroscopies, and reviewed the pictures from those operations. She felt where Pob was and commented that really Pob was oblique and not breach - her head having moved down at least 10 cm since the scan in the early morning.

After some discussion, Dr Big Picture decided to scan to see for herself what the story was, and went straight to the fibroid. It's about 6x5cm and it's adjacent to the cervix, right in the pelvis. She showed us that none of the baby is down by the cervix, she's all up in the abdominal cavity. She told us how babies just don't choose to be oblique, there is almost always a reason for them staying in that position, and fibroids are the usual culprit. She sketched out very clearly what the situation is. The fibroid has taken up some of the space in the pelvis where Pob's head should have gone. Pob has probably tried to get round (that certainly makes sense given the seismic level of movement I've felt over the last few weeks) but hasn't had enough purchase to do so. In addition, the fact that none of her has been down near the cervix means that that part of the uterus hasn't stretched to accommodate her, so if we try to turn her now, she'd most likely pop back as there isn't enough space for her.

Yup, you got it. Not even worth a try.

Part 5: The conclusion
We went back to Dr OB to update him and book our c-section date. 20th September, at about lunchtime. So Kath and I will have daughters just a day apart. Not quite sure what I'll do about Yom Kippur, which starts on the Friday night, but I think I'll be forgiven in the grand scheme of things. Pob needs the extra time so her lungs can be ready to breathe.

It was good to have a clear opinion, and to really understand why we're where we are. But I really really feel disappointed. Odd, I know, given the ambivalence I started off with about a vaginal birth.  But hearing from you and others about the amazingness of being able to have your body push out that baby, well, it made me want to be part of it. I am not devastated, I recognise 100% that once we have Pob in our arms, it won't matter (that much) how she got here. I also recognise it's the only sensible option at this stage. It's a very small loss in the grand scheme of losses we've been through. But I am sad that I won't get to do it in the old-fashioned way. Also, I find it a bit odd to know in advance what Pob's birthday will be. I feel like she should have some say in this. Odd, I know, but there you go, just one of my many irrational feelings.

This time, two weeks from now, we'll probably, hopefully, be holding our daughter.

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 downside of cleaning

I found at least a small burst of that energy some of you mentioned in the last post, and cleaned out the bathroom cabinets. I am a terrible pack rat, and so this was a real voyage through memories, compounded by the realisation that Friday was the 10th anniversary of the day I left my home in the US to travel back to the UK. Easy to remember, given it was the day Diana died, and we woke up to the news on the radio in the middle of my bare apartment. So I've been thinking a lot about the changes of those last 10 years, marvelling that at least some of the friendships I formed in the US have survived that separation, feeling embarassed that H and I have been in this house 4 years and only now are we unpacking some of the boxes from that move.

But back to the bathroom cabinets. They're really cupboards, about 3 metres across and 1 metre high, and they were pretty packed, so you can imagine the accumulated junk. A LOT of outdated medicine. A box full of broken earrings and brooches I've never managed to get mended. The headpiece I wore to my brothers' wedding, 8 years ago almost to the day, still in its very fancy box. A huge number of different boxes of tampons, different sizes, different brands. Enough to keep me going for about 6 months, perhaps. A pair of stretchy hospital knickers and a 'maternity pad' left over from the ERPC on my miscarriage. A lot of old pots of nail varnish, all now separated and mottled, and in colours I really wouldn't wear, even if I still did manage to do my own pedicures. Lots of old makeup, some of it from my wedding. The sponge bag I took on honeymoon, with the sun cream we used on honeymoon in it - the smell was very evocative. Two puregon pens, each in their own bags, with spare needles, lots of swabs, etc. Five pregnancy tests. Four OPKs (and I'm just waiting for the partridge in the pear tree).

I threw a lot away. I put some stuff aside to take in for the collection we have at work for a local homeless shelter - shampoos I tried and didn't like, moisturiser samples, etc. I sorted everything into categories and boxes, and put it back neatly. I thought about the past.

