Thalia's fertility journey

About time

Long time, yadda yadda yadda. I didn't mean to leave that post up as the last one for so long, but life just is busy and my blogging muscle (along with many other muscles!) is out of shape.

First, I need to thank you so much for the sensitivity and thoughtfulness you put into the comments and emails on that last post. I really needed that prod to think through how I was really feeling, to continue the process that had been milling about in my head for months before I posted. It was a real signal of just how mixed up I was (am) that every comment, as they switched tack and made different points, meant something to me, and made me think differently about the situation.

Where have I ended up? Well, first, I have not 'ended' anywhere. This is an ongoing process of making our marriage work, or not, so I don't expect everything to be suddenly hunky dory. I did bring up some of what I wrote about, and we've had some productive discussions together. I need to do more on this. H is seeing a shrink, and he's finding that helpful to process some stuff which is going on for him and which he's never dealt with. We haven't yet decided to do couples counselling although I think it's a good suggestion.

One reflection after your comments was that I haven't been 'in love' very often in my life. And I wonder how much this is to do with my first very serious partnership, the guy I lived with for 3 years when we were doing our PhDs. It's a long story but the short version says he wanted to be gay, but was drawn into a relationship with me nonetheless. I fell quite heavily in love with him, but part way through the relationship he made it clear he did not see the relationship as long term, that he wanted to use the move we would both make for our post-docs as an ending. I had to force myself to fall out of love with him in an attempt to protect myself. It was really painful, and left me very angry. Although I had very strong 'lust' for the following three relationships, the ones before H, I don't think I fell in love again in the same way.

Yet I think I did fall in love with H. I remember just sitting and smiling at each other. Just feeling so happy because he was in the same room. And our first kiss, on our second date, was electric. We were passionate, but H's sexual issues have come in the way of that over the years.

I take my marriage vows very seriously (as does H). For better, for poorer, etc. We owe it to each other and to the children to do whatever we can to make this work. There is lots good. We have to figure out what we can do about the less good, and where that leaves us.

Things in my head

I'm too fat. I'm fed up of being too fat. Must find time to exercise. Must not eat that biscuit...

Is Pob overweight? What can I do about it? Should I ignore it? I don't want her to have an eating complex. I don't want her to be the fat kid. Help.

Why isn't Junior talking? Is there something off with his hearing? Is he just not ready? What did he just say? Is that a word or is it wishful thinking?

Shit I haven't sent that email I said I'd send. Bugger.

Why is H so unhappy? How can I help him?

Should we move? Can I bear the strain? Would it be worth it?

Should I do that meeting or ask someone else to? Is it worth going all the way to Turkey for a 2 hour meeting? Really?

Is my key customer ever going to hire us again?

What should we give the children for dinner tomorrow night?

Shit I haven't ordered the wetsuits for the holiday next week. The children will freeze.

Should I let Junior have his MMR on Monday and risk the reaction happening while we're on holiday, or should I wait for another couple of weeks?

Will the washing machine be safe to use tomorrow after today's flood?

What should I do about my assistant?

When can I get back to my book?

Am I a bad mother because I like working?

What would I do if I didn't do this job?

Let me just browse to see if I can find Pob a winter coat.

What should Pob wear to that party tomorrow (today actually)?

How is Kath? Why hasn't she responded to anything recently?

Shit I still haven't sent that email.

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.

Something to celebrate

Thank you so much for all the thoughts on my last post. They've made me think a lot and I will get back to them, but I feel drawn to do something else in the meantime.

As most of you know, an expectant mother has recently chosen the lovely Flicka and Sarge to be parents for her baby boy, to be born in 2 weeks' time. Flicka hasn't shared the details but I'm guessing that the mother is very clear she will not decide to parent given the way Flicka is writing about things.

Flicka is away and hasn't had the chance to register properly, so I think we need to throw her a proper internet shower. Here is the link to what is on her registry, but there's other stuff they will need which isn't there yet. So please email me if you want to participate, and we can discuss how best to meet their needs.

How to add your bloglines lists to typepad

By popular demand, here's how I did it:

Go to bloglines. On the opening page after you've loaded your feeds down the left hand side, but before you've called up a blog on the right, there's that long list of things you can do with bloglines. Go down to 'publish, share and save' at the bottom, and click on 'share your blogroll'. In the space provided, type the name of the bloglines folder you want to share, then let it generate the html. You want to then copy the one that starts <script...

