Moving on to the next plan

Still here...

2011-11-10T13:16:00.003Z

I've been a rotten blogger recently - I've neither updated my own blog nor commented on anyone else's, though I can assure you that I still think of the people whose blogs I used to read regularly, and pop in from time to time to see how you're doing.

Some of the things that have kept me away are things I can't tell you about, but others are things that I think many bloggers before me have experienced.

I've had a lot of worries and a few major panics since I've been pregnant. I had bleeding at 8 and 12 weeks - proper red blood, about the volume of the first day of a period, followed in each case by a week of spotting. I felt like I was holding my breath until I reached 12 weeks, but I felt guilty about writing about my concerns, because I knew that there were people who might be reading who would give anything to be in my shoes. It just didn't seem fair to complain about being worried, or feeling sick, or not being able to sleep, or anything at all, when actually I was conscious every minute of every day of how incredibly lucky I was to finally be pregnant.

Anyway, I'm now at 16 weeks 5 days. Everything looked good on my 12 week scan - they even bumped my due date forward a few days, because the baby was measuring ahead of dates, though I'm ignoring that, since I know exactly how old the baby really is. Last week I had another appointment with the midwife and heard the heartbeat for the first time (when I've had my scans, I've only seen it).

Right now, I'm waiting to develop a bump which looks more baby than blubber. I think I may have felt the baby move at the weekend (when one of my nieces was lying on my tummy), but haven't really felt anything since which I could say was definitely not just gas, so I'm looking forward to feeling proper kicks more regularly and being able to tell for myself that the baby is still there and doing OK.

I've been overwhelmed with how thrilled people have been for us - not just friends and family, but random people that I've done jobs for over the last year, my nieces' teachers, and even my doctor and the ultrasound technician at our NHS 12 week scan.

Every time someone gets excited on my behalf, I keep thinking, "But what if it all goes wrong and I have to tell all these people that I lost the baby?", and then at the next opportunity I secretly poke my boobs to make sure they're still hurting - and they always are (probably because I spend so much time poking them)!

I also moved straight from feeling sick most of the time to having indigestion and heartburn most of the time, and although I've now been prescribed something to help with the indigestion, I feel fortunate that amidst all this worrying, there really have been very few days when I could say that I didn't feel any different from normal and therefore start panicking that this might mean things had started to go wrong.

I probably won't update very much over the next few months, though I will definitely tell you if anything major happens (like giving birth!). So I just want to thank you for continuing to show an interest, and for all the huge support that so many of you have given me over the last few years.

I may not be updating, but I'm still thinking of you...

Heartbeat

2011-09-03T09:07:00.002+01:00

It's taken me a while to update you on our scan, which took place on Tuesday. The ultrasound nurse was lovely, and we saw our baby's little flickering heart. It measured one day smaller than I had thought, at 6 weeks 3 days, which is probably due to later implantation, but everything looked good and the nurse was very positive about it.

And yes, there's only one. Realistically, I'm relieved that this means there are likely to be fewer complications. Secretly, though, I'm a little disappointed that it also probably means our baby will be an only child - and I feel very ungrateful for feeling any sort of disappointment when I've got what we have longed for for so long.

I was thrilled and relieved to discover that because I'm on all the immune treatment, the clinic wasn't going to discharge me as soon as I'd had my first scan. In fact, I get another scan two weeks after the first one, and then another again at 10 or 12 weeks. I don't think I could have stood waiting for six weeks between scans at this stage, so I'm hugely excited that we'll get to see the baby again in only another 10 days or so.

The clinic only prescribes enough drugs at each appointment to last until the next one, which I suppose is sensible in case anything goes wrong and the drugs are no longer needed, but this caused us huge stress on Tuesday. We were in a strange city, four hours from home, and had no idea where we could go to fill our prescription. After we'd been to two pharmacies that didn't have half the stuff we needed, I rang the clinic in despair and a lovely lovely lady phoned round for me, found a place that had most of what we needed, and then got the doctor to write another prescription for everything they didn't have, because one of the problems we had is that you have to get everything on a single prescription in the same place.

The sticking point was the gestone - nobody had any. I had my jab for Tuesday evening, so sent DH into London with the gestone prescription on Wednesday morning with instructions to pick it up from one of the pharmacies near XXXX clinic during his lunch break. He phoned me in a panic at lunchtime, having tried several different pharmacies and been told the same story at each - there's a national shortage of gestone and he would find it very difficult to get any before the middle of September at the earliest.

After much angst, and the longest lunch break ever for poor DH, he eventually found a pharmacy which had been keeping back two boxes (exactly what we needed) for someone else who hadn't turned up to pick them up, so he sweet-talked the pharmacist into letting him take the two boxes.

That afternoon, I had a lot of twinges in my stomach and some other fairly odd feelings, and I managed to convince myself that although we'd seen a heartbeat the previous day, the baby must surely have died. I felt really sad, and worried every time there was another twinge. I also googled like crazy, and read that if I was miscarrying I could usually expect heavy bleeding and stronger cramps than I was feeling - but I have several friends who've had missed miscarriages, so that only made me feel a little bit better.

Since then, I've been on crazy symptom-watch - am I feeling as sick as I was last week? Why don't I get that dizzy feeling any more? Am I weeing as much as I was? It's 10 pm and I haven't collapsed with exhaustion yet - why not?

And the answer is that I think everything's fine at the moment. Last night I felt as sick as a dog, and this morning I was woken at 5:30 by a wave of nausea that was so strong I really thought I was going to throw up for the first time.

I'm trying my best to go with the flow and just enjoy this whole experience without worrying about every little thing. But don't expect me to be sane or rational for the next few weeks...

Five weeks

2011-08-19T18:13:00.003+01:00

Wow, it's true - I really do still have more than three readers! Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and congratulations - they all really meant a lot to me.

Since our BFP, the week has passed in a bit of a blur of pregnancy-related stuff. I had to sort out my prescription for the next two weeks' worth of drugs - I have to stay on all the drugs (gestone, Clexane, prednisolone and oestradiol valerate, as well as prenatal vitamins and calcium tablets) until we reach 12 weeks, but for the moment they've given me enough to last until our early scan at the end of this month.

I've calculated that our due date is 20 April next year, and that as of today, by the weird and wonderful method that the medical profession has of calculating these things, I am officially 5 weeks pregnant. I did another test on Thursday morning, just to make sure, and the line came up instantly and was as dark as the control line.

I'm still absolutely wiped out with exhaustion in the afternoons and evenings, and have had enough nausea and dizziness (sort of a seasick feeling) to reassure me that there's definitely plenty going on in there.

I also find very few foods particularly appealing - though strangely, this baby is obviously a bit of a health freak, as the things that are most unappealing to me are the unhealthy treats that I usually enjoy. Today, all I wanted for lunch was vegetables with chickpeas, and I almost cried when I opened the cupboard to find that we were out of chickpeas. I suppose you could add 'more than usually emotional' to my list of symptoms - tears spring to my eyes at the slightest provocation.

The most irritating symptom I have, which I think is mainly caused by the gestone, is insomnia. Last night went like this:

10:00 - take the last of my daily drugs and settle down with relief to go to sleep. Fall asleep quite quickly, as I normally do at the beginning of the night.

11:30 - DH comes up to bed and wakes me up. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway.

12:00 - still awake, and staring at the glowing numbers on my alarm clock.

12:30 - I must have fallen asleep at some stage, because I've just been woken up by a couple of idiots shouting outside the bedroom window. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway.

1:30 - I can't get back to sleep, and DH's gentle snoring in my ear is really starting to irritate me. I briefly consider smothering him with a pillow to make the noise stop, but decide this baby really deserves to have a father, so move to the spare room instead. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway. I'm also feeling increasingly nauseous, so I munch on a couple of breadsticks before settling down in the spare bed.

2:00- I'm wide awake and surfing the internet on my iPod, desperately trying to get myself sleepy enough to get back off to sleep.

2:30 - My eyelids are finally drooping, and I put down the iPod and manage to get to sleep quite quickly.

4:45 - DH stomps past the spare room on his way to the bathroom, waking me up again. Never mind - I have to get up to pee anyway.

5:30 - I'm finally asleep again.

6:10 - DH's alarm goes off and wakes me up. As the spare room is closer to the bathroom than our bedroom is, I manage to nip into the bathroom before he can get there - I have to pee again.

6:15 - I crawl back into our own bed and take the first lot of drugs of the day.

6:45 - I'm vaguely aware of DH bringing me up a drink before he leaves for work.

7:30 - My alarm goes off. I wake up for long enough to reset it for 8:15, and then I'm sleeping like a baby once more. So why can't that happen in the middle of the night?

8:15 - My alarm goes off again. I'm not ready to wake up, and could quite happily roll over and go back to sleep again for a few more hours - but never mind, I have to get up anyway to go and pee again.

For the moment, I'm quite happy to have whatever inconvenient or uncomfortable symptoms I get - I've waited for this moment long enough, and these are all signs that I may at long last be going to achieve the one thing that I've wanted all my life - to be a mother.

Eeek - our first ever...!

2011-08-16T18:48:00.003+01:00

First, thank you so much for the concern and interest that my three remaining readers have continued to show despite my lack of updates. It really does mean a lot to me!

Well, what a couple of weeks it's been. We had our transfer two weeks ago tomorrow. For the first time, we were given a photo of the embryos. I felt very emotional when the embryologist showed it to me just before the transfer and said I'd be able to take it home afterwards. Somehow, it just made the whole thing more real.

The first two embryos that they defrosted survived and were doing well, so they didn't have to defrost any others. These two were expanding blasts, and the embryologist said that after the thaw they had started to reinflate very well. And here they are, looking plump and beautiful - and I've barely been able to stop looking at this photo since.

After the transfer, we were sent away with an HPT and told to test in two weeks (ie, tomorrow). We didn't go home for a couple of days, and then we were pretty busy, but last Tuesday I had every intention of updating you and posting that photo.

Before I could do that, last Tuesday evening I started spotting. It was only a tiny amount, it never turned red and it never increased, but it was there on and off from Tuesday to Saturday, and I was completely freaked out by it and convinced that we had failed yet again - and just too depressed to tell you about it.

Then the spotting stopped altogether, and other things started to happen. I noticed that a few things smelt a lot stronger than usual, and that some odours were making me feel a bit... peculiar. The AF feelings in my stomach didn't subside, but nor did they lead to any bleeding. I started to be hit with crushing waves of exhaustion which would actually leave me feeling dizzy for a couple of minutes. And my nipples were a little bit tender and so prominent that you could practically see them through my duvet.

I started to have a faint little shoot of hope, but I didn't want to jinx it by saying anything to anybody, so I stayed away from my computer and just prayed like mad.

I also had an incident where I pulled back on my gestone syringe, as you're instructed to do to make sure you haven't hit a vein, and it filled with blood - so I had to discard that injection and start again. That meant I was one injection short, and when I called the clinic to tell them, they said it would be OK if I tested a day early. I didn't tell anyone, not even DH, figuring that if I got another BFN this morning, I'd be able to lick my wounds for 24 hours before I had to tell anyone else.

Yesterday evening I was peeing every half hour, and just before I went to bed I felt very peculiar - exhausted, dizzy, slightly nauseous. And I just had a feeling that maybe we might have been lucky this time.

So this morning, while DH was pottering around getting ready for work, I took my official HPT into the bathroom, carefully pipetted (is that a word?) three drops of urine into the sample area, and waited. The control line came up straight away, and I stared at the test area in disbelief as it stayed stubbornly white... for about half a minute. Then something else started to happen, and after another minute, it looked like this (apologies for the crappy photo from my phone):

I've subsequently gone on the bulletin board for this clinic and seen loads of people say that the tests the clinic gives out are unusually insensitive, and that most people get very faint lines on them.

So it would appear that after 3 years and 3 months of trying, 2 years of fertility investigations and treatments, 3 failed IVFs and endless months of not even being able to get started with treatment because my hormones weren't right, I finally have my first ever BFP!

We still have a huge long way to go, and I know a line on a pee stick in no way guarantees that I'll have a live baby in my arms in nine months' time. But that moment when I went downstairs, showed the test to DH and said, "This line means I'm pregnant" and saw the look on his face as he gradually realised what I meant is one that will stay with me for ever as one of the best moments of my life.

We have a date!

2011-07-28T09:36:00.002+01:00

Things have been pretty busy around here recently, and the only sign of anything out of the normal has been the increasingly regular alarms going off on my phone, reminding me to take one drug or another.

My new business is starting to look as though it may break even in its first year, and I've taken the fairly momentous decision to give up the 'crutch' of freelance work in my old field to concentrate solely on the new business. I'm doing my last bit of freelance work right now, and hoping to finish it before next Tuesday evening, because...

On Tuesday evening we're driving up to the town where the new clinic is, ready for transfer (assuming all goes well with the defrosting) on Wednesday.

I had a scan on Monday, my tenth day of taking oestradiol, and my lining was 12.4 mm, with no sign of any anomalies. I asked specifically about the polyp, and the nurse who did the scan looked very carefully and said if there was a polyp it would be filled with fluid, and there was no sign of anything fluid-filled in there. The consultant had said that it could be shed with the lining if I had another bleed, and I had a bit of bleeding last week, so I'm assuming that's what happened, and that I am now polyp-free.

So after six weeks of preparing my body for this, two years of fertility treatments and over three years of trying for a baby, how does it feel to be this close to transfer?

I don't think I can really identify my feelings towards it at the moment. In one way, I'm planning for success, thinking about how I would juggle pregnancy and childcare with my new career, repeating to myself the names that we've chosen, and imagining where the cradle will go in our bedroom for a newborn.

In another way, I can't imagine ever being successful. I'm very cautious about the next stage in our treatment, and very conscious that it is only the next stage - that it could fail now, and even if it doesn't, there are months and months of possibilities of failure ahead of us. I spend a lot of time thinking about how our life would be if we never had children, what the positives of that would be, and reminding myself how difficult it would be to continue to build up my business with a baby - preparing myself for failure, in other words.

Am I excited about Wednesday? My family certainly are. DH is. I'm.... keeping my mind busy. The people I do this freelance work for are usually very good at estimating how long it'll take, and I've got four to five days' worth waiting to be done. I'm starting it today, and I'd like to finish it before we leave on Tuesday evening. That means working at least one day of the weekend, and it's tedious, mind-consuming work. At the moment, I'm thinking about getting that done.

I've also cleared my diary so that, assuming I get this work finished, I can spend a couple of days at the end of next week with my feet up, catching up on some long overdue reading.

So activity-wise, the 'before' is sorted, and the 'after' is sorted. We've got a hotel booked for Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and DH has booked the time off work.

And that's it. I've told a few people that it's happening, because they asked how things were going. They've got very excited, and I've tried to damp down their excitement by pointing out that the embryos might not even survive defrosting. I worry a little bit that I've got a dreadful cough at the moment, and if it gets even worse, I wonder if we'll even be able to go ahead.

Mostly, though, I'm relaxed. I'm not obsessed with this process, as I was for previous IVF treatments. When the nurse came to give me my intralipids, she commented that my blood pressure was low - when I was working in London, it was high, so surely that's a sign that I'm more relaxed these days.

I can't even say I'm waiting, because I'm too busy getting everything else done to have the luxury of waiting. All preparations that can be made have been made already, and now I'm just getting on with everything that needs to be done and the perpetual juggling that my life seems to entail at the moment.

Is it the calm before the storm? Will I become more preoccupied with it again as the time gets closer? Will my state of zen-like calm crack and bring with it the emotional messiness of previous cycles?

Who knows - but I'm sure I'll be appreciative of any prayers and sticky thoughts that you can send my way next Wednesday.

One step forward...?

2011-07-14T07:49:00.002+01:00

Thank you so much for your comments on my last post. I've been such a bad blogger recently that I'm amazed anyone is still reading, and Sonja's comment in particular really reassured me.

I had another chat with the lovely consultant on Tuesday, and he finally gave me an opinion and said that given the size and position of the polyp, he was 60-70% in favour of continuing with the cycle. He said he personally didn't think the polyp was very significant, but that he had to give us information on all the latest research and let us make our own decision.

We agreed that I would start taking oestradiol valerate that evening, and they would pay close attention to looking out for the polyp when I had a lining scan 10 days later.

The next step was to organise my intralipids infusion, which they want me to have done within a week of starting the oestradiol. That was when it all got a bit frustrating again.

I suppose I was spoilt at XXXX clinic, where they do everything themselves - drug provision, hysteroscopy, IVIg, and anything else they consider necessary during your treatment. The decision about whether to have a hysteroscopy was made harder by the fact that the new clinic doesn't do them, XXXX clinic couldn't do it for me, and I would have had to shop around for somewhere, get a referral, and then probably join a waiting list.

The new clinic also doesn't do its own intralipid infusions. In one way, that's nice - because they use a company that can set up drips in patients' homes, all I needed to do was arrange for a nurse to come to my house and then I could have my intralipids in the comfort of my own home, while getting on with some work (which, by the way, is really picking up now and has been very busy over the last month).

But the way they did it this week was for the clinic to ring the homecare company and set up an appointment - without asking me when I was available. I then had a call from the clinic saying that it was going to be done on Friday morning.

Well, as it happens, I have a stand at an event tomorrow which I hope will lead to some more work for me. The stand was offered to me free of charge as a thank you for some other stuff I've done for the organisation concerned. Not only can I not afford to miss out on the opportunity to advertise my business, which is still in its first year in a highly competitive market, but I also can't let these people down at the last minute.

I told the nurse at the clinic that there was no way I could do Friday morning, and she told me to call the homecare company direct. The woman I spoke to said there was no other time they could do for me within the one week period, and I was then shuffled into a game of telephone tag with these two women. It culminated in me being told not to start taking the oestradiol on Tuesday after all. The new instruction was to start it this Saturday, and someone from the homecare company would ring me to arrange a date for the intralipids.

I got the call yesterday (rather inconveniently, while I was out on a job). My intralipids infusion is now booked for... Monday. Which by my reckoning is within a week of this Tuesday - so why didn't they offer it to me initially when I said I couldn't do Friday?

I then have a scan the following Monday at the satellite clinic, and depending on what it shows, they may want me to go up to the main clinic again so they can rescan for themselves and see what the polyp is doing.

I was a bit irritated by the further delay in starting the oestradiol - I'll have been on buserilin for six weeks now, and the night sweats and hot flushes are beginning to get more than a little bit boring.

But then there was a new development last night. If I wasn't on buserilin, AF would be due round about now - and sure enough, last night I started bleeding. This is odd, because the scan on Monday showed that my lining was pretty thin. But the consultant did suggest that if I came off the buserilin and had a bleed, the polyp might come away on its own.

So is all this waiting around going to result in the polyp disappearing of its own accord? And is it normal to have a second bleed when you're on buserilin? All intriguing questions, and I'll be on the phone to the clinic again later today.

I just hope the start of the oestradiol isn't going to be pushed back beyond this Saturday...

Still up in the air

2011-07-12T08:49:00.002+01:00

Well, I stayed on the buserilin while waiting for a repeat scan, so am still fully downregulated (and having regular hot flushes and night sweats - all the fun of the fair!).

Yesterday we finally made it to the clinic for the scan - it took so long because they wouldn't let me use the satellite clinic and we had to have a couple of clear days so we could go up to our main clinic.

The polyp is still there - it's at the top of the lower third of the uterus, and is about 3-4 mm, so pretty small.

One issue we have is that this clinic doesn't do hysteroscopies, so if I wanted to have it removed I'd have to arrange to have it done somewhere else. I rang XXXX clinic, and they said they couldn't do it for me, but also said that if it was small and not 'impacting on the uterus' (whatever that means), they wouldn't bother anyway.

The consultant we saw yesterday - who was absolutely lovely - was fairly equivocal about whether he thought we should abandon this cycle and get the polyp removed. He said some studies indicated that it might be a good idea, but we should make the decision ourselves and I should stay on the buserilin until we decide.

I've consulted Dr Google. There are lots of people on the forums talking about having to abandon cycles in order to have polyps removed. I also found this useful book which has information on various studies that have been done. Unfortunately, none of them is really conclusive, but it seems that the greatest evidence for polyps affecting the outcome of IVF treatment is with polyps over 1.5-2 cm (way bigger than mine). It seems that polyps don't affect implantation rates, but may have an effect on the likelihood of miscarriage - but again, this is not certain and may only involve polyps over 1 cm.

The other imponderable is that there is some evidence that oestrogen causes polyps to grow - I haven't started taking oestrogen yet in this cycle, but if when I do it makes the polyp grow larger as well as making my endometrium thicken, then this would be a bad thing.

If the clinic did hysteroscopies and polypectomies, I think it would be a no brainer - I'd just go ahead and let them do it. My problem is in deciding whether this is a big enough deal to make me not only abandon this cycle after over 5 weeks of downregulation and have a further delay of what could be a few months, but also have to find another clinic that will do the polypectomy and have yet another set of doctors poking at my bits.

Yesterday we were all ready to go ahead. Right now this minute, I think I've talked myself into thinking that if this cycle ultimately isn't successful, I would have fewer regrets if I had had the polypectomy than if I hadn't - whereas if it is successful, I won't mind the extra time and expense anyway.

This is hard - I wish the consultant had been a little less wishy-washy in his advice and had just definitely told me what he thought I should do...

Bother!

2011-06-27T23:31:00.002+01:00

After a little over three weeks of buserilin, I had my downregulation scan today, to see if I could start taking the next lot of drugs.

My lining was nice and thin, both ovaries were inactive, and it only took two nurses three attempts to take a bit of blood from me (which is fine - I know I have difficult veins, and the bruise really isn't that big).

But ... there's always a 'but'.

It seems I have another polyp, and the consultant rang this afternoon to say they want to do another scan to see whether it's likely to get in the way of implantation. Someone will ring me to arrange the appointment, so for the moment I'm in limbo again.

I asked if they could just do the hysteroscopy and get on with it if necessary, without abandoning this cycle. The answer was no - they don't do hysteroscopies at this clinic, so they would have to refer me to the NHS (which would take for ever) or I'd have to find another private clinic that was willing and able to do it at short notice.

Suddenly my stress levels are increasing again. I really don't want to abandon this cycle, but if there's any chance this polyp will adversely affect the outcome, I don't want to carry on until I'm rid of it.

Comments

2011-06-11T09:57:00.002+01:00

Blogger won't let me comment on any Blogspot posts! It's been doing it for a couple of weeks now, and is very frustrating - so I'd just like to say to cgd, I'm thinking of you, and hope that you have a very happy birthday today.

A week in

2011-06-11T08:18:00.002+01:00

So, I've injected my buserilin for seven days now, and sure enough, it has delayed AF. I find myself once again waiting for AF to turn up so that I can get on with treatment - but since the next week is going to be even busier than last, I don't mind if the delay lasts a little longer.

I'm doing OK so far - I've felt like AF was on her way for the last four days or so, and I'm getting a bit bloated in the evenings. I got a bit overemotional about a misunderstanding yesterday, but to be honest, I think I'd have got overemotional about it even without all the drugs - someone I'd never met before was basically questioning my integrity and was quite rude to me, and cancelled an arrangement that I'd made with his wife without consulting her. The story's a lot longer and more involved than that, but I found it very upsetting.

On Thursday I dropped in at our first clinic to pick up copies of some paperwork that the new clinic wanted. I was surprised to feel absolutely nothing as I walked in - I think the scars from that first treatment have healed over now.

It still doesn't really feel real that I'm going to have an FET within (hopefully) the next month or so. I veer between feeling confident that it'll work (which is actually quite a rare feeling) and being absolutely certain that it won't. In reality, I just can't imagine any treatment ever working for us. The universe isn't fair, and it's not a question of waiting for 'my turn'. The total unfairness of what has happened to Egghunt confirms that, and I feel desperately sad for her. It's been her 'turn' for as long as I've been reading her blog, and I can't believe how much crap she has had to put up with, and continues to have to deal with.

So I'll keep sticking needles in my stomach and keep plodding on to the next stage, but at the moment it feels more as though I'm doing this because I'll regret not having done it if I don't, rather than because I think there's a baby at the end of it. The hardest thing is coping with the expectations of others, who are convinced whatever I say that it's going to work this time. I can finally see the value of not telling people what's going on, but keeping my mouth shut and not answering questions honestly when people ask is just not in my nature.

And so we wait...

And so it begins

2011-06-05T08:01:00.002+01:00

This week is half term, and we had Nieces #1, #2 and #3 for a sleepover on Thursday night, so on Friday morning I was woken just before 6:00 by #2 and #3 crawling into our bed. We watched a Brambly Hedge DVD while DH got up and got ready for work, then went downstairs and made pancakes for breakfast.

Once they were dressed and all the sticky syrup had been cleaned up, I left them playing while I phoned the clinic to get any last instructions and pay the final bill for the medication.

We then went out for the day to a model village near where I live. My sister and Niece #4 joined us at lunchtime, and I took loads of photos. The weather was beautiful, and we ended up going round the village three times and having two reasonably long stints in the play area.

I came home, relaxed for a few minutes with a cup of tea, gave myself an injection, then settled down to watch some of my favourite programmes on the telly. DH was out boozing with his colleagues - a rare occurrence, but one of them was leaving on Friday, so they were giving him a good send-off.

Yesterday, I did my Saturday morning chores, went through my photos and uploaded some of them to Facebook for my family to see, wandered down into town with DH, where I had an eye test and we went for a coffee in Starbucks, read the newspapers in the sunshine, gave myself an injection, then in the evening we ordered a takeaway curry and ate it in front of the telly.

Do you see what I'm getting at here? At the moment, these injections are no big deal at all - I even have to set an alarm on my phone to remind myself to take them. I'm also totally relaxed about DH having a nice evening out with his friends, even if he did text me from the train to say that he'd had a bit too much to drink and would sleep in the spare room.

