Hair analysis - the lifestyle changes

Well, after that little week-long interlude, let's get back to our regular schedule. I was going to tell you some more about the hair analysis and the information that came back with it.

As well as taking the supplements, we're going to make some of the lifestyle changes they recommend, but not all of them. No doubt if we fail to get pregnant, they'll tell us it's because we didn't follow the programme in full, but there are some things that just won't fit into our life at all, or that I'm not prepared to do.

The first thing they advise is that you should avoid the possibility of pregnancy until your hair has been reanalysed and the balance of minerals is more satisfactory. This is because if we did conceive, miscarriage, premature birth and birth defects are much more likely if we don't have a good balance of minerals. In particular, our zinc and manganese levels are both low, and low levels of both of these have been linked to miscarriage and birth defects. Well, chance would be a fine thing, and as we're unlikely to start our next IVF cycle within four months, I think it'll be pretty easy to avoid getting pregnant.

The next recommendation is to give up smoking and alcohol. Well, neither of us has ever smoked. We don't drink much, and we both always give up alcohol for Lent anyway, so that won't be too hard.

We're only to consume filtered water, and if we drink bottled water it should be from a glass bottle, not plastic. I say 'consume' because it's not just for drinking - they want us to cook with filtered water as well. I have a filter jug somewhere, so I'll dig it out and see how that goes.

They've told us not to carry mobile phones in our pockets, as they "severely damage sperm and affect the ovaries". Thinking about this, I always have my phone with me, and it's often in the pocket of my jeans - which is as close as you can get it to being pressed up against my ovaries. I've now started either carrying my phone in my handbag (but then I don't hear it ring, which kind of negates the point of having a phone with you) or slipping it in my coat pocket as we leave the house.

They also advise us against freezing meals that we have cooked and reheating them some time later, as the process destroys a lot of the vitamins and enzymes in the food. Again, with full-time jobs we need to think of the practicalities, and I don't do a lot of freezing and reheating anyway, but we'll try to avoid it for the next four months.

There's then a long list of things to avoid, as follows:

• Fluoride toothpaste - They have GOT to be kidding! I don't know of any good toothpaste that doesn't have fluoride in it, and I'd rather have healthy teeth, thanks very much. Mind you, I brush my teeth twice a day, use the recommended amount of toothpaste and have very healthy teeth. DH gets through four times as much toothpaste as I do (sharing a tube would lead to divorce, since he makes such a mess of his tubes, so I have to provide it separately for him, and am amazed how much he gets through), so perhaps a gentle word about only using the recommended amount might be in order for him.
• Foil wrap - We don't use it a lot, so that shouldn't be too hard.
• Food additives - I don't buy an awful lot of processed food, but we'll be eating an even higher proportion of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. I can't guarantee that we'll be additive-free, though - what about when we eat out?
• Microwave food - Again, I never cook in the microwave, though we do occasionally use it to reheat food. I'm not sure we can avoid it altogether, but we will make the effort to reheat soups etc in a saucepan on top of the stove rather than in the microwave.
• Pesticides - We'll eat more organic food, but this is also a matter of time. We both work full-time and have other stuff going on in our lives. Sometimes I just don't have time to prepare stuff from scratch and I cheat by using ready-chopped fresh vegetables. I'll try to be a bit less lazy about this, but I haven't seen any organic ready-chopped stuff, so sometimes we might slip a bit.
• Tuna and swordfish - I can't remember when I last ate swordfish, and we don't have tuna that often. Oily fish are supposed to be good for you, though - I was wondering if we could have tinned mackerel, but then noticed that tinned food is also banned, as are canned drinks.

So there you have it. We were also eating way too much processed sugar, so I've cut that out as much as I can - DH has even given up taking sugar in his tea without me even asking him to. And I've given up caffeine, but haven't asked him to, as it's one of the few things that's not mentioned in the covering letter they sent us.

It's going to be a super-healthy but fairly inconvenient four months...

The antithesis of customer service

And now for something completely different - a story that will make you gasp with horror and then laugh at the stupidity of some people. Or maybe you'll just stop with the gasping if you live in the Land of Customer Service. For obvious reasons, I'll have to leave out quite a lot of the detail in this story.

Last Friday was my brother's birthday. On Tuesday evening I ordered something for him on the internet. I knew it wouldn't arrive on time, but the timings given on the website suggested that it would probably only be a day or two late.

Mid-afternoon on Friday, I received an e-mail telling me that my order was being processed. This was not within the timeframe promised on the website, and I was a bit cross - probably exacerbated by the fact that I was in pain and feeling out of sorts. So I responded to the e-mail, thanking them first but then expressing my disappointment that the order had not been processed earlier.

I then received the most extraordinary response, saying that I was completely wrong in my expectations and announcing at the end that because of my attitude, they had cancelled my order and refunded my money.

Now, I happen to believe that customer feedback is one of the most valuable things for a business, and that they can learn from their mistakes only if they know what those mistakes are. And I was still irritated...