Now go to typepad. I found it easier to delete the whole typelist I was replacing. Create a new list with the name you want. Make it a 'links' list. Click on the button to add your first link. Don't put anything in the 'name' and 'url' space, but in the 'notes' space paste the <script... thing you copied from bloglines. Click to add the link. Typepad will then ask you if you want to display the list on your blog, say yes.

Then go back to the main list of typelists, and click on 'configure' for the one you've just made. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click 'display notes as text'. Magic! Your bloglines feeds are now displayed. Repeat as necessary for other bloglines folders - you will want to create a separate typelist for each. Or you can share all of them in one go by just 'exporting' your bloglines (link at the bottom of the bloglines column which has all your feeds in it) - but then you don't get any categories in what you show on typepad.

Contrary to what I wrote the other day, bloglines seems to be clever enough not to display password protected blogs on this list, so that adds a level of privacy for those who want it.

There you go, hope it works!

Just designed for your doctor's office

This should be installed in every RE's office, globally.

I was wondering about those google searches...

If you've ever done a google search for this blog, you'll know that there is a singer called Thalia out there. She's the cause of a lot of disappointed visitors to this site, usually from Greece or Eastern Europe. They tend not to stay long. I was wondering why I'd seen an increase in random visitors recently, then I saw this:

Thalia talks about pregnancy and baby showers

That explains it.

It's nice that Thalia (who is married to Tommy Mottola and didn't he used to be married to Mariah Carey or someone like that?) is getting 4 baby showers, including a separate one for her gay friends. Because they can't mix with her other friends? Or because the gifts will be so much better at that one and she doesn't want to embarrass anyone? As previously discussed, baby showers really aren't top of my list, but do you think she might feel like sharing some of the loot? If I asked really nicely?

Offer

This is all very illegal so I'll take this down sometime soon, but if you are in the UK, preferably in London, and are taking Puregon in the next four weeks let me know. I have an almost full 900mIU cartridge in my pen, and I don't need it. It's been pierced, so it should be used within the next four weeks. I used 125mIU from it, which means it's got about 900mIU left (they always have extra, and this is how much extra was in the other cartridges I had this cycle). I don't need any money for it, I just don't want it to go to waste. I also have one orgalutron injection going spare if someone can give that a good home as well. Let me know.

Journalists get it right sometimes

Scan down to 'Weisz up". Forgive me for feeling a little bit amused by this.

http://www.thisislondon.com/films/articles/21895542?source=Evening%20Standard

Validation

I went to a speech last night by an academic who studies organisational energy. We were discussing whether it was easier for an organisation to regain energy it had lost, or to build energy from scratch. Ah, she said. It's about belief in success. If you've never been successful, it's hard to believe that you ever will be. Sound familiar?

But I think it's worse than that for us. We are mostly women who are used to being successful, and to being able to influence that success. Here we are, powerless to make ourselves successful in this miserable endeavour at which we all keep failing, and we also don't have the coping tools to deal with the fact that we keep failing. Low energy from the fact we've never been successful, and negative energy from the frustration at not being able to control our fate. A bad combination.

In other news, it's been a hard week to not be pregnant in my little corner of planet earth. First, and I readily admit I did this to myself, was the documentary on the Discovery channel about Jackie Clune. I'm not going to post a link to the discovery home and health site as all it gets you is a large picture of a naked pregnant woman, nothing to do with the documentary, that I imagine at least some of you aren't really in the mood for.

Anyway, Jackie Clune, for you ignorant non-brits, is a comedian. A reasonably famous one in the UK. One reason she's famous is that she spent 12 years being an out and proud lesbian. Then, as she puts it, she decided to give men another go, fell violently in love with a very handsome man, got accidentally pregnant at the age of 37, and had a daughter. Then, just 8 months after her daughter was born, she got accidentally pregnant again. At the 12 week scan they found out it was triplets.

Triplets. Accidentally. At 39. Now I'm not hoping for triplets but couldn't I have just a little tiny bit of her fertility? A smidge? She does seem like a nice woman - unassuming and terrified - but it was still hard to watch due to the usual blast of overwhelming jealousy at someone else's good fortune that I now seem to be unable to quench.

Second event was my high school reunion. Which I avoided, but I did get to read the newsletter. Let me offer you a sample of what my erstwhile schoolmates have been up to.

Juliette Fertile (nee Party Animal): Well, after getting my MA in Chinese at Oxford, and my PhD in international relations at Yale, I've spent 10 years travelling around the world to various trouble spots, working first with the Red Cross and now with the UN, helping set up crisis centres and saving people from certain death in areas like Biafra, the Sudan, Croatia, and Afghanistan. My latest posting in Iraq has forced me to finally become fluent in Arabic and in my spare time I'm helping a small women's cooperative develop their business in making and selling teapots. I'm also incredibly lucky to be married to the most gorgeous man in the world, Ollie (yes, Fiona, it's true, I promised you I'd marry him and I did!) and we have two lovely children: Joe and Amelia who are 7 and 4 respectively. Looking forward to hearing all your news!