Part of what makes me so relaxed is that I'm not worrying about the quality of my eggs and DH's sperm this time round. Part of it is that I haven't yet had to go to the clinic. They sent all the drugs by post, and they've already been knocking around the house for a couple of weeks. When I phoned them yesterday they just told me to call again when AF shows up, to book my downregulation scan. So it's all very low key, and I don't have enough hormones swimming around my body yet to have turned me into IVFzilla (much to DH's relief).

The next fortnight is going to be very busy with work, then I have a brief hiatus of a week or so before I head into another very busy period. So my mind will have plenty to occupy it, and I hope this means that the relaxed attitude will continue.

Part of my mind is already preparing me for what feels like inevitable failure - I've had so many disappointments, I almost can't bear to hope that this time we'll be lucky. But another part of my mind is remembering how July was meant to be an important month for me, and calculating that either my transfer or my test (or maybe even both) should definitely be taking place in July...

Into the countdown

2011-05-28T08:57:00.003+01:00

We're on our third clinic now, and I find it interesting to see the differences in the way they all operate. This one is the first to send drugs all at once through the post - just as well, since it's also the furthest from home - and I now have a huge box of drugs on my kitchen table, waiting for us to get started.

I'm doing a medicated FET, so have to start by downregging - this will be the first time I've done this, as all my IVFs were on the short protocol. All being well, I'll be starting with daily injections of buserilin this coming Friday.

My new business is one which is always likely to be busiest in May, June, July, and then in October, November and early December. I'm really pleased to have several bookings for late June and early July, but it does mean that appointments are going to have to be juggled to fit round work - with such a new business, I can't turn stuff down, and most of the bookings are for specific events and so can't be varied. I think it'll be good to have work that I enjoy to take my mind off obsessing about the treatment, and I've worked out my dates quite carefully so that they shouldn't clash with any appointments - as long as my body is playing ball.

It's been a busy week - in fact, a busy six weeks, with trips to three different countries for three different major events in the lives of our friends and family - but this weekend we're home and can relax and recharge our batteries. My sister's coming for lunch tomorrow, and we're going to see DH's parents on Monday, but for today I can just potter around and do very little - bliss.

It's funny - I haven't really thought further than the logistics of starting to take the drugs and what monitoring appointments I might need (to avoid clashes with work bookings). It's as if I was just planning to do injections for a few weeks and then get back to normal.

In reality, of course, I hope that 'normal' is going to be looking very different from now on...

Conversation with a 4-year-old

2011-05-24T21:45:00.003+01:00

I spent an hour or so on my own this afternoon with #2 Niece, while #1 was at school and my sister was out with #3 and #4. As she sat on my lap after I finished reading her a book, we had the following conversation:

#2 (a propos of nothing): When I grow up, I want to be a mummy.

Me: That's good. I'd like to be a mummy too.

#2 (turning to look seriously into my eyes): But you're not a mummy. Before you can be a mummy you have to get a baby in your tummy.

Me: I know.

#2: My mummy has had babies in her tummy. But you've never had a baby in your tummy.

Me: No.

#2: You can't be a mummy until you get a baby in your tummy, you know.

And so it went on. A 4-year-0ld has a great way of grabbing hold of a topic and not letting it go...

Out of the blue

2011-05-23T09:43:00.004+01:00

My DH isn't brilliant at keeping in touch with people (at least, not without some heavy prompting from me). So although he sees one particular friend as his best friend, he sees nothing unusual in going months without having any contact with him.

Last time DH met up with his best friend, they discussed IF matters. Their entire conversation went something like this:

DH: "We're having trouble having children."
BF: "Us too. We've been for tests."
DH: "Us too. Do you want another drink?"

This was over 18 months ago, and I've been nagging him to contact BF ever since. When he came home and relayed the conversation to me, I asked him for more details, but he didn't have any. After a couple of months had gone by, I said that even if he and BF didn't want to talk about it, BF's wife and I could be a support for each other, if we were going through the same sort of things.

Last week DH finally got round to calling BF. I was out working all day, and came home in the evening exhausted. The first thing he said as I walked through the door was, "I spoke to BF. Guess what? His wife's 8 months pregnant. IVF - first attempt. On the NHS."

I'm not sure how long they'd been actively trying, but when I first met them, before we were even engaged, DH told me that the car they drove had been specifically bought with a view to it being a family car. They had said that they weren't trying yet because the time wasn't right with their jobs, but who knows whether that was just an excuse to avoid having to talk about it?

I don't think I was as excited by the news as he might have hoped. In fact, I felt like he'd punched me in the stomach. Maybe if we'd been in touch with them while they were going through all the testing and then the treatment, I'd have felt more in tune with her and been as excited as she was when she got her BFP. To get as far as going through IVF, there must have been some pretty major bumps in the road, and some times when they thought it was never going to happen for them, and they must really have wanted it to happen - and as someone who knows exactly what it's like to go through all that, I should be delighted that they've finally got what they wanted.

As it is, I'm left with the feeling that they've had it easy. One minute they're 'having tests', and the next thing I know, they're popping out a baby, courtesy of the good old NHS. And once again, we've been left behind.

Am I allowed to admit that I'm a teensy bit jealous? And that I won't be quite as insistent on nagging DH to keep in touch with them over the next few months?

Recognition

2011-05-11T10:18:00.002+01:00

Some might say our timing was bad - having lived through UK Mothers' Day, we managed to be in the US for US Mothers' Day as well. And at the Mass we went to, the priest invited all mothers to stand up before the final blessing so that he could give them a special blessing.

There was a couple sitting directly in front of us, on their own - probably about our age. I noticed that when the mothers were invited to stand up, she remained sitting. And I also noticed that her husband patted her thigh a couple of times and then held her hand tightly during the blessing.

Funny, the way you come across infertility so often once you know it's there...

Booking in

2011-04-28T17:42:00.003+01:00

Life has been hectic around here lately, and will be for a couple more weeks - over a six week period, we will have had trips to Spain, the US and the Czech Republic, as well as lots of travel around the UK.

One of our UK trips last week was to visit the new clinic. We had meetings with the donation co-ordinator, the counsellor (it's compulsory to have counselling before any sort of donor treatment here, although I do wonder how useful a single one hour session would be if you hadn't already worked through the issues beforehand) and the consultant, as well as the usual scans and blood tests.

I found the whole scan experience mildly amusing, as there was a new nurse there who was learning the ropes and asked if she could sit in on my scan. Over the next half hour or more, I sat there half naked in the most undignified position as the experienced nurse gave the new nurse a very thorough tour of my reproductive organs ("This setting allows you to see the blood flow to the uterus... And if we press this button here, we can get a 3D picture of her left ovary", etc). Fortunately, after 3 full IVF treatments, I have no more pride and simply followed the show with great interest.

I loved our new consultant. I was a little anxious at the possibility of an unmedicated FET, because after my body has let me down so many times in the last three years, I don't really trust it any more to do what it's supposed to do. So I was delighted when he listed out all the drugs that he was planning to give me. We gave him a copy of our file from XXXX clinic, and he saw that I had had immune treatment there and said he would do the same - as much to reassure me as anything. He said they usually give progesterone in pessary form, and I found myself saying that I felt more secure with gestone by injection. He didn't question it, just noted a reminder to himself on the file to prescribe gestone for me - so I've let myself in for another fortnight (or hopefully longer if it's successful) of having a dead leg.

All in all, we felt really positive about the whole experience, and are now looking forward to getting started with the FET - probably some time in June or July. And in the meantime, I have some more relaxing to do...

Quick update

2011-04-05T09:45:00.004+01:00

First of all, thank you so much to all those who have kept checking in and have left messages asking how we're doing. I'm so sorry I've been such a bad blogger recently - over the last month, I haven't even been reading blogs, and I do intend to catch up with all of your news as soon as I can (which probably means next week some time).

So, what's been going on for the last month?

Well, having got the news about the embryos, I went in for my blood test hoping that I would get a clear answer one way or the other - and I did. My FSH was 14.1, which was the highest it's ever been.

This was the signal we needed that we were making the right decision, and although I did have some sadness when I heard the result, I immediately contacted the new clinic to accept the offer of the embryos.

We've been in a bit of a holding pattern since then - having filled in a pile of paperwork, we were given a date for our initial appointment at the clinic, which will be in a couple of weeks' time.

This all happened about five days before Lent began, and for those five days DH and I indulged ourselves in all the things we enjoy that we have been denying ourselves for the last couple of years - treats like wine, beer, chocolate, a cream tea... And now it's Lent, and the reason I'm depriving myself of any of the things I enjoy is completely different and not surrounded by stress and angst.

It's been unbelievable how as soon as we had properly made the decision and come to terms with it, it was as though a huge weight lifted off both our shoulders. I've been so stressed for so long about our IF that I'd stopped even realising how profoundly it was affecting me - barely an hour went by over a period of about two years without me worrying in one form or another about whether I was doing the right thing, whether there was anything extra that I could do to improve our chances of being parents, whether we would ever have children, etc, etc.

I don't know whether our donor treatment will work, and I know I'll be devastated if it doesn't. But it's unbelievable the extent to which we are now comfortable with the idea that we're never going to have a child that's genetically related to us, and the extent to which I've managed to relax over the last month.

So although I'm sorry I've been so neglectful of my bloggy friends over the last month, and I have still been thinking of you and praying for you even if I haven't been following your blogs, in my case I can definitely say that no news has been good news for me, and I'm enjoying this period of calm before the upcoming turbulence of our next round of treatment.

Big news

2011-03-02T11:38:00.002Z

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger recently - I promise I'll catch up on all your blogs soon.

This last month has been a fairly difficult one in many ways - coming to terms with yet another disappointment, the new baby obsession in the family with another new niece coming along, the sudden realisation that even if we hadn't decided to give up on our own eggs and sperm after this month, we have other commitments in the next two months which mean we probably wouldn't have been able to try again anyway before June... I've also been very busy with work, but now have a quieter period coming up which will hopefully allow me to concentrate on other things.

Anyway, today is CD1 - two days early again, just to keep me on my toes, so tomorrow I'll be heading into XXXX Clinic for what will almost certainly be my final CD1-3 blood test for treatment with our own eggs and sperm.

And a couple of weeks after my first call to her, the person I spoke to at the new clinic has just called me back and said they have a couple of embryos available for us! The physical characteristics of the donors are broadly similar to ours, and if we say yes it should all happen pretty quickly.

The embryos have also been offered to another couple, and basically the first couple to accept them will get them. I need to find out what DH's work schedule is over the next couple of months, and how easy it's going to be for him to get time off - he's just been put onto a new project at work which could change things a bit, and the new clinic is 200 miles away, so he would definitely need time off for appointments. We would need to see the consultant there and also have compulsory counselling at the clinic before going ahead with the procedure.

The co-ordinator is out of the office until Monday, by which time we'll have the results of my blood tests at XXXX Clinic and will know whether we're going to go ahead there.

I'm almost tempted to say we should just forget about the appointment at XXXX Clinic and go straight ahead with the donor treatment - these will be embryos from a batch that has already successfully produced at least one living child, and we all know my track history of IVF failure.

But one way or another, by this time next week we could be one step closer to becoming parents!

The higher the hopes...

2011-02-08T12:36:00.002Z

I allowed myself to be hopeful this month. It was our last month before moving on to donor treatment, and maybe I needed that bit of hope. Maybe I just wasn't ready to say goodbye to my dream of having my own baby. Clearly, I'm still not.

So I admit it - first, I stupidly allowed myself to get a bit hopeful that a miracle might have happened when AF showed up two days late. But of course, show up she did.

Then I went in for my blood test yesterday and my FSH and E2 levels were good - 9 and 184 respectively. The nurse commented how good they were, and seemed pretty certain that we'd be starting on the short protocol today - provided today's blood test and scan were OK. And again, I allowed myself to get hopeful and started working out how I would fit my work in around trips to London for blood tests, etc.

I went in this morning and the scan showed up a clear right ovary, but two cysts on the left - one at 10mm, the other at 13mm. There were three possible outcomes - aspiration probably tomorrow followed by an immediate start on the short protocol, starting straight away with the follicular protocol, or being told that yet again this wasn't a suitable month. It all depended on the blood test, and stupidly, I allowed myself to hope that it would still come out OK. After all, it looked as though I had two chances out of three.

So I was pretty upset when they phoned and gave me the same old rubbish about this not being an ideal month, but if the same thing happened next month we'd go ahead with the follicular protocol.

I pointed out that this is what I'd been told in December, and it HAD happened again, so surely we should be starting this month. No, the nurse said Mr Miracle Worker wanted to see if the cysts would go away on their own. I pointed out that I have had at least one cyst 10mm or above EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY'VE SCANNED ME, from last March onwards. I even had one when we did our cycle last July. So they're obviously not going to go away on their own, and leaving it one more month is just wasting another month while I continue to get older.

So I don't get to go ahead, but nor do I get closure, because they're still dangling the possibility before me of something happening next month. We'll go ahead and contact the new clinic about donor treatment anyway, because we'll probably have to go on a waiting list with them and we might as well get the ball rolling. And if next month I finally get a chance to have a last shot at XXXX clinic, we can always remove ourselves from the waiting list if it's successful - not that I'm holding my breath.

I don't know if I'm so upset because I had allowed my hopes to get up over the last three or four days.

Or because I'm moving on to the next plan without getting any sort of closure on the current situation.

Or because I'm angry that the clinic seems to have gone back on the promise they made me in December and won't properly explain why or respond to my arguments.

Or because I'm just so fed up with the answer to my prayers always being the same - "No, not for you".

Or maybe it's because everyone else in my family is so excited today, because my latest niece was born in the early hours of this morning. And I can't read all the messages of congratulation, and my brother's excited post on Facebook, without crying so hard that the computer screen in front of me disappears into a blur - and I'm sorry to say that they're not tears of joy, but of self-pity.

Tomorrow I'll be ready to face the world again. I'll be excited about my new niece, and making plans to go and meet her.

But for today, I have a nice big piece of work to do which is not difficult but requires total concentration, and I'm going to wash my face and bury myself in that piece of work. And if the phone rings, I'm going to ignore it, because just for today, I can't bring myself to be excited about yet another person getting what I want, at the same time as trying to come to terms with the fact that it looks more and more likely that I'm never going to have it.

Sometimes it's easier not to have any hope, because the higher the hopes, the greater the disappointment.

Busy busy busy

2011-01-30T09:38:00.002Z

I've been a bad blogger recently - partly because when you've had as many months as I have waiting around for AF to turn up and then being told that this isn't a good month for treatment, there isn't really a lot left to say; partly because I've been working hard on Operation Destress, which has involved quite a lot of trying to avoid thinking about anything that gets me stressed; and partly because work has suddenly turned really busy.

I'll say it cautiously, but it looks as though my dream of still being self-employed by the end of the year is one dream that will come true in 2011 - I won't make a fortune, but this month I made enough to cover the bills with a little bit left to tide me over the less profitable months. I've got enough work to keep me going flat out till the end of February, and several good leads for the coming months. That's quite an achievement after four months of self-employment, and I still love my new boss!

The other dream for 2011 is never far from my mind, and I'm on another huge health kick with the supplements, wheatgrass, healthy diet, no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, etc. Still going to reflexology and coaching sessions, trying to get more sleep at night, having some really good discussions with DH and feeling happy that we're so much more on the same page at the moment. Waiting for my latest niece to show up - her due date was on Friday.

I can't do more than I'm doing, and I'm hoping against hope that it's enough.

Control - again!

2011-01-17T12:03:00.003Z

Once again, I'm hopping onto the computer briefly before dashing out again. Funny, I can't think why people keep accusing me of being stressed...

I saw the reflexologist this morning, for the first time since before Christmas. She said she can feel that I'm very stressed, and this is something that really needs to be dealt with. As she put it, if there's a blockage in a river, the water can't flow - and in my body, there's a blockage caused by stress which is stopping the hormones from flowing the way they should.

So she said I should stop worrying about trying to pick up the pieces after everyone else and solve all their problems, and concentrate on what I need. (Funny, it's exactly the sort of thing my coach says as well.)

The thing is, it's easy to say. In fact, DH and I both have trouble relaxing, and we have this thing where one of us will notice the other is getting a bit too stressy about something and scrunch all our muscles up really tightly, making our hands into tight little fists, as we say, "RE-E-E-E-L-A-A-A-A-A-X". It makes us laugh, but doesn't resolve any of the issues.

Last week, it was money I was worrying about. On Thursday, I talked about this with my coach. By the end of the day, two things had happened. The first is that a nice big chunk of work landed on my lap, which will comfortably pay this month's bills (and now I just have to worry about finding the time to get it all done without dropping any of my other balls).

The second is that I broached the subject with DH, and he said he had always found it hard to understand why I was so insistent on paying my own way, and that as soon as I said the word, he would be happy to sit down and talk about rearranging the family finances so that I didn't have to contribute as much until I was earning more. He also reiterated that as far as he's concerned, my number one priority at the moment shouldn't be to earn money and pay bills, but to relax and do whatever I feel I need to do in order to give us the best possible shot at succeeding in our next IVF.

Does it help that I've had it forcefully pointed out to me yet again that all the pressure I feel comes from myself, and that nobody else is making any demands on me?

Well, if it didn't sink in the first million times, why should it sink in any easier the million and first time?

How does a control freak relinquish control without worrying that the world will fall apart? If I stop madly juggling to try to keep all my balls in the air, it won't stop me worrying - I'll just worry about different things. Am I putting too much pressure on DH? How will X cope if I just suddenly withdraw the support I've been giving them for years? What if we start relying solely on DH's income and then he gets made redundant as well? Shouldn't I be working as hard as I always have, rather than sitting about trying to feel relaxed? What about saving for our retirement? What if we end up with a baby, but can't actually afford to feed and clothe it? What if I drop everything else in order to make this work, and then it doesn't work anyway? How would I pick everything up again?

So my immune system's shot to pieces, I've already had a cold and a stomach bug this year and we're only halfway through January, I'm trying to juggle self-employment in two completely different lines of work (one of which I'm already making a bit of money in and know I can continue to do so, the other of which I enjoy and want to do full-time if I can ever start making enough money, but have no bookings at all for January), my diary is getting fuller and fuller, I'm not sleeping again, and telling myself that I need to relax only makes me more stressed.

There's too much riding on this next month, and knowing that the only way to make it work is to relax more really doesn't help. If only I could hibernate...

Muddy waters

2011-01-11T08:02:00.004Z

I'm sorry I've been AWOL for so long. It's not so bad that I haven't updated my own blog, but I also haven't been reading and commenting on anyone else's. In mitigation, I can tell you that I have been thinking of you and praying for you as usual, and I'll be catching up on your blogs this week.

My silence hasn't been for lack of things to talk about.

There was the lovely text I got from my sister on the feast of the Holy Family, which ended with the simple words, "Praying for your family on this feast."

There was the New Year's Eve party with a group of friends who had all, for various reasons, had a hard time in 2010, where at midnight we raised our glasses and said goodbye and good riddance to the old year.

There've been a couple more helpful sessions with my coach, who has helped me to change my perspective on some things and to be more positive.

There was the flat feeling I had in the first week of the new year, when I felt that I was in exactly the same position as I was at the beginning of 2010, and hadn't moved on at all. My coach helped me to see that this wasn't the case, and I may write a separate post on that.

And then this weekend AF showed up two days early, and I went back to the clinic for my blood test yesterday, full of hope that we would get started on this new protocol that Mr Greek God proposed shortly before Christmas.

I knew it wasn't going to be good news when the phone call didn't come until 6 pm, because they tend to call people who need to come in the next day first, and then the ones who don't.

Sure enough, although my oestradiol was nice and low at 73, my FSH was up again to 12.6, and Mr Miracle Worker is not willing to go ahead with FSH at that level, knowing that there have been a few cycles recently when it's been lower.

Having had my hopes raised last month, I was actually more gutted than I have been for a while to get this result. Whenever I've had a call from XXXX clinic telling me that it's not a suitable month (and that's happened several times over the last few months), I've been disappointed but philosophical, knowing that the aim is to choose the month with the best possible chance of success. Yesterday was the first time I can remember crying when putting the phone down on that call.

The reason I'm so upset by it is that it gives me yet another difficult choice. We had decided that if my levels weren't right this month, we would go ahead with donor embryo treatment. I don't think I'd realised how much I was hoping that this wouldn't happen. Also, because of the renewed glimmer of hope we were given last month with the promise of a new protocol, I feel once again unready to let go of that little bit of hope.

I discussed it with DH last night, and he listened and contributed to the discussion with a level of understanding, both practically and emotionally, that he didn't have this time last year.

The upshot of our discussion is that we are going to wait one more month to see whether my FSH comes back down in February and they allow us to try this new protocol. If not, then we get in touch with the donor clinic. I don't want to set off down that route until I've given up hope on the route we're currently travelling. In November, I'd almost lost hope and was ready to make that decision. In December, I was given a tiny bit of hope to cling onto, and it seems to have moved my thinking backwards.

It's funny how being given a little bit of hope can actually muddy the waters and make a decision harder, rather than easier.

The nightmare before Christmas

2010-12-24T14:52:00.005Z

Well, I've survived two nativity plays, a class Mass with sixty six- and seven-year-olds lisping their way through Christmas carols, babysitting Nieces #1, 3 and 4 while my sister took #2 to see the Nutcracker for her Christmas treat, all the Christmas shopping and Christmas telly with images of smiling happy families... I'm prepared for tomorrow, with Niece #4's first Christmas and all the baby talk that's going to happen when my mother, sister and 8 months pregnant SIL get together.

But yesterday was something I was NOT prepared for.

Niece #1's Christmas treat was a trip to the temporary ice rink at the Natural History Museum in London. I missed seeing her actually on the ice - my other sister, her godmother, skated with her but then left very soon afterwards - but I went along to help my sister take all four of them into the Natural History Museum after the skating was over.

#3 is a very determined 2-year-old who runs remarkably quickly, and my main task for the day was to wrangle her. She loved pressing buttons on all the interactive exhibits, and it took a good few minutes to persuade her away from each one.

We started with the dinosaurs, which was great. Then while my sister stopped to look at a map and see where we could go for lunch, #1 and #2 spotted the human body exhibition and asked if we could go in.

We went through the displays on cells and muscles, then arrived at the entrance to the next exhibit. There was an interactive display with flashing lights, and #3 made a beeline for it. She then stood for about five minutes (or was it five hours?) happily pressing the buttons to make the lights come on.

The display was called 'See which sperm makes it to the ovum first'. It was a large 3-D model of a uterus, with little flashing lights representing the sperm making their way through it to fertilise the egg.

I finally managed to winkle her away from that display, only to be dragged by #1 and #2 into a giant mock-up of a uterus, with womb sounds playing through a loudspeaker. I was confronted with a five foot high foetus, which by happy (?) coincidence just happened to be pretty much the same gestation as my SIL's baby now is. #1 was asking lots of questions, which I answered through gritted teeth.

We passed through the giant uterus into an area with models of embryos at various stages of gestation, followed by pictures of a woman giving birth ("Look, Aunt ___ - that lady's pooing out a baby!") and then a room with all sorts of information about hormones and how they help in the baby-making process.

If I can survive that, I'm pretty sure I can survive the rest of Christmas. Whatever way the conversation turns, I can comfort myself with the thought that at least I'm not stuck in a giant uterus with a five-foot foetus staring me in the face.

I hope you all have a happy Christmas - and that next year a few more of us are looking forward to our children's first Christmas.

The good, the bad and the ugly

2010-12-20T10:25:00.002Z

Sorry I haven't been around for a while - life suddenly got ridiculously busy, and it's still not showing much sign of letting up. At least it gives me less time to think about things...

My AF showed up on Friday, so I went down for my blood test on Saturday morning. While I waited for the call with the results, I took the opportunity to do a bit of Christmas shopping in Oxford Street, and was amazed at how uncrowded Britain's busiest shopping street was on the Saturday before Christmas. Perhaps the forecast snow had something to do with it - it started to fall around 10:00.

By the time I was ready to go home, there were about four inches in central London, and about seven inches at home. My journey home took me three hours (compared to the usual one) and I ended up having to walk the last three miles, because there was no public transport at all running to my town. I got off the train in the next town, bought myself a sledge and trudged home, pulling my shopping behind me on the sledge.

So it wasn't with unreserved joy that I greeted the news that the clinic wanted me to go in again on Sunday for a repeat blood test and a scan. My FSH was 7.6, oestradiol 247, LH 3.4 and prolactin 289. Apart from the oestradiol, those were pretty good results, and I'm pleased that my FSH has come down again so nicely. But I wasn't sure how I was going to get back into London yesterday, and even less sure how I would manage daily blood tests over the Christmas period if I got the go-ahead to get started.

In the end, DH and I managed to get to my sister's on Saturday evening and spent the night with her - she lives closer to central London and her local station has more trains and was more likely to be open than our little terminus station at the forgotten end of a branch line.

Mr Greek God did my scan again, and I was impressed that even before he looked at my file, he seemed to remember the issue that I had last month.

This time, I had a 12 mm follicle. He said they didn't like them to be this big so early, but that this was a day later in my cycle than the scan I had last month (day 3 rather than day 2), which could explain why it's a bit bigger. And the good news was that, whereas last month one ovary was doing absolutely nothing and the other had a big follicle and two tiny ones, this month I had two follicles on one ovary and three on the other, and all were around the 10 mm mark - so bigger than they would like, but there wasn't really one dominant one.

I asked him why I always seemed to have these big follicles already before getting started, and he said that although it wasn't ideal for IVF, it was what my body was meant to be doing.

DH and I then went away and waited for the call. We went to Mass at a very nice church round the corner from the clinic, then waited in Starbucks with big mugs of coffee and the Sunday papers.

The first call, when it came, was not what I had expected. It was the nurse I had spoken to in the morning, who had received my blood test results. She asked me to confirm what day of my period it was, and asked how heavy the flow was and whether this was normal for me. From this I guessed that my progesterone was raised again, as it was last month. (I sneaked a peak at my file while I was waiting for the scan, and last month's CD2 progesterone level was 6.something, when it should have been less than 2.) She then said she was about to take my file up to Mr Miracle Worker, and would call back shortly.