So I responded with a polite but direct e-mail saying that I found this approach to customer services rather extraordinary and that I would be telling people I knew about it and we would not order from this company again.

This is when things started to get a little bit surreal. I told a couple of friends about this and showed them the e-mails. One of them has a business making products which are complementary to the ones sold on this website, and without my knowledge she e-mailed them and said that she had been considering buying from the website, but in view of what she had heard from the person who originally recommended it to her about their customer service, she would not be doing so and would advise her customers not to do so either.

Obviously, anybody is completely within their rights either to recommend a business or to give their personal view that they would not recommend it - it's called word of mouth and is seen by many businesses as the most important form of advertising that they have.

Now, I believe what happened next is that the woman who ran the business went home to her cats, had a couple of glasses of wine and stewed over this for a couple of hours. This is surely the only explanation for the next two e-mails that my friend received - the first making an insulting comment about me. The second was threatening in its tone, and the woman had obviously googled my friend's business and found its registered address. The e-mail quoted my friend's address (she runs her business from home), which freaked my friend out quite a lot.

Less than an hour later, an anonymous e-mail was sent to me. It was nasty in its tone and contained information which anybody could have obtained by googling my name and the town I live in - it's in the first link that comes up in the results. I don't make a habit of going round making enemies, so I can't think who else would have wasted their time on Google yesterday and sent this. As well as being nasty, it could be construed as threatening, since the hotmail address it came from was a clear reference to revenge.

My IT-literate friends tell me it's very easy to find out the IP address from which an e-mail was sent, and I'm sure that if they looked into it, they would find that it was sent by this woman (in breach of the Data Protection Act, which forbids the private use of personal data obtained in the course of business).

My friends and I didn't respond to any of these three e-mails, and we hope that having got it out of her system, this woman will now leave us alone - and that in the cold light of day, she will have realised how silly she was being. Although we were both initially quite upset by the threatening and insulting tone of the e-mails we received, we now just find it funny that anyone has such an extraordinary attitude to customer service, and sad that this woman has such an empty life that this was all she could find to do on a Friday evening.

And as a postscript, I found a replacement birthday present for my brother on a US-based website on Friday evening. Within an hour, I received an e-mail telling me it had been shipped.

The single defining event

Myndi made an interesting comment on this post, which got me thinking once again of something I've been trying to articulate for a while. This was the bit that struck me the most:

"While I spend a great deal of time focused on shoring myself up to make it through the struggle intact, the true mess that I am still exists, it's just tucked away. If we let it stay ever present, would we really make it through each day or would we fall to pieces?"

The friend we were visiting last weekend is an old schoolfriend and an amazing woman. We were talking about a mutual friend - also from school - who had visited her the previous weekend. I'll call them A and B respectively.

Ten years ago, B's husband left her. This was a horrible trauma, and I fully appreciate that the feeling of rejection that must engender never really leaves you. A was pregnant with my goddaughter at the time, and B would phone both A and me in the early hours of the morning and sob into the phone for hours.

As well as emotional support, we offered what practical help we could - looking after her children, bringing her meals, and I even went to a couple of meetings with the solicitor with her when she wanted to make sure she understood the things she was being told.

Despite the trauma, things worked out as well as they could have done. She has an amazingly supportive family who give her unbelievable amounts of practical, emotional and financial support. Her ex-husband's family also remain in touch and help with the children. She got to keep the house, and her ex-husband has never failed to pay maintenance or to follow the childcare arrangements they've agreed. He has the children for the whole of every other weekend and for one day of each weekend in between, which meant that she was able to enjoy the footloose single life every other weekend, while he was never able to go away with his new partner.

The thing is, she got to enjoy being the centre of attention while all this was going on, and she's found it hard to let go of that, so her life seems to be one long list of tragic disasters, all of which need to be wept over and unpicked to the nth degree. I have to say that for both A and me, ten years of this has got a little old. B's entire life is defined by her divorce, and she sees and appreciates none of the good things that she has in her life.

A hasn't had it all easy. When she was a student, someone spiked her drink with drugs, and the accident that she had while she was high from those drugs changed the whole course of her life, because she was no longer able to pursue her intended career and suffered long-term effects from the injuries. She has had two major operations in the last three or four years, and a lot of pain both before and immediately after them. She took two years to conceive each of her three children, one of whom she miscarried. The youngest has special needs. Her husband had an incredibly difficult childhood.

But A is the most thoughtful, outward-looking and energetic person I know. She doesn't let her guard down with many people, and I'm privileged that I'm one of the people she does feel able to show her vulnerability to. She has allowed none of the major life-altering events that she has gone through to be her 'defining moment' - they've happened, they sucked and she moved on.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of the infertility mire, and sometimes I feel it's all I can think about, and all I can talk about.

But I want to be like A, and not like B. In ten years' time, I don't want anybody to be saying, "She was fine until she couldn't have children, but now she never stops whinging" or "She's just tiring to be around now" or "Her whole life is defined by the fact that she wanted children and couldn't have them". I'd rather they said, "This could have defined her, but she didn't let it - and although it's not the life she expected to have, she's happy with the life she has."

