Thalia's fertility journey

This time two years ago

This time two years ago it was sultry. Boiling hot. I couldn't stop sweating.

This time two years ago I had agonising haemorrhoids and was experimenting with condoms filled with water and then frozen to see if they relieved the pain. They didn't.

This time two years ago my bag was packed. It contained, among other things, domperidone, fennel tea and fenugreek capsules. And a pumping bra. I wasn't taking any chances.

This time two years ago we had put the crib together and it stood at the foot of the bed, made up with the blue liner and the new white (organic) cotton sheets.

This time two years ago I poked my stomach every few minutes just to make sure he was ok in there.

This time two years ago I had sung Pob to sleep with her favouite song - the Pob song. I was very nervous about how the next few days would make her feel.

This time new years ago we were excited, and hopeful, and nervous.

This time two years ago we were just 10 hours away from meeting Junior.

 

 

 

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.

Junior - 48 hours to go

I have three big posts I want to write, but I'm lying on my side trying not to moan too much from the haemorrhoid pain. I had really not appreciated before how agonising they were, but I think the minor experiences I have had were in a different place. These are, well, not. I'll spare you the fine details and since this is pretty much the only bad thing that's happened so far in this pregnancy, I cannot complain. But it hurts!

Today is my 'get prepped' day where I am going to get my legs (and other bits) waxed, hair done, pedicure etc. I am trying to recreate my last day pre-Pob where I had a lovely wander and felt all relaxed and happy. But I can't walk without wincing, it's deeply, unpleasantly hot in London (and in general the London buildings either aren't air conditioned, or have a hard time coping with this temperature), and I'm a bit stressed about the amount of stuff we have to do before turning up at the hospital at 7am on Thursday. Yes, we have a scheduled section. Although Junior turned out to be head down at the scan last week (having been head up at every other previous scan), my doctor was pretty clear that he was very unwilling to risk a VBAC given my age and the fibroids, and I didn't put up much of a fight. I did stretch his comfort zone to 39+1 rather than 38+1, but that was as far as he was prepared to go, and only then based on a good scan report last week that showed a grade 1 placenta and a baby following the growth curve, not to mention the lack of any oedema and my consistently fantastically low blood pressure (90/60 at most readings).

So we're on to meet Junior just under 24 hours from now.  I really don't feel ready, and goodness knows the house isn't ready - we had builders here until 2 weeks ago, we haven't yet decided on curtain fabric for Junior's room (not that he'll be sleeping in there for a while), let alone having any furtniture for him other than a chest of drawers, we can't find the one fan we have in the house, there are piles of ironing in the laundry room that are scaring me. But I have a stockpile of domperidone, I'm about to call Medela to order the breast pump, the cradle in our room has sheets on, and our nanny is booked to come in early on Thursday so that we can head off to the hospital. It is happening, whether we are ready or not.

The two more meaty topics I want to write, not sure if I'll be able to:

• Circumcision. It feels like a barbaric thing to do to a child. It is also a critical component of being jewish, however, and I don't want to rule out him deciding he wants to be observant - or making him feel that he can never be properly Jewish. I feel hypocritical in that we are not very observant, but part of me wants to keep this particular observance. H is vehemently against although understands its importance to religious identity. I don't know what to do. And I've read the stuff that says the baby doesn't cry etc., but I've also read the stuff that says that babies get a huge cortisol surge when it happens and often fall into a semi-coma. There is no doubt in my mind that it is traumatic, the health benefits are not there, and it will have long lasting effects. Help
• Breastfeeding. I'm pretty sure my experience will be closer to motel manager's than Kath's in terms of the second baby being better at it. That is, that we will still have a supply issue no matter how good he is at sucking. I just don't know if I should wait to start the domperidone or just start taking it straight away after the birth. Thoughts?

I'm off to see how painful having a shower will be. Will update from the hospital if not before.

General incompetence

I've reached the awkward, tiring, uncomfortable stage of pregnancy. And indeed the stage of general incompetence. I can't remember words. I'm so bunged up that I can't breathe by about 5am and so wake up and cant' go back to sleep. I'm exhausted in the evenings and can't make conversation with H. And, oh yes, I fell flat on my face while simply walking along the pavement on Sunday, and now have an impressive scar running down my nose, and another on my chin, which makes me look like a very depressing kind of victim. I can see people eyeing me up and not wanting to say anything, but it's a bloody great scar, particularly on the bridge of my nose, so it's pretty hard to avoid.