When the next call came, it was Mr Greek God himself. He said that my levels were not ideal for cycling this month - and I must admit that after the travel problems over the weekend, I did breathe a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to have to travel into London every day during this bout of snow.

He then said that if my levels are similar next month, they would like to try down-regulating me. I've always done the short protocol up to now, and when I asked Mr Wonderful after the last cycle if down-regging might help to prevent the dominant follicles, he said he didn't think it would be suitable for me. But I'm actually really pleased to get a chance to try something new, and curious to see how my body responds to it.

So it looks as though, provided my FSH level is reasonable next month, I should be starting down-regging in mid-January. I think what they're planning is the follicular protocol, which seems to be halfway between the long and short protocol. I can't find much about it on the internet, but down-regging starts on CD1 or 2 with daily Suprefact injections, and you normally start stimming after 10 days. I'm sure they'll tell me more about it when the time comes...

So, the news is mostly positive, and it's just our laughable transport system, the amount of work I still have to do before Christmas and the fact that I have yet another cold/throat infection that stops me from looking forward to the next few days.

Oh, and the ugly? That's me - I'm a bit run down at the moment, and it's showing up in my skin. I have more zits than I've had at any time since I was a teenager, and look a bit like a geriatric adolescent. Perhaps Santa should bring me a big bottle of Clearasil...

The curse of the Android

2010-12-09T08:18:00.004Z

For the last 24 hours, Facebook has been full of posts from one of my friends, regularly updating the world from her phone on the progress of her labour. Of course, each post is followed by several thousand comments about what a special time this is, how wonderful she is, and how excited everyone is.

This morning, there's a birth announcement with a photo of the baby which must have been taken within minutes of the birth.

It's her third child, and her second since we started TTC.

I'm happy for her, but can I admit to wishing that it wasn't all quite so in my face?

Nothing but a dreamer...

2010-12-08T11:23:00.003Z

The last few nights, I've had the most incredibly vivid dreams. Most of them have been classic anxiety dreams - I've forgotten to do something vital, and I'm trying to sort it out at the last minute. I've had dreams of this type at various stages all my life - I used to get them every single holiday during the week before going back to boarding school, for instance - so they're nothing new.

Several have involved our family Christmas get-together - not in the form of any sort of concern about spending the day at my 8 months pregnant SIL's house or watching the latest niece wear the Christmas pudding outfit for her first Christmas, but more about realising on Christmas Eve that I've forgotten to make the trifle I promised to contribute and don't have all the ingredients in the house, or getting halfway there and realising I've left the trifle at home.

Last night's had nothing classic about it as far as I was concerned, and was very bizarre and a little upsetting. It involved me watching in horror as someone prepared to sacrifice a baby on a barbecue. I don't know who the person was, or why the baby was being sacrificed, but this person obviously thought it was absolutely necessary to do this. Then I saw someone who I knew was coming to help. She was climbing up an open waste pipe, and just as she was about to reach the top, I accidentally flushed her down the pipe. I stood there helplessly looking on as the one person I knew could help disappeared down the sewer... and then I woke up with a horrible sense of dread which left me unwilling to move a muscle for several minutes for fear of what might happen.

It was quite possibly the daftest dream I've ever had, and all I can say is my subconscious is obviously having a busy time at the moment working its way through the decisions that we're making and the shift in our thinking that they entail.

I do wish it would shut up and do it a bit more quietly, though.

Coaching update

2010-12-05T09:29:00.002Z

A couple of you asked whether I was still seeing my coach. I am, and the whole process is really helping me - I don't think I'd be where I am now without her help.

There are three main things that she's helping me with - working out what I really want and need and how I can achieve that, communicating better with DH and getting what I need from my relationships with other people.

The help with communicating with DH is particularly helpful, as the usual reaction of certain members of my family to hearing that I've been trying to tell DH something that's important to me is "leave the poor chap alone".

I originally booked eight sessions with the coach, and Thursday should have been the last of those eight. As it happened, I couldn't get my car out because of snow and ice on the hill we live on, so the session has been postponed to this coming Thursday - and this week, I'll try to make sure I don't park the car facing uphill.

I spoke to her on the phone and said that I knew coaching wasn't meant to be open-ended, but asked if she thought it would be a good idea to book more sessions. The cynical part of me said that for anyone you're paying for a service to advise you that you no longer need that service is a bit like a turkey voting for Christmas. The emotional, needy part of me said that I need this extra person on my side, helping me to work through the decisions I'm making and the issues they're throwing up, for a while longer, and hoped that she wouldn't say she thought I was ready to deal with all this by myself.

As it happens, as with everything else, she struck exactly the right note. She said that as far as the not being open-ended is concerned, one difference between counselling and coaching is that with counselling, you're working through a lot of stuff that has often happened years ago, and it can take a very long time to deal with all the issues that come up. Coaching deals largely with the present and is more forward-looking. You're learning tools to help you to deal with specific things in your life, and so after a certain amount of time you should be able to stop the coaching and still use the tools that you've gained from it on your own.

She also said that she still occasionally contacts her own coach when she feels that she needs a bit of help and books a single session to help her work through whatever it is she's having trouble with. She said it can be helpful to be able to talk something through with someone who knows you well but can be completely objective. It kind of reassured me to know that this is an option.

In my case, I'm still in the middle of all this - I've taken a big step towards making a major decision, but the decision won't be put into practice until after the new year. In the meantime, we've got Christmas to get through, the birth of my latest niece, and the whole child-oriented shebang of nativity plays and Christmas parties. She said I may feel that I need support through all of that, and if I do, she's happy to keep working with me, but I must tell her if there's anything that I want to do differently or that I feel isn't helping.

So I'm going to book another block of sessions, and hope that by the end of this block, a lot of the stuff that's up in the air at the moment will be resolved one way or the other.

And, of course, I'm also hoping that the resolution itself will be one way, and not the other...

Empty

2010-12-02T08:06:00.004Z

Thank you so much for all your comments on my last post - I really appreciated them all. I'm so sorry I haven't reciprocated this week. I've just been completely empty - I had no words, nothing constructive to say.

We had a bit of a distraction this weekend in DH's birthday celebration. We had friends for dinner on Saturday evening, and they stayed over. We stayed up very late, DH and his friends drank an outrageous amount of whiskey, his friend's wife asked me some fairly personal questions and I totally opened up and poured my heart out to her, but she was so drunk that I know she remembered nothing about the conversation in the morning, and on Sunday I kept DH at arm's length because he stank of stale whiskey.

His actual birthday was on Monday, and he took the day off work so we could go and take his parents out for lunch.

It's not that I didn't have time to blog - on Sunday and Monday mornings, I was first up and went to my computer as I always do. And then I just stared at the computer screen and couldn't even bring myself to put my fingers on the keys.

On Tuesday, DH went back to work and I spent most of the day rediscovering my inner child as I coloured pictures in, cut things up and stuck them together to make a very involved Christmas decoration. Last night was our fortnightly pub quiz, and as it was the last one of the year, there was a competition for which team could bring the best home-made decoration. We didn't win the quiz, but we did win a bottle of wine for my Christmas decoration.

Yesterday I had set the day aside for working. As it turned out, I did absolutely nothing. I haven't been thinking, I haven't been feeling sad, I haven't been working anything out or doing research - I've just been.... nothing. I had no energy and no desire to do anything. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed.

Then last night at the pub quiz, I got irritated. As usual, we ate at the pub, and as usual, DH ordered something which on the menu came with mash, and he asked if he could have chips instead of mashed potatoes. And as usual, I commented on the fact that he'd chosen the unhealthiest option, and as usual he laughed it off.

On the way home, I told him how much this upset me, and again he laughed it off. And I thought that at least I was feeling something again, even if it was irritation.

But I was still irritated with him at bedtime, so just as he was settling down beside me to read his book, I said, "I'm still not happy." I pointed out (for the umpteenth time) how I try so hard to give him healthy food and to cook nutritious meals for him, and how he undermines that by choosing the unhealthy option every time he makes a choice for himself.

I reminded him that I'd fed him all his favourite foods over his birthday weekend, and that the puddings, birthday cake and full English breakfast that we'd had were not exactly healthy - and that he'd had chips when we took his parents out on Monday, so I wasn't telling him he could never treat himself to the fatty treats he likes, but that he should exercise a little moderation.

I said it wasn't just about the baby thing, but that I wanted him to eat healthily for the sake of his own health, because I wanted us to grow old together. I also told him how irritating it is when I tell him I'm not happy about something and he just laughs at me, and I said that if he just said "sorry", it would go a long way towards making me feel better.

He did apologise then, and promised to take more responsibility for his own diet and to try to stop undermining me.

And then he held me as I cried into his pyjamas and told him that I just didn't think I could do the donor egg option, and told him why. He seemed to understand, and said that in that case, donor eggs were off the table and we wouldn't talk about it again. I carried on crying as he just held me, and we grieved together for the idea that we'll probably never have a baby that's genetically related to us.

Although I'm crying as I write this, I think this is a step forward - I'm no longer numb and empty, and I'm ready to climb back out of my cave and deal with life again.

Talking it over

2010-11-27T09:53:00.002Z

Way back when all this began, we talked about what we would do if the IVF didn't work, and we agreed that the options on the table were embryo adoption and ordinary adoption. At least, I thought that was what we'd agreed. But it turned out DH hadn't considered either option at all, because he was so convinced the IVF would work. And he wasn't too sure what embryo adoption even was.

Fast forward to this week, and he's got his head round normal adoption but is still very hazy about embryo adoption. Part of the issue is that my research showed that it's pretty rare to be able to do it in the UK, due to a huge lack of donor embryos. So I was thinking we'd have to go abroad for it, and he's dead set against that, because he doesn't want me to undergo 'a medical procedure' in a foreign country. But then I discovered that although it's rare in the UK, it's not impossible, and it was back on the table again - as long as we did it here.

I'm sure we talked all those months ago about the reasons for embryo adoption rather than egg (or sperm) donation, but I underestimated DH's ability to fail to process things he doesn't want to think about. So now the whole topic is having to be rehashed, and I'm still not sure what the end result is going to be.

We've had a few discussions about embryo adoption since Monday. I've explained to him why it's my preferred option over normal adoption.

If we want to adopt, we'll have to wait a year from our last fertility treatment before they'll even start the approval process. Then we'll have to open up every aspect of our lives to a bunch of strangers who will be judging us on everything we say and do.

There's no guarantee that we'll be approved as adopters, and in fact being white, middle class, middle-aged, married and Catholic are all likely to count against us in the eyes of social services.

Even if we are approved, we then have to wait for a child to be matched with us, and since we're looking at a foster to adopt scheme, we could then end up spending the first two or three years not even knowing whether we're going to have to give the child back.

And, of course, we're unlikely to be given a baby and so we have to consider the psychological damage that the child has already suffered in its life. I admire people who adopt older children, and I'm not completely ruling it out, but right now it's not for me.

Plus, I really want the whole package - it's important to me to know what it's like to be pregnant and to give birth, and if there's any chance of that happening, I want to take that chance. And it seems shallow, but I also want to be able to name my own child - and if we're adopting an older child, or fostering with the possibility of adopting in the future, the child will have been named by its birth parents and it would be cruel to try to change the name that it's used to.

We were talking about the whole adoption vs embryo adoption thing in the car on Thursday night, and I said that with embryo adoption, the child may not be genetically ours, but because I would be growing it in my body for nine months, biologically it would be getting an awful lot from me and so I would feel that it was very much our baby.

But DH said, "Yes, but it would get nothing at all from me."

And I realised that I've been looking at this from my point of view, and what I need, and haven't really thought enough about what he needs and what he's giving up in deciding we've reached the end of the road with our own eggs and sperm.

I thought a lot about this, and then yesterday he had the day off work and we were in the car again - and I do find the car a very good place to have a discussion like this, what with him being a captive audience and everything.

So I told him I'd been thinking about what he said, and I explained that there were three reasons I'd been talking about embryo adoption rather than egg donation.

The first, and probably the most important, is that we know that there are problems with his sperm as well as my eggs. None of the embryos we've had in the first three IVFs have implanted, and we can't say for sure whether that's because of my crappy eggs or his crappy sperm, or both. If we're deciding to give ourselves a better chance by going for younger, fresher eggs, it makes sense to give ourselves the best possible chance by going for embryos which have been produced by a couple who have already become parents themselves.

The second reason is that our Church is very opposed to donor eggs and sperm, but hasn't really come down clearly on donor embryos. Plus there's a very good argument that adopting an embryo is a good thing, as these embryos have already been created and would probably be discarded if people like us didn't give them an opportunity for life. Of course, we've already gone against the Church's teaching by having IVF in the first place - I'm very conscious of that, and it was a very difficult decision to make. Going for donor eggs with DH's sperm would be a step further in opposing that teaching.

The third reason is that although the chances of success with donor embryos are much higher than with our own eggs and sperm, it's still highly likely that we wouldn't be successful first time. We can't afford to have more than one attempt with donor eggs - and can't really even afford to have that one attempt if we do get the go-ahead to have one last try with my eggs and then have to move on if it's unsuccessful. Donor embryo treatment is cheaper, and so we could probably scrape together the money for two or three attempts if necessary, and could even manage to afford one attempt after trying one last time with my own eggs.

There's another secret reason that makes me feel absolutely horrible, and I hope I never have to tell him and show him what an awful person I am. But the fact is, I can cope much more easily with the idea of having a child that's not genetically related to either of us than the idea of having a baby that's his but not mine. There's just something about the idea of his sperm fertilising another woman's egg that makes me feel betrayed. I know it's irrational, and I feel like if I loved him enough, I would want to have his child no matter what. I do want his child, but I want it to be with me - I want it to be half mine and half his, and if I have to say goodbye to that dream, I just don't think I can bear to watch a child grow up and know that genetically, it's half his and half a complete stranger's - to see a character trait or a certain expression on the child's face and think, "Does she get that from DH, or is it from the stranger who gave us her egg?"

So now you know what a horrible human being I am. But I gritted my teeth and said that those (the first three) were the reasons why I thought embryo adoption was better . As I said at the beginning of this ridiculously long post, I thought we had discussed all this over a year ago, but at the time he might as well have been sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting "la la la" for all the good those discussions did. But I said that if he was dead set on it, we could consider egg donation as well.

So I said the right words, but even typing that last sentence made me cry just now, so we've got a lot of work to do before we're on the same page on this.

In the meantime, he said he needed to find out more about it for himself and asked me to get out my IVF books for him - and I think he's planning to spend some time today doing some reading.

I feel like we're back in that twilight zone when we first found out that we weren't going to be able to have children without help - each of us having different ideas about what we're going to do next, and struggling to understand each other's position and reach a decision about what's the best thing to do. It's not an easy place to be in, and the degree of peace that I had earlier in the week when I thought that the decision had been made has just been shattered. All I'm left with is the sadness, and a bit more confusion and uncertainty.

A couple of months ago we took our nieces to a music show. One of the songs had the following refrain:

We can't go over it.
We can't go under it.
We'll have to go through it.

And that's what's playing in my head at the moment. The only way past this uncertainty is to go through it, and I don't know what it's going to be like at the other side. But I do know it's not going to be easy to get through, and I'm kind of wishing I could just hibernate and wake up in the spring with the way forward suddenly and miraculously clear to us.

Enough

2010-11-24T16:04:00.002Z

When I got home from London on Monday evening, I had a long wallow in a hot bath. It had been a long and stressful day, and I was freaked out by being told that I wasn't having a 'proper' period. I was also concerned that yet again, it looked as though I didn't have any more than one follicle ready to grow.

I can't keep doing this month after month - I don't want to keep getting my hopes up and then having them dashed, and every month is another month closer to the inevitable time when I'm going to run out of eggs altogether.

I've also read recently in Zita West's book that fertility stops up to 10 years BEFORE your last period. As my mother had her last period when she was 51, it's likely that I'll be around that time too - and I'm now 41. So I really could be flogging a dead horse here.

When DH got home, he came into the bathroom and stood over me, still in his work suit. He said he was sorry that it had been such a disappointing day, and I told him that I thought it was time to start thinking about how long we're going to keep doing this before we move on to Plan B (actually, more like Plan D - IVF is already our Plan C). I pointed out that I wasn't getting any younger and that all indications are that it may already be too late for us to succeed with my eggs.

He immediately trotted out the usual line that I hear so often from him and from others: "But you're not old!"

These days in the West we're absolutely terrified of admitting that we're getting old. It's why botox and plastic surgery are so popular, and telling someone they look old is one of the worst insults you can throw at them. My parents, who will both be 70 in the next 18 months, think of themselves as middle-aged - despite the fact that you don't actually meet many 140-year-olds. They're horrified if I refer to them as OAPs, though they will just about admit to drawing a pension when it suits them.

So when someone says they're too old for something, the knee-jerk reaction is to tell them that of course they're not, they're only as old as they feel, or that they look way younger than their age.

The sad truth is that it doesn't matter how well I've looked after myself, or how well preserved I may look - you can't argue with the chronological age of your ovaries. I only have a few eggs left, and up to 80% of those I do have are likely to be chromosomally abnormal.

So when DH tried to reassure me by telling me I wasn't old, something inside me snapped. I lay there in the bath, with tears streaming down my face, as I threw facts at him like machine-gun fire. I pointed out how every single chart shows fertility falling off a cliff-edge after the age of 40. I told him that age was a fact of life, and acknowledging the passing of the years is not an insult but an acceptance of reality. I said that people can trot out all the stories they like about people who gave birth in their 40s, but these people become anecdotes precisely because they're so rare. I told him I was tired of being hopeful every month and then getting the same answer, month after month after month. And I said I wasn't prepared to keep wasting time and money to chase after a dream that is becoming less and less likely ever to become a reality.

Eventually, when he managed to get a word in edgeways, he said in a little, sad voice, "I suppose I do need to start facing up to reality."

Poor guy - he's seven years older than me, and thought he had a young wife. But once I was out of the bath, I showed him some more statistics and made him read what Zita West had to say about the effect of age on chances of success.

So now we've agreed - I'll go for my test next month, and probably in January as well. But if those tests don't show ideal conditions for going ahead with IVF, then we'll get in touch with clinics that do donor embryo treatment. If we have to go on a waiting list, we'll keep trying for the perfect month with my eggs in the meantime. But once a donor embryo becomes available, that's it - no more trying for the impossible dream of having a baby that's half his genes and half mine. Being parents is more important than producing a mini-me.

I'm sad, relieved and a little bit hopeful all at the same time. We still have two more months to get my hormone levels right. And if that doesn't work out, we have a plan - and one which has a greater chance of success.

I just hope when the time comes, we have the nerve to go ahead with our plan and not keep stalling any further.

Yet another false start

2010-11-23T09:13:00.003Z

So, I went into the clinic yesterday all excited and looking forward to making a start on IVF #4. I picked up my form and trotted round the corner to the lab for my blood test, then back to the clinic to wait for my scan. I was taken upstairs for a teaching session to remind me how to do my jabs, then eveeeeentually went in for the scan. And that was where it started to go a bit wrong.

The scan was done by Mr Greek God, and the first thing I did was make an idiot of myself by putting my bottom where my head was meant to go. OK, I know, I'm hardly a beginner at all this - you'd think I'd know. In my defence, it was in a different room with a different set-up, and I got a bit confused.

Once I'd got myself in the right position, he got started. My lining was looking as it should, beginning to come away. One ovary was showing no signs of activity whatsoever - not a potential follicle in sight. The other had one or two around 4 mm, and another which measured 9x10 mm. Mr Greek God said that their cut-off is 10 mm, which interested me, as I had a 10 mm follicle last time we got started and they never mentioned it to me as a potential problem. Anyway, he said it would be Mr Miracle Worker's call whether he was willing to go ahead.

I then wandered off to a coffee shop to wait for the results. I met DH for lunch (and he irritated me by turning up 10 minutes late, so that I was left hanging around in the cold for 15 minutes, because, as he should know by now, when I make an arrangement with someone to meet at a certain time, I always try to turn up a few minutes early), and then wandered around the shops, clutching an information pack from the clinic in one hand and my phone in the other.

Eventually, one of the nurses called, and said that they weren't happy with today's results, but if I wanted to I could go back again today for yet another blood test and scan to see whether they had improved. She said the blood test indicated that this wasn't a proper period yet - well, that really freaked me out, because it came at the right time and had been as heavy as usual since Saturday afternoon.

I said if this wasn't a good month, I didn't want to waste time and money going back for more blood tests and scans for nothing, and tried to ascertain what she meant by 'not a proper period'. All she could tell me was that my progesterone was still high, and it should have dropped after my period started.

In the morning, I had asked Mr Greek God what I should do about the DHEA if Mr Miracle Worker decided I shouldn't go ahead this month. He said it was fine to be on DHEA for up to six months, and since it was Mr Wonderful who prescribed it last time, I should talk to him about getting a repeat prescription. I mentioned this to the nurse who called, and she said she would talk to Mr Wonderful and call me back.

So it was back to wandering the streets while I waited for another call, and eventually I settled in another coffee shop with a book until the phone rang.

It was Mr Wonderful who called me back. He asked if I was still taking the DHEA, and when I said I was, he said I should stop it immediately and then come back next month. He said that the high progesterone could be caused by the DHEA - and sure enough, when I consulted Dr Google when I got home, I discovered a few articles that said DHEA supplementation could cause increased progesterone levels. The only warning I'd had beforehand was that it could increase testosterone levels, so I wasn't prepared for this at all.

Although they didn't tell me what the level was, both the nurse and Mr Wonderful also said that my oestradiol was elevated yesterday, so I presume that must have risen since Sunday - maybe no surprise, if I already had a dominant follicle.

So the upshot of all that is that I wasted a day hanging around waiting for calls, wasted more money on blood tests and scans, and don't get to go ahead with IVF this month after all.

The good news? Well, my FSH was lower this month than it was last month, but still borderline at best, so another four weeks should hopefully give it a chance to come down a bit further. My cycle has returned to its normal length at last, following several short cycles after IVF #3. We get another month of healthy eating and taking the Foresight supplements, which did seem to help last time. And if we had gone ahead this month, we might have ended up with just the one dominant follicle again.

But does all of this make me any more confident about next month's results? Well, after one dominant follicle cycle and then seeing that the same thing seems to be happening again the very next time you get a scan, would you be confident of ever again getting more than one egg?

Starting blocks

2010-11-21T14:42:00.002Z

Sorry I've been a bit absent the last few days - life suddenly got very busy. It's calming down again now - in one way. I have no more work bookings for the next couple of weeks, and can do as much or as little marketing as I choose to get myself busier or less busy over the coming months.

And that calm is a great thing, because the next couple of weeks could be rather busy.

I was quietly pleased in the last couple of days to see that for the first time since we went through IVF #3, my cycle appears to have returned to normal and AF showed up when it was supposed to, late yesterday afternoon. For the last three months, it's been arriving one or two days early, and I'm pleased to be back in my regular cycle (which at 26 days is short enough as it is).

This morning DH accompanied me into town for my day 1 blood test.

I just got the call back from the clinic. My FSH is 11.6, which is still borderline but much lower than last month. And the great news is that my oestradiol, which has been a problem since we first signed up with this clinic, is only 116. That's the lowest it's ever been by a very long way, and means that my FSH level is a true level and not artificially reduced by higher oestradiol levels.

So the clinic want me to go in tomorrow morning for another blood test and a scan, and then hopefully tomorrow afternoon I'll be getting started on IVF #4.

I'm hoping the low oestradiol level this month means that I won't be starting with a dominant follicle this month, as I did last time, and that this might help me to end up with more than one egg.

I feel mentally and physically ready for this in a way that I didn't for either IVF #2 or IVF #3. I have no major commitments while this cycle is going on - even DH is taking a couple of days off work so that we get a long weekend together next weekend - and I'm actually looking forward to being able to put everything else second and concentrate fully on following Mr Miracle Worker's instructions.

It's crazy, but I actually feel quite excited!

Little good feeling

2010-11-15T08:13:00.003Z

One of my favourite books when I was growing up was 'The Little Brute Family' by Russell Hoban. It's the story of a fairly miserable family of creatures who eat sand and gravel for breakfast, stick and stone stew for dinner, and are rude and unpleasant to each other.

Then one day, Baby Brute comes across a "little wandering lost good feeling" in a field of daisies. He takes it home in his pocket, and by the end of the book everyone is nice to each other and their lives have been transformed.

Well, on the way back from the Fertility Show the other day, I came across my own little wandering lost good feeling.

I can't explain it, and I have no real reason for it, but I suddenly got this really calm, peaceful feeling that everything's going to be all right.

And I still have that good feeling now. I'm actually allowing myself to be cautiously optimistic - even though I know it's still more likely than not that our next IVF will fail, and I know our chances of conceiving naturally are vanishingly small.

Maybe I'm finally learning the difference between hope and expectation - separating out my understanding of the odds from my hope that it might work for us, rather than being plunged into despair at the thought of how low the odds are and talking myself into expecting to fail.

Maybe it's also because I feel more in control of my life. A lot of things spiralled out of control over the last year, and are just beginning now to come right.

I've always been strong and healthy, and I was terrified by how unable I was to function when I put my back out earlier this year, and how long it took before I was able to do simple things like put my own socks on or turn over in bed. For the last couple of months, I've been seeing a personal trainer, and she's been concentrating on exercises to strengthen my back. As a result, I feel stronger, fitter, and more confident in my body's ability to do what it's meant to do.

Then there was my job situation. When I was made redundant, the programme that I had researched, written and run from its first conception was abolished - my employers were effectively saying that they didn't value the product that I had devoted five years of my life to creating, developing and improving. And the product was so much my creation that it felt that they were saying they didn't value me as a person - my skills, my ability, my knowledge and the personal qualities that I brought to the job.