And then I looked at those pregnancy tests, and the puregon pens, and thought about the future. I'm sure you'll all think this is utterly weird, but I've been thinking a lot about number 2. If there ever will be a number 2, that is. I've loved being pregnant so much, despite the aches and pains and the intermittent terror. I'd like to be pregnant again, but mostly I'd love for Pob to have a sibling. Yes I know only children are fine and wonderful, but it's not how I imagined life for our child. I think it's a lot of pressure, to have all that weight of parental expectations, and it's potentially very lonely later in life. It's hard not to have anyone who really shared the day-to-day annoyances of your childhood. I know I've discussed this before, but I can't find the post right now, and it's not the post I want to write now, so I'll stop there on that line of reasoning.

The point is that part of me is trying to reconcile this desire for another chid, this desire to experience pregnancy again, with the realistic notion that the likelihood I'll be able to bear another child is very low. Look what it took to get us to this point. By the time we start trying again I'll be 41, our chances will be low and declining of conceiving and carrying to term again. Yes, we've got enough frozen embryos for at least one cycle, and I'm not going to leave them in the freezer, but given previous experiences I don't hold out much hope that we'd be successful with them. I'm prepared to try another fresh cycle, just to see how we do. I'm prepared to try naturally, but unsure how we control the endometriosis while we do so (and by the way, anyone know what's likely to happen to endo while breastfeeding? Should I be considering some way of suppressing it?).

We will try. H and I have discussed it. He's keen to put a time limit on it - say 18 months from when we start, which I imagine will be from when Pob is about 6 months old - and then call a halt. He's not (currently) prepared to discuss adoption for a second child. He wouldn't be keen on donor eggs. He doesn't want trying for a second child to take over our lives in the way infertility round 1 did. I understand all of that. I want to be able to focus on Pob and doing the best for her, not on being consumed by a new round of infertility. But what if I think having a sibling is one of the best things I can do for her?

This whole train of thought is really quite bizarre when part of the time I'm still worried that Pob won't make it - like every time she's been quiet for a couple of hours. On the one hand I don't have my first born yet, on the other I'm worried about procreative strategies for the next, but unlikely, one. You'd think I'd give myself a minute's peace, no?

I think it's a combination of being the kind of person who always finds something to worry about, with the enjoyment of this pregnancy and wanting to experience it again (although knowing it would be very different with a small person to look after at the same time), the worry I've had for a long time about parenting an only child, as well as wanting the best for Pob. And cleaning out the bathroom cabinets, that's where the trouble really started. I knew it was a bad idea. It might have generated cleaner, neater cabinets, and a large black rubbish sack of trash, but it got me thinking. Always a bad idea.

Fun in the middle of the night

I seem to be suffering from early morning insomnia. I wake up some time between 430 and 545 and can't get back to sleep. This morning I woke up on the early side, but managed to get a comfortable nest set up on the sofa, and dozed off again around 6. Only to be woken by a loud crash at 630. It took me a while to figure out that what had happened was that a picture had fallen off the wall above our coffee machine, bounced off the coffee machine and slammed onto the floor. Nice. Luckily the coffee machine is working, albeit with a broken lid, because not being able to get cofee at this point would be a total disaster.

So I haven't had much sleep. Luckily I'm not going to work today or tomorrow, so I can nap at various times which will really help. Off to see Dr OB later this morning, I don't expect him to say anything interesting other than 'get a scan next week' given the baby hasn't moved and I'm still feeling fine, albeit with swollen ankles (not fingers), and plenty of heartburn and general grumpiness. Having a baby's head shoved into your ribs is not a very comfortable thing to live with. Bending forward is no longer even a vague possibility.

It still hasn't sunk in that we could have a baby in as little as 2 weeks time. The house is an utter mess as the basement still hasn't been re-waterproofed since the flood, and Pob's room has just been painted, so the furniture for her is just sitting in boxes in the hall. We got a new printer, that's still in a box. We had to move all H's camping and golfing stuff, our shoes and coats out of the basement so those are scattered over our living room. The study floor is covered in paper as H tries to sort out his filing system. My papers are in piles all over the house as I wait for him to find some space in the filing cabinets for me to file them. I still have books in boxes from when we moved house, but there are no bookshelves for them. We've had mice so there is poison and traps under the units in the kitchen. You get the picture. None of this is life threatening, but I'd love to be more organised. I'm not a tidy person, but from time to time am good at doing a massive spring clean, often around the jewish new year. But work has left me so knackered that I've done very little in the house for the last few months, and it shows. Luckily we have a cleaning lady, so it's not too disgusting, but she doesn't get to the big stuff like cleaning bookshelves, stairs etc. We're getting a cleaning service in for 2 days next week to do a thorough spring clean, but they can't do the paper filing for me...