It was an odd accident. We were walking along the South Bank to meet some friends. H was wheeling Pob in her pushchair. She was crying for some reason we couldn't quite understand. There were quite a few people around, but it's a wide space and so not that crowded. I felt myself trip. I wasn't that worried. It all happened in slow motion.

Moment 1: It's the kind of trip you correct easily with a little skip, and keep going.
Moment 2: Oh dear, I'm still falling. Ah well, if I just move like this I'll be upright again in a second
Moment 3: Nope, still falling
Moment 4: Well, I'll just land on my knees here and that will be that
Moment 5: Nope, still going down, what's WRONG with me?
Moment 6: Well, how did my face get there. Ooops, there go my sunglasses. And why is that packet of tissues in my hand?

It must have looked quite dramatic as two police on patrol came over to check on me. I got straight up. Of course Pob was screaming at this point, so I got H to get her out of her pushchair and hand her to me. I felt very shaken but ok. My glasses were trashed. I carried Pob into Tate Modern, met our friends, and took a few minutes to stop feeling wobbly. It was only later when I went to the loo that I realised I looked pretty dodgy, and the following day as the scars formed I looked even worse.

I then started to notice I was wobbly at other times. On the escalator on Monday when I went to hitch up my crappy maternity jeans that always fall down. Getting out of a taxi yesterday. Walking up the stairs into a hotel. I'm no longer a competent walker. Or stander. That's not very impressive, surely?

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.

All fine

Thanks to those of you who checked in via email. I can't remember how long it is since I posted, and I'm not going to look now, but I'm sure it's ages. It's been a terribly busy time. Pob and I were in Florida, then I came back to lots of urgent work, then had to go to Vegas for a week for work without Pob, which was really really tough, then came back to a clingy Pob and even more work, and have been working mostly til midnight each night with no down time during the day other than the 45 minutes I see Pob for in the morning, and the hour or so in the evening before I start work again. The week after next I'm off to Austria, to run the training course where I usually take Pob, but this time no one could come with me so I'm leaving her again. Which I don't like to think about. And this weekend H is away riding his motorbike, so no respite for me.

It probably sounds worse than it is, but it's not so awful. Junior seems to be doing ok, although he's having a quiet day today which makes me nervous. I think he is generally less busy in there than Pob was, but hard to tell if that's poor remembering, or just that I've been too busy to notice. We did end up in Labour and Delivery for a check last weekend as I had some gastric bug and had been vomiting for 24 hours, so they told us to come in for a check. Because it was Easter weekend, the place was understaffed but was having several emergencies, so we waited quite a long time, which was no bad thing as I just slept. Eventually they gave me some fluids, a shot of compazine and gave me some more to take home, and that was that. I had a good night's sleep and felt a lot better the next day. No drama really.

Will write something more interesting soon. Pob is continuing to talk up a storm, but is also doing a lovely line in tantrums and screaming. I guess it's just normal development but it's fairly wearing at times.

All work and no play

Tempted into starting a post by listening to the WXPN feed and hearing that 76 is blocked up from University ave to the Conshohocken curve, and remembering sitting in that traffic...

Last week was a bit of a killer on the work front, and I'm barely recovered despite H sending me to bed early three nights in a row, and taking a nap both Saturday and Sunday afternoons while Pob was sleeping. She's only just given up her morning nap, and consequently is definitely ready for a long sleep after lunch.

She turned 18 months on Friday, and we can see the huge change in her approach to the world as she becomes more and more her own person. No longer can we get her to do little tasks for us - she just grins and says 'No' and runs the other way. These used to be things like taking junk mail to the recycling bin, or fetching her slippers so we could help her put them on, or returning a book to the shelves and fetching a new one. Oh well, it had to come. The one task she will still do is taking a plate to the dishwasher, as she loves exploring what's in there. She also enjoys 'helping' unpack it, and gets very cross if we get too far ahead of her in the process.