When I was then also turned down for a job which I had been told was being created especially for me, I hit a real low point in confidence. I couldn't have a baby, I couldn't rely on my body to do what I wanted it to do, and now I couldn't even get a job.

Around the time of the Fertility Show, I was just reaching the end of my first commissioned piece of work. I had also had a call the previous day offering me four days' work for the next fortnight, and so I knew that for the first time since August, I was going to be earning some money this month. Both of these jobs were what I think of as bread-and-butter work - connected with my previous job and so something I know I should be able to do to make money when I need it, but not something I'm hugely enthusiastic about continuing in the long term if I can make a go of what I really want to do.

But that morning I had also got my first bit of serious interest in the work that I really want to do - something I've done on an amateur basis for years now but have now decided to try to do professionally. It's something I'm passionate about, and although I'm increasingly realising that I still have a lot to learn, I have had some pretty good results when doing it for friends and family. Anyway, I subsequently got the booking, and I did my first professional job for a total stranger this last Friday. There are more commissions in the pipeline, and I have lots of marketing ideas and am excited about making this work.

As for the fertility business - I know I'm doing all I can. I'm not giving up without a fight, and if nothing else, everything that I'm doing at the moment will make me mentally and physically stronger and ready, if need be, to take that strength into whatever the next round of the fight might be.

You've all been very patient with me through all my whinging, and no doubt there'll be more dips and troughs to come, but for today, what's not to feel good about?

Reflexology

2010-11-14T08:51:00.002Z

I said I would tell you about my first reflexology session, last Monday. This was an extra-long session, to allow her to take a full history before she started playing with my feet. I answered all her questions, then lay back as she went to work, kneading away at various parts of my foot as I occasionally winced in pain and she looked interested, nodded wisely and made little notes on the clipboard next to her.

I didn't really know what to expect. At one point, she murmured that she could tell I was calm on the outside but crying on the inside. I wasn't all that impressed with this, as you can say that to pretty much anyone who's having fertility issues and it's likely to be true. I also found it a bit irritating the way every time I winced, she encouraged me to breathe through the pain - I know what real pain is, and I don't need to start puffing like a woman in labour to soothe myself after a little twinge when someone presses a sore place in my foot.

I was impressed, though, when just from playing with my feet she was able to identify two major health problems that I've had in my life, neither of which I had alluded to at all when she was taking my history.

She said she felt some vitality in my reproductive system, which meant that there certainly wasn't any reason I shouldn't produce some good eggs. But she detected sluggishness in my pituitary gland, which plays a major part in hormone production, and also in my thyroid. She said if my thyroid was borderline underactive, it wouldn't be picked up as a problem in testing (the test I had earlier this year said it was in the normal range), but could still be causing problems.

These are areas that she said she could work on, as well as helping me to destress and be a bit more relaxed. First, she wanted to see if we could get rid of my sinus infection. Since I'm not a big fan of antibiotics, and couldn't get an appointment with the doctor anyway, I was all for her having a go at treating it just by rubbing my feet. She also gave me some 'homework', showing me points that I could press on my hands to try to clear the congestion.

After the treatment was over, she warned me that I would probably feel very tired and a bit fluey and achey over the next day or so, as a result of what she had been doing. Sure enough, on Tuesday I dragged myself out of bed feeling like death warmed up, and spent the day feeling very sorry for myself.

By Thursday, though, my head was still stuffy, but the rather yucky signs of infection were already clearing up and I was feeling quite human again.

She stated very clearly that she's not setting herself up as a doctor and she can't claim to be able to 'cure' anything, but she said it felt as though everything was still there and ready to work, but it was almost as if I'd just shut down shop in reaction to something traumatic, and that if we could just coax my body into the state it was in just before everything shut down, it should be able to do the rest on its own.

That makes sense to me - I've never got millions of eggs, and that doesn't really bother me. But on IVF #1 I got six, of which four were mature and three fertilised, and on IVF #2 I got four, of which two were mature and one fertilised. Those two treatments were very (too?) close together and involved huge doses of hormones and lots of messy emotions.

Then there was a longish wait, during which I improved my diet, took supplements and tried to get in as good a condition as possible, followed by a third IVF in which I got two eggs, only one of which was mature. I also had my worst ever back problems (and interestingly, the reflexologist said that the precise area where I had my slipped disc is strongly connected to the reproductive system) and lost my job, so it was a pretty stressful few months.

So after the assaults on my body and my emotional well-being over the last year, despite the healthy eating regime, is it really any wonder that my ovaries decided the time wasn't right to start pumping out eggs as if there was no tomorrow?

In any case, something was definitely going on in my body after the first session last Monday, so I look forward with interest to seeing what effect, if any, this treatment has on my hormone levels in the next couple of months.

Control

2010-11-11T08:22:00.003Z

One of the things that's so difficult about this whole IF business is the feeling of loss of control. Many of us have no, or very little, control over when we'll be cycling. We have no real control over whether the treatment will be successful or not. We spend month after month being unable to make plans, or having to make tentative plans in the knowledge that they may have to be cancelled in favour of a trip to our favourite clinic.

This is why we so often fall prey to superstition and mumbo jumbo - because they give us something that we can actively do and in a way give us back some sense of control. Saluting a magpie may not get me pregnant, but it's a positive action that some say can help ward off bad luck.

One of the things that I think my coach is trying to do is to give me back a real sense of control (rather than the false one you get from superstition). Before last week's session, she asked me to think about things I'd like to change to help me feel more positive about this next cycle, communicate my needs and feelings more effectively, and/or improve my chances of conception.

I decided that the first and third of those aims would be fulfilled by losing weight, eating more healthily and sleeping better, and I thought about things that I could do to achieve each of those aims.

In the session, we concentrated on the weight loss. We drew up an action plan with a specific, concrete goal (how much I want to lose, when I want to lose it by and how I will reward myself if I achieve that aim) and specific actions setting out how I plan to do this.

Suddenly, my focus has shifted slightly from something I have no control over ("I must reduce my FSH, then produce plenty of good quality eggs, then get pregnant") to something that is much more within my control and will ultimately be good for both my general health and my chances of conception.

I know that I'm also doing everything that I can in other ways - I'm listening to Circle + Bloom and going to a reflexologist for relaxation, I'm back on the supplements that I'm convinced helped us last time, I'm taking DHEA and wheatgrass, and I'm getting regular exercise.

Despite feeling so grotty over the last week (thanks for putting up with my whinges, by the way), I have maintained that sense of control over what I'm doing, and so far I'm seeing results - in the first week, I've lost 3 lbs.

Just as importantly - perhaps even more so - I'm beginning to feel as though I'm back in control of my life. It's been a crappy little-over-a-year, with three failed IVF treatments, a slipped disc, a redundancy, a couple of months of no work, dealing with feelings of jealousy over my SIL's pregnancy - all things over which I had little or no control. And now I'm making progress with my work (tiny steps, but it means I'll be earning money this month for the first time since August, and since what I want to do relies quite heavily on word of mouth, the first few jobs were always going to be the hardest to set up) and have taken as much control as I can over the whole baby-making process.

All of this makes a control freak like me feel an awful lot better.

Bleurgh

2010-11-09T14:52:00.002Z

I've got loads of stuff I could be blogging about - my last coaching session and the homework I've got from it, my first reflexology session yesterday, the job bookings I have which mean that I'm now officially self-employed rather than unemployed, the funny thing that happened on the way home from the Fertility Show on Friday...

But you're going to have to wait for all of that, because today I'm just too busy feeling sorry for myself.

I only ever call for a doctor's appointment if Dr Google tells me he thinks I should. So when I have all the symptoms of a humdinging sinus infection which I just can't seem to shake off, and after being sick for nearly three weeks I finally give in and decide to ring the useless surgery, I do find it irritating to be told on Monday that the earliest appointment they can give me is on Friday.

So excuse me if I just curl up in a corner with a hot drink and a healthy dose of self-pity for company - in the absence of antibiotics, the self-pity is the only thing I can dose myself with at the moment.

Fertility Show - Part 2

2010-11-06T10:22:00.003Z

That was getting a bit long...

The seminars cost £1 each, and I hadn't booked tickets for any of them. However, when I got there I discovered that they were not being held in rooms, but in roped-off areas. This meant that passers-by could stop and hear the seminars - the only extra you were getting for your £1 was the chance to sit down in a chair for 45 minutes. If I'd paid my £1, I might have been a bit miffed to realise that other people were getting to hear the seminars for nothing - especially when the barriers were lifted at the beginning of one talk and people without tickets were invited to fill the spare seats.

So I managed to catch the second half of a seminar on coping strategies before, during and after treatment, which had already started when I arrived. Then I lurked at the side of seminars on complementary and alternative medicine, fertility treatment for older women and one called 'Why should I give it another go?'. All were interesting, and it was good to learn more about reflexology in the seminar on complementary and alternative medicine, since I have my first refloxology session coming up on Monday.

In no particular order, here are a few of the little titbits that I noted down from these sessions.

There's plenty of suffering in life, and you will suffer at times - you don't need to practise for it by putting yourself through needless suffering.
We find it hard to live with uncertainty, so when things are uncertain, we try to make them certain. Often, we do this by predicting a negative outcome. We need to learn to live with uncertainty and allow ourselves to accept that positive and negative outcomes are both possible.
"Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person". (This is a quote from Rumer Godden, based on an Indian proverb.)
There was an acupuncturist there who said that the people who are successful following his treatment are the ones who feel a change in themselves and then make a change in the rest of their lives as a result - as opposed to those who keep coming for treatment week after week after week, but continue to do everything else exactly the same. He said if you're not willing to change, don't expect results.
In the talk on fertility treatment for older women, the guy talked about tests of ovarian reserve. He said it's a truism in medicine that where there are many alternatives, none is perfect - and this is the case with the various methods of testing ovarian reserve. So a poor result on one of the tests (FSH, AMH, antral follicle count) doesn't necessarily mean disaster.
He also said that a major issue has been identified with the quality of DHEA supplements. Some brands have been found to contain no DHEA at all, while others contain more than the stated amount. This gave me pause for thought, as I was thinking that if we still hadn't started IVF #4 by the time my prescription runs out, I would order some cheaper DHEA off the internet. I'll now look more carefully at the brand and do a bit more research before I buy it.
Of all creatures on the planet, humans have the worst reproductive potential. Up to 70% of all embryos are non-viable. Playing the numbers game now, I've had 5 embryos which were clearly not viable. Perhaps the 30% will turn up in my next batch.
Low AMH doesn't mean you're menopausal - having no periods for a year does. This reassured me, as my AMH is low, but my periods are still regular.

I'm still assimilating a lot of what I heard yesterday, but it was all useful, and I'm very glad I went.

Fertility Show - Part 1

2010-11-06T09:34:00.004Z

I had wondered whether there was any point in going to the Fertility Show yesterday. Most of the seminars I was interested in were sold out, and I wasn't sure how much I would learn that was new, given how long we've already been on the IF train. Then on Thursday, my 4-year-old niece phoned and said she was going to be in a play at playgroup on Friday morning, and asked if I would go. Being incapable of saying no to a 4-year-old, of course I agreed.

So yesterday morning I did a bit of work on an article I'm writing which is due in on Monday, checked the material I'd been sent for another assignment which has just come in (yes, for the first time since August, I'm actually going to earn some money this month, and I'm quite relieved about it!), went and had coffee with a friend (a long-standing arrangement that I wanted to fit in, even though it had to be cut short because of the play), then rushed over to watch my niece's play. I did a bit of useful networking afterwards and picked up a couple of potential customers for the other bit of my new business (the bit I'm more excited about).

Finally, at about 1:30, I was ready to set off. The article wasn't finished, and we're busy all weekend, so I wondered if I should just go home and work.

But I remembered what my coach had said about priorities - if I want this IVF to work, it must be my number one priority, and I mustn't let other stuff get in the way. The Fertility Show is once a year, and you never know what useful titbits you might pick up at something like that. And I'll be able to make time over the weekend to finish my article.

I arrived at the show at about 2:45, and started by doing a quick tour of the hall to see what was there. I then had to go back out to the ticket office, having realised that there was way too much change in my pocket and they must have undercharged me. I think the woman was a bit surprised when I complained about having been given too much change and insisted on giving £10 back to her, but it felt good to do the right thing, and I like to think it made up for what happened with the seminars...

There were a few interesting stands about. Most of them had big bowls of various sorts of free chocolate and sweets in front of them, and I was very good and avoided taking any, despite the exorbitant prices in the cafe (£1.80 for half a litre of water, and I didn't even dare ask what the food cost).

One of the things I appreciated was the chance to browse through some books - our local bookshop isn't very big on infertility, IVF, etc, and with such a bewildering array of books out there, I didn't want to order from Amazon without getting a chance to flick through them first. I ended up buying the Foresight recipe book, which also contains a lot of advice and information about nutrition and menu planning, and Zita West's latest book.

A lot of clinics, both in the UK and overseas, were represented, including the other two that I considered when we were looking at switching clinics at the beginning of this year. One, which is known for its success with people with high FSH, didn't impress me much when I went to its stand towards the end of the day and all the representatives who had come from there stood chatting to each other and completely ignored me, but I took one of their brochures anyway.

The other is the place where a good friend of mine conceived her twins on her second IVF cycle. I had read that they did donor embryo treatment, and I got a chance to sit down and talk to their donation co-ordinator. She said they have three lots of embryos available for donation at the moment, but are not able to predict from month to month whether they will have any available. These three will be there until they are taken, which could be a couple of weeks or a few months. This is definitely something I'd like to explore with DH if IVF #4 doesn't work, and he showed some interest when I told him last night about the conversation.

I also met and chatted to the woman from Foresight, a couple of other nutritional experts and someone from Infertility Network UK.

I probably shouldn't have been, but I was surprised at the number of men who were there, especially as it was a normal working day and most would have had to take the day off work for it. I commented on this to DH, and he said, "Well, yes - we're involved too."

I explained that my surprise stemmed from the fact that the people I've met IRL and online who do all the research and are active in finding out how to improve their chances of success tend to be women, and he said, "That's just the natural way of things."

"It seems to be the natural way for us," I responded. And maybe he did finally realise that it doesn't have to be that way. I've left the Zita West book out on the coffee table and mentioned a couple of chapters that he might be interested in reading - you never know...

A timely exercise

2010-11-05T08:44:00.004Z

Well, that exercise I did where I thought about my support network couldn't have come at a better time.

Yesterday, I was on the phone to my BFF and she asked what we were up to this weekend. I told her I was thinking of going to the Fertility Show.

She immediately began to giggle, and said, "Those are two words that really shouldn't go together, aren't they?"

It wasn't the most sensitive response ever, but then my effortlessly fertile friend still thinks that the way you get pregnant is by having sex. I suppose that image doesn't really go with the idea of a show - or at least, not the sort of show that people like us would be going to.

I'm sure a few weeks ago I would have got quite upset at the way she responded. Yesterday I was able to laugh it off - I love her dearly, she will always be my best friend, but there are some things she just doesn't get. And since I'm not relying on her for support in this particular area, that doesn't matter. I know who I can rely on, and they won't make mistakes like that. So we can just be good friends, without the pressure of me expecting her to understand something that she never can understand and constantly being disappointed when she doesn't live up to my unrealistic expectations.

(Incidentally, I told Jeannie, who IS in my support network, about this conversation, and she said she was worried now that she might say the wrong thing. Let me just say again, Jeannie - the reason you're such a major part of my support network is because you NEVER say the wrong thing. Even if it's ever not what I wanted to hear, it's the right thing because of where it comes from and the understanding and desire to give me emotional support that I know is behind it.)

Support network

2010-11-03T08:08:00.002Z

The homework that my coach gave me this week was to think about who's in my support network - not just who my friends and family are, but who I can really rely on and turn to for help and support, both emotional and practical, in this whole business.

One of the ideas behind this is that if someone I have identified as not being in my support network disappoints me, or says the wrong thing, or upsets me in some way, the sting will be taken out of it somewhat by the realisation that they're not one of the people I'm relying on.

I've been thinking a LOT about this all week, identifying people in my mind and mulling over whether they're one of the four or five key people who will help me to get through this. And it's surprising how many people, regardless of how much I love them and know they love me, I've realised are not in this network.

One of the limitations for me in identifying people who can truly offer emotional support when I need it most is that there are very few people in the world that I'm prepared to cry in front of. And if I can't cry in front of someone, there's a point at which, when I'm at my lowest and most vulnerable, I have to stay away from them, or back off from the thing which is hurting me the most.

There are also those whose feelings I try to protect by not talking to them about how low I'm actually feeling, or how difficult I'm finding things. Or perhaps I worry that they'll think less of me if I admit to some of my uglier feelings.

A combination of those three factors means that my mother and sisters are not part of my support network. They know what's going on, they're very supportive, and I have told my mother some of what I've been feeling. My sister is wonderfully understanding about some things, and I know how much she wants this to happen for us. But there's always a big part of me that holds back, to protect them and to protect myself.

DH is going through this with me, and has the dubious honour of being someone I'm not afraid to cry in front of, or get impatient with, or show any other ugly and unpleasant feelings to. And he's patient and loving and tries hard to understand, but a lot of the time he's too close to the problem. And sometimes I get frustrated with the different way he chooses to deal with our situation.

I have a couple of friends who live locally and are always willing to offer practical support - the one who drove us to the clinic and picked us up when I was having my egg collection on IVF #1 and #2, the one who drops round with flowers and chocolates when I'm feeling low and offers to do my shopping for me when my back's bad. But although they'll ask how it's going when we're in the thick of treatment, neither of them wants to have children and they don't really understand how I feel.

And my BFF has demonstrated in the past that she's willing to drop everything and come to me whenever I need her. But she has three children and a lot of commitments, and I don't want to abuse that willingness by making her drop everything when she doesn't need to.

There are two or three close friends that I know I could call at any time to talk about things if I needed to. One went through IVF twice herself - the second attempt resulted in her now 9-year-old twins. Another had her own fertility struggles and really gets the sort of decisions I've had to make over the last couple of years. But I always hold something back - I don't want to cry, I don't want to upset them, I don't want to overburden them.

Most of all, I don't want to become that whiney friend who never talks about anything else and never moves on - I have personal experience of the compassion fatigue that can result when someone you've propped up through a difficult time in her life is still making the dramatic 2 am phone calls about the same issue several years later.

I met a couple of people through one of the internet forums - we were having treatment at the same place, and all three of us had failed IVFs around the same time. We propped each other up through it all, experienced it all together, and shared our impressions of the clinic, the buttoned-up consultant, the lovely nurses, the side-effects of the drugs and our hopes and fears for the future. One of them had her baby three weeks ago, after a successful third IVF treatment. The other is now about 18 weeks pregnant. They're not in the same place as me any more.

The last time I saw the latter of those two was when she told me she was pregnant. She sat there saying, "The thing is, I never gave up. I prayed really hard, and my DH and I have a really strong relationship. I think those two things are what made it happen." That made me feel as though if it didn't happen for me, it would be because I hadn't prayed enough, or because my relationship with DH wasn't good enough.

She also kept saying, "I know it's going to happen for you. I know you're going to get pregnant too."

And I kept thinking, "No, you don't. We can both hope as much as we like, but nobody knows."

I felt worse after seeing her than I did before, and although I'm sure we'll remain friends, she's certainly no longer on my list of people I could turn to for understanding.

So my support network, in the end, boils down to two 'people'.

One real-life person who I can talk to about anything, I can even cry in front of without feeling too uncomfortable, and who is always at the end of the phone when I need her. She sends me little notes and text messages that let me know she's thinking of me, and she's the only member of my family that I would ever want to read my blog. She gives practical advice as well as emotional support, and is a wonderful sounding-board. I just wish she didn't live quite so far away...

And the other 'person' is the blog itself, all the anonymous people who read it without leaving comments but who make me realise that there are people listening to my ramblings, and the wonderful people who leave comments to let me know they understand and send me virtual hugs when I most need them.

So I'd just like to say thank you for all your support - and let you know how important you all are to me.

Sticking at it

2010-11-01T08:39:00.002Z

I'm feeling a bit run down at the moment - my insomnia has been pretty bad the last month or two, and I've got a nasty cold which is showing no signs of abating after a little over a week. So it's time to reassess what I'm doing and try to get myself (and DH) back into peak physical and emotional fitness ready for our final IVF attempt.

One of the things my coach pointed out in our last session is that I keep trying new things for a relatively short period of time and then abandoning them when they don't work straight away and moving on to the next miracle cure I've found on the internet. I need to give things time to work, and stop chopping and changing so much - it's not a wonder my body is a bit confused.

Well, I tried acupuncture for over six months, and eventually came to the conclusion that it had done me more harm than good, so I won't be going back to that.

The Foresight regime had a lot of positive benefits. DH stopped snoring, his sperm improved hugely, we both lost weight, and we both felt healthier, picked up fewer bugs and recovered more quickly when we did pick anything up. My FSH was lower for the months that we were on the regime, although I did have a corresponding rise in my oestradiol.

So why did we stop? Well, it's not so much that we consciously decided not to do it any more - it was a three month programme, following which we were supposed to get another hair analysis to see how we were doing. When we reached the end of all our supplements, we were a few days off the end of a cycle and although we did actually cut our hair and have it ready to send off, we decided to wait and see whether we were able to start in that next cycle - and sure enough, we were, and we got a much better embryo than on the previous two attempts (though I did only produce the one mature egg).

And then after our BFN, we never did send those hair samples off, and then they got too old and we would have had to cut new samples, and then DH got a really short haircut, and we just never got round to it. It takes a couple of weeks to send the hair off and get the results back and then order the supplements, and we just kept putting off deciding to do it.

My coach made a revolutionary suggestion last week. She said it was so long now since we stopped taking the supplements, we were likely to be back to square one, so why not just reorder the same supplements we took last time? Well, that had never occurred to me, but today I'll be searching out the order forms from last time and phoning up the supplier to see if I can do that.

We'll then stay on those supplements until the final IVF attempt has been and gone, however long that is.

I'm also going to stay on DHEA, and I've started taking wheatgrass again - I stopped after a month because I'd read that it could affect immune results, but I definitely felt healthier while I was taking it, so I decided to reorder it and we'll deal with the immune issue if and when it comes up.

During IVF #1 and #2, I listened to a self hypnosis CD. The woman's voice and some of the language that she used annoyed me from the start, but I persevered with it until we got our second BFN, and those CDs are now gathering dust in the spare room. I do like the idea of tapping into the mind-body connection and listening to something to help me relax, though, so I'm now using the Circle + Bloom series.

Coaching is currently helping me to identify and address the sources of stress in my life. Coaching is not meant to be an open-ended thing, as the idea is that it gives you the tools to deal with things yourself, but I am finding it very instructive and in each of the three sessions I've had so far, something has come up which has given me a new perspective and made me see something in a different way, so if there's work still to be done at the end of the 8-week course that I've already booked, I'll carry on with that for as long as necessary.

And the final piece in the jigsaw at the moment is that I finally got hold of the reflexologist who had been recommended to me (it turns out she was on holiday last week), and I have my first appointment with her next week.

So there we have it - a whole raft of extra measures which will hopefully help me to get ready for our final attempt at IVF. And once they're all in place, I'm going to stick at it until those pesky FSH and E2 levels are under control and we get to go ahead on our final IVF attempt.

Messy emotion

2010-10-29T15:26:00.002+01:00

One of my very clear memories from childhood is of a time when we moved house. Nothing unusual in that - we moved house regularly due to my father's job, and by the age of 10 I was attending my sixth school.

On this particular move, when I started at my new school I felt that I had a clean slate, and was anxious to keep it that way. Conscious that I was growing up and had responsibilities, I was especially keen that none of my new friends should ever see me cry.

It must have been about three weeks into my time at the new school that I went to get something from under a raised counter top, stood up too early and bashed my head very hard against the corner of the counter. It really really hurt, and instantly tears came into my eyes.

The reason this incident stuck in my memory is that I can still remember how hard I cried, and how miserable I felt for days afterwards. Not because of the pain in my head, but out of frustration, humiliation and sheer rage at myself for having exhibited such a sign of weakness in front of everyone.

This happened shortly after my sixth birthday.

I soon became adept at keeping myself under control, and by the time I went to boarding school at the age of 10, I found it difficult to cry even if I wanted to.

I've spent many years since then keeping my emotions well buttoned up. If something was too painful to talk about without getting visibly upset, then I would avoid talking about it. If it was too painful even to think about without crying, I would push it to the back of the mind and do my best to avoid thinking about it. I've cried more in the last year than I have in the whole of my adult life, and there's a big part of me that despises the weak, blubbering mess that infertility is turning me into.

What's happening in my coaching sessions is the exact opposite of my usual way of dealing with difficult things. I tell my coach about something that has happened, and she asks me questions about how I dealt with it and how it made me feel, and she keeps asking questions beyond the point where I would back off from the subject as being too uncomfortable to deal with. So in two of the three sessions I've had with her, I've cried. And I still hate doing it in front of other people, but these are issues which need to be dealt with, so I sit there displaying all that embarrassing, uncomfortable, ugly emotion and work with her to try to work out how I can make things better.

But I do sometimes wonder with what sort of disgust my six-year-old self would have viewed the incontinently emoting adult I seem to have become.

Benched again

2010-10-26T08:48:00.002+01:00

I wasn't really enormously keen on getting started this month. There were several reasons for this - the cycles that I've had since IVF #3 have been so short that I just didn't feel ready, having mentally prepared myself to wait three months. The DHEA and vitamins that we were given after the last follow-up are meant to be taken for at least three months, and it hasn't been three months yet. I'm concerned that my cycle doesn't seem to have fully returned to normal since our last IVF. And I feel rotten this week because I've got a bad cold - yesterday I completely lost my voice, and had the greatest difficulty making myself understood when I rang the clinic.