Anyway, it will all be fine in the end. I either will or won't sleep, the house will or won't get tidier. I will or won't have time to finish those posts I've got brewing about my antenatal classes, and a couple of scientific publications that have come out recently. But either way, we'll probably have a baby home with us. In 29 days at the latest. Wow.

Away in the frozen north

Apologies for lack of update, as previously mentioned it's been busy at work, plus we're trying to get stuff in our house sorted (I never told you about our flood, did I?). We were planning on leaving on holiday on Friday night but had to delay til Sunday just to get stuff done in the house on Saturday. It was a long drive north, but we arrived late on Sunday night and immediately felt more relaxed. I'm working very hard not to think too hard on the fact that it was probably while we were here 16 months ago that our first pregnancy ended. This is the first time we've been brave enough to return. It's a lovely place, and I don't blame the place for the miscarriage. I know it's an association rather than anything more. Hopefully this visit will kill that ghost. I have, of course, checked which local hospital we need to go to if I start to bleed or if my waters break. There's a good consultant-led unit about 20 minutes away, and we both know the route to get there. What me, suddenly become an optimist? Surely you jest.

I do have work to finish up - hence turning on the computer this morning, but we've also visited our favourite gardens, cooked a Roast Chicken dinner, watched The Bourne Identity, I've started and finished my first book of the holiday (highly recommended, especially if you used to be or are now a scientist), and I had a 2 hour nap yesterday afternoon. It's good to have a break. There's really no signal here to speak of, so I'm hoping this post doesn't get eaten by the system when I try to post. I'll keep hoping.

All is well with the Passenger. I had a horrible dream last night that she had died inside me. I kept trying to find her heartbeat with the doppler but secretly knew it wasn't there. People kept coming in to use the room I was in and I was getting increasingly desparate and started getting quite rude as I tried to make them go away. At one point I saw her projecting out of my right side, and I tried to push her back in. She did go in, but I still knew she was dead. As you can imagine, when I woke up from that one there was no going back to sleep. I got up and ate some breakfast to try and get her going. And within about 15 minutes she was wriggling away, thank goodness. It was horrible while it lasted, but I suppose it's a normal anxiety dream at this stage.

The 'projecting out of the right side' thing is probably related to my worries/discomfort with her position. Having been breach, she moved to obliquely transverse about 2 weeks ago. Her head is under my right ribs, her bottom is down by my left hip (best guess, I haven't had another scan, although the doc agrees). In this position they won't even attempt an external version as apparently it rarely works on transverse babies. So the next step is a scan at 37 weeks, and then we make a decision. If she is breach or transverse, and if an external version doesn't work if she's breach, then we schedule a c-section, they won't do a vaginal delivery if she's not head down. We'll see what she decides to do. I'm still doing ok - blood pressure is a very healthy 105/60 at the last check, last week. Bump measures the right size, urine is fine, she moves around quite a bit, etc..

I am increasingly uncomfortable - breathing is hard sometimes, it's hard to sleep as my hips start to ache after an hour or so in one position. Turning over in bed is quite a palaver. Getting up and down from sitting is hard, and I feel like a barrage balloon. I can't walk very fast, and have a lot of heartburn - both when I eat and when I don't, which seems a little unfair! Until this week I'd enjoyed being pregnant so much, I wasn't sure I was ready to give it up. But now I can see that after another 5 weeks (or, most likely, less) I will definitely be ready to meet her properly. When I do I think I'll still miss the bump, miss seeing her move under the surface of my skin, miss that feeling of the utter miracle that she has grown inside me all this time, that all my organs have moved aside to make sure she has enough room. H and I have barely stopped marvelling at how lucky we are, how extraordinary this is. Pob* will be here, all being well, within 5 weeks. It's hard to imagine what that will be like. But yesterday we bought her a little stuffed eiderduck (native of this area), just one more thing we're doing so that she knows how much we were thinking of her before she even got here.