Her language has also taken another leap. Lots more words, but more that she is now putting them together to tell us something more interesting. For example, "baby sleep" (pointing to a picture in a book)," "more apple/cheese/peas," when eating, and even a little story when I went in to see her because she wasn't settling on Friday night. I had been stuck on a conference call for all of bedtime, but when I finished she was loudly complaining (not crying, just exclaiming) about being in her cot. So I went in, and she immediately stood up and demanded a cuddle. I gave in, and as we sat down together in the rocking chair, she explained to me, "Daddy night-night [sound of kiss being blown]." "Did Daddy say good night and blow you a kiss?" I asked, "Yes," I was told. I don't think these really classify as sentences yet, but it makes a big difference in us understanding what she really means. This doesn't stop her from getting very cross, whiny and tantrum-y if we don't understand what she wants or won't give it to her, but I'm hoping that as it progresses, it will get easier for us all as we communicate more effectively together.

I've heard from many people about toddlers being picky about food, but Pob is pretty much the opposite. Yes there are a couple of things she's not keen on - potato in particular, and non-strongly flavoured pasta sauces, and too-strong cheese, but apart from that she wants to eat whatever anyone else is eating, and won't stop until she gets it. At the park yesterday this was amusing but slightly embarassing as she walked up to any child with a snack and tried to take it from them. Or just stare at them until they handed it over. This ploy didn't work with a little French boy who shouted loudly at Pob when she tried to come near his banana, so she retreated to a safe distance and kept looking at him while he ate the whole thing, all the while repeating over and over to herself,and partly to him I imagine, "nana, nana, nana". Not sure what we should do about this, if anything? I'm glad she's so open to food and enjoys a wide range of tastes, but the demanding she shares anything she sees someone else eating seems a bit much.

We tried her on egg over the weekend. She's now had half of one of my oatmeal-berry-yogurt muffins on two occasions, with no ill-effects. It's not much egg - one per 12 muffins - but it's a start. We'll keep on building her up until hopefully she can eat simply cooked eggs in a few weeks time. I hope.

She is physically fearless. We took her to a trial class at an organisation called 'little gym' on Saturday, and she threw herself into everything - large bouncy-castle type gym mat, parallel bars, the balance barre (which had hand bars either side so they could walk along safely). I thought this would tire her out but she then ran around the shopping centre where it was held for a good hour afterwards. Oh to have the energy of a toddler.

She has decided that hats are a great thing. Having thrown a fit every time my mother and I tried to get her to wear one in Florida, she is now an addict and every trip this weekend required her to be wearing her white sunhat. And preferably her wellington boots as well, which combined to make a slightly eclectic look on Saturday. Then she needed to wear her pink woolly hat when we got home, and all through supper. I didn't know a stong sense of style started so early.

Pob is going through a real 'Mummy' phase. I felt bad for H when he went in on Saturday morning to get her up and her first response was "NOOO! Mummy!" Not sure there is much we can do about it, and I'm sure it will reverse at some point. This worries me at bit given I'm gone for a whole week from Sunday. It's the longest I've left her, and I'm not at all excited about it. Perhaps when I'm not there she'll accept Daddy as a substitute more easily.

***

Junior (Sib didn't stick so we are back to the unoriginal) seems to be doing well. I had a scan on Wednesday to check placental blood flow to see if I can come off clexane, and all looked good. Great blood flow and a baby with a big head and short legs, just like Pob, poor thing. He is moving around a lot, particularly after I eat something, but so far I am not very uncomfortable, even in bed at night, which is a relief. We'll see how long it lasts.

24w5d

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.

15w6d

Well, so far so good. I'm pregnant. I'm wearing maternity trousers, mostly, although still in normal tops and jackets and dresses. Until last weekend I was wearing pre-pregnancy jeans although the ones with stretch only. I regularly check Sib with the doppler, and can find the heartbeat every time, although Sib seems to move around quite a lot and not be mad keen on being measured. I saw my OB 10 days ago, and he doesn't want to see me again until 20 weeks unless I need reassurance. But since I have my trusty doppler there isn't much point in that. I haven't even booked the 20 week scan yet. Not sure why.