Because of that last point, I was even more hesitant about phoning the clinic and getting my blood test done. I thought it wouldn't be fair on everyone there to take my coughing and spluttering into the clinic and spread my germs around. I even asked about this over the phone, and the person I spoke to told me not to worry about it, and that having a cold wouldn't affect the treatment if my levels were right.

Anyway, despite all my reservations, I went in and had the blood test. My levels were:

FSH - 13.4
LH - 5.4
Oestradiol - 146
Prolactin - 188

These numbers are almost exactly the same as when I was first tested at the other clinic last summer, following which I got half a dozen eggs and two embryos transferred in IVF #1, so they're certainly not disastrous. The FSH is, however, the highest I've had - despite one month of wheatgrass (I didn't order any more after the first month, because I read that it could affect the immune readings) and almost three months of DHEA.

The nurse who called with the numbers asked if I'd been very stressed lately, since she said this can have a negative effect on FSH. I instantly said no, because I feel as though I shouldn't be stressed now that my job, the main cause of stress in the past, is gone.

But of course, life isn't just about work, and I have had other stresses in my life recently - not least the worry about how I'm going to earn money in the future. And one sign that I probably have been more stressed than I was admitting to is that I've been sleeping badly again for the last couple of months - having some trouble getting to sleep in the first place, then waking up at about 3 and being awake for at least an hour, and sometimes for the rest of the night.

I'm pleased that my numbers aren't any worse, and it's kind of reassuring to know what's going on at the moment, but I'm also quite pleased not to have been starting with the IVF this month, when I just didn't feel ready.

So the next 25 days or so will be spent trying to get myself ready. There are three particular things I'm doing to address the stress - the coaching, following Circle + Bloom's Mind + Body programme, and today I'm going to call a reflexologist who's been recommended to me. She specialises in fertility issues, and I've read that this can help some people - since acupuncture did nothing for me, I'm going to see if this will work better.

I'm also going to get another month's supply of wheatgrass, increase my B vitamin intake, and really concentrate on cooking good, nutrient-rich meals over the next few weeks.

DH and I discussed going back on the Foresight programme. But by the time you've had the hair analysis done, got the report back, ordered the recommended supplements and received them, a good couple of weeks have passed, so DH suggested that we wait until next month, and then if my FSH is high again on the next test, we'll do the hair analysis. Last time round, we had to wait five months for my FSH and oestradiol levels to be good enough to start treatment, so we're half prepared for it to be a while this time as well - but hoping that November will be our month.

DH, by the way, has been very supportive this week, and is really trying to take more responsibility. I have also been stepping back and letting him make more of our joint decisions - things like "this letter came from the water company today - I've left it out so you can have a look at it and see whether you think we need the insurance they're offering", rather than making my own decision and binning the letter like I usually do, and also really asking his opinion on whether I should have the blood test and what we should do next, rather than (as I now see that I usually do) telling him what I think we should do and then asking if he agrees.

I'm not bothered that my FSH is a bit too high for this month, but I really really really want to get it down so that I can get started next month - so now the destressing begins...

Positive negativity

2010-10-25T08:03:00.002+01:00

I keep talking about acknowledging the negative in my life, and yet what I'm really trying to achieve is a positive attitude towards our upcoming IVF. It seems a bit contradictory, but this is my reasoning.

As we've gone through failure after failure in the last two and a half years - first failing to conceive naturally, then eventually being told IVF was our only hope, then going through three failed IVF treatments - I've been trying harder and harder to protect myself against the pain of yet another failure.

I'd pretty much reached the stage where I was thinking that it's inevitable that the next IVF will fail, and that it doesn't matter if it does, because my life is pretty perfect as it is.

And yet I know that this isn't the case - it will matter tremendously to me if this IVF fails, and although my life is good, and could be good even if we never have children, I'm kidding myself if I think that I'm happy to move on and live a child-free life.

So my attempt to protect myself from having negative feelings is actually contributing to my negative attitude towards IVF, where I'm already convinced that it's going to fail before I even start. And because of that, I'm terrified to start, because until I do, I still have some hope. But after the inevitable failure, there will be no more hope that I'm ever going to have my own biological child.

I think I need to allow myself to acknowledge the extent to which my life at the moment is not what I want it to be, in order to start visualising again the sort of life I do want and imagining that it's possible to have that. The friend I stayed with last weekend said that she's convinced I will be a mother, but she's not sure how that will come about - whether I'll give birth to my own child, give birth to a donor embryo or adopt a child. She said the only way I'm not going to get there in the end is if I decide myself to stop trying.

I don't think she's entirely right - all our fertility treatments could fail, we could get turned down for adoption, and we genuinely could end up running out of options. But it's certainly a refreshing change from all those people who say, "I just know you're going to get pregnant soon" - to which my immediate mental response is, "No you don't - and why can't we just acknowledge that some people never are going to get pregnant and I could be one of them?"

But the basic idea about not giving up hope of us becoming parents one day is a good one. And in particular, I need to go into this IVF with the hope that it's going to succeed. If I'm protecting myself from negative emotions by convincing myself that it's going to fail before I even start, I'm not allowing it the best chance possible to succeed.

I think that's what I mean by acknowledging the negative. I'm not going to turn into a total Eeyore. I'm not going to lose my generally upbeat attitude to life. I just want to acknowledge to myself how much I want this to work and allow myself to feel hope without being crippled by the fear that raising my hopes will only make me fall harder when those hopes are dashed.

And by writing all this, I think I've just convinced myself that, this being CD1 (and I'm very bothered by the fact that I just had my second 24-day cycle in a row and that my cycle doesn't seem to have sorted itself out properly since IVF #3), I will feel the fear and call the clinic today, rather than giving up on this month before it even starts and putting it all off until next month - or the month after - or the month after that.

The bright side

2010-10-23T11:33:00.003+01:00

I don't think I'm a natural optimist - but since the days when I was a moody teenager, I've worked very hard at accentuating the positive. I've been pretty successful, and I still think of my petrol tank as 'only one sixteenth full' rather than 'nearly empty'. Fortunately, that's never actually led me to run out of fuel...

But does accentuating the positive sometimes mean denying the negative altogether, or denying my feelings about it, until it gets too much for me and I explode? Or does the suppression of the negative increase the stress in my life, because I secretly know it's there but am trying to pretend to myself that it's not?

My last two posts have basically been whinges about my DH's behaviour. (Incidentally, I really appreciated all your comments. I actually mentioned to him this morning that the three huge glasses of wine hadn't really sat very well with his assumption of responsibility, and he said, "But she only half-filled the glass each time, so it wasn't really three glasses." I pointed out that the glasses were the size of small buckets, and he seemed genuinely surprised and claimed not to have noticed that they were larger than your average wine glass!)

In my first coaching session, I filled in a thing called the Circle of Life, in which I scored various areas of my life out of 10 according to how they were going at the moment. The scores I gave were almost all between 7 and 9, and I gave my relationship with DH 9/10.

In the second session, the coach asked if I wanted to revisit any of the scores in the light of the week's events, and I didn't really - except that I increased the score for my career, because although it's at a bit of an impasse at the moment, I'm not too unhappy about it.

She suggested that I was kidding myself - basically indicating that my life was pretty close to perfect and especially giving our relationship such a high score when I was clearly very angry at DH at that particular time.

I keep coming back to this thought and wondering if I should be less contented with my life at the moment. I know that over the last few months I've begun to focus more on all the things in my life that I enjoy and that would be more difficult or at least very different if we had children. And that's me - I'd rather look at what I do have than what I don't. And I'd rather feel happy than dwell on the things that make me unhappy.

The trouble is that the things that make me unhappy are still there, lurking beneath the surface. And every so often something happens to make me realise how present they still are, and how much they do still bother me.

I know that in order to get what I really want, I need to examine all those things that I've shoved to the back of my mind and stop pretending to myself that the status quo is absolutely fine. And I know that this is the process I went through with the coach I saw before, who helped me to take the plunge and make some big changes in my life.

The difference is that this time, the end result of all this is not within my power. It's not as simple as "if I don't get that job, another one will come up soon and I just need to tweak my CV a bit and brush up on my interview technique" or "if I look long enough and hard enough, I'll eventually find the perfect house in the right area".

With IF, I can do everything 'right', remind myself exactly how much I want to be a mother, throw a harsh light on all the areas of my life that are not perfect right now, but nothing I can do will guarantee me a baby at the end of it. I might end up stirring up all the areas of discontent, bringing my unhappiness to the fore and then being left with nothing but discontent and unhappiness at the end of it all.

And that's why I'm terrified of admitting, even to myself, that any area of my life is much less than perfect at the moment. But I think it's also something I really need to allow myself to do. (Mind you, I'm still not ready to suggest that my relationship with DH is any less than 90% perfect - it's just that I've been bringing the 10% to the fore recently...)

In retrospect, I wonder if the title of this post should have been 'The dark side'...

Responsibility

2010-10-22T08:38:00.003+01:00

At my coaching session yesterday, we talked about what happened on Tuesday. This morphed into a long discussion of DH's passivity, my frustration with it, and what I might be able to do to make things better.

Once again, I was surprised by something that really made me stop and think, and that I think I really needed to hear. My coach asked if DH had always been this way, and I said he had. She then suggested that if I had always known he was like this, and was now trying to change him, perhaps the problem was mine rather than his. He's been totally consistent, and perhaps it's unreasonable for me to expect him to change.

On the other hand, he does need to take responsibility, and we have fallen into a pattern where I make all the decisions and he just passively sits back and lets me. I have the feeling that if I don't do things, they just won't get done, and so I rush around doing everything and then get stressed because he's not helping.

She helped me to see that I need to step back a bit and actually allow him to take responsibility himself, rather than automatically doing everything myself. If I don't do things, they may end up being done differently, but the world probably won't fall apart around my shoulders.

And it's true - I find it as hard to let go of my independence and of doing everything myself in the way I like it done as he does to take control of anything. So the problem is not all on his side, and I need to work on my control freakery as much as he needs to work on his passivity.

I told him all about it when he got home from work yesterday evening. Then I told him another thing we had discussed - that he has the responsibility for making sure that his 50% of the DNA that's going to our future embryo is as healthy as possible. I can't do that for him, and so he needs to agree to take on that responsibility himself and make the right choices without me ~~nagging~~ reminding him the whole time. And he agreed that this is what he needs to do.

And then we went to our monthly book club meeting, and as I watched him accept his third glass of wine I gritted my teeth and wondered how long I can keep letting him take the responsibility if the decisions he makes are often so irresponsible.

Imbalance

2010-10-20T10:00:00.002+01:00

DH and I had a Big Talk last night.

It all started with him working late and failing to turn up to Niece #2's birthday tea. We were all expecting him, and the nieces kept asking when he was going to arrive. He claims he had mentioned in the morning that he would be working late. If so, I certainly didn't hear him, and in any case, since he knew we had plans for the evening, I feel that he should have at least acknowledged that he was going to be changing the plans rather than just casually remark that he might be late. The birthday tea had been discussed several times over the last week, and he said nothing to suggest he wouldn't be there when I reminded him of it by e-mail during the day.

Anyway, eventually I got worried that he was so late, and texted him to ask where he was - and was pretty cross when he replied that he was still at work. He did join me at my sister's house eventually, but not until after the children were in bed.

Somehow, the discussion that we had on the way home returned to a familiar theme - one that you'd think had been done to death, except that nothing ever changes.

DH is easy-going to the point of laziness and complete passivity. He's always very good at agreeing with me that X or Y needs to be done, and he's usually good at emotional support once a decision has been made. Even then, though, I find that if the decision involves something I need to do, he'll support me. If the decision involves something he needs to do, it almost invariably ends up not getting done, regardless of my support/reminders/nagging.

But the day-to-day running of our life - decisions both big and small about everything from whether it's worth trying for another IVF treatment or whether we should try to adopt, right down to what we eat every day and even what clothes he should buy - all those decisions are left to me. If I ask his opinion about anything, he always says, "You decide." And on the rare occasions when he does make a decision of his own, they're often bad ones - like unerringly choosing the unhealthiest option on the menu when we go out for a meal.

And I'm tired of bearing the entire responsibility for everything that goes on in our life. I'm tired of the fact that he doesn't support me in the decision-making, and that if the decision involves him, he'll listen and nod along, not disagree, but then go away and do the complete opposite of what we've agreed. If he disagrees, he should say so, but I'm fed up with this form of passive aggression.

And guess what - most of the 'conversation' yesterday consisted of me talking, followed by long pauses as I waited for a response. Occasionally, he would say, "Yes, you're right" or "That's true", but he never engaged in trying to work out anything positive.

Anyone who thinks they would like a husband who never disagrees with them should take careful note - it's the most exhausting and frustrating thing in the world. I dream of the day that he gives me a reasoned response that shows he has actually thought about something we're discussing and has come to a different conclusion. I want to be his wife, not his bloody mother.

First coaching session

2010-10-18T09:15:00.003+01:00

Wow, it's almost a week since I last posted. I've been busy since then, and we went away for the weekend, but apart from that I've been doing a lot of processing - which will probably make this an incredibly long and boring post. If you don't have time to read it, the short version is "I saw a fertility coach for the first time and I think that was a good idea and will be helpful, so I've booked a series of sessions with her".

On Thursday I had my first session with the fertility coach. I had been fondly imagining that I had formed some sort of protective shell around my feelings about infertility - and maybe even that I had come to terms with it to the extent that I'd really be OK if it turned out that this was it and we were never going to have children.

I did realise, though, that I felt very ambivalent about this next cycle, and that I had some very confused feelings that I needed to try to sort out, which was why I went to see her in the first place.

Anyway, the whole "I'm strong and together and really OK with all this" idea very quickly fell apart. I even cried after I spoke to her on the phone to set the appointment up, and for the hour that I was with her on Thursday I cried for most of the time. This is kind of a big deal for me - I hate all that messy emotion, find crying in front of people very uncomfortable and have never understood those people who say, "Have a good cry and you'll feel better". So I was surprised that I cried in front of a complete stranger for an hour and then actually felt sort of calm and relieved while I was wandering around the shops afterwards.

But it's not all about wallowing in my misery and having a good cry. I've seen a coach before in my life - a few years ago I was very unhappy at work, and my boss actually arranged for me to see a life coach. This coach helped me to see that there were positive things I could do to improve my situation, and helped me to find the courage to stop procrastinating and change the things in my life that I wasn't happy with. Within a few months, I had started a new and much more fulfilling job, moved from a grotty South London flat to a lovely house in a beautiful area outside London, and met my future husband. (The only thing I found a bit odd was that I saw her at my new place of work about four months after our last session and said hello - and she barely even acknowledged me. I felt that if that had been me, I would at least have been interested to see that my former client had obviously followed my advice to the extent that she now had a new job, and would have wanted to spend two minutes finding out how she was getting on, out of curiosity if nothing else, rather than giving the impression (even though I know this was the case in any event) that I had only ever shown an interest in her because I was being paid to do so.)

Anyway, there were three main things that came out of Thursday's session with this new coach (apart from the whole messy but cathartic blubbing business).

The first is that I was using a lot of negative language. For instance, I said that our next cycle is likely to fail because I'm a poor responder. She said that I should try to avoid putting negative labels on myself like that, as if it's somehow my fault that I haven't responded well to the drugs in the past and as if it's a foregone conclusion that this will always be the case. She wants me to work on expressing things in a less negative way.

The second thing is that we talked about all the other stuff that's going on in my life at the moment, and how IVF #3 was squeezed into a very busy period and I did my jabs in a different place every day while I rushed from one thing to the next. She looked at me as if I was mad and said that while keeping everything ticking over might be a good thing when you're going through your first ever treatment and have plenty more chances, this next IVF is my last shot. If I'm serious about wanting to make it work, I need to give it the best possible chance, and that means prioritising it above everything else and not trying to set up a new business, dropping everything to babysit for other people every five minutes, and arranging to have a ridiculously active social life while I'm cycling. And if that means saying no to people, then I just need to learn to say no.

I talked about this with DH afterwards, and fairly tentatively said that I felt I'd been given permission to take my foot off the accelerator for a while and stop trying to keep all my balls in the air. He instantly replied that he'd been trying to get this through to me for a few weeks - and he certainly has talked about the IVF being our number one priority for the coming months, above any need for me to start earning money. Somehow, I needed to hear that from someone completely impartial before I could actually accept it.

The third thing was something that took me totally by surprise. The coach asked me what I saw as my purpose or role in life. I said that I had met DH quite late in life, and that I had often thought it was useful that I was single and childless, because I had been able to be there to help various people who needed it. This had continued since our marriage, and I sometimes felt that I wasn't meant to have children, because I was the one who was meant to be always available to be there for other people. I didn't say this, but a couple of times I've thought that it's just as well our IVF #1 and #2 didn't work, as my sister needed a lot of help around the time that Niece #4 was born this year, and not being heavily pregnant or having a new baby myself meant that I was able to give that help.

And then I started to cry really hard and said I didn't want to be that person any more, and it was my turn to have it for myself rather than always have to be just the one that's there for other people.

So this idea that I'm not meant to be a mother is one of the things that I need to confront and get past, and it kind of surprised me, because although that feeling has been lurking there in the background for a long time, I've never really thought of it in terms of something that might be giving me a mental block which could be preventing me from getting what I want. And maybe if I can accept that I have as much right to be a mother as anyone else, then my body can start to do its stuff and make itself a bit more of a hospitable environment for a baby to snuggle in next time round.

Interestingly, this weekend we stayed with one of my very dear friends, and we stayed up and talked for ages after the children and husbands were in bed (one of the advantages of visiting a fellow insomniac!). I told her all about this session, and she said that the reason she turned to me when her first baby was born was that she knew I knew what I was doing and would be able to give practical support. Then she said, "And far from thinking you're not meant to be a mother, when I look at everything you've done for various people over the years, all of that is the reason why I think you absolutely MUST be a mother, because you'll be so fabulous at it."

I'm not so sure about fabulous, but it's certainly a different way of looking at this.

Hoping is still scary, because I'm afraid that if I allow myself to hope too much, I'll just have further to fall when the (inevitable?) disappointment comes along. But if I don't have any hope, there's no point in doing any of this. I've definitely proved to myself that I still want this as much as ever, and I still feel as rotten as ever about it not happening. So I'm slowly working on building up hope again, and trying to believe that it really is my turn now. And I just really really hope that this hope isn't going to be crushed again.

Planning...

2010-10-12T09:15:00.002+01:00

When Mr Wonderful said that we must have two full cycles and then we could start again on the third cycle, I fixed in my head that we would be starting to try again (with those pesky FSH tests) in late November. Then, of course, I had a 21-day cycle and a 25-day cycle, and suddenly I'm staring into the barrel of the starting gun again.

Mr Wonderful said that for the best results, I should take DHEA and DH should take the high dose Vitamin C and E for three months. When AF shows up at the end of this month, it won't have been anything like three months yet.

So I'm not sure if I'm physically or mentally ready for another cycle to start in a couple of weeks' time. But then I wonder if it's just fear holding me back - the fear of failing again and of what will happen next, since this will be our final attempt. And I think of how my biological clock is winding itself down and is barely ticking any more, and I wonder if a delay of even one month might harm our (very slim) chances of success.

And then there's work. I'm hoping that the groundwork I'm putting in at the moment will lead to work starting to come in fairly soon, and it's possible that if I put this off until late November, I may once again have to juggle a treatment cycle around work commitments. That may even be true if we get to go ahead this month, but if it is, I'm still likely to have more work on next month.

Of course, the decision could well be taken out of my hands. I could go for my blood test this month and find that my FSH and E2 levels aren't good enough to start. But even if they are, I just don't know whether it would be better to wait a month longer (actually, only about 26 days longer) and get the extra benefit of taking DHEA for a bit longer.

The timing of the last cycle was not ideal for me - I was in my last couple of weeks of work, and I had teaching and other commitments which meant increased stress, lots of time spent on my feet, and lots of shooting up in various public toilets. I felt quite ambivalent about going ahead with it, but was concerned that with my dodgy hormone levels I might not get another chance.

With this next attempt being our last, I really don't want to have any sort of ambivalence about its timing - but I can't see the future, and I don't know when my hormones are going to behave themselves (if they ever do) or when work will start to come in (if it ever does).

For a control freak like me, it's so hard to have to make these decisions while only ever being in possession of a maximum of half of the relevant information.

I was right

2010-10-11T10:55:00.003+01:00

Thank you for your advice and encouragement on my last post. I did e-mail my friend, and it turned out I was right - although obviously I'd rather have been wrong.

She responded very quickly and told me about the devastation she and her husband had suffered when they lost a very much-wanted child quite late in the pregnancy. She also told me that her son was conceived through IVF.

I'm so sorry for the pain she's had to go through, but really glad that I made that contact - it's so easy to do nothing in these circumstances, but with your help it took me less than a minute to compose an e-mail which has opened up a line of communication and hopefully made her feel that someone else cares about what happened to her.

Hmmmm

2010-10-09T10:31:00.002+01:00

I have a friend who I don't see much of these days. We worked together about 15 years ago, and went on a few holidays together. We went to each other's weddings, and every so often we meet up in a big group with other former colleagues. She has one child, a boy born after she'd been married about five years, and I've always known that she absolutely doted on him. We actually speak to each other probably less than once a year, but we are friends on Facebook.

Her Facebook status today took me slightly by surprise - it announces that Baby Loss Awareness Week starts today.

I don't really know what to do with this. I'm not aware that she's ever lost a baby, but it would certainly explain why her son is quite so precious to her and why he's an only child. And as far as I know, she knows nothing about our IF struggles - unless another mutual friend has mentioned it to her.

I want to acknowledge her status in some way, but I'm not too sure how. Two people have 'liked' it, and it would be very easy just to press that button and forget about it. But I think I'm going to send her an e-mail, and I'm not sure yet what it's going to say. If you post a status update like that, you're bringing something out into the open and it deserves some sort of response.

But how do you find the right words to respond to someone when you're not entirely sure what it is you're responding to?

Dealing with it

2010-10-08T08:34:00.003+01:00

I know it doesn't seem that way, because this blog has always been my emotional outlet, but I've been struggling to express my feelings, or even sometimes to know what my feelings are, over the last IVF failure and preparing for the next (and last) one. The huge emotional outburst when our first cycle was delayed by a month, and then when it failed, has never been repeated. Is that because I don't care as much? Or because that level of emotion just can't be sustained and I'm getting used to the pain that IF causes me? Am I denying my feelings to myself, or am I just not feeling them as much?

I had been thinking it was the latter - that with the passage of time, I've come to accept what's happening, accept that I may never be a mother, and get used to that idea so that it's not the huge disaster that I once thought it was.

But the way I've reacted to some things lately - like my friend announcing her pregnancy on Wednesday, and the way I felt when AF showed up on the plane last week, makes me think that the feelings are all still there, but I've buried them and not dealt with them. If you knew me in real life, you'd see that 99% of the time, I just get on with things, enjoy life and actually talk about other stuff. When I cry, I generally cry alone (and then tell all of you about it) - I don't like to show that sort of vulnerability to people, and I also don't like to upset people who are close to me by showing that I'm upset.

I need some help in understanding how I feel and in working out some of my negativity and feelings of hopelessness, so that I can approach this last cycle in a positive frame of mind. I do believe that your state of mind affects your body, and I want to give myself the best possible chance. So after about six weeks of toying with the idea of contacting a fertility coach, and after six weeks of looking at her website and putting off actually doing anything positive, I finally made the phone call yesterday.

I won't go into detail about what we said, but I felt that this was someone who could really help me to work out some of my negativity and move forward, so I've booked a session with her for next Thursday. I told DH about the conversation last night, and he was totally supportive of the idea, though I don't think he wants to join in.

I feel like I'm still in this big dip - I certainly haven't started to dig myself out yet - but perhaps I have just got myself a spade.

"Pick me, pick me"

2010-10-07T11:08:00.003+01:00

Do you remember PE lessons at school, when the sadistic games teacher would choose the two most popular people in the class and get them to pick teams for that day's game? And of course, they would pick the star athletes first, then their best friends, and eventually all that would be left would be the ones with two left feet that nobody wanted. And of course again, the ones with two left feet would never be chosen by the sadistic games teacher to pick the teams.

I used to be one of those two-left-footers, and the team picking always used to end up in one of two ways. Either one of the team captains would eventually sigh and realise that, with only me left, she would have to accept me on her team, or there would be too many people in the class for that particular game and so two or three of us would end up never being picked, and would spend the rest of the games lesson running round the perimeter of the hockey pitch, or being tasked to run up and down the sides of the netball court, ready to retrieve the ball if it ever went out of play.

The feelings of inadequacy and exclusion that I felt in those days, as I held my breath, waiting to find out whether I would be able to join in the game at all and desperately trying to pretend that I didn't care if I ended up on the sidelines yet again, are replicated and magnified in my current journey.

Yesterday I met a friend for coffee. I met her through an IF internet forum, and our shared experience has helped to ensure that we formed a strong and deep friendship from the beginning. She is the same age as me, has similarly crappy eggs, a husband with similarly crappy sperm, and is a similarly poor responder to the IVF drugs. Like me, she has had three failed IVF cycles.

With all this in common, I should have been nothing but delighted when she texted me just as I was about to leave home. She said she had some rather wonderful news to tell me, but would quite understand if I decided I couldn't face it and changed my mind about meeting her for coffee.

It took me half an hour to drive to the place we'd agreed to meet, and my feelings on the way over there surprised me. I didn't want to see her, I didn't want to hear her good news, and as I got closer, I felt more and more miserable and sorry for myself.

When she arrived, she asked how my job situation was, as the last time I saw her was just before I finished work. I shook my head, said, "No job, no baby, no future" and had the greatest difficulty in not bursting into tears on the spot. And that's odd, because when I'm not feeling daunted at the magnitude of the task in front of me, I'm actually quite excited about my new portfolio career.