Selena Really-Really-Fertile (nee Artypants): Having won an Oscar for my documentary: Up the Amazon in 2001, I've spent the last three years focusing on writing while being a mother to my adorable twins, Sophie and Madeleine. I hope at least some of you saw my first novel, I still can't believe - which made it onto the Waterstones top 10 list last October - it was very well received. Meanwhile my husband, Jurgen, has continued to wow the Art world with his creative video installations. Thank goodness Charles Saatchi is such a fan! I'm now expecting a little brother for the twins, who will be born around the time my second novel, Having it all, is published in the Spring. So excited to see you all!

Francesca I'm-so-bloody-fertile-I-get-pregnant-just-walking-down-the-street (nee Maths-Wizz): My First in maths at Cambridge soon turned into a PhD on option theory from MIT, at which point I went into banking. After becoming a senior vice president at Goldman Sachs five years ago, I left to set up my own company, which manufactures and markets the product I invented - the QuTiClean - that (we hope!) will change housework forever. Turnover finally hit the millions last year so now I can relax a little and enjoy life with my husband, Jamie, and our children Hamish (10), Freddy (7), Barty and Eloise (5) and little Jessamy (2). It's been an amazing few years and I can't wait to share more news with all of you!

Bitter? Moi? And honestly, I'm not exaggerating. These are truly superwomen.

Another old friend called in conjunction with the reunion. She and I have been out of touch for a while but she wanted to call and say thank you for the sympathy letter I sent her when her father died earlier this year. She's also been very successful - she's married to an actor, has two children and is a child psychologist with a weekly column in a national newspaper and two regular television programmes on mainstream channels. In the course of her work she met Sir RW, the uber-doc of UK fertility. She mentioned this after I told her about where we are on the fertility front. And good news, she passed on the maestro's advice! Now we'll all be pregnant soon! Are you ready for this advice? Because given the source, it's clearly going to be fab, right?

Ready?

Are you sure?

Ok because you know I'm going to tell you.

So, Sir RW says that what we need to do is...

JUST RELAX! Can you believe it? How can no one have told us this before! Seriously, he told my friend that you need to do two things. 1. Go on holiday, relax and have lots of sex. 2. Have an orgasm after the deposit has been made.

I can hardly speak I feel so enlightened.*edited to add that I am well aware that SirRW's comments were being relayed to me by an unreliable witness - I'm sure anything he had to say was more nuanced than this.

To add insult to injury, last night over dinner a colleague was discussing having found, on the JP Morgan women's initiative page, a policy saying that they supported adoption with various benefits. She was joking that of course JP Morgan had to offer those benefits since all the women who worked there would "have to adopt" since they'd be too old to have children by the time they got round to it. I thought about a suitable retort, and then just stayed silent. Coward.

And another colleague just started showing. Her third. Oh well.

Onward and upward.

I need a holiday

What do you guys do about holidays? H and I really need one but every time I look at the diary I struggle to figure out when we can go. Partly because of my work commitments, but partly because my cycle is not completely predictable - it can be anywhere between 23 and 28 days. I therefore can't look more than half a cycle out to see where we will be a cycle at any time. Since my early August cycle will be the first time we can do an IUI given my current clinic's busy-ness, I don't want to be away then. If it doesn't work, I want to be around at the end of August for a second try, so we can't be away then. In between we could go away but we can't get flights at the right time and anyway I'm not sure I want to fly during the 2ww just in case it reduces our chances (can you tell I'm getting really irrational here?).

Plus the holiday we really want to do - to go back to Africa again - we can't do because I can't take malaria tablets if we're trying to get pregnant. So we're struggling to think about where we really want to go. One option is to just have a couple of weeks off and stay at home which I would quite enjoy, but that would disappoint H a great deal. We were going to try a UK cottage holiday but the place we want to get to is booked up. We're overall being a bit pathetic.

So what have you all done? Said "to hell with it" and just gone away anyway? Or tried to build holidays around your cycles and interventions? I'm worried we'll let the summer slip away which will be really bad for both of us.