And that's why I can't let the hurt stay ever present, and however often I accidentally knock the scab off and have a little cry with my husband, I have to see an end to this whole business and then learn to live with the result, whatever it is.

Why I love my osteopath

So, the appointment with the GP went pretty much how I'd anticipated. She said yes, she could see that all the muscles in my back were in spasm and it was obviously very painful. Then she told me to put ice on it, take painkillers and keep moving, and come back if it wasn't better in six weeks. Yes, that's right - I said SIX WEEKS.

She said she wasn't worried that it had happened four times in three years, and she wasn't worried that I had been unable to walk when I got up, "because you can obviously walk now". She didn't think any further investigation was needed, and recommended that I do core strength exercises to strengthen my back once this episode is over.

The osteopath, on the other hand, gave me a good massage to start loosening things up, did some acupuncture on the damaged ligaments (yes, apparently there are now two) and told me that as well as the muscles being in spasm, she could feel the cause of that spasm, which was a huge swelling around one ligament in particular.

She was interested to hear about the first episode, when I was putting my niece in her car seat, and said that from what I was doing and the angle I would have been bending at, she was pretty certain that the ligament I would have damaged that time is the same one I've damaged this week.

She then covered me in strapping to support and protect my back while it heals, and booked another appointment for Monday.

And I'm happy to say that although I was limping and in pain when I got up this morning, I was able to stand upright and walk, and having iced my back, taken painkillers and walked around for half an hour or so, I'm now able to walk reasonably well and without too much pain.

And that's why I never usually bother going to the GP, but love my osteopath! And hopefully I'll stop whinging about my back and resume normal blogging tomorrow.

More sore

Thank you for the much-needed sympathy yesterday. This is going to be another post about my back, and is mainly for my benefit, because I want a record for comparison in case this happens again - so if you don't want to hear more whining, look away now and have a nice day.

The last 24 hours have been excruciating. As I lay awake last night, I realised that this is the fourth incident in about three years.

In May 2007, I took Niece #1 to Jersey for a car rally. At the time, I was driving a two-seater classic sports car. She had just turned 3, and her car seat was in the passenger seat of my low-slung car. All went well and we had a marvellous time, but when we were on our way home, we stopped off somewhere and as I lifted her back into her car seat - an activity which involved a certain amount of bending and twisting because of the type of car - I felt something pop in my back. It was sore for a while after that, but I don't remember any major trauma.

In June 2008, my back went while we were on our honeymoon. There was no popping this time, but after I had been tossed about by some big waves while snorkelling, I got out of the water to find that my back was sore. It was certainly very uncomfortable, and I can remember wondering whether I was actually going to be able to walk to the restaurant we had booked for that evening, but I was never completely incapacitated. It was when we got back to England that I found the osteopath, and she told me that I had pulled a ligament and sorted me out pretty quickly.

At the end of May last year, we celebrated our wedding anniversary with a weekend at the hotel where we had our wedding reception. On the Saturday, we lounged about all day in the sun, and when I got up I must have overstretched the ligament or something. The next day my back was very sore and stiff, and according to my diary from last year, the day after that I was unable to walk when I got up. This time, the osteopath described it as a ligament sprain, and again, she sorted me out and I was over the worst of it by the end of the week.

Since then, I've had regular visits to the osteopath to keep an eye on it and deal with any problems before they got too bad. You may wonder why I never saw my GP - it's basically because the NHS has two answers to back pain: "Take two aspirin and wait for it to go away" and "Here's a big knife - I'm going to chop you up." I suspected that I would get the former response. The osteopath, on the other hand, did something that worked.

And so we come to this time. Yesterday I felt the popping in my back when I stretched in the morning. An hour later, when I got out of bed, my left leg was very weak and it took a couple of minutes before I was able to hobble a few steps on it. I knew from last time that the morning is worst and that it eases off in the course of the day, and after a couple of hours of really not knowing where to put myself for the pain, it reduced to a steady 7 or 8 on the pain scale and my movement became a little freer. Every time I sat down for more than 15 minutes, though, it seized up again.

I was dreading the night, knowing that the two things that made last time really hard were the difficulty with turning over in bed and the issue with getting up in the morning.

Sure enough, every time I wanted to turn over last night, I woke up. Each time, it took me a couple of minutes to readjust my position, and I felt it getting harder as the night went on. At 6:00, I gave up on trying to sleep and experimentally pushed myself into a sitting position, just to check that I could. I could, but it took a while and was very painful, and I thought how lucky I am that I don't have these mobility problems all the time. Lying helplessly on your back, feeling uncomfortable but knowing that you're not going to be able to shift your position at all without shooting pains going all the way up your back is not much fun.

Before he left for work at 7:00, DH brought me an ice pack, and I iced my back for ten minutes before I got up. I manoeuvred myself into a standing position, and then realised that my left leg wasn't going to take my weight at all. I had slept in the spare room, where we have a cot for Niece #3's visits, and I leant on the side of the cot flexing my leg muscles and trying to keep myself upright. Standing up straight again sent shooting pains down my back. I managed to grab hold of the door handle, then the radiator the other side of the door, and dragged my leg behind me as I pulled myself out into the hall.