Often I forget I'm pregnant. And then I suddenly feel ravenous and remember. And eat something, anything, just to get rid of the feeling. In the middle of a cold snap, I've been craving salads. The crunch and the clean taste have been all I've really wanted to eat. Until H cooked a big pot of a Nigel Slater bean dish with coconut milk, spices and lime juice last night and I wolfed down two portions. It was delicious, but there again, there's that citrus-y clean taste. I don't remember this particular need when I was pregnant with Pob, it seems to be specific to this pregnancy.

I nearly wrote 'to this baby' but then I stopped myself.

I've told the powers that be at work that I'm pregnant. Mostly people have been delighted for us, it's just the local big guy who was distinctly ambivalent. Since he doesn't have much to do with how I'm evaluated that's probably fine and I probably just caught him at a bad moment, but given he knows some of our back story I was a little disappointed. Perhaps I'm just no longer the high flier I was and therefore less interesting to him. Either way, I was glad that straight after the conversation with him I had a great session with another senior colleague who offered me a bunch of very practical advice on how to manage this leave, and was thrilled for us, which made me feel less concerned about my professional future - or rather, just as concerned, but with a good sense of how to manage it.

One of those funny-ha-ha but not really moments happened the weekend before my birthday. H organised for us to go away to a fancy hotel for the weekend, while his parents looked after Pob. Really, given I'm working full time, I'm not that keen on leaving Pob, but he organised it as a surprise so I said lovely thank you and threw myself into it. On the Saturday night we got chatting to a family who were sitting around after dinner near us. A family of two parents and one very sweet, incredibly well-behaved little boy, who was perhaps around 8 years old. We said our daughter was with her grandparents and the little boy solmenly berated us, saying: "you know they really like children here and you can order anything you like and they'll make it for you, your daughter should be here!" And I silently agreed with him. H then volunteered that we were expecting another baby (I have no idea why) and the father joked "you guys need to get a television!" We laughed and just continued to chat on other topics.

I was in a mellow enough mood that I didn't feel any need to correct his assumption that this was a lucky accident or a bit of silly planning on our part, to explain that we didn't have much choice in the timing, but it did raise for me, as it has done for many of you who've been lucky enough to come out of infertility with a 'normal' number of children, that probably people will no longer look at us and see the possibility that we struggled to get here. And it really will be a case of too much information if I try to explain that or add it into the conversation. Obviously in some situations I explain and I always volunteer the miscarriage thing in particular when it happens to friends or colleagues who don't already know it, but in social situations it just sometimes isn't appropriate. And that feels odd. It's been my life since 2004. Now that I'm part way to having two children, what is my future identity other than 'mother' 'professional' (which broadly does not come into the blogosphere), and perhaps 'wife'? I know we all know the scars of infertility will be there forever, although I also know that for me they have faded considerably over the last 16 months. But I'm not really infertile any more, am I? At least not in how the world sees me.

Let's see. We'll not count any chickens or determine any future identities just yet. They will be emergent.

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.

11w5d: All normal

I've never been good at the 'save the strapline til the end of the post' thing. So the longer version is, we had the nuchal scan today. Everything was normal. Nuchal measurement between 1.9 and 2.2mm, heart with four chambers, all organs that we could see developing normally, a little bit of fluid in the bladder which means at least one kidney is working normally, fingers present (she couldn't get a good look at the toes as the fetus kept kicking and twisting and rolling over and generally making her job difficult), the nasal bone present, bloods normal. This gave us a risk of 1 in 1529 for Downs, and 1 in 2600ish for Trisomies 13 and 18. The risks are higher than Pob's, but then I'm 21 months older than at the same stage with Pob, so it's hard for the risk to get down to the same levels we had with her.

The good Dr Professor spent about 25 seconds looking at the scan, and another, ooh, maybe 50 seconds looking at the combined results, then told us that all was fine and to enjoy our Christmas. Oh ok then.

H is feeling very happy, but then he was sure that all was ok anyway. I am feeling, well, surprisingly flat. It could be the continued sleep deprivation (insomnia after 3am last night), or, I dunno, the knowledge that so much can still go wrong? I'm not sure. My mother is very disappointed in me. I'm not unhappy, I'm just not celebrating yet. It's a tremendous relief, but it's a long way from a baby.

I celebrated by buying clothes for Pob in the sales, then got my hair done and splashed out on a bright red manicure and pedicure. At least I look festive. And I came home to Pob and H and they were both very pleased to see me. I have a lot of joy in my life, and this new life will hopefully become part of it in July. Until then, I'll make the most of the joy I have.