It's hard to explain how you can be genuinely happy for a person's good news and yet at the same time feel as though that good news is breaking your heart. In the great PE lesson of life, she just got picked and is bouncing happily towards the game, while I'm left wondering whether there's going to be room for me in the team, or whether I'm going to be left running up and down the sidelines looking on for ever.

The bank manager can wait

2010-10-05T07:58:00.002+01:00

One of my warmest memories is from when I was working in China. My mother came out to visit me, and my father wasn't able to join her. My first nephew had just been born, and I was desperate to meet him. So my mother and I cooked up a plan that I would come home to England for a couple of weeks that summer. We told my brother and SIL (parents of my nephew), but didn't tell anyone else in the family - including my father.

The evening I arrived, my brother and SIL picked me up from the airport and drove me to my parents' house. My father was told they were coming with an extra guest, and my mother asked him to lay the table for supper. He grumbled and complained, saying how ridiculous it was that they were coming mid-week in an evening when my brother had to work the next day and they had a small baby. When we arrived, I got out of the car, and his face was a picture.

Later in the week, we surprised my sisters at school. Their reaction was almost as good, but it's my father's that I really remember.

Today is my father's birthday. Of course, I'm not travelling halfway across the world to surprise him this time. But I am just about to set off to drive 200 miles. I've phoned and wished him a happy birthday and made sure he's at home today - his favourite film is on the telly at lunchtime, and he said he's planning to watch that. Fortunately, he also has it on DVD, so if I disturb his viewing, it won't be too much of a disappointment.

So the quest for work can wait another day - I spent yesterday ordering the books I need and then buying a new computer to use for work, so with all this expenditure the income had better start coming in soon. But for today, my bank manager will just have to contain himself - I'm off to wish my dad a happy birthday.

Out of sorts

2010-10-03T08:50:00.002+01:00

I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed at the moment. On the job front, I'm wondering if I've overestimated my abilities and might be better off just looking for the sort of ordinary, dull job that I've been so strongly resisting. I spent yesterday doing some research on the internet and convincing myself that I've been completely deluded about my level of ability and that there's no way anyone will give me money for what I do.

On the baby front, I'm simultaneously looking forward to the opportunity to try again at the IVF and dreading it, because once it's over, that's it and there are no more chances. At the moment, I just can't see it succeeding, and part of me is thinking that we should just accept that and not waste another huge chunk of money on it, especially at a time when I don't have a job. Another part of me panics and feels weepy even at the thought of not having another go.

I've been given the details of a fertility coach who lives nearby, and tomorrow I'm going to give her a call. I've reached a stage where I desperately need to talk this through with someone completely objective who can help me to make sense of the way I'm feeling.

Back home

2010-10-02T07:48:00.004+01:00

Well, we had a marvellous holiday. It was wonderful to see my brother, to spend hours chatting over coffee with my SIL (thanks, Jeannie), to get to know my nephews again and have lots of playing and lots of snuggles with them, to see where they're living now and be able, now that we're home, to picture their daily life so much better.

They're living in a little settler town in the Eastern Cape which is packed with history, as you can see from the beautiful store fronts here.

There's a beautiful cathedral in the centre of town...

... the university, where my brother works...

... and nearby, there's a huge pineapple farm...

... and a game park with several different types of animals and birds, including loads of elephants.

We really didn't want to come back... and guess which witchy old aunt joined us on the flight home, as if to say, "Don't ever expect things to happen just because you're relaxed, buster."

Short pause

2010-09-20T08:02:00.002+01:00

One of the worst things about dealing with IF is the inability to make any plans. I can't tell you how many holiday plans we've made and then shelved in the last two and a half years. But one trip that has been postponed way too many times and for way too long is a trip to see my brother and SIL in South Africa.

Well, once we knew the clinic wanted us to wait three cycles before jumping back on the IVF train again after our latest failure, that was the first trip we booked, and I can't wait to see them. You can picture me getting to know my sweet nephews again, having endless chats over cups of (decaf) coffee with my wonderful SIL Jeannie, and exploring the local area - they've moved house since we last visited them, to the opposite end of the country.

See you in ten days...

Amazing day

2010-09-19T09:37:00.005+01:00

We had an amazing day yesterday, and I'm so glad I have my new camera.

First, because I've always remained anonymous on this blog, I thought I'd show you a picture of me. So here I am, along with a few other people (you may not be able to pick me out, as I'm amongst the 80,000 people being shown on the big screen there).

And here's the man we were all there to see (along with the heads of some people in between - I may have my new camera set up, but I don't have any photo editing software on this computer yet).

The whole day was amazing, but to experience 80,000 people falling silent in prayer was just incredible, and I'm so glad to have been part of it.

The BBC, of course, has found it practically impossible to report anything at all about any aspect of the visit without mentioning the words 'protest' and 'child abuse'. It's intensely frustrating, but for me and 79,999 others, yesterday afternoon and evening was all about celebrating the many good things about our Church and sharing in the experience of the first ever State visit by a Pope to the UK.

He gets it

2010-09-17T09:32:00.002+01:00

We were talking about money again last night. We have a joint current account, joint savings account and each have separate accounts as well. So far, the IVF has come out of the joint savings account, but there's not enough in there for the last attempt, so we need to find the money out of our separate accounts. I'm owed a bit of money which is about equal to the amount I need to find, and I was discussing with DH last night the fact that the person who owes it to me hasn't mentioned it for a while and I hope they haven't forgotten about it. I'd rather lose the money than fall out with this person, and it's an awkward time to ask for it, but I lent it before the redundancy was on the cards, so my own circumstances have changed significantly.

DH's instant response was that I mustn't worry about paying for the final IVF - he would cover the lot out of his own savings. I said things weren't that bad, and I should still be able to pay my share, but the response meant a lot to me and gave me a warm glow. It's not about the money - it's about the fact that he gets it. He knows how important this is to me, and it's as important to him as well.

There was another sign this week that he gets it. There was a lot of talk on our family e-mail group on Wednesday about SIL's pregnancy, the scan, the painting of the nursery, etc. As it happens, I was fine with it - now that the scan has happened and I've really appreciated how worried they were about the baby's heart, I think I've got over my jealousy a bit. But as soon as he got home from work that day, he gave me a huge hug and said how worried he'd been about me all day with all that talk going on.

He's come a long way from the man who said a year ago that he'd heard about some woman who couldn't have children and didn't want to be around pregnant women and babies and was glad I didn't feel that bad about our situation.

A hug in an envelope

2010-09-16T09:42:00.003+01:00

Yesterday morning, as I was changing the sheets on our bed, I paused, as I always do, to read the note that I keep under my pillow. It's from my SIL in South Africa, and she sent it with a little fertility charm. With the other little cards and notes she has sent over the last few months, I treasure it, and often go back to read them when I'm feeling a bit low.

Then yesterday afternoon a card arrived from my SIL in the US. Being on the other side of the world and busy with her seven children, she hasn't always been quite up to speed on what's been going on with us, and there have been times when I've wondered if she and my brother even cared. I feel bad about typing that now, because in a few words in the card that she sent yesterday, she conveyed all the love and concern that you could hope for.

I always knew really that she was thinking of us and praying for us, and she has sent the occasional e-mail, but somehow this card made me cry, because what she said was so perfect, and it made me realise how much I had been underestimating - or perhaps underappreciating - her.

But right now I feel very blessed, because yesterday I had a great reminder of how lucky I am to have two SILs who, although far away, are among my best friends. And how even luckier I am that when we're not able to see each other face to face and give each other real hugs, they're both so good at sending me a hug in an envelope when I most need it.

Phew!

2010-09-14T14:06:00.003+01:00

My SIL had her 20-week scan yesterday. There was a certain amount of apprehension about it, as at her 12-week scan a possible problem was picked up with the baby's heart. They had five people in the room with them for this scan, including a cardiologist, and had a tense few minutes as these five professionals said nothing while examining the scan.

Fortunately, they finished up by saying that all was well, the baby looked fine and they could see no problems with the heart. They also told my brother and SIL the baby's sex, so I now know whether I'm going to be an aunt or an uncle (and no, I'm not going to tell you until the baby's here!).

I'm relieved because I love my brother and want him and his wife to be happy, and because you wouldn't wish those sort of problems on anybody anyway. But I'm also relieved because I would have felt quite irrationally guilty had there been any problem with the baby, because I was so jealous of this pregnancy. I never wished them any harm or wanted anything bad to happen, but I'm very conscious that I haven't been as pleased or excited for them as I should have been, and that at times I've really struggled with the whole situation.

Now that we've had this little worry, and I've had a chance to examine my feelings and acknowledge how uncharitable I've been, hopefully I can look forward to welcoming my latest little nephew or niece in January without these nasty little feelings of "it should be me, not them".

Riding along in my automobile

2010-09-13T08:26:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was an absolutely perfect late summer's day. There was real warmth in the sunshine, the sky was blue, and with the knowledge that there will be very few more days like this before the autumn sets in, we didn't want to stay indoors.

After Mass, we put the roof down on my zippy little two-seater and went for a spin on the country roads around here. We meandered down little single-track roads, stopping for cyclists and horses along the way, and eventually stopped at a lovely little country pub, where we sat in the garden to have a late lunch.

I've always found the car a very good place to talk. You have a captive audience - nobody can just wander off - and it's sometimes easier to say things that are a bit difficult when you're not facing each other. Having something else to concentrate on (the road ahead) and not being able to react too much physically (sometimes even a hug can disturb the flow of the conversation) also help.

The reason I needed to talk is because I've been having a bit of a crisis of confidence recently. I've now been unemployed for a little over a month, and the rejection of redundancy followed by the huge knock-back on the day of our follow-up appointment at the clinic have just made me doubt myself a bit. I don't want to go into detail about the knock-back - you never know who might be reading this - but there was a very major and very sudden change of attitude which I found both surprising and puzzling, given all the other circumstances.

I've had my moments since then, but yesterday, for some reason, I just felt really low about it. I know I'm good at my job, but I also know that I'm very bad at dealing with artificial situations like interviews and role plays (essentially, the thing I did badly on at the second interview for that job was a glorified role play, and I just wasn't able to replicate the real-life situation I was supposed to be representing). I feel as though I'm always going to stumble up against this reality when applying for jobs - being expected to jump through hoops that I find impossible to get through in order to reach the position where I'm actually able to demonstrate my ability to do the job.

I'm planning to go freelance, at least for a while, but I stumble up against the same problem - I can do the work, but I have no experience of marketing myself and selling it. And if I have piles and piles of beautiful work gathering dust at home, but nobody who wants to give me money for it, then I might as well not bother doing the work at all. It'll cost me between £2,000 and £3,000 to get myself set up for this - will that expenditure reap rewards by bringing in several times that amount, or will it just bring me to the end of my savings a bit more quickly?

So I've been worrying, and trying to work out how much longer my savings will last, and wondering how I can economise and make them stretch further. And then I've wondered if it's daft, when we're in this situation, to spend another £10,000+ on a fourth IVF treatment when we have such a low chance of success.

And that's what I talked about with DH as we bowled along the little country roads with the sun on our shoulders and the wind in our hair yesterday. He listened and understood my concerns, but he was totally supportive of what I'm planning to do, and he believes I'm capable of doing it.

He said three things that really helped to reassure me. The first is that he's seen that I'm doing groundwork for this new freelance work at the moment, and he thinks I'm right not to rush in and to ensure that I'm fully prepared before I start trying to sell my work.

The second is that it takes time to build up this sort of work, and even if I don't make any money before Christmas, that doesn't mean the effort I'm putting in now won't pay off in the longer term.

And the third is that as far as he's concerned, our priority for the rest of this year is not earning money, but giving ourselves the best possible chance of success at our final IVF. And he brought that up all by himself, without my having mentioned it at all, so I feel reassured that he's still fully on board with the baby thing (maybe more so than I am at the moment, as I can't help worrying about the cost and the high probability of failure).

So we had a lovely day, I got a lot of worries off my chest, and DH was great in offering both practical and emotional support. I knew there was a reason why I married this man...

When did I become so blase?

2010-09-11T10:16:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I visited another of my friends, mother of another of my godsons. For no reason other than the general busy-ness of life, I hadn't seen her for over a year, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Although we had spoken on the phone, there are some things that just don't get communicated in a phone call.

I was sitting in the kitchen chatting with her while she finished preparing lunch, and she was asking me about my redundancy and what I planned to do next. I told her about the job that had fallen through, and that my current plan is to see if I can make freelancing work.

I then effortlessly moved into, "And that fits in better with our other priority. I can't remember if I told you, but we found out last year that we can't have children. We've had three unsuccessful attempts at IVF, and now we're gearing up for what will be our final attempt, so I'm trying to keep the stress in my life as low as possible and concentrate on relaxing and being as healthy as possible."

There was no angst, no telling her how difficult the year had been and how unhappy we'd been about it - just a bald statement of the facts. But of course, it was the first time she'd heard these facts, and she hadn't had a clue we were going through all this.

Things went a bit quiet, and she didn't really respond to the next thing I said. Then suddenly she flung down her spatula and rushed over to give me a huge hug, and I noticed that she was crying. She just choked out, "That's so unfair. You would be such a good mother", and it took her a while to get herself under control again.

Perversely, I felt good that she felt so bad for me. But it did make me wonder how I managed to be so matter-of-fact about it. I suppose once you've been living with something for over a year, you have to harden yourself to it a bit. I'm not sure that anything quite matches the devastation of the first appointment when you're told you're infertile, or the first failed IVF - though I may learn differently if our last attempt fails and I have to face that finality.

For now, I seem to have grown a hard shell over my heart to protect myself from all that emotion. I know our final attempt will break through that shell, and at the moment I'm not ready for that to happen. I'm quite happy to live in limbo and pretend to myself that it's just one of those things, that you mention in passing while catching up over lunch and a cup of tea.

Oh boy

2010-09-09T08:33:00.003+01:00

The universe is throwing big clunking messages at me again this week. The first is that whatever happens, there will always be children and young people in my life. The second is that, even though I love babies and toddlers, you can still have a great relationship with a child even if you've missed the first couple of years of his or her life.

On Tuesday, I was babysitting for my sister when I got a call from a friend - the father of one of my godsons. He and his wife were having problems with their eldest son, and asked me if I could help. I agreed to go over and see them yesterday.

So yesterday I spent the late afternoon and evening with them, just interacting with the three boys as normal and chatting with the mother. The father didn't get home from work until 10 pm, at which time the younger boys went to bed, the eldest boy went to watch the telly and I spent about an hour closeted with the parents as we talked through their concerns. I then went through to the other room and spent the next hour or so talking to the boy, then called the parents in and mediated while they talked together.

I've known this boy since he was two or three, and I always enjoy seeing him. He's now just short of his 17th birthday, and is the same sweet boy he always was, but with a veneer of stroppy teenager on top. The problem is largely cultural, I think - he seems a very normal teenager to me, but his parents are immigrants and expect him to behave in the same way as teenagers in their own culture. He himself was born in the UK and has lived all his life in South London, where teenagers behave very differently from the way his parents are used to.

I think everyone went to bed a bit happier, and I hope that even if I haven't helped, at least I haven't done any further harm, and I've certainly given all three of them a different perspective on the issues. The parents have often said that in the absence of the support network they would have back home from their extended family, I am their surrogate extended family, and I take that role very seriously, knowing how much it means to them.

I got home at about 3 this morning, and would probably still be slumbering peacefully if I hadn't had to get up to move my car - the only available parking space when I arrived home was a space down on the main road which is restricted after 8 am, so I struggled down there to move it at 7:30.

On the way home, I was thinking about parenting and adoption, and I realised that although I missed the first couple of years of this boy's life and have known his brothers from birth, I'm as fond of him and have as close a relationship with him as with his brothers. I know you can't compare a relationship with a friend's children to a parenting relationship, but it made me realise that the fear I have that I wouldn't be able to bond with an older child is probably ungrounded.

And now I must respond to a text that has just come in from my sister, asking me to babysit again next week. You see - always children in my life...

New camera

2010-09-08T09:47:00.003+01:00

Since before we got married, I've been wanting a digital SLR camera. When we got engaged, a friend gave us a terramundi money pot, and as I was pretty much the only one who ever put money in it, it was understood that when it was full, the money we got out would be mine. As time went on, it came to be known as my camera fund, and we talked about buying my D-SLR camera when it was full.

A few weeks ago, DH said that if I emptied the terramundi now, he would make up the difference between what was in there and the cost of the camera I wanted for my birthday. So last week I smashed the terramundi and went out shopping. The contents of the terramundi probably paid for about a third of the camera, and DH has now reimbursed me for the rest.

So I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D5000, and I LOVE this camera. It takes such sharp images, even in ridiculously low lighting, and I took some great pictures of my nieces at the weekend.

The first picture I took with it was, of course, of the terramundi.

At the moment, I only have the standard 18-55 mm lens, but there are a couple of big events coming up for which I'm going to need a good telephoto lens, so I'm debating between the 70-300 mm lens and the new 55-300 mm lens, which only came out last week. The new one is apparently lighter, but may not be as good quality as the 70-300. And it's so new that there haven't been any reviews of it yet, whereas there are dozens of reviews out there of the 70-300, all of which say what a great lens it is. Whatever I get, I'd like to have it and know how to use it by 18 September, which gives me only 10 days. If any of you have any thoughts on the matter, I'd be very interested to hear them.

I have a lot to learn about digital SLR photography, but I'm going to have a lot of fun learning it!

The extra guest at the party

2010-09-07T08:09:00.002+01:00

So, on Sunday morning I was steeling myself for an afternoon of baby talk with my pregnant SIL. I felt a little as though I was missing a layer of skin - sort of weepy and oversensitive. I also had a bit of a backache, and was desperately hoping that my back problems weren't going to re-emerge.

And then everything suddenly became clear, when I discovered that AF had decided to show up for my birthday party as well. It was only CD 21, so I wasn't expecting her at all - but how nice of her to join me and make me even more hyper-aware of the fact that I wasn't pregnant.

As it turned out, we had a lovely afternoon. There was a fair amount of baby talk, and it was the first time I've seen SIL since her bump started to show, but I coped pretty well with it all.

After they left, DH asked me how I was feeling and if I'd been OK with all the baby talk. That man has learnt a lot over the last year - even six months ago, it would never have occurred to him that I might not be OK. But I got lots of extra cuddles from him, and his sensitivity to my feelings really helped.

I'm a little bit freaked this morning, as I just read an article which said that only 47% of women who attempt IVF are ultimately successful. It was only a survey of 2,000 women, though, so who knows how skewed those results might have been.

But I think I'd better get used to smiling and being nice about other people's pregnancies, regardless of whether AF is here or not, because I'm not liking those odds...

Utterly spoilt

2010-09-05T07:44:00.003+01:00

Thank you for all the birthday wishes. As it turned out, the day couldn't have been better yesterday.

My 40th birthday celebrations last year were completely coloured for me by the fact that on my birthday, I didn't hear at all from one branch of the family (one of my brothers, his wife and seven children, the eldest of whom is my godson). To be fair to them, I did get something in the post a few days later, but on the day, there was no phone call, no e-mail, no text message, nothing even on Facebook. The more ways there are of getting in touch, the more disappointing it is when someone fails to do so.

Yesterday, I had two phone calls, an e-mail and a Facebook message from them, and it makes all the difference knowing they're thinking of me. I also heard from every other branch of the family, saw both my sisters and received dozens of cards, presents and messages. BOTH my sisters brought cakes that they had made. And of course, my parents are here for the weekend, so we had a lovely time with them as well.

Here's a picture of the table covered with my cards and presents, taken with the fantastic new camera that DH got me (in poor light, without the flash - not bad, eh?!).

Today my youngest brother and his pregnant wife are coming for lunch. It's very unfair of me not to be looking forward to it very much, especially when they're making a huge effort to be with me on my birthday weekend, but this is the pregnancy I've struggled with most - it's their first child, and she is VERY excited about it and talks about pretty much nothing else, and I so desperately want to be nothing but happy for them, but the jealousy just creeps in despite my better intentions.

Anyway, now I'd better go off and clear all that stuff off the table so we can have some breakfast...

Forty-one

2010-09-04T07:00:00.002+01:00

Today is my birthday, and I'll be spending it with my parents, sister, BIL and nieces. The weather forecast promises sunshine, and we're going to have a barbecue and enjoy one of those beautiful late summer days which always feel like a bit of a bonus.

DH has got me a fantastic present - I know, because he sent me out to buy it myself on Thursday, but I'm still not going to tell you about it until tomorrow (or maybe Monday, since my parents are here for the whole weekend).

It's going to be a great day, but not perfect - because there's someone missing from the party. If IVF #1 had worked, we would have a three-month-old baby - or possibly twins - here. If IVF #2 had worked, I would have a newborn. And if IVF #3 had worked, I would be exchanging notes with my pregnant SIL, who we are also hoping to see this weekend.

I'm not even going to think about the fact that I'm now 41. That is no cause for celebration at all. But being able to spend a bright, sunny weekend with people I love - that is.

What a relief!

2010-09-03T07:20:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I was driving home from a shopping trip when I had a sudden and startling realisation, which lifted a huge weight off my shoulders.

You may think that I've been boring you with every little detail of my concerns over the last few months, but there's one I've kept hidden and just worried away at from time to time on my own.

For the last four or five months, my periods have been lighter than I was used to. This worried me, and I had managed to convince myself that this was a sign that I was going into the menopause proper, that they were soon going to tail away into nothing, and that by November I might not even have any eggs left to try with.

As time went on, I got more and more concerned. It wasn't just a one-off, but it continued for several cycles. I began to long for the unpleasantness and flooding that I was used to. I had been given dire warnings to expect the AF after my latest failed cycle to be heavier than usual, and when it was reasonably heavy, but not unduly so, I really worried.

So there I was, driving along the A41 yesterday, when suddenly, out of nowhere, it was as though a lightbulb went on over my head and melted my fears away.

Five months ago, I had my hysteroscopy - and had a polyp removed. And polyps are one of the major causes of heavy periods.

So what I've been experiencing as much lighter periods over the last few months are actually what they should be. And as evidence for that, I have the scans that I had on my latest cycle, which showed that the lining came away as it should at the beginning of the cycle, and then plumped up to a good thickness later on in the cycle.

I mentioned this to DH last night and told him how I'd been quietly worrying about this for months. First he castigated me for not having told him earlier, then he said, "Anyway, remember what the doctor said in our follow-up meeting."

I did remember, and wasn't reassured at all. But DH went on: "He said that egg you produced was perfect."

We really were in two different meetings that day!

You don't know unless you've been there

2010-09-02T08:28:00.002+01:00

This morning, I feel huge sympathy for the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who was forced to make a statement yesterday in which he revealed the fertility struggles that he and his wife have had.

Apparently, rumours have been circulating in Westminster for years about his sexuality. Well, he married quite late and doesn't have children, so it's obvious, isn't it? And obviously many people believe that it's impossible for two people to share a hotel room - even one with twin beds - without having mad, rampant sex together. Obviously, he should have realised the extent to which many journalists' minds are in the gutter and had a bit more sense, but when he was paying for these rooms out of his own pocket, I can quite understand a pragmatic Yorkshireman deciding to save money by booking a twin room rather than fork out for two separate rooms.

What distresses me the most about this story, though, is that he and his wife obviously thought that revealing their private pain would draw a line under the story. And yet the newspapers this morning are still full of innuendo and speculation, and the political blogger who started the rumours about Hague and his aide is apparently set to make further "revelations". In fact, when searching for an article to link to just now, I found that only a couple of tabloids published remotely sympathetic accounts. The broadsheets were all too ready to display their continued scepticism.

Leaving aside the question of whether it's right to out someone as gay in order to sell newspapers, as if it were some terrible crime that brings into question that person's suitability as a politician, I find it incredible that in the face of such a difficult personal revelation, the people who started these scurrilous rumours obviously feel no shame. Far from it - they scent blood, and circle ever closer, waiting for the chance to go in for the kill.

But then, I know and understand a lot of what William and Ffion must have gone through. I think of my own distress after not much more than two years of trying to conceive, and never having gone through the pain of miscarrying a much-wanted pregnancy, and I can't even imagine going through thirteen years of repeatedly getting my hopes up and then having them dashed yet again.

I don't think anybody who has suffered any form of infertility can have anything but sympathy for the Hagues this morning - for the private suffering they've gone through, for the vicious rumours he has had to put up with while this was going on, for the agonising decision to expose their pain to the world, and for the heartless reaction of journalists and bloggers who see nothing but a scoop, something to sell their papers and maybe make themselves famous for a few days, or get themselves a promotion or a pay rise.

Clearly none of these attack dogs have experienced this sort of suffering first hand, and clearly they have no understanding of it. But I hope that some of them at least will come to regret the pain they have caused, and continue to cause, to a couple who have already suffered enough.

Getting fit

2010-09-01T10:00:00.003+01:00

The latest step in trying to create the perfect environment for a baby to snuggle into is that I'm trying to get fit again - I haven't done a lot since I had all those problems with my back earlier this year, and my gym closed down a couple of months ago.

The manager of the gym has now set up on her own, offering personal training, and I've signed up for that. I've just finished my second session, and boy, can I feel it! She's very good about not pushing me too hard - I felt a twinge in my back at one point and she instantly stopped me doing what I had been doing and changed to an exercise which didn't use my back so much. But there's no hiding at the back of the class or coasting when you get tired - with someone watching you the whole time, you have to work hard all the way through.

My favourite exercise is the boxing - I'd never done it before, but I have plenty of aggression to work out at the moment. I wonder if I can get a pair of gloves for myself and get DH to wear the pads...

The rest of today will also be reasonably active - we finally have a couple of dry days, and the shed desperately needs to be painted. I might even manage to treat the decking and mow the grass as well.

Job hunting can wait until tomorrow - I need to get my house in order first...