The two paces from the spare room door to the bathroom door then proved too much for me, as there was nothing to hold onto for leverage, and I eventually crawled on all fours to the bathroom, where I managed to pull myself almost upright and drag myself along the length of the bath to the loo.

I then dragged myself back to the bedroom and slowly pulled on some clothes. I didn't even attempt to put socks on - my trousers were difficult enough.

The strength gradually began to return to my left leg, and although it was stiff and painful, I managed to get downstairs, where I paced up and down for about an hour to loosen everything up.

I decided perhaps it was time the NHS had a look at my back, so I rang the surgery and for the first time ever, I actually managed to get a same day appointment with the GP without any argument! Perhaps it was the pathetic tone in my voice when the receptionist asked, "Is it urgent?" and I said, "Well, I'm having trouble walking."

I've now been sitting still for about 15 minutes, which is a definite improvement on yesterday morning, and am going to have a go at climbing Mount Bathtub so I can have a shower before I see the doctor and then the osteo.

I can't tell from reading last year's diary whether this episode is the same as last year's or worse, which is why I want to get all the sorry details down this time, so I remember. I certainly remember being in excruciating pain then, and I'm really hoping this time isn't worse, because that might indicate some sort of deterioration and even that the next time might be worse still, and that would be unimaginable.

Back out of action

I should never have complained the other day about my backache. That was just a normal, common or garden backache, which was sore but didn't stop me from doing anything. On a scale of 1 to 10, it probably fluctuated between a 3 and a 5, but it was constant and the fear was always there that it would get worse and leave me incapacitated again.

The osteopath was treating it, and by yesterday it had improved to the degree where I actually went back to the gym and did some gentle exercise.

This morning, DH was in the shower and as I lay there in bed, half awake, I yawned and stretched - and felt something pop. Immediately, my back was flooded with pain. For a few moments, I was unable to move, but then I managed to turn onto my side and was relieved to find that it wasn't so painful in that position. I decided not to go to the stretching class I'd planned to attend at the gym this morning - a class attended mainly by older people, at which they do the stretches that the osteopath recommended to me to strengthen my back - and went back to sleep for an hour.

When I woke up, I got out of bed and found that my left leg wouldn't hold my weight. This has happened to me before, so the fear that I have now is first that I know how much pain I'm going to be in over the next few days and how difficult it's going to be to recover, and second, that it wasn't a one-off last year and I may be facing episodes like this regularly for the rest of my life.

I eventually managed to struggle to the bathroom, where I looked at the insurmountable height of the bath and decided I would have to live without having a shower today.

Since then, I've been hobbling around the house, knowing that if I sit still for too long, my back will seize up and be even more uncomfortable when I have to move again. Plus sitting still for more than five minutes causes the pain to radiate round to the front and start shooting down the front of my thighs. Since I got out of bed a couple of hours ago, the pain has been a constant 10 or 11, with occasional moments of relief where it goes down to 8 or 9. Painkillers don't touch it, and the ice pack didn't do a lot either.

I'm now waiting for a call back from the osteopath to see if she can fit me in before my next scheduled appointment next week. She worked miracles last time, so I'm hoping to get to see her before the weekend - though at the moment I'm even dreading the thought of hobbling out to my car and driving up there to see her.

In the meantime, I'm sorry if I don't comment on your blogs - it's taken me over half an hour to write this, and I've changed seats four times in the process and got up a few other times to walk around a bit. I just can't sit still long enough to read and leave comments today.

If blogging is light in the next few days (or possibly totally full of self-pitying rants about how much pain I'm in), you'll know why - hopefully normal service will be resumed soon.

Always there

Last week, DH had driving lessons on Monday and Tuesday evenings after work. Because we normally get home from work around 7, by the time he's had a two hour lesson, it's almost 9, and we pretty much just have time to eat and then get to bed.

Then on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings we were out together, we were away at the weekend, and on Monday and Tuesday of this week he had driving lessons. He has another lesson tomorrow evening.

So tonight was going to be our night for curling up and spending a bit of time together, and just catching up on what's been going on. I was working from home, so at lunchtime I was able to prepare a nice beef casserole to go in the slow cooker. Just before he was due home, I lit a fire, so that it would be roaring away nicely by the time he came in.

And then it all started to go wrong. The slow cooker was slooooow, and the casserole wasn't ready. The logs were damp, and the fire glowed gently for a while and then fizzled out. We sat there gazing at the dying embers and waiting for our casserole to be ready, and although he said nothing, I felt impatience coming off him that here he was, home on time for once, and he was still having to wait for his supper.

Then he phoned his parents, and his father asked in a hopeful sort of way what we were doing this weekend - angling for a visit. We were meant to be visiting my parents this weekend for my mother's birthday, but the trip fell through - and I had told DH that I was pleased in a way, because although I was sad not to be there with my mother, we had a huge long list of jobs that needed to be done at home.