Holiday family entertainment

We've just returned from a Chanukah party day at my mother's house. It was good and bad. Good in that we got to see my brothers, one sister-in-law and my three nephews, and eat nice food and be together. Bad in that one brother went off into the deep end after a remark I made which pushed a button for him. It wasn't an offensive remark, and I immediately apologised, but he wasn't having any of it, and when I apologised again when he left, he had another go at me. It's left me incredibly tearful - weirdly so - and I'm trying to figure out why.

To understand this I have to give more family background than I have before. My family is not very Jewish for two reasons. The first is that my mother's mother's family came to England over 400 years ago, so they are very very anglicised and so my mother didn't grow up with many of the so-called traditions like many 'jewish' foods (actually often Ashkenazi foods) and didn't keep many cultural customs, although they did keep most of the religious ones like Friday nights, Synagogue, High Holy Days etc.

The second is that my father isn't Jewish, and given the drama my parents had when they wanted to get married, they gave up religion at that point - both of them - and brought us up to be nothing. When I was 7, though, I decided I was Jewish, and after that I would go to my grandmother's for each religious festival, did Jewish religious education at school, etc. So I'm the most practicing member of my family.

Previously my brothers haven't been interested in the Jewish side of our background, and neither of the mothers of my nephews have been Jewish, so it isn't a big part of their families. One brother has just started to get interested, so it was partly his encouragement that led us to have a Chanukah party while he was in London with his family this weekend.

The tension was that today is one of the most important football matches of the season for the team that my brothers, father, cousins etc all support. So the younger brother - who is single after a bad separation from my nephew's mother 2 years ago, and a bad break-up from the woman who looked like she was going to become our sister-in-law a few months ago - was very not thrilled at the idea of having a party today and hence missing the football match. He reached some kind of compromise with my mother that said he would go home to watch the game late in the afternoon, having recorded it so he didn't miss any.

Then at lunch today he started talking about leaving and taking the older brother and the two older nephews with him, at about 1530 - very early if we were going to get to the park, play dreidel, light the candles etc. They were discussing logistics and my sister-in-law and I raised eyebrows at each other and I said, lightheartedly - "Next year can we have a family get-together where there's no football or it can be recorded?" And as mentioned above, younger brother lost it, and had a little diatribe at me about how we could have showed up earlier since he'd been there 2 hours before us (we didn't know he'd got there so early, and were home cooking for the party and wrapping presents this morning, having also done so last night til gone midnight), how he is the only person who ever has to be flexible (also nonsense, he's decided he wants to go and spend Christmas Day and the few days afterwards with the older brother so we won't see him again til sometime in 2009, while we are left to spend Christmas Day with H's parents (without his brother and family as they are off to my other sister-in-laws' family) and Boxing Day with my mum and my mentally handicapped Aunt, which is fine, but much less fun than being with my brothers and their families), no one appreciates him etc.

It was all a bit unpleasant. I immdiately apologised and everyone glossed over it. Sometime during the afternoon the plan changed and older brother and family stayed to have tea, while younger brother went off alone, leaving his son to stay for tea - fine with nephew since he worships his older cousin. On his way out I caught younger brother to say goodbye as we won't see each other again, and I simply said I was sorry for having upset him, and I got another diatribe. This time I interrupted him and said I was just trying to apologise and I didn't want to row about it, just to say sorry, so he stopped, said sarcastically that everything was fine, and stalked off.

I am irrationally upset. Which is a combination of horrible tiredness from working like a dog since September without a break, having had several late nights this week due to combination of work and work socialising and cooking, and being up in the night due to Pob having yet another cold to go along with her constant cough. So tiredness is part of it. Sensitivity to general family tension is another part - I have always tried to be the family peace-maker and taken a lot of responsibility for that. Concern that my brother is clearly having a crappy time and is generally not happy is another. Concern that he's angry at me, which I always hate. And fury at the unfair judgement he's handing out. There are probably additional less savoury emotions underneath.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of holiday dramas it's not bad. But it upset me anyway.

Nuchal scan tomorrow. Think that had anything to do with it?