Back to reality

2010-08-31T09:43:00.002+01:00

We had a wonderful few days with my parents. Since I'm now unemployed, I was able to go up a couple of days earlier, and DH joined us when he finished work on Friday. Then yesterday was a bank holiday, so we had a really good break.

My parents have several friends who are on various weird and wonderful diets. They are all quite happy to visit my parents for a few days at a time, but all expect their latest foibles to be accommodated - one won't eat wheat (no, she's not allergic), another won't have anything that's made with milk (also not allergic), another is on the Atkins diet, still another won't eat anything at all before noon.

DH and I wouldn't dream of putting our hosts to that much trouble, even when they're family, so we've had a few days of no wheatgrass, no brazil nuts and just eating whatever was on offer. It was so relaxing - we even went to the pub a couple of times and had a drink.

Now that we're home, we're back to our fertility foods, but with a more relaxed attitude. I'm taking my full dose of DHEA (and continued with that while we were away), but I really can't believe that one shot of wheatgrass more or less, or one pint of beer with my father, can turn my eggs from superova to it's-all-ova.

And in other news, today is my lovely SIL's birthday - happy birthday, Jeannie!

Gon out

2010-08-26T08:10:00.004+01:00

Streaming cold. Grumbling ovaries. Two weeks of heavy rain. No baby. No job.

I'm going home to be cossetted by my parents for a few days.

See you soon...

Good old Dr Google

2010-08-25T13:19:00.002+01:00

Last night's google searches were "severe cramps after failed IVF" and "early ovulation after IVF".

Funny - most people seem to find that their cycles are longer after a failed IVF. It seems that my cycle is sticking firmly to its original timetable, ignoring everything that has been done to my body in the last month and the fact that my AF was delayed by the gestone. Well, I always was a bit of a creature of habit.

So according to the date of my last AF, I'm only on CD10 today. But last night I had the worst ovulation cramps I've had for months - the sort where it's impossible to stand up straight, and every step you take feels like a knife in your lower abdomen. I'm pretty sure that's what they were, and that my insides aren't about to fall out or anything. We'll see - in about 12 days' time, I expect...

Unrealistic expectations

2010-08-24T09:17:00.002+01:00

I nearly threw a brick through my sister's telly last week. It was on in the background, and a programme came on which I would never normally watch, but which I knew about from reading reviews. And one of the things I had read about it was that there was a character in this drama who was struggling with infertility.

It started to grab my attention when they started to talk about IVF. Another character had lent this woman's husband the money to pay for their IVF, and it appeared that the husband had gambled the money away. There was lots of angst about whether the infertile wife should be told, then there were some huge arguments, and it seemed that there was now no money for IVF and this woman was going to remain childless.

And then you'll never guess what happened next. She had a huge row with her husband - I think she may have thrown him out, though I was still only half watching this as I chatted with my sister, so I'm not certain. We saw her crying and alone, then we saw her throwing up, and then guess what - she peed on a stick, and sure enough, it turned out that she wasn't going to need the IVF any more, because she was miraculously up the duff.

I can't think of a single radio or television programme I've seen which portrayed a failed IVF attempt. And of course, the print media tend to take the line that with women wanting to have it all and deliberately delaying starting a family while they build their glittering careers, IVF will soon become the normal way to conceive - and they never mention the physical and emotional trauma that IVF entails, or the fact that it's not always successful (or the fact that most of us didn't simply 'choose career over babies' and then expect a quick fix at a time when it became convenient to start thinking about babies).

The other thing you occasionally see in the newspapers is a smiling couple showing off their baby after 'years of heartache and 10 IVF attempts'. Sometimes the article will mention the amount the couple have spent: "Our baby cost us £100,000, but she's worth every penny".

But they keep very quiet about the other side: the couples who endure years of heartache, multiple IVF attempts, and are left with nothing to show for it but debts. The impression given is that most people are successful after one or two attempts - some don't even need that, as they get miraculously pregnant while they're waiting for IVF to start - but everyone is pretty much guaranteed to get there in the end.

And I think that's why so many people I speak to think it's exciting that we're going through this, and can't understand it each time we tell them that it's failed again. Because surely if we were doing it right, we'd have our baby by now.

I think there's a gap in the market here - someone needs to write a realistic drama about a couple who endure unsuccessful fertility treatments. The trouble is, it wouldn't sell - nobody likes an unhappy ending. So we struggle on, with the weight of the world's unrealistic expectations on our shoulders, and hope that one day we'll be the smiling couple telling everyone that it was all worth it in the end - but knowing that we might just become another of those invisible statistics that nobody wants to talk about.

Working things out

2010-08-23T10:35:00.002+01:00

My subconscious has been busy.

Last night I had a dream that I was driving through a tunnel. Suddenly all the traffic ground to a halt, and people were getting out of their cars to see what the hold-up was all about. I walked out of the tunnel in time to see that the traffic was beginning to move again, and started to run back to my car so that I wouldn't hold everyone else up behind me. As I came towards the tunnel again, I saw several people pushing the car towards me, so that I wouldn't have to run so far.

I woke up feeling that my subconscious was telling me that my current situation is temporary, that things will start to get moving again soon, and in the meantime I have my friends and family to help me.

Of course, I think it's my career situation that my subconscious is concentrating on at the moment - it seems to have nothing much to say on the baby front. But it's nice to know that somewhere deep inside, I'm confident that Friday's rejection is just a temporary blip and my career will soon be back on track.

In other news, after a dose of IVIg and three weeks or so of steroids to depress my immune system, I can say that I'm finally responding to the drugs. Despite six days of drinking compost (aka wheatgrass shots) and three days of DHEA, both of which are supposed to make me burst with energy, vitality and health, I was awake for half of last night, shivering, sweating and struggling to swallow past the ball of barbed wire that seems to have taken up residence in the back of my throat. I still have a little bit of voice, but not really enough to start making calls to potential employers and trying to impress them, so today is going to be a day of resting, researching on the internet and visiting the library for a bit more research.

So, my mind and my body both seem to be processing the events of the last couple of weeks - and hopefully both will start to get stronger in the next few days.

He heard, she heard

2010-08-22T08:41:00.003+01:00

It always amazes me how DH and I can participate in exactly the same conversation and come away with completely different views of it.

I came out of Friday's appointment with the doctor (he needs a name - let's call him Mr Wonderful) feeling utterly crushed, and had the greatest difficulty stemming the flow of tears which had begun to fall halfway through the appointment.

Mr Wonderful was kind and caring, and he tried not to be negative, but he said two or three times that our chances of success are very low. He said that if this had been our second or third attempt at XXXX clinic, he would be recommending that we give up and explore other options. It was only because this was our first attempt with my immune issues being addressed - so that he said we could pretty much discount our two attempts at the other clinic - that he thought it was worth trying one more time, but we mustn't get our hopes too high.

He said that there are two principal reasons why embryos fail to implant - immune issues and embryo quality. Since my immune issues were being addressed in this cycle, it must have been down to the embryo, even though when they put it back it looked perfect. I'm not getting any younger, and my ovaries respond so badly to high doses of stimulation that he holds out very little hope that I'll produce any more eggs next time round - and the fewer eggs you have, the lower your chance of success.

I asked very tentatively about DHEA, because I'd read that XXXX clinic doesn't believe in it. He cautiously said that some studies had indicated that it could help in some cases, and agreed that I might as well try it. He offered us the prescription as an afterthought, just as we were about to leave. The impression I got was that we had so little hope, we might as well throw everything we could at this final attempt.

I wondered if DH would consider it worth wasting another £10,000 on one last treatment cycle, knowing how low the odds were (and also knowing that I was unemployed, with no real job prospects on the horizon), and I waited with some trepidation for the discussion we would have when he got home.

He then surprised me by saying as soon as he got in on Friday night, "Well, that was quite positive, wasn't it?"

Errrrm, no, I wanted to reply, but just waited and let him carry on.

"I'm so glad he thinks we still have a chance. And he was impressed when you asked about the DHEA."

Errrrm, no again. I think these doctors don't like it all that much when we second-guess them with information we've got from Dr Google. But we're such a hopeless case that he thought we might as well throw something extra at it, probably just so I feel as though everything has been done that could be done.

"So we start again in November. It's good that he's giving your body time to rest before you have to go through all that again."

Yes, my love, we go through it again in November. And you're all perky and cheery because you think Mr Wonderful gave us good news on Friday. And I'm just hoping that you're right, and that your birthday present in November isn't going to be another BFN and a bucketful of tears.

Review appointment and a kick in the teeth

2010-08-20T16:34:00.002+01:00

Well, we went down to the clinic today for our review appointment, and I was very pleased that we were seen by the guy who did my egg collection and embryo transfer, who is a lovely, warm and caring chap.

He said that our embryo was graded 3/4, with 4 being the best on their scale, but obviously it wasn't ideal that I only had one - interestingly, given that the HFEA is really pushing single embryo transfer now, he said that even in younger women with higher success rates, single embryo transfer reduces the chances of success by about 30%.

He basically said that my ovaries are knackered, and that they can't work miracles. While there are always going to be success stories with a single egg and a single embryo, and while he can't say for sure that we wouldn't be successful, he wants us to be realistic and appreciate that our odds of success are very low (he didn't put a figure on it, and I didn't ask).

However, he said that because I do have immune issues and have only had one cycle in which those issues were addressed, if it was him he would probably have one more go - but no more than one.

I asked him about DHEA, and he said it could help - and actually gave me a prescription for it, so I'll be taking that from tomorrow.

I also asked if Clomid could help my response, and he said they do use it sometimes, but the problem is that it can sometimes reduce the thickness of the uterine lining. They probably will add it in for me next time.

DH's sperm were about the same as when we had our first appointment there - 5m/ml (down from 6m), 10% morphology (same as last time) and 50% motility (up from 35%) - so a huge improvement on last year, but still not brilliant. The doctor recommended that he take 1 mg of Vitamin C and 800 units of Vitamin E a day to try to improve his sperm, so I bought those supplements when I picked up the DHEA.

They recommend that you wait at least two or three cycles before trying again, as the treatment cycle is so intensive and your body needs time to recuperate. That means we'll have about three months of the vitamins, DHEA and wheatgrass - hopefully long enough to see an effect, if there's going to be one. So we're back to waiting, and when my November AF shows up I'll go in for a CD1 blood test.

He was very kind, and as encouraging as he could be while still being realistic. The truth is that if we don't get lucky next time round, it's game over for us - and after DH sat there listening to the guy saying how low our chances were, I need to wait and find out whether he still thinks it's worth even going for this one more chance.

I managed to get halfway through the consultation before I started to cry, and then I just couldn't stop.

My emotional state wasn't helped by the phone call that I received while we were in the waiting room before going in to see him. I had a job interview last Wednesday that went really well, then a second interview this Wednesday which was a bit disastrous. For various reasons, I had been given the impression that this job was in the bag, and it's one of the things that made me worry less about my redundancy. They chose this lunchtime to call and tell me that they didn't want me after all. Some people's timing just sucks.

Clinic angst

2010-08-19T07:38:00.002+01:00

My first thought on getting the BFN call last Friday was to wonder if we ought to change clinics again. There's another London clinic which also has very good results (though not as good as XXXX clinic) and specialises in treating women with high FSH. I wondered if I might be better off there.

But I've grown to love XXXX clinic, with its boot camp regime and all its little quirks. And what's the point of going to another clinic which might be willing to treat me with high FSH if ultimately it's not going to work anyway? Their results definitely aren't as good as XXXX clinic's.

So I did some more research, and I discovered that the other place doesn't do daily monitoring and doesn't give as much aftercare if you get that elusive BFP. And a lot of people who aren't successful first time at XXXX clinic are successful second (or third, fourth, fifth or sixth) time. Not that we intend to keep going forever, because we don't have that sort of money and I don't think I can take that sort of physical or mental stress, but we do want one more go.

And so I've come back round to the idea that XXXX clinic is the right place for me.

Even the BFN experience was so much better than at the old place. For a start, I feel more comfortable with them phoning to give me the result rather than me having to do an HPT and phone them. And honestly, the person who called me sounded as gutted as I was about it.

She said they'd call again a couple of days later to see how I was. They never did, but I like to think they would have done had I not called back to arrange our follow-up appointment and got an appointment so soon afterwards. I was also impressed that the person who answered the phone knew I had just got my result that day and expressed sympathy before getting down to the business of setting up the appointment.

I only want to go through this again if it's going to work, but I'll only ultimately know whether it's going to work by having another go - a bit of a Catch-22 situation. But having researched that other London clinic and a place that's been recommended to me outside London, I do know that XXXX clinic is the place I want to go through it. Now I have to hope they're still willing to work with my recalcitrant ovaries...

Wheatgrass

2010-08-18T08:00:00.002+01:00

My frozen wheatgrass shots turned up yesterday. You're supposed to take it on an empty stomach, so I've just had my first one and am giving it a few minutes before I have breakfast.

This stuff is a very disturbingly deep green colour. My first mistake was in believing the bit in the instructions where it says, "Put your frozen shot in room temperature water for about five minutes and then drink it". All I can say is, it must be an awfully hot room if it can melt one of those shots in five minutes. It took me at least ten minutes of determined stirring, with the sneaky addition of a bit of warm water from the kettle, to melt my shot.

The best way I can think of to describe the smell is to think of grass that's been left to grow a bit too long and has been mown when it's a bit damp. Which makes sense, because that's pretty much exactly what this stuff is. It also tastes like that, and if you happen to do a little burp after drinking it, you get the same flavour repeating on you - regardless of whether you've had anything to eat in between.

So I have another form of torture to go through and to hold against my eventual child when it becomes a stroppy teenager. (Hmmm, perhaps that's why the universe doesn't consider me a suitable person to become a parent...)

On the plus side, the claims for the health benefits of wheatgrass began with a coincidental observation by a farmer. He used fresh cut grass in an attempt to nurse his sick hens back to health. Not only did they recover, but they produced more eggs than the previously healthy hens. In later experiments, he found that hens which had their diet supplemented with wheatgrass produced twice as many eggs as previously.

Now, I know I'm not a hen, but if I could double my egg production, and make them better quality too, it'd be worth having the flavour of damp grass in my mouth for a couple of months.

It's also claimed that wheatgrass helps blood flow, digestion and general detoxification - if it helps me to flush out all the drugs I've been taking over the last few weeks, that'll be no bad thing as a start.

There is one thing I'm not prepared to put up with, though. Some people have reported that this stuff stains their teeth green. If I end up with green teeth, the wheatgrass shots are going in the bin...

Boring

2010-08-17T08:13:00.002+01:00

How many more ways are there to say "I can't have a baby and I'm sad about it"?

How many more ways are there to tell people that you've failed again?

How many more sites can I google in an attempt to find positive stories about people who've failed X times but been successful on the X+1th attempt?

How much longer is this thing going to be the focus of my life?

How long is it going to take this time round before I stop unexpectedly finding my eyes streaming with tears at random and unpredictable moments?

I'm even beginning to bore myself.

The stiff upper lip wobbles

2010-08-16T07:37:00.004+01:00

I haven't had the big, ugly, gulping tears yet - and if I can avoid it, I won't.

DH and I met for lunch on Friday just after I got the call from the clinic. My eyes were leaking as soon as I saw him, and he wrapped me in a huge hug and said, "Go on, let it out, my love."

I pushed him away, angrily swiped at my eyes and said, "Not in public."

And then we had our lunch, in a place which is frequented by a lot of patients from XXXX clinic, and from time to time as we ate in almost complete silence, an extra bit of salted water would drop onto my salmon, but I managed to keep it mostly in check.

On the way home, I called my parents and just said, "The answer is no." They asked if I would call back when I got home, and I said, "No. Tomorrow." And swiped away a few more tears.

Once home, I got onto Google and started thinking about what to do next, and planning and researching helped to keep the tears at bay. By the time DH got home, I was able to stay on a reasonably even keel as long as we didn't probe into our feelings too deeply.

It was the little things that got to me.

My father, desperate to help and make things all right for his daughter, offering whatever help he could give, "including financial", but knowing that in reality there's absolutely nothing he can do to make this situation any better.

The text from my sister, who knows exactly the right thing to say even though this situation is so far removed from her own experience. "Very very sorry. We love you."

The person at the clinic, when I phoned for a follow-up appointment and gave my name, saying softly, "Oh, you just heard today, didn't you? I'm so sorry."

Getting in the bath on Saturday and looking down at the purple, yellow and brown landscape of my stomach, still bruised from all the pointless Clexane injections.

Seeing the woman who sits a couple of rows in front of us in church, caressing her growing bump as she sat serenely surrounded by her seven other children.

The hymn we sang at the end of Mass yesterday, with the third verse asking for comfort for those who mourn.

And each time, I've bitten my lip, swiped away the tears, and forced my mind onto some other track, and disaster has been averted - if by disaster we mean total loss of control and helpless collapse into a soggy, sobbing heap.

I did let myself wallow a bit over the weekend - for the first time since long before we got married, I never even got dressed on Saturday. I felt antisocial, I didn't want to talk to anyone, and when we went to the supermarket on the way home from church yesterday, I felt irritated and affronted by the very existence of other people's children. I barely spoke all weekend, and had to make an effort that was almost too much for me just to be civil to poor DH.

But now that little period of limbo is over. The gestone is finally working its way out of my system, and AF showed up this morning. DH is back at work, and I have a list of jobs to do.

Life goes on, and it's time to pick up the reins again.

The next plan

2010-08-15T07:05:00.003+01:00

Thank you so much for your comments and support - I really do appreciate each and every one of them.

I'm trying not to think too deeply about this at the moment, because I need to keep some measure of control and not turn into a blubbering mess. Every so often, something makes my eyes well up, and I instantly push it to the back of my mind and concentrate on something else. And that something else tends to be 'what do we do next?'.

Of course, we can't really know what we're going to do next until after our follow-up appointment, which is booked for next Friday. We'll be guided by the clinic on whether they think it's worth trying again - but for the moment, I have to believe for the sake of my sanity that they'll say it is worth it.

I'm tired of popping pills, so we're probably not going to go back to our programme of supplements. Now that I'm not working, I can shop for food more regularly and cook healthy, nutritious meals, so we'll stick to trying to stay healthy naturally.

We discussed whether we should stick to the not-eating-in-the-evening thing. It's worked well for us in that we both feel healthier, DH snores less, and we don't feel heavy and bloated in the evening. On the other hand, we hardly ever eat together, and I've been limited in the meals I could cook, because they had to be able to go in a little Tupperware pot and be reheatable at work.

Eventually, we decided that we will start eating again in the evenings - but I'll have supper ready as soon as DH gets home from work, and our suppers will be high protein and low carb. Last night we had delicious organic steaks with salad - an excellent start.

The next miracle cure I'm going to try is wheatgrass, which can apparently help lower FSH and improve egg quality. I ordered a month's supply of frozen wheatgrass shots yesterday, which should arrive on Tuesday. Even if we aren't able to go ahead with another IVF, wheatgrass is good for detoxing after you've been on a lot of drugs, so it should do me good as my body processes all the stuff I've been taking the last few weeks.

I had some inkling that this cycle might not have worked on Friday morning, when I had some brown spotting, so the BFN call was less of a shock than it might otherwise have been. My AF still hasn't shown up, though, and in many ways that makes me feel that I'm still in limbo.

Looking at my dates, the best time for another cycle would be November, so I'm hoping my cycle will work itself out in such a way as to make that possible. And if we get that chance, I will cancel all plans for that month and concentrate solely on relaxing, eating protein and following the clinic's instructions.

In the meantime, I'll take the wheatgrass, get to work on getting fit and losing some more weight, book our long-delayed holiday to South Africa for late September/early October, pray that we get the answers we're hoping for from the clinic on Friday, and try not to think too deeply about the hopes and dreams that were dashed for us this week.

The answer is no. Again.

2010-08-13T14:35:00.002+01:00

Thank you so much for all your prayers and good wishes. Unfortunately, the answer, once again, was a resounding 'NO'.

My HCG was less than 1. This embryo didn't even try to implant.

So what does this mean? I only had one usable egg this time. I'm a poor responder par excellence, and the eggs I do get don't seem to be good enough.

Was it just bad luck? Or are my eggs so old and crappy that I'm never going to produce a decent, viable embryo? And why should that be, when my mother didn't enter the menopause until she was over 50, and my grandmother gave birth when she was in her 40s? Isn't that supposed to be an indicator of something? I'm 40 - I know I'm no spring chicken, but my ovaries shouldn't be completely old and withered at this age.

I'm so angry at the unfairness of it all. DH and I are good people. We'd be good parents. We've done everything we could to make this work. We worked as though everything depended on us and prayed as though everything depended on God. We've smiled and made happy noises for the casually fertile, even when we were dying inside. We've looked after other people's babies when our arms were aching to hold our own. Why is it never our turn? What have we done to deserve this emptiness and unhappiness?

DH would like to try one more time. I don't know. We threw everything at it this time. We'd been eating healthily and taking ridiculous numbers of supplements for months. We had immune testing. We had daily blood tests. We gave up alcohol. I gave up caffeine. We had expensive and painful drug regimes for pretty much every eventuality. It was the best shot we could possibly have given it. And our embryo didn't even begin to implant.

We'll book our follow-up appointment, and ask our questions about what they really thought of the quality of our embryo, and why they think I responded so badly. And then we'll ask them whether they genuinely think there's any point in trying again - because I'm not prepared to go through this again without a realistic chance of success.

We could be at the end of the road here.

One more day to go

2010-08-12T07:19:00.002+01:00

I've had plans for every day this week, and they have helped to make the week go faster. Today, though, I've deliberately kept my plans very fluid - when planning my week, I had to be prepared for the possibility that I would be a nervous wreck by today, and possibly already plunged into the pits of despair by the knowledge that this IVF hadn't worked.

So today I'm waiting for a call from the garage about whether they can fit my car in for a repair. One of my neighbours brought round a big bag of wild plums the other day, so I might make some plum jam. If the sun comes out and we get some good drying weather, I might do some laundry. Apart from those things, I have a big pile of supplements from the last few weeks' Sunday papers that I haven't had time to read, so I'm planning a lazy day working my way through those.

I still have fewer symptoms than I've had on either of my first two IVFs - or even on a lot of the 2WWs I had when we were TTC on our own. I know that the symptoms I do have are entirely caused by the drugs I'm on, and amazingly I've had no real urge to symptom spot over the last 12 days.

Last night I dreamt that I took my top off and saw that my boobs had suddenly increased to three times their normal size and turned bright purple. I thought to myself, "So THIS is what they mean by changes in your boobs - that's fairly unmistakeable. I must be pregnant." In real life, my boobs are resolutely staying their normal size, shape and colour, and the prominent veins I usually get before AF have never materialised.

I'm a little bit crampy on and off, and I had a little moment last night when I convinced myself it hadn't worked and AF was on her way, but today I'm back to having absolutely no idea. I'm not full of wild optimism, but nor am I full of despair - I just really don't know what tomorrow will bring. Strangely, I have no desire whatsoever to POAS, and am quite content just to wait and see what they tell me tomorrow.

I wonder how long this calm mood will last...

How to forget that you're only two days away from test day

2010-08-11T09:07:00.003+01:00

One word - gestone.

My right thigh is so painful right now that there's no room to think about anything else at all. I barely slept last night, and I'm struggling to prepare for this afternoon's job interview. Hey, I'm even struggling to walk. Or to sit still.

The good news is that the day after tomorrow, even if I have to carry on taking the horrible stuff (and I actually hope I will), I'll at least be able to talk to the nurses and see whether there's anything I'm doing wrong or could do differently.

The other good news is that I've googled enough to know that it's quite normal to be in this much pain, especially if you're doing the jabs in your thigh. And it doesn't hurt this much every day, so hopefully by this afternoon it will have eased off a bit, and this evening's injection won't be so bad. Sunday's was pretty awful (though not as bad as this), but I was fine on Monday and Tuesday. If it means I get a baby at the end of it, I can cope with excruciating pain every third day...

But for the moment, the one thought in my head is:

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ooooowwwwwww!!!

The inner dialogue

2010-08-10T08:52:00.002+01:00

So, still think we're in with a chance, do we?

Well, it's 9dp3dt, and I haven't had any spotting yet - that has to be a good sign. After all, I spotted earlier than this on both my previous cycles. And today is day 26 of my normal 26-day cycle, so in the absence of the whole IVF process, today or tomorrow is when I'd be expecting AF to show up.

(Hollow laughter) And what about those gestone injections? Weren't you the one who read that they should prevent any spotting before test day, because of the higher dosage and the more efficient method of getting the progesterone into your system? You weren't on those for the last two IVF cycles, were you?

Errrm, OK - it's a fair cop. But what about all this weeing I'm doing? I'm up and down like a yoyo all day and all night, and that's not like me at all.

And what about all that drinking you're doing? I know your stomach's looking pretty ugly and bloated, but the water has to go somewhere.

True. But what about the heavy, dragging feeling in my stomach, and the occasional little stabbing pains?

Again, think back. You've got excited about those exact same pains so many times before, and every time you convinced yourself that you'd never felt anything like it before. Honestly, sometimes I think you have the memory of a goldfish! As for the heavy, dragging feeling - with extra progesterone AND Clexane, which are both supposed to plump up your lining and make it nice and thick and fluffy, did you really expect anything less? Doesn't mean there's anything actually living in your beautiful red cloudland.

OK, but I'm also feeling a bit queasy.

And you think that's unusual, with the amount of drugs you're on? Besides, don't you quite often feel queasy when AF is due?

Oh yes, so I do.

I suppose next you're going to tell me your boobs are sore and veiny.

Actually, they're not. They usually get sore and have prominent veins a few days before AF is due, then the veins fade and AF shows up. This month, I haven't seen the veins at all. They've been a bit sore at times, but nothing unusual. I don't think we can read anything into that.

[Scornful silence.]

Anyway, there's no reason to think that I'm going to be one of those intractable cases that has failure after failure. We tried a completely different approach this time, with a new clinic which has a success rate of 40% in my age group. Why shouldn't I be in that 40%?