The best kind of Seder

I have a mixed Jewish background. My father isn't Jewish, my mother comes from a very aristocratic Anglo-Jewish family. My great-(lots of greats)-grandfather arrived in this country as Court Physician to William and Mary in 1692 from Spain via 10ish generations in Amsterdam. Understandably, my mother's family had lost most of their traditions in the 250 years between this arrival and her birth, although they had hung onto a strong Jewish identity, perhaps because of how segregated British society was (my grandmother was the first generation of Jewish women who could be presented at Court). My mother's family don't eat chicken soup, they do eat bacon. But they also go to Synagogue every week, celebrate all the holidays, and generally define themselves as Jews.

My parents gave up religion when they got married, because they'd had so much hassle from their families (although my father once confessed that there would have been even more outcry if he'd brought home a catholic - at least a Jew was exotic!). So we were brought up to be nothing. When I was eight, I decided that I wanted to be Jewish. My grandmother was delighted. After that I spent all the Jewish holidays with her, and learnt our family's traditions from her. This included always attending Seders, where I was frequently the youngest person there, so I'm pretty good at Ma Nishtanah.

During my childhood my parents had a big family row with my uncle and grandmother - it was about money, what can I say. This resulted in my mother not seeing her mother for several years. Yet through all of this I remained close to my grandmother, and my mother supported this. I can only now understand how hard that must have been.

There is a point. I'm getting there

However when my grandmother died nearly 6 years ago (many years after having reconciled with my mother), it left me without a close Jewish part of the family. Although my uncle and aunt are civil to me in Synagogue, and my cousin and I have regained some of the closeness we had as children, they never invite me for family meals around the holidays, or for Seder. Luckily one of my mother's best friends, A. (who also happens to be my aunt's cousin) has taken me under her wing. She's invited me each year to her family Seder. See, we're at the point.

Most years, this Seder is quite formal. Not as formal as some, but Sephardic and serious. This year, however, for the first time, all of A.'s grandchildren attended. There are five boys, ranging in age from 3 to 9. And in the interim, A.'s husband has had a stroke and finds it hard to read. So this year the five boys gathered around their grandfather at one end of the table, and he told them a story.

He told it incredibly well. He has a great voice, and he held them entranced from start to finish. A., sitting next to H and opposite me at the far end of the table, kept getting anxious that the children were losing interest. But they weren't. They listened with open mouths to their grandfather telling the story of what happened in Egypt. The older boys piped in the names of the plagues. They jointly recited the questions in English as their grandfather led them through. And then we had dinner.

We didn't say most of the prayers, we missed one of the glasses of wine, we only sang one song. But I think we did the right thing.

Hmm

I've been enjoying the google searches that bring people here ("egg white" and "fertility" brings you to my entry about Pavlova, "despair" plus "2ww" plus "aussie" brings you to the personal comedy category due to me mentioning Dietgirl), but started to note a somewhat disturbing trend. I did a bit of googling myself and discovered that Thalia is both the name of a Mexican actress with a serious following, and a porn star. That explains the number of "thalia" + "sex" googles I was getting.

Oh well, I'm not about to change my name now. Sorry to those who come here in error, I wish you much luck elsewhere.

More than half full

Today I did the usual Saturday afternoon thing and went through a pile of post that had come in during the week. One letter turned out to be some of our test results and the news is great! My progesterone test came back at 59 at approx 6 days post ovulation (according to BBT), meaning that I am almost certainly ovulating, and H.'s sperm test came back at a count of 44 million with 72% total motility and 47% progressive motility after 45 minutes, and no round cells, which I understand from Dr Google is only ok on the count, but great on the motility. He missed the cup for the first bit of the sample which apparently contains the highest concentration of sperm, so I'm going to chose not to worry at all about the count. He also tested negative for IgG. The letter from Dr Candour said that he was happy with the results, so I'm taking it as good all round. There was no morphology score apart from the comment about round cells. Anyone else in the UK had a sperm count know why they might not do this test here?

In other good news the chocolate chip cookie dough that I froze after my mammoth baking session a few weeks ago turned out to have survived very well and the cookies were much much better than the first batch. I'd rolled the dough into a sausage shape before I froze it, and so today when I felt like H. needed cheering up (it was pre opening the letter and he was suffering from Saturday afternoon ennui), I got it out of the freezer, unwrapped the clingfilm, and used one of our super sharp Global knives to simply slice the frozen dough sausage into quite chunky discs (about 2 cm thick), and put them straight onto a baking sheet. I flattened them a little as they softened while I waited for the oven to warm up, and I kept a very close eye on them once they were in the oven to make sure I didn't overcook them. They are yummy. I finally managed to make chewy chocolate chip cookies. A red letter day indeed. Not helping the waistline thing, but we both did a tough workout this morning (we see the same trainer in different slots) so I think we can get away with a cookie today.