So I was a little annoyed when he looked sideways at me and then told his father that he didn't think we had any plans and he might drop in to see them. He tries to visit them once every two or three weeks - we visit my parents about twice a year. I encourage him to visit his parents whenever he has the chance, as they're elderly and his father is very frail, but if he went this weekend it would mean that, yet again, I was left to do all the jobs on my own.

I sat there and stewed for about an hour, then it just came out. "I know I'm probably premenstrual and unreasonable, but I feel a bit resentful that you told your father we weren't busy this weekend."

He looked hurt and said, "Honestly, I can't do anything right. I didn't think we were."

So then I reminded him that we had talked about all the jobs we needed to get done this weekend. And I reminded him of the most important one - that since our papers arrived from the old clinic last week, we haven't had a chance to fill in the forms for XXXX clinic. In fact, DH hasn't even seen our papers from the old clinic. There are a lot of questions for both of us on these forms, and it's a job that we need to do together. Plus, I want him to care about this and invest in it at least a little bit.

And I pointed out that every month that passes is another month closer to me having no eggs left at all, and that nothing is going to happen until we've sent the forms off.

And he put his arms round me and apologised, and suddenly I found that I couldn't hold back the tears and his shoulder was getting awfully wet.

It was like I'd scratched at the corner of a scab which I thought was ready to fall off on its own - and suddenly I found that I'd ripped the whole thing off and found that I was still bleeding underneath.

And I'm wondering once again if this is what it's going to be like for ever - pootling along through my everyday life thinking I'm OK with all this, talking about it in perfectly sane and reasonable terms, until suddenly and unexpectedly the scab gets ripped off and I'm in pieces again.

Hair analysis

Our hair analysis results have come back, and make very interesting reading.

We tend not to have puddings very often, although when we do we usually have cream or yogurt with them. We also only really buy cheese when we have visitors, although I do occasionally put grated cheese on a pasta dish. But since I was advised to drink half a pint of milk a day during my first two week wait, I have carried on drinking a lot more milk, while DH has stayed at his usual level of consumption. That probably explains why my calcium level is 563 against a recommended minimum value of 380, while DH's is only 299. No little old lady osteoporosis for me! I am going to get him drinking more milk, though.

My magnesium level is also pretty high, but iron, potassium and sodium are all low. DH has normal magnesium and also has low iron, potassium and sodium. I tend to use very little salt in my cooking, so especially as I'm giving us as much fresh food as possible and trying to wean DH off processed stuff at the moment, I suppose I'd better start using a bit more salt.

Having read that selenium and zinc are good for fertility and that many people are deficient in them, I've had us eating five brazil nuts a day each since early last summer. I encourage DH to eat his by giving him four normal ones and one chocolate-covered one. Also, since about October/November last year, we've been taking an additional zinc and selenium supplement. We've been taking preconception vitamins for what seems like for ever, and I'm sure they also have zinc in them.

So I was surprised to see that, although DH's selenium level is OK, my selenium is a little on the low side and we both have low zinc. This either means that I was right about us needing the supplements but our levels haven't quite caught up yet, or that we're not absorbing it properly. My friend who tried this several years ago had a similar problem with magnesium.

I have normal levels of chromium, cobalt and copper, but manganese, molybdenum (which I've never even heard of) and vanadium are also on the low side, and nickel is half what it should be.

DH has very low levels of all of those things, and his nickel level is even lower than mine.

They also test for metals which shouldn't be present in high quantities. We're both within the acceptable range for aluminium, cadmium and mercury, but both have trace levels of tin (where on earth does that come from?), and I have a slightly raised level of lead.

They've recommended a whole bunch of supplements, and we have to take those, follow their other advice (which I'll tell you about later) and then get our hair retested in four months. They advise us not to get pregnant in the meantime. Not that I think there's any chance of that, but they reckon if you get pregnant while your nutritional levels are not optimised, you have a much higher chance of a miscarriage or of birth defects.

Once we get our supplements, I'll be on 19 pills a day and DH will be on 26. If you're walking down the street and meet someone coming the other way who rattles as they walk, that'll be us...

Timings

One of the things I've been idly wondering about is the timing of second and subsequent IVF attempts.

From what I've read, it's not just the sperm that take three months to mature. It also takes three months for eggs to mature. This means that if you have a second IVF cycle within three months of the previous one, the eggs that will develop on that second cycle will have been exposed to the drugs that you took in the earlier cycle.

Does this have any effect on the development of the follicles and the maturing of the eggs? Could it be the reason why I responded so poorly on IVF #2, which began less than two months after IVF #1? And could it mean that I could expect to respond better on IVF #3 later this year, when the drugs from #1 and #2 have completely worked their way out of my body?

Or could it be that the residual presence of drugs in my body and the fact that the eggs in IVF #2 had effectively been exposed to two sets of IVF drugs made my body respond better than it would otherwise have done, and that the poor response in IVF #2 was a sign of how quickly my ovarian reserve is deteriorating?