Don't forget a success rate of 40% still means a failure rate of 60%. And as for thinking you're not an intractable case, let's look at the facts. You're a poor responder, you've got two failed IVF cycles behind you, and this time round you got one usable egg. Hardly a ringing endorsement of your fertility level, is it?

It only takes one - people get pregnant naturally every month having only produced one egg. And the embryologist said my embryo was beautiful.

Don't make me laugh - I'm sure she tells everyone their embryos are beautiful. I seem to remember the embryologist at the old clinic telling you your embryos were beautiful - it wasn't till after the BFN that they admitted what low grade they were.

I really really want this, and I've waited over two years for it. Surely it's my turn.

I think you know how stupid that argument is. We've seen plenty of evidence over the years that this doesn't go by 'turns'.

Well, I've done everything I should - I followed that healthy diet and supplement regime for months, I've religiously taken all my medications at the right times, I've followed all the instructions I was given, and I've put up with pain and discomfort without complaining.

And you think the people with 8, 9 and 10 IVF failures haven't worked just as hard to make it work?

And I've prayed like anything.

God's answers to prayer aren't always the answers you hope for.

OK, what about that angel reading? My egg collection, and therefore the fertilisation of this embryo, happened in July. Could there be some truth in what that woman said?

Oh, please! You really are moving from the sublime to the ridiculous. Put your faith in God and forget about some charlatan who gives you false hope. You should never have got that reading in the first place.

Well, quite apart from the reading, the timing is just so perfect at the moment, what with my job just having finished and all. And an April birthday would be lovely.

There are plenty of April birthdays in your family already - who needs another one? And as for perfect timing - babies come in their own good time, not when it's convenient. Have you learnt nothing in over two years of this game?

You're exhausting me - you're always so negative. Why shouldn't it have worked?

If you're so confident, why don't you pee on a stick to put yourself out of your misery? I'm sure it'd show up by now if it was positive.

Errrrm, no - I'm too scared. I want to live in my PUPO cocoon for a bit longer. Now please shut up and let me think about something else...

The gestone blues

2010-08-09T07:20:00.002+01:00

Well, a constant supply of hot drinks and a large handful of dried apricots sorted out yesterday's problem, so I'm feeling more comfortable today.

My latest issue with the progesterone is just in giving myself the PIO jabs. Can I just say that, although I really hope I'll be continuing to take them for the next several weeks, I hate the buggers?

The clinic gave me the choice of doing the jabs in the middle quadrant of my outer thigh or the top outer quadrant of my buttock. Since I'm doing them myself, it's easiest to do them in my thigh. I've also read about people catching their sciatic nerve when doing the buttock, so without a precise target to aim for and with my history of back problems, I'm just not prepared to risk it - despite all the dire warnings I've read on the net about the thigh being a much more painful place to inject than the buttock.

I am getting a lot of muscular aches and pains around the injection site, so I decided I'd rather have one dead leg than two and have so far only done the jabs into one leg. That was fine until this weekend. Saturday's jab was fine as it pierced the skin, but I hit something on the way through the muscle and THAT was painful! Then yesterday I just couldn't get the needle to go in at all - I ended up taking the needle off, changing it and shifting the injection site about an inch further south, where it did at least glide in easily.

I only have four more of these jabs to do before test day, so I'm going to try to do those in the same leg, then if I get a BFP and they keep me on the gestone, I'll switch legs from Friday and give this one a bit of time to recover - I'd rather do it that way than alternate daily and have both legs sore at the same time, I think. I have heard of people at XXXX clinic being put on twice daily gestone injections - I'm already on twice daily Clexane, and I'm really hoping the gestone won't go more than once a day.

The trouble is that my recovery time seems to be a bit slow at the moment - I still have bruises from two weeks ago, though they are at least fading. It's getting harder and harder to find an unmarked patch of skin on my stomach to do my Clexane jabs. This is particularly true as the one hour gap between the Ritodrine and the Clexane isn't always enough to make the Ritodrine shakes stop before I have to do the jab, so I often have to do the Clexane with jazz hands.

But if I'm still injecting this time next week, I won't be complaining even if my entire stomach ends up looking like an army camouflage suit and I have two dead legs. You can remind me of that if I do start complaining...

The madness begins

2010-08-08T09:00:00.004+01:00

Well, the calm, relaxed attitude of yesterday has been replaced by creeping doubts and frantic knicker-watching. On IVF #1, I started spotting at 8dp2dt. On IVF #2, I started spotting at 9dp2dt. So now that it's 7dp3dt this time round, I've started to look for the spotting. Of course, this time I'm on a higher dose of progesterone, and the injections are apparently more effective than the pessaries, so I've been told spotting is less likely. On the other hand, the information from the clinic also says that spotting is very common and doesn't necessarily mean the cycle has failed. But I'm still looking out for it, and still hoping against hope that I won't see it.

In other news, sorry for the TMI, but the progesterone is doing its evil job. I've been drinking water as if it was going out of fashion, eating plenty of fibre, walking around and getting plenty of gentle exercise - so why am I sooooo constipated? My stomach feels so uncomfortable, and every time I try to go, I worry about whether I'm going to dislodge my little embryo just as it's trying to dig itself a nice little nest.

So not a brilliant day for PMA, and I'm thinking a day spent at home with an endless supply of warm drinks and the Sunday papers sounds more attractive than either a visit to the in-laws or a trip to a shopping centre.

Lazy Sunday, here we come...

I love it when a plan comes together...

2010-08-07T11:19:00.002+01:00

Well, it's been about 16 hours, and so far, I'm loving being unemployed!

Yesterday was a good day, with lots of people coming over or e-mailing to wish me well (and saying what a huge mistake it was on the firm's part to make me redundant, which was nice). I left without a backward glance - there are people I worked with there who I'm sure will always remain friends, and I've enjoyed the job and have achieved things that I'm proud of, but personally and professionally, the time is right to move on.

I've spent most of this morning on the phone, and now have the next week very satisfactorily planned out. I have an activity for every day, but nothing too strenuous, and certainly nothing that will take as much out of me as commuting to work does.

Today we're having a barbecue with some friends. The six of us go to a fortnightly pub quiz, which we win quite regularly. At Christmas, we went out for a slap-up meal with our winnings so far. We now have another pot of winnings racked up, so this afternoon we're going to coast round Costco picking up whatever we fancy, then have a massive blow-out barbecue. The sky is looking grey and threatening at the moment, but if it rains, we'll just move inside - no big deal.

Tomorrow after Mass DH is going to visit his parents, and I'm going to potter into town to pick up presents for a couple of birthdays that are coming up soon.

On Monday I'll take my parcels down to the post office, then go over the bit of work I've been asked to do in advance of my job interview.

On Tuesday I'm having lunch with two of my oldest and dearest friends. Although we all went to the same school, they didn't know each other at school, but gelled instantly when they met as adults at one of my birthday parties. Well, they would - they're two of the loveliest people I know. They each have a 10-year-old daughter - I'm godmother to both, and they were bridesmaids at my wedding and also got on brilliantly together - and a five-year-old son. I've been trying to get them together again for a while, and it's going to be such a lovely afternoon with some of my favourite people.

On Wednesday I have a job interview. If this job comes off, it'll be perfect - three days a week, working from home. I know several people at the company quite well, and the work will be interesting but a lot easier and less stressful than what I've been doing recently.

On Thursday I need to take my car for a service, and then if it's a nice day I might just go for a bit of top-down motoring to blow out the cobwebs, just for the sheer pleasure of driving through beautiful countryside.

And then Friday is test day. DH and I have discussed whether I should POAS beforehand and decided that I probably won't.

The advantage of doing so would be that I would be prepared for whatever result I get from the clinic. If it's a BFN, obviously I'll just want to be home as soon as possible and hiding under my duvet. But if it's positive, I'll be called back to have another blood test (progesterone levels etc) and pick up a prescription for more gestone and whatever else they think I need. So once I've had the blood taken on Friday morning, I really need to stay in London until I get the call with the results, just in case it's positive.

I think I know the very place to wait - it's a Starbucks not far from DH's office and the clinic, with a big comfy sofa right at the back which is sort of hidden - a good place to have a little cry if necessary. I've already waited in there for a couple of calls during stimming and done a couple of my jabs in their toilets, so the place will be forever associated with this treatment cycle in my mind anyway.

So my thinking at the moment is that I won't POAS, I'll have no way of knowing what the result is going to be, and I'll spend Friday morning sitting in Starbucks awaiting my fate.

So, a week of pleasant occupations and plenty of opportunity for rest in between. What could be more perfect?

Five

2010-08-06T07:23:00.004+01:00

OK, I promise I'm not going to do this every day of the 2WW, but it's another significant number.

It's the number of days past transfer.

It's the number of embryos we've had in total over three IVF cycles - little Viennetta arrested before transfer on our first cycle.

It's the number of full years I've been working for my current employer - significant because today is my last day of work.

It's the number of days until my interview for a possible new job (confirmed only yesterday - and they've given me stuff to prepare for it, so that's Monday's lounging in front of the telly scuppered!).

It's the number of months until that job starts if I get it - and so the number of months I get to take it a bit easier and just do the occasional bit of freelance work to keep me going.

If any babies want to start implanting now, this would be a really good time to do it...

Four

2010-08-05T07:16:00.002+01:00

The number of days since transfer.

The number of times I had to get up to go to the loo last night.

The total number of embryos we've had transferred in three IVF cycles.

The number of gestone injections I've done so far - and last night I discovered that although the ice does numb the skin and prevent the needle hurting as it pierces the skin, applying heat to the area instead of ice before doing the jab makes it less painful to actually squirt the stuff into the muscle. I'm pleased about that, since I'm hoping to be on these gestone injections until about 12 weeks (see that blind optimism again?).

The number of times I have to take Ritodrine a day. OK, the gestone hurts, but it's the Ritodrine I really hate. For over an hour after each dose, I feel anxious, shaky and sometimes a little bit dizzy. Fortunately, apparently this one doesn't go on after test day whatever the result. Also fortunately, two of the doses are taken while I'm in bed, and I can (try to) go back to sleep afterwards.

The approximate number of mood swings I have each hour. Lucky, lucky DH!

Overreacting? Moi?

2010-08-03T10:30:00.004+01:00

I went into the kitchen this morning to put on a load of laundry. DH has done the last couple of loads, and he mentioned at the weekend that he thought we'd run out of Calgon. I reminded him that we have a mahoosive box that lives under the kitchen cupboard and thought no more of it.

This morning I discovered that he has thrown away the dinky little box that fits into the cupboard, that I used to refill from the big one, and the kitchen cupboard is now a total mess with a mahoosive (and half empty - didn't that give him any sort of clue?) box balanced diagonally across the top of everything else.

In the big scheme of things, this is really not a big deal at all, and in any case, it'll be very easy to find another little box to keep in the cupboard so that the big one can go back underneath. Perhaps if it's a completely different sort of box, it might encourage him to remember why and then not throw it away next time he empties it.

So after I'd tossed all the washing onto the floor, kicked it around a bit, stamped up and down on it, gone through the recycling to see if I could find the empty box and then thrown all our old cardboard and paper all over the kitchen as well, sworn loudly and burst into tears, I did start to wonder if all these drugs I'm on may be making me just a teensy little bit less stable than usual...

The WUB drug routine

2010-08-02T19:08:00.004+01:00

Thank you so much for all the prayers and good wishes - and please keep them up!

As promised, here's a little list of the drugs that I'm on between now and next Friday (and hopefully some of them at least for a bit longer, if all goes well). I have alarms set on my iPod to tell me when to take them all, so let's work our way through the day...

0600 - First dose of Ritodrine - half a tablet to be taken at six-hourly intervals throughout the day (and night). This is a drug which is used to prevent uterine contractions, and when prescribed at XXXX clinic it's used only during the two week wait. That's good, because it gives me a slightly shaky feeling and I think is also what's causing the indigestion that I'm getting.

0655 - First dose of Clexane -20 ml subcutaneous injection which stings a bit and leaves peculiar perfectly round purple bruises, about the size of the head of a screw. This is a blood thinner which is used to increase the flow of blood to the uterus and try to ensure no clots are formed.

0845 - Steroids - two tablets, to be taken with or immediately after food. Yesterday they switched me from Dexamethasone to Prednisalone, but Mr Miracle Worker reviewed my file this morning and put me back on Dexamethasone from tomorrow. Both are used to damp down the immune system and try to prevent it rejecting the embryo as a foreign body, but apparently Dexamethasone is better at negating the effect of natural killer cells.

1200 and 1800 - Second and third doses of Ritodrine. More shakes and heartburn. I also take a 75mg aspirin at noon, as I've been told to take it some time between the Clexane jabs.

1855 - Second dose of Clexane, and the big gestone injection - the dreaded progesterone in oil. 100 mg a day, injected intramuscularly with a 1.5 inch needle - OUCH! I was told I could do it into my buttock or thigh - given the difficulty of contorting myself to reach the right part of my buttock and the danger of hitting the sciatic nerve, I've opted for the thigh. Having read various things about it, this is how I'm doing it at the moment: when I start getting everything ready, I pop the two phials of gestone into my bra to warm them up. While doing my Clexane jab, I balance an ice cube against my outer thigh to numb it. I then whip the phials out of my bra, make up the jab, stab the needle into the numb part of my thigh and inject slowly (having pulled up on the plunger to make sure I haven't hit a vein). As soon as I take the needle out, I massage the area gently for a couple of minutes and then apply a warm wheat bag to it. The injection itself isn't too bad, but I've had a bit of a dead leg afterwards both times I've done it so far. Anyone want to tell me that's going to improve...?

0000 - Final dose of Ritodrine.

And apart from that, it's just the litre of milk, 2-3 litres of water, prenatal vitamins and regular protein snacks - and even more regular prayer.

I'd like to think that all this extra support, and all the hoops I've jumped through to get to this stage, can't fail to lead to my long-awaited BFP - but of course there are plenty of people who've gone through even more treatments and jumped through even more hoops and still never got there. And so I veer between quiet optimism and a firm belief that this can't succeed, because I just can't imagine what success would be like after more than two years of failure.

What a wimp!

2010-08-01T14:05:00.003+01:00

We had a bit of stress getting sorted for today, as relatively late last night we discovered that all today's trains into London from where we are had been cancelled, and we couldn't get a hotel room in central London at short notice for less than the price of a small kingdom. So we decided to hope for the best that I wouldn't be sedated and drive all the way in.

The staff at XXXX clinic were as lovely as they always were, and I had a good chat in the waiting-room with someone I'd been chatting to regularly while we were going in for daily bloods - she was in for egg collection today.

There were three egg collections and a hysteroscopy before me, then I had the cannula inserted just in case and the embryologist came to see me. She said Rucksack was at seven cells and was looking beautiful. The consultant said he would prefer me to be awake for the transfer, but offered me the option of being sedated straight away, so I said I'd have a go at being awake.

Another sign of how tailored the treatment is at XXXX clinic is that they map everything out when they do the hysteroscopies, and on the basis of what they know of your individual anatomy they decide how full they want your bladder for transfer. I was lucky - they wanted my bladder empty.

It was much more relaxed in the theatre than it ever was at the other clinic - Mr No Nonsense liked to do his transfers in absolute strict silence, whereas everyone was joking and trying to put me at my ease this time. Without the experience of my last two transfers, I'm sure I'd have been absolutely fine.

The consultant did a quick t/v scan before he started, and I took slow, deep breaths and concentrated on trying to relax. They don't use ultrasound during the actual transfer, as they don't want any distortion in the shape of the uterus caused by the scanner thing pressing down on your stomach.

Then he said he was ready to get started, and I heard the clink of the metal instruments on the tray and just thought, "I can't do this". I totally panicked and begged them to put me to sleep - which they instantly agreed to, and the lovely anaesthetist came in and sent me off. Oh, the blessed relief!

I was very apologetic afterwards about having been such a wimp - but on the plus side, I got a good half hour to an hour lying absolutely still after my transfer, and I feel quite positive about the effect that might have.

I have a whole raft of new medications to take - they tested my progesterone level and have taken me off the Cyclogest and treated me to the dreaded PIO injections instead. I'll tell you more about my new drug regime tomorrow... I suggested to the embryologist that they were just trying to take my mind off the two week wait by making me spend the whole time counting down to the next dose of medication, and she didn't disagree!

I have to go back for my beta test on Friday 13th - lucky for some, I hope. And in the meantime, I'll just relax and enjoy being PUPO.

Two cells

2010-07-31T09:43:00.003+01:00

I don't like to boast, but this morning the embryologist said my embryo looked 'perfect'. S/he was checked on first thing this morning and was at two cells, but as the embryologist said, s/he may already have carried on dividing and reached four cells.

So I'm to go in for 8:00 tomorrow morning, and the embryologist confirmed that I would start off awake but be sedated if I found it very difficult. She said that a lot of people have had difficult transfers elsewhere and then had no problems at XXXX clinic - largely because Mr Miracle Worker almost always does a hysteroscopy beforehand and so knows the best way in. Also, he doesn't try to rush the procedure, which probably helps.

I know you don't want to mess around with sedation if it's not necessary, so I'm quite happy with that arrangement.

I went back to the breakfast table - we have a friend staying who has 9-year-old IVF twins, and I said, "We have two cells!"

An alternative birds and bees conversation ensued when one of the twins asked what that meant. Their mother explained in simple terms what we were going through, then said, "I haven't really told you this before, but that's how we got you as well."

And then she gave the most beautiful, simple explanation of how their father had been ill and they hadn't been able to have babies on their own because of it, and how the treatment had happened, and told them that the first time she saw them, they were each about six cells. And the children asked three or four questions and were then satisfied.

I hope I'll be having that conversation in 9 or 10 years' time, with my perfect little two-celled chap.

Rucksack III

2010-07-30T14:31:00.003+01:00

Well, the embryologist called. One of the eggs wasn't suitable for injection, but the other has fertilised, so Rucksack III is currently waiting for us in the lab and hopefully working hard on dividing nicely. Perhaps we should change his/her name to Chesney (The One and Only).

Although I was a little disappointed, I still feel more hopeful than I did at this stage last time round. It only takes one, and although our odds of one implanting are slightly reduced by only having one in total, it's still the quality of the embryo that counts. And surely, after everything we've done over the last six months, the quality of both my eggs and DH's sperm MUST have been better this time round.

I asked about the sedation, and the embryologist said Mr Miracle Worker prefers people to be awake for transfers, but that she would talk to him.

She later called back and proposed what I think is the best possible compromise - because I'm sure it's best to avoid sedation if I can.

My transfer will be scheduled for some time on Sunday morning, after all the egg collections for that day have taken place. Until the end of today, they won't be able to say exactly when that will be, as they will be monitoring people for the rest of today to see if any of them are ready to trigger tonight. But that will mean the anaesthetist is still around when I go in. Mr Miracle Worker wants to start me off awake, and if it gets too uncomfortable for me, he's promised to put me to sleep.

Having got that little detail sorted, I feel quite calm about the whole thing. I don't feel too anxious about little Rucksack/Chesney sitting there in the lab, because I know the embryologists are on the ball and s/he will have five star treatment while s/he's there. And to be honest, if s/he isn't going to survive to day 3, it doesn't really matter whether s/he's inside me or not - but at least if I know before transfer, I'll be spared the agony of the 2-week wait.

In reality, though, I'm not letting myself think about the possibility of having nothing to transfer, and am concentrating all my energies on praying that our little embie will survive - not just until Sunday, but to grow into a baby and then an adult and ... well, you get the picture. One sometimes has to be specific in one's requests.

So the next hurdle is the phonecall from the embryologist tomorrow to see how Rucksack/Chesney (Ruckney? Chessack?) has done overnight, and then hopefully instructions about when I need to be in London and what I need to do on Sunday. And in the meantime, I've restarted the Dexamethasone and aspirin, am on Cyclogest twice a day, and the Clexane starts up again tonight. I'll while away the waiting time with drugs...

A modest harvest and a little freak-out

2010-07-30T07:33:00.002+01:00

So, we got up yesterday at 4:15 and left the house at 5:00 (DH complaining that he was tired). We were at the clinic for 6:30, where we discovered that there were SEVEN egg collections happening that morning, and I was last on the list. Apparently today there are no egg collections taking place. That's the thing with individualised treatment and all this intensive monitoring - you get your eggs collected when they're ready, not when it's convenient for the clinic and they have a space on their list.

DH was taken off first to do his business. I do find it hard sometimes to think that he has no problem producing into a cup at the clinic, and he even had no problems when I ordered him upstairs on Tuesday night, but he has such a psychological block about coming up with the goods when he's with me. Can you be jealous of a plastic sample pot? Still, at least his little pot was filled yesterday without any difficulty.

The contrast from the old clinic is huge - much more informal surroundings, more chit-chat to put you at your ease, absolutely no frills, but absolutely superb care. I was in no pain at all when I woke up, and although I was a bit sore by the time I got home, I had killed a few hours wandering the streets of London (I did have to beg DH to take me to a coffee shop for a sit down in the end, in preference to going round yet another bookshop as he had intended) and then gone to my work leaving do in the interim period, which is probably not the most highly recommended way of recovering from egg collection.

At the old clinic, they wrote the number of eggs they'd collected on your hand, so that you could see it as soon as you woke up. Here, they didn't do that, which gave me a brief moment of concern that perhaps they hadn't got any.

As it turned out, they had collected two. Bearing in mind that on IVF #1 I had four follicles visible on the scan and ended up with six eggs, and on IVF #2 I had two in the running and two coming up behind and got four (although two turned out not to be mature), I was a little disappointed with this. At my last scan I had two huge ones, as well as one about 18 mm and another one or two possibles. So was it the huge ones that yielded up the goods? Or were they overripe, and had a couple of others caught up?

However, I was also hugely relieved that I had any. I know I would have been gutted to get only two eggs at the last clinic, but all I could think of yesterday was "well, hopefully they're both better quality than the crappy eggs I got before".

XXXX clinic does transfers on day 2, 3 or 5. Having only two eggs, it's unlikely that we'll go to day 5, so we're looking at a day 2 or 3 transfer - tomorrow or Sunday. Strangely, I think I'd prefer day 3. Before, I've been so worried about my little embies in the lab and just wanted to get them inside me. But this clinic has some of the best embryologists in the country, and if they think it's OK to let my embies go to day 3 I feel as though that means they have more confidence in their quality and viability.

I had a little freak-out when I was told that they're not expecting to sedate me for embryo transfer. At our very first appointment, I was told they would consider doing this, and the last two transfers have been so painful that this was a hope that I was really clinging onto. They insisted that Mr Miracle Worker is really good at this and that people who have had painful transfers elsewhere haven't felt a thing with him, but the image that keeps playing through my head is of Mr No Nonsense sticking that blasted car jack into me and vigorously cranking it until I felt I was going to split in two. I'd so much rather be asleep and not know anything about it, however skillful Mr Miracle Worker is.

Of course, all of this could be academic - I'm now waiting for the fertilisation report, and there's always the chance that there'll be nothing to transfer. If we're playing a numbers game, I don't have many options. I just keep repeating to myself that it's quality that matters, not quantity - and hoping against hope that all the supplements, the healthy diet, the pints and pints of milk I've consumed, the intensive monitoring in the course of this cycle, and all the other things we've done differently will add up to super-quality eggs and sperm that got happily jiggy-jiggy last night and now are busy dividing away in the lab and beginning to grow into my future children.

Vignette

2010-07-29T06:14:00.000+01:00

The lab where they do the blood tests is round the corner from XXXX clinic. The lady on the desk is there every single day - I was staggered to see that she was working both Saturday and Sunday as well as every weekday.

On Tuesday, I said to her, "Do you ever get a day off?"

She put her hand on my knee, gave me a lovely smile, and said, "You tell me when you're pregnant - then I'll take a day off."

So no pressure, but I really hope for her sake that I get pregnant soon...!

I never thought we'd have a row about this...

2010-07-28T18:18:00.002+01:00

Some people's husbands do their jabs for them. Others do the cooking from time to time. Mine does neither. He won't even be in the room while I'm mixing my jabs. And I'm the one that always has to think in advance about what he's going to eat, do the shopping, cook it and tell him which of the Tupperware containers in the fridge he's taking for tomorrow's lunch. And sometimes just the fact that I always have to think about it exhausts me a bit.

Anyway, when I started stimming this time, I asked him to do one thing. Research has shown that the optimal amount of time to abstain before giving a sperm sample is something like 2-5 days. More than that, and the sperm aren't fresh. Less, and you might not have time to make enough good new ones (especially if you have a very low count to start with).

So, given that his little problem means that this is something he has to do on his own, I asked him to make sure that for as long as I was stimming, he should make sure that he clears the chaps out every two or three days, so that when I got the go-ahead for egg collection he could then stop and know that we'd be in the 2-5 day window on the day his chaps were needed. Not an unpleasurable task, I would have thought, and not much to ask when I'm doing absolutely everything else.

So last night I asked him when he'd last done the deed, and he said, "Oh, I'm not sure. Some time last week, I think."

I got really cross, pointed out that it was the one thing I'd asked of him, and that we were now definitely not going to be in the 2-5 day window for optimal sperm production.

His response was, "I'm sorry - I've been too tired." (I went out with friends on Sunday - he was at home pottering about the house by himself all day. And was still too tired to do a five minute job which would presumably have given him a certain amount of pleasure? Oh please...)

After organising this whole thing, sticking up to four needles a day into my stomach, having to get up at 5 am to give myself jabs and leave home at 6 am to go and have yet more needles stuck into my arms, spending a day on a drip on Monday, and following all sorts of other instructions so that I'm a tired, achey, bloated pincushion with arms and stomach covered in bruises, is it unreasonable that I got a bit cross with him for being too tired to give himself a little bit of pleasure over the last week?

And I wonder how many other arguments have finished with the wife shouting at the husband to get up the stairs NOW and get on with that particular job...?