10w1d: Pregnant with an alien

Dr Shoes turned round the monitor to immediately show me that the current passenger (TCP?) is doing well. He or she actually measures 11weeks, so is a bit of a giant, but then the accuracy of the vaginal scan at this point is apparently not great so not to worry. It wasn't moving initially, but a small movement of the probe woke it up and it wriggled around - mostly moving arms and legs, and even looking as if it was rubbing its eyes at one point. I know it wasn't, but that's what it looked like.

So we are discharged back to Dr OB with the best wishes of the clinic. I've made an appointment to check in with the good doctor next Wednesday, and then we have the nuchal the following Monday, so possibly by Christmas we will know how things are looking - past this trimester's major hurdle.

I think this is the first scan I've been really excited at. The new passenger (TNP?) is starting to look like a human, albeit more of a humanoid at this point. And it moved in a human-like way. And it measures great. And the heart was going like the clappers. It's still early (heard another awful miscarriage-at-15-weeks story today) but it's looking ok for now.

Just busy

Thank you for checking in. We are all fine, but I am snowed with work, not to mention holiday issues, so I just haven't had the time to more than briefly check in on some of your blogs. We were away all of last week too, with me working approximately 7am-11pm each day, with about 30 minutes at lunch time to see Pob and H, and on a few evenings I got 45 minutes or so to put her to bed. H did a sterling job as single parent, but was rather worn down by the end of the week.

Pob is flourishing, despite the number of bruises on her face. She confidently walks everywhere, although with that little frankenstein waddle, and many pirouettes mid-journey when she finds she suddenly has misjudged the distance between foot and floor, or decides that another direction is suddenly more attractive. She is very verbal and imitating everything we say - 'hiding' came out this evening in the bath.

She has developed a real criminal mastermind tendency, too. Yesterday when on a playdate with a little girl who doesn't walk yet, she decided she needed the book this other child was playing with. So she took it away to the other side of the room. When the nannies intervened, Pob put the book down, and said "Gone." "Gone" (which sounds like 'ga') is accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders and both hands outstretched in a shrug to demonstrate they are empty. I didn't know toddlers knew how to lie? She shook her head and said "no" and "gone" again several times before the nannies managed to persuade her to share. I'm a bit worried about where this is leading.

She has also managed to teach a few of her small friends her favourite signs. One little boy who she sees once a week has started signing 'hot' to his parents when they serve up his dinner. They asked his nanny what she thought he was doing, blowing on his fingers like that, and she suddenly clicked that he'd picked up this sign from Pob who enjoys it tremendously and uses it whenever possible, often associated with things she's not allowed to touch - we have an open fire to which she signs, "No, hot" on a regular basis.

The new passenger (yet to find the appropriate moniker) may or may not be doing fine. My stomach seems to be expanding, but that could just be greed. I'm tired, but I'm also working like a dog. I gag occasionally when I brush my teeth but shoving the toothbrush against your tonsils will do that. So the signs are not clear. Another clinic scan on Thursday, we'll see what the story is then.

8w0d: Still pregnant

Embryo measuring 8w3d with a lovely fast heartbeat (not measured but could clearly see it going at least 2-3x/second). Clear view of yolk sac, the developing amnion and umbilical cord. Embryonic sac measured 8w4d. So everything on track.

Of course I'm worrying still. The embryo wasn't moving. At 9w Pob was positively bopping around, and one or two of you commented you were confident that she didn't have a chromosomal defect because your own experience was that embryos where there was something wrong often had an indication at this stage in that they were slower to move. The sonographer says she does see embryos moving at 8w, although Visembryo says that spontaneous movement isn't possible until a certain stage of brain development at about 9w2d or so. So perhaps I shouldn't worry about that.

I do worry about a chromosomal problem, regardless of this movement issue. To learn the likely situation with that worry, we will do a nuchal scan at the super-duper clinic where the man who invented the quad screen does his work. I was so determined to get him personally to do the CVS, should we decide we need it, that I took my worry and superstition in both hands, beat it into submission, and called them one day last week to book the appointment and make sure we got in on a day when he is in the clinic. Monday 22 December, I will hopefully be 11w5d. Before then we will have one last scan at the fertility clinic on 11 December. I can't go too long without a scan, and my clinic are amazingly sympathetic to my needs, I'll have to think of a way to thank them.

