Money talk

You may have noticed blogging was a bit light at the end of last week. This is partly because work has been very busy, but mainly because DH's father has been in hospital since Thursday, so the Family Taxi Service has come into operation in a big way (and DH has realised all on his own how much easier life will be when he can drive).

So we've been driving over to his parents' house, which is about 20 miles away, to pick his mother up, and then most of the time I've been dropping DH and his mother off at the hospital and finding a convenient place to wait for them until they're ready to be picked up, because the parking at the hospital is ruinously expensive and there's no other parking available within walking distance.

The great thing about all this time in the car with DH is that it's a great time to talk. And you know what our discussions always come round to in the end...

On Saturday, it started off as a conversation about how SIL would really like MIL and FIL to move closer to her, but they're reluctant to leave the house that they've lived in for over 40 years. We talked about how they had scrimped and saved, and how much it had stretched them to pay £4,500 for that house. This got onto talk about savings generally, and about what their purpose is, how they should be spent, and ... the cost of IVF.

Yes, there we are, it only took four moves to get from "MIL and FIL are getting old and we're worried about them" to "how many more IVFs are we going to have?"

I've been really nervous about this next IVF. I'm excited, because I think we're in the right place now and that if anybody can get us pregnant, Mr Miracle Worker and his team can. DH and I are agreed that IVF #1 and #2 weren't a total waste, because they were the right course at the time with the knowledge that we had, and they taught us that we are the sort of problem case that needs a bit more help than that clinic gives. But in many ways it feels as though we're starting again with the vastly different approach that they have at XXXX clinic. I have huge hope for this round, and I'm excited to get started.

At the same time, I'm terrified. For as long as we don't get started, I have hope - huge, crazy amounts of hope. I even had my first ever BFP dream recently. I've been calculating how far along I'll be at particular times, thinking about how and when I'm going to tell people, thinking again about names... And then I catch myself up short and think, "We agreed that we'd have three attempts, and this is our final one. And we're running out of money, and this treatment is likely to be twice as expensive as an IVF at the old clinic. What if it doesn't work?"

On Saturday, I tentatively suggested that if this next IVF doesn't work, but we get a better vibe from it than the previous ones, I'd be tempted to try a fourth time. I said that the two IVFs at the other clinic were totally different and that IVF #3 felt like a whole new thing, and I wasn't sure if it was fair only to give it one chance.

And DH agreed! He said he'd been thinking the same thing, and that at this stage, he didn't think we should rule anything in or out - we'll wait and see what happens, and if IVF #4 feels like the right thing to do, then we should do it. Or if moving on to apply for adoption feels like the right thing, then we should do that.

This communication thing is amazing! I feel so much better about everything now. We also talked about the whole not-sticking-to-the-programme thing, and we've agreed some ground rules on that too - although I think I just have to accept that he's going to continue to make me out to be the baddie in front of other people when he wants something he's agreed not to have.

And a bigger mortgage and no savings won't be such a bad thing - we'll just have to keep working for a bit longer...