I don't know the answers to these questions, and Mr No Nonsense never ventured an opinion on whether it was a good idea for us to try again so soon or whether we should, in fact, wait for a while to give us a better chance.

I'd be really interested in any thoughts that anyone else has on the subject, or experiences of second and subsequent cycles which were either within the magic three months or outside it...

Another notch up on the hope-o-meter

One of the many people who knows all about our fertility struggles (well, not all - but she knew we were trying, then she knew we weren't going to do it without help, then about the two ICSI attempts) is my osteopath. I suppose when you see someone regularly, and on each visit you strip down to your underwear and lie face down on a bed while they do unspeakable things to your back, the situation lends itself to confiding a certain amount about what's going on in your life.

At the end of today's appointment, she handed me a bit of paper and explained that another of her patients had, like us, had two failed IVF attempts at the local hospital. She had then gone to one of the London clinics and was now pregnant with twins. She had raved about how wonderful this place was, and so the osteopath had written down its details for me.

And guess what? The clinic this woman was raving about was the XXXX clinic. And Mr No Nonsense had been as scathing about it with her as he was with me, but she had gone anyway, and she couldn't sing the praises of the XXXX consultant (henceforth to be known as Mr Miracle Worker) highly enough.

The copy of our file from the old clinic arrived last week, and since then we haven't had a single evening at home. We were also away for the weekend, and DH has driving lessons tonight and tomorrow. But some time this week, we're going to make another copy of our file, fill in all the forms from the XXXX clinic and get the whole lot sent off to them.

Every child needs one

In our bedroom, we have a 'book cuberd' (as my friend's six-year-old twins labelled it when they made it for me almost two years ago) made out of a cornflake packet. In the sitting room, we have paintings by my nieces, and going up the side of the stairwell there's a looooooong picture of a giraffe, drawn by a niece a couple of years ago. Our fridge is also covered in children's drawings.

Last night DH and I went out for drinks and a meal for a friend's birthday. It was bitterly cold again, and before we left the house I grabbed a nice warm scarf to put on. It was made by my then seven or eight-year-old niece in the US. It's woven out of different colours of wool, and she must have run out of one of the types of wool she was using, as the two ends are completely different colour combinations and designs. I'm not sure if it's deliberate that it's much narrower in the middle than it is at each end. But it kept my neck lovely and warm, and I wore it with pride.

As I took it off in the pub, I proudly showed it to my friends, and then commented, "Probably only an aging childless aunt would actually wear this out in public." They didn't disagree.

DH once ended up in the casualty department of the hospital near his sister's house after getting a very nasty scratch on his hand while separating a fighting cat and dog. It was only when he noticed the funny looks he kept getting from the staff that he remembered that he was wearing brightly coloured nail varnish - a Christmas present his niece had received, which she had immediately wanted to try out. As an indulgent uncle, when asked to let her paint his fingernails he had willingly obliged.

And now this weekend we're going down to the south coast to spend the weekend celebrating the 10th birthday of one of my goddaughters. We're thrilled to have been invited to join in the celebrations, and we'll be having lunch once again with all the adults who mean the most to her - her parents, grandparents, uncle and aunt. She's having a sleepover, and if she and her little friends are looking for fingernails to paint, I'm sure DH will oblige again.

There's a special role in children's lives for the relative or family friend who doesn't have children of their own. When we see them, we have endless amounts of time for them, because we don't keep having to go and chase after our own children. We're not looking for special 'grown-up time', because we have our fill of that for most of the time, so we're willing to get down on our hands and knees with the toddlers, sing endless songs, read endless stories, have our nails painted and treasure their art work.

Most children have someone like us in their lives - I know my brothers and sisters and I did when we were growing up - and while it lasts, it's a privileged position that we should enjoy, as we have both done for years.

But hopefully one day some of those children will become the cool teenagers in our own children's lives...

His boys really can't swim

Our file has arrived from the clinic where we had IVF #1 and #2, and I've been having a good look through it.

DH had a sperm analysis when we had our first appointment, and it was pretty disastrous - volume <1 ml, number of sperm 0.6 m/ml, progression 1 (out of a possible 4), motility 30%, morphology 3%.

Since then I've sort of fantasised that his sperm could be getting better. I feed him fairly healthily, with liberal servings of all the foods that I've read can help fertility, and I've had him on Wellman vitamins, a daily dose of brazil nuts and an extra supplement of selenium and zinc. Every so often I would have a little moment where I remembered that he'd only ever had one sperm analysis and thought, "Well, after all these supplements, it's bound to have improved." And after we got embryos both times we tried ICSI, I thought, "Well, there are definitely some decent guys in there."

The file shows that they did a little analysis of each of the samples that he produced for our IVF cycles. The one he produced for IVF #2 was even worse than the original - volume 0.7 ml, number of sperm 0.5 m/ml, progression 0-1, motility 20%, morphology still at 3%.