I'm sorry I don't sound happier. The effects of some horrible tragedies in the blogosphere, particularly in the last year, the sad story of my work colleagues -the one a few weeks ago and the one last year, they are combining with my natural pessimism to make me very very cautious about any form of celebration. I know that seeing a right-sized, heart-beatingy embryo at this stage has genuinely dropped the risk of losing the baby (the oft-quoted statistic that once you've seen a good fast heartbeat at 6w the risk drops to less than 5% turns out to only be true if you are under 35, if you are nearly 42 it's closer to 15%). But it's not zero, and I'm aware that risk factors are high for this pregnancy, still.

I know this is good. It's really good for now. I look forward to more good stuff to come. Sometimes.

For the record

I feel filled with doom.I know that doesn't mean anything, but still it's how I feel. Scan in 30 mins.

7w1d: Worries

By the way, I'm not withholding photos of Pob, it's just that I'm not very organised, and it takes a while to upload the photos to the computer, compose the post, select the perfect few photos to illustrate the post, then faff around with the formatting etc., and finally get the post posted. It's lack of time, and organisation, and working half the time off the wrong computer, which is stopping me. I'm very aware I haven't done a real Pob post for months, and she deserves a "Pob at 14 months" post - she is 14 months today - so I will try to make time to write and illustrate it.

So 7w1d. I don't feel pregnant. I haven't had any stretchy pully cramps. I have had generalised ache in my abdomen, the kind that feels like you're about to start bleeding. I haven't had any bleeding. My boobs haven't changed shape, or got more visible veins. I am not getting much, if any, nausea, just a bit of extra hunger. I have had a couple of instances of gagging when I brush my teeth. All in all, it's not a very compelling set of symptoms. But it doesn't tell me anything either way, since this is about what I had with Pob, other than that I did have the strechy, pully cramps. Perhaps I just don't have strong pregnancy symptoms. Ever.

Of course it's making me believe it's all over. I have no reason to believe it's over, and no reason to believe it's not. It is what it is. I have brought forward the scan to next Weds, when I will be 8 weeks precisely, partly because I need to know, partly because we are going away for a week on the Sunday so if things have gone wrong I'd rather get things over with before we get on a plane. Cheery soul, eh?

6w2d: possibilities

Because I'm on the crackberry I won't draw it out by telling you of my nightmares all night, but just announce that we have an embyo measuring 6w4d and a healthy looking heartbeat. Only one, mind you!

Cue heavy sigh of relief. Next scan in 2 weeks.

5w6d: Pob in the wars

Still no more symptoms to speak of. Wondering if, as some of you suggested, the nausea last week was in fact a stomach bug and nothing to do with pregnancy!

Meanwhile poor Pob has had a tough week. The least of it was that she had her MMR on Wednesday, which didn't seem to bother her much. She had an afternoon of grumpiness and that seemed to be it.

Her second trauma came on Friday morning we noticed she had a swollen eye. NHS Direct didn't seem to be worried by it, nor did our local pharmacist. Another pharmacist saw her at lunchtime and told us to take her to the doctor, the doctor told us to take her to A&E. So at 6pm on a Friday night we were in A&E. Luckily one of our local hospitals has a paediatric A&E, so we were at least in an area designed for children with friendly nurses. By the time we'd seen the nurse, the medical student, and finally the doctor, it was 1930 and Pob was a little scratchy. They agreed it was a case of peri-ocular cellulitis, but not too bad, and we were ok to take her home with oral antibiotics, she didn't need an IV. We were relieved. She slept badly but woke in the morning with the eye much better, and our return visit to A&E that lunchtime resulted in a discharge. So no big drama.

Then this morning the drama. She was going backwards and forwards to the bookshelf to get me books to read to her. She picks up the book, stands up, then totters over to me. It's a change she's made in the last three weeks, she's now decided it's easier to walk and carry a book than it is to crawl over to me, bringing the book by sliding it along the floor underneath one hand. This morning, however, balance was not her friend, and she chose a somewhat circuitous route back to me. As she headed towards me she lost her balance,and fell headfirst onto the edge of the coffee table. I'm sure you could have heard the crack several streets away, it made me feel sick to hear it. She screamed and screamed. We tried to put ice on the bump, but that made her scream more loudly. We put on some arnica cream and she snuggled in my arms for a few minutes, occasionally letting out an outraged yell, crying a bit then snuffling for a few seconds. After a few minutes we asked her if she wanted breakfast, and she struggled out of my lap and onto the floor, then held out her hand so I could walk her over to her high chair. She's been fine all day, apparently, although she looks awful, with a livid purple bruise in the middle of her forehead.