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* Pob is the nickname we've been using for the passenger. It stands for 'passenger on board' which is what the drivers who regularly pick me up for work say a lot. It's also the name of a character from children's television back in the 1980s. It seemed to fit.

Coffee, nectar of the gods

A long time ago, when we first started trying to have a baby, I gave up coffee. It nearly killed me. I love coffee with a firey passion. I drink it black, and I savour every mouthful. I never drank more than 2, perhaps 2 and a half cups of black coffee a day, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I was quite fussy about what quality of coffee I drank. No instant coffee, no bad meeting-room coffee, no Americanos unless I was absolutely desparate. The only coffee chain in the UK which actually brews coffee rather than giving you an Americano is Starbucks, so that's where I went. At home we drank single-source coffee, from beans roasted the day you order them.

Initially I cut back a little by ordering a half-decaf, half-normal brewed coffee at Starbucks on weekdays. Then Starbucks stopped brewing decaf coffee in the UK so that was out. Around this time a study was published which showed that consuming levels of caffeine above 300mg a day was associated with an increased level of miscarriage. We'd been trying for about 6 months. I wasn't consuming that much coffee, but I figured that if 300mg caused a problem, why was I tempting fate by consuming any coffee at all? So I went cold turkey. I also gave up diet coke, mostly because of the aspartame, but I could not countenance giving up chocolate, so that stayed on the cards. So I was getting some caffeine but not much. I substituted funky teas for coffee, and I missed it, particularly at the weekend when H would brew up a pot of lovely smelling coffee and I'd be there with my cup of green tea.

And then I found out that green tea can reduce absorption of folic acid. Which I'm already prone to be deficient in, given my MTHFR homozygosity, so green tea was out. I switched to the Tazo tea, Calm, but clearly it wasn't the same. No jolt of energy, no lovely complex smell to inhale.

This went on for some time. Gradually I started to feel resentful. I'd had enough of deprivation. Two years of failed cycles and miscarriages made me feel I deserved to eat the things I liked. And given everyone around me seemed to get pregnant happily on a diet of coffee, wine, and rich food, I didn't see why I had to suffer. So the coffee started to sneak in. At first it was just off-IVF cycle, while I was on zoladex anyway, so no chance of conception. And it was half a (small) cup of coffee, at the weekends, at home. And then sometimes on weekdays too, if I wasn't rushing off to work. I still hadn't picked my Starbucks habit back up.

And then we went on holiday to Morocco for my birthday. And we know now that I was already pregnant. And I had wine every evening for dinner, and coffee, plenty of it, for breakfast. And somehow, not that miraculously, this embryo hung on despite me creating what Zita West would term a 'toxic uterus' for it. Given this, even once I knew I was pregnant, it was hard to justify being that abstemious again. Of course I stopped drinking alcohol again. To be honest, I can take or leave alcohol anyway, so that hasn't been too much of a hardship. I've allowed myself a few sips of H's wine at dinner, and that's been mostly ok. But the coffee? No, that's a different story. I stuck to the 'coffee at weekends' rule for a while. And then I had a less busy period at work so I was able to have a bit of coffee at home on weekdays. And that turned into most weekdays. The passenger was thriving anyway. I kept going, limiting myself to only drinking coffee from our home brewing, not buying it elsewhere.

Until last week. Last week was very very busy at work. I had to work til 10 a couple of nights (normal in my job, but not normal for me recently). By Thursday morning I felt really really rough. So I went to Starbucks. And I ordered a tall black coffee. Which I drank about 3/4 of. Oh baby, forgive me. But it was good. I haven't been back. But I worry I've now crossed the Rubicon and I'll find another day when I need that weekday cup of Starbucks. And there won't be an obvious reason to resist.

Anyone got any suggestions for how to wean babies off their caffeine addiction?