And the one he produced for IVF #1? It must have been OK, because we originally got three embryos out it - right? I mean, OK, one of the embryos stopped dividing before transfer time and the other two didn't manage to implant, but there were three decent sperm in there, right?

Well, apparently three is about the limit. They didn't even bother to write numbers down for this sample - just scrawled across it "occasional". And I'm guessing that "occasional" sperm are not brilliant news.

I kind of knew it all along - that's one of the reasons I said we would never bother with donor eggs and DH's sperm. I knew his sperm were crap.

But I didn't know they were getting worse. I didn't realise the utterly crap result we had last July was him on a GOOD day.

So the dream that we might get a miracle BFP while we're waiting for our appointment at XXXX clinic has receded just that little bit further. And my faith in the supplements we've spent a fortune on and the healthy diet that I'm trying to keep us to has also taken a bashing.

And I have to say, I'm a little bit gutted.

More about work

I normally take the attitude with work that the bits I love about my job are the things that persuade me to get out of bed in the morning, while the bits I hate are the things that I'm being paid for.

Let's just say that over the last couple of months, I've been doing an awful lot of the stuff I'm being paid for. And if I have to have too many more dealings with one particular person, who is the type of person who takes credit for stuff that you've done while failing to do his own job and trying to shift the blame onto you, then I'm going to need a significant pay rise.

On the plus side, today is one of the days I get out of bed for - I'm running a revision class and have spent quite a lot of time creating a board game which I hope will make them learn while having fun. I showed the game to my boss and he thinks it's pretty cool and wants to use it himself, so I get brownie points all round.

Today is the guinea pig day, where I ascertain whether I've got enough questions for a full round of the game to be played and how long it takes to get round the board (I need it to last for at least a couple of hours).

Wish me luck...

A positive viewpoint

One of the problems with researching adoption and seriously considering doing it is that you very quickly start to hear all the horror stories - the children with attachment disorder, the failed adoptions, the people who've had a horrendous time with the application process, the cost, the intrusion into every aspect of your life. Above all, applying to adopt is a huge step into the unknown, and a bit of time on the internet very quickly shows you all the ways that you could fail.

There are also those people in real life who just have to share their stories of failed adoptions with you. They're probably the same people who tell horrendous birth stories to people who are newly pregnant.

But my oldest and best friend is adopted, and yesterday I was chatting with her. We hadn't spoken on the phone since before Christmas, so I was catching her up on where we're up to with the baby-making project. I told her how completely banjaxed I'd been by DH's reluctance to consider adoption, and we talked about that for a while.

Then she said, "The thing is, when you're adopted you DO belong to that family. And not just that, but if you're adopted, you know absolutely that you were wanted and that you're loved. Whatever else happens in an adopted child's life, you can't take away the fact that they're absolutely secure in the knowledge that they're the most precious thing in their parents' life."

She said it as if that was true for all adopted children, and I know from spending too much time on sad and angry internet sites that that's not the case. But it could be the case for us.

But more than that, I now realise that I just really needed to hear someone with first-hand experience of adoption actually saying that from the adopted child's point of view. And because she's my oldest and best friend, I know that she absolutely believes it to be true. And because I've known (and loved) her parents since I was 10, I know that in her case it's undoubtedly true.

There are so many unknowns, and the biggest of all is the question of whether we would be turned down for adoption on the basis of age. The crazy thing is that for a number of reasons, it would be easier for me to adopt on my own as a single person than it will be for DH and me to adopt together as a married couple. I think that shows a serious defect in the system.

If it comes to it, though, I really feel now that if we do pursue adoption, I will be pursuing it as a positive and real option and not just as the last resort after our attempts to have our own biological child failed. I feel excited at the idea of it, and although I know DH isn't there with me on that feeling yet, I think we could get there together.

Whinging about something different

Washing your hair when you've got strapping on your back that's not allowed to get wet - not easy, especially when the reason for the strapping makes you a whole lot less flexible than usual anyway.

Having to get your back strapped up for the third time in a year - not fun. And being told to avoid all lifting and twisting sort of puts paid to the planned return to the gym, if the pain hadn't done that already.

I'm dragging my sore back off to work now - bleurgh...

New home

No, not me, but Myndi - she has a great new blog home. It looks great, but there are two things I took a minute or two to figure out, so I thought I'd share them in case you're as slow as I am - if you want to leave a comment (or read existing comments), you need to click on the title of the blog post you want to comment on. And then to get back to the home page, just click on the blog name in the banner at the top. All very simple and straightforward - great job, Myndi!

'Children of men'

Last night DH and I watched 'Children of Men' on the telly. It's a film whose main premise is that the entire human race is suffering from unexplained infertility. The youngest person in the world is 18, and the world is full of violence and oppression - "because that's what happens when you lose the sound of children's laughter". Then one woman becomes pregnant, and the film is the story of how one man helps her and tries to save her from the people who would harm her and use her baby for their own nefarious means.

Three things struck me about this film.