Oh, and the antibiotics have given her nappy rash for the first time in her life. Poor baby.

So life is plenty distracting. Too busy, not enough time with Pob, but distracting.

Three sleeps to go.

5w4d: Hmm

I felt really quite ill all week. Monday was definitely the worst day given the compounding effect of lack of sleep, but the acid stomach, lack of appetite and the fact that my stomach basically HURT all the time lasted all week. Until Saturday morning, when I woke up feeling fine, ate a normal breakfast and a proper lunch for the first time all week. No nausea. I managed to wear tight jeans, having struggled with my work clothes all week as they dug into my stomach. I felt fine all day although at dinner with friends last night I didn't eat nearly as much as I would usually, felt a little odd on the way home, and did gag brushing my teeth for the first time in this pregnancy. That reassured me somewhat.

This morning, no nausea, have been nicely hungry on and off all day, ate a big lunch at my mother's with no after-effects, and am still doing fine now.

As you can imagine, this is all making me very nervous.

I'm trying not to let it wind me up as I'm sure morning sickness can come and go (someone?), but it is nevertheless winding me up. It was really quite unpleasant and hard to concentrate on work all week, but at the same time was a lovely secret feeling of things going well. It's much harder to do without it.

I imagine possibly, given I had almost no nausea with Pob, my body is just good at adapting to pregnancy hormones. But equally, a few days before my first scan on pregnancy #1 I was sure it was all over, I no longer felt pregnant. And it turned out I was right. I'm not yet convinced that this pregnancy has all gone pear-shaped, but I am finding it increasingly difficult to figure out how I last til Friday with any semblance of sanity intact.

4w6d: The grotty stage

Am feeling not very well, no idea the relative contribution of hcg and sleeplessness, since Pob has developed the unfortunate habit of waking at about 4 and crying on and off for an hour or so before going back to sleep. Any ideas? If I go in she's fine, just sitting there hanging out, holding our her arms to be picked up (which I usually don't do). I'm wondering if we should cut back on her daytime sleep. She currently has a nap at 9ish for about an hour and a half, and another at about 1300 for about another hour and a half, goes to bed at seven and usually we get her up at seven. She is clearly tired for both of those naps - rubbing her eyes, complaining etc., and will often take off for the stairs and start climbing up them around nap time. And she doesn't create any fuss about going down. So I'm at a bit of a loss, and very tired.

I do think the hcg is contributing at some level, the queasiness I'm feeling seems unlike the usual tiredness symptoms. I've not had morning sickness before, just an unnerving desire to eat when I was pregnant with Pob, I wonder if this is it. I guess the next few days will tell.

In answer to questions over the last few days:

• There is no particular reason to believe this is multiples. It is of course not impossible but note: (i) hcg values are very similar to Pob's and to my first pregnancy, both of which were singletons. (ii) there is no link between doubling times and the presence of multiples, and (iii) not much link between total hcg value on any particular day and multiples - see betabase for details. So the only thing that will tell us for sure is the scan, but personally I think it's a singleton and I'm just hoping desperately that it sticks around
• I am on clexane (lovenox) and baby aspirin as well as IM progesterone. The clexane (20mg/day) is prescribed, the aspirin is self-medicated. Started both the day after egg collection. I loathe and detest the new clexane syringes which sanofi-aventis has introduced - much harder to use and orders of magnitude more packaging. Hate.
• I had been taking DHEA for one month before the cycle started, and continued through to the positive pregnancy test. I have no idea if it had an effect or not, but have a suspicion based on how much better the embryos were this time. Oficially it's supposed to take 4 cycles to have an effect due to its involvement early in folliculogenesis, but maybe not. But if you are thinking about giving it a try, Dr Candour's response to my question was "can't hurt, might help." So there you go

Thanks for all the lovely comments people, I'm very lucky to have you.