Tonight we're meeting up with a University friend of mine to see Maria full of Grace so I hope that doesn't eliminate the good mood. I'm feeling happy for what feels like the first time in ages!

Thank you, again

Dear everyone,

Thank you so much for the support over the last few days. As usual, your comments plus 24 hours spent almost entirely on the sofa (except for 2 hours at the gym, approx 30 mins in the shower and 8 hours in bed!), are all contributing to me feeling much much better. Actually, correct that. The day also involved an argument that started with a conversation about who was reading what bit of the paper that then turned into a huge row apropos the conception thing. Amazing how we can mess ourselves up that way, isn't it? When we'd both calmed down and I'd realised how upset he was (he never cries, and for the second time in 5 weeks he cried), we had a good talk and made a plan of sorts.

You are all right, I can see that this is an intolerable pressure-filled situation for H. He already had a problem, and now a problem has become the problem, at least as far as we know. Given that there is now no way we can get pregnant this month, we've resolved to use the time to just fool around, get comfortable sexually again. Hopefully that will help.

To those who asked, he does have a prescription for an ED drug. It's not V*iagra, it's one of the others which is supposed to be more gentle. However, I now know that these drugs are only a miracle if the problem the man has is physical. They don't do much, if anything, if the problem is psychological. Yes, if he starts feeling turned on they help by increasing blood flow, but his brain can just as easily cut that off again. So they helped the first month he took them because he believed they would fix him, but now they pretty much seem to have no effect. Because of trying to get pregnant, the problem he had which was "oh shit what if I don't get an erection," has become "oh shit what if I can't ejaculate".

As you all said, roll on the IUI. If I'm not in the room, i.e. it's not about penetrative sex, he usually doesn't have a problem so the IUI should be ok. Having said that, I'm sure his brain can come up with some way to scupper things but I'm going to conveniently forget that that is a possibility for now.

I'm resisting the urge to bake. I love to bake, but if I bake we eat my baking and I'm already half a stone (7 lbs) heavier than when we got married, and I'm determined not to get fat again. H is overweight, but he's also incredibly fit and muscly so not a huge issue, although it's obviously not good for him to get fatter. But this hole I feel in my life seems to want to be filled with sweet baked things (and not simply chocolate, which is my usual poison). I guess what this is telling me is that despite having managed a huge dose of will power last year, I haven't fixed my issues with eating and food.

Anybody got any satisfying baking recipes that I can make and not make us both fat?

Cats and dogs

Last night as we cuddled on the sofa and watched "The Right Stuff" (my husband is so cool that he doesn't mind that I have to watch this every time it's on so that I can fall in love with Sam Shepherd all over again),  H suggested: "You know, we should get a dog. Having something to love and look after would help us get through this fertility stuff."

My husband wants to get an obligatory infertility dog. He doesn't read infertility blogs, he doesn't read any blogs. He currently doesn't allow me to use the word infertile to refer to us. Clearly there is something in this pattern that transcends the blogsphere.

However we won't be getting a dog. If we get anything it will be a cat. Because I'm a cat person, and in the end, I know H will let me win this one. For now, at least.

Bad person

One of the reasons I had such a hard time this last cycle is that my sister-in-law is due on 17 March, and I was hoping I'd be pregnant before then so I wouldn't feel so horribly sad and jealous when the baby was born. I know I will be able to be happy for her, my brother, my nephew and the new baby, but I'll also be struggling to feel ok about myself.

My best friend is also pregnant, with her third. She got pregnant by accident and really didn't want another baby, let alone another girl - she has two girls already and thought she was done. Last night I spoke to her and got a hard time for not having called for a while. Now that's not entirely my fault as she hasn't exactly been ringing me every night. I have a more than full-time job, travel all the time, and am feeling sad a lot of the time about our lack of a pregnancy. She is a stay-at-home-mother, who lives in the house of my dreams, in the neighbourhood of my dreams, with the two (soon to be three) daughters of my dreams. So it would be nice to get some empathetic "how are you, I've been thinking of you". But that wasn't forthcoming. I heard about their ski trip, her husband's trips away, and her planned trip to a spa before the baby is due. I offered to accompany her on that trip and then it turned out she'd already agreed to go with another friend. So I feel hard done by about that, too.

Then this morning I went to check the 'buddy group' that I've been posting to on a ttc board, to find that one of the other women just got her bfp. She already has two children, and this is only the second month she's been trying. I'm struggling to feel good for her at all.

Why has this situation turned me into a bad person?