The first is that, although the film is 'about' infertility, it didn't touch me emotionally at all. It was a sci-fi action thriller, and there was too much violence and fighting in it to allow the emotional side of infertility to be explored at all.

I found it a very shallow film, where endless fighting (and the idiotic hero irritatingly putting himself and the girl in danger by standing around to see what happened next at the places he'd just left rather than trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the baddies they were escaping from) and sweeping shots of unexplained desolation (apart from the fact that it was filmed in a year when in real life we'd recently had a foot and mouth outbreak, why did they show footage of a pile of dead cows being burnt?) moved the plot along without allowing us to see how the situation had developed or how people felt about it.

There was a scene at the beginning where there was mass hysteria and loads of people crying and wailing because the youngest person in the world had been murdered - but there was no real emotion in it, and the over-the-topness of the weeping and wailing took away any sadness in the scene and turned it almost into something comic.

The second thing was a little throwaway comment towards the beginning of the film. The infertility was described as being a problem of the women - nobody could understand why they were suddenly all infertile. There was no suggestion that there might be any issue with the men as well. And that saddened me, because it seems that in real life, too, it is very often assumed that the woman is the problem. Here was a chance to drop into a mindless action film the idea that infertility has a male side as well as a female side, and it's a shame the easy 'blame the woman' line was used instead.

The third thing was this joke told by Michael Caine's character that I actually found quite funny.

There's a big dinner going on, and everyone around the table is discussing the problem of infertility and speculating about why nobody is able to have children. One man keeps silent, tucking into his meal with great gusto.

Eventually, someone says to him, "You've been fairly quiet in all this discussion. What do you think is the cause of all this infertility?"

He looks up from the barbecued meat he's been chomping on and says, "I really don't know - but this stork is delicious, isn't it?"

The other strand of hope

It seems that for almost two years now, I've been holding my breath.

Last Christmas, DH and I decided that we would go to China around Easter time. Then I started to get cold feet, because surely by Easter I would be pregnant, and I didn't want to be travelling in China while I was pregnant. So we gave up on that plan.

We intended to visit my brother and his family in South Africa last year. There was never a good time, in between all the times we thought I might be pregnant and then the IVF treatments, etc.

I haven't been to the gym since October, and the main reason I stopped was the IVF. This creates a bit of a vicious circle for me, as the lack of exercise and the resulting weight gain make my bad back worse, which makes it more difficult for me to get to the gym, which makes my back worse... I've got another appointment with the osteopath on Monday, and as soon as she's worked her magic I'll be back in the gym, giving it my all.

We have a kitchen extension with a flat roof which desperately needs to be replaced, and we need all new windows upstairs in our house. We said we'd sort both those things out last spring, but it never happened. The damp stain on the kitchen ceiling is now twice the size, and the guttering has come down at the back as well.

My half-yearly appraisal is coming up at work, and I can't think of a single thing I've achieved in the last six months. Work was just what I fitted in around fertility tests and treatments and obsessing about how to improve our chances.

And there've been so many other things we haven't done - friends we've failed to visit, people we haven't even kept in touch with, birthdays I've been late in acknowledging, or have failed to acknowledge at all.

So yes, you could say my life has been on hold - and one of the great things about knowing that we won't be doing any treatments for the next four months or so is that I get my life back for a while and can make plans that don't involve sticking needles in my stomach or getting cameras stuck up my bits.

But then there's the question of what happens next. I still hold out more hope than I probably should do of having a successful treatment at the new clinic. But, and this may sound bizarre, now that I know how remote the possibility of success is for us, optimism for me also means thinking about what happens if we're not successful, and if we end up not being able to adopt. Because I need to know that whatever happens, we'll be OK.

And because I'm an optimist at heart, but I'm also a realist, I'm thinking of all the possible scenarios - and working on convincing myself that each of those scenarios will allow us to live a happy and fulfilled life.

So while I hope with all my heart that I'll be pregnant by the second half of this year, and while I know I'll be devastated if that doesn't happen, I also know that if we end up not having children, I'll come through that devastation and find a way to be happy. It won't be the life I planned, but it'll still be a good life. The life I've had up to now has not by any stretch of the imagination been what I thought it would be, but I wouldn't change a thing about it - the good parts or the bad.

And what all that means is that I need to start making plans. I can't go on wishing my life away, and ending up with nothing because Plan A isn't working out and there's no Plan B.

I'm cheating a little bit, because I'm not going to make any plans that are absolutely set in stone. But on Monday, a friend said she was planning to run a half marathon in October and asked if I would do it with her.

And instead of refusing in case I'm pregnant by October, I thought how nice it would be to have something to work towards if I'm not pregnant. I thought of the sense of achievement that I got from completing a marathon (very slowly) a few years ago, and how I'd always said I'd like to train properly and do another one, aiming for a more respectable time.

So yesterday I registered my interest, which is the first stage towards hopefully getting a place to run that half marathon. And now I have two alternative scenarios to look forward to in the second half of the year. One is that I'm happily pregnant. The other is that I'm fit, healthy and getting ready to run 13.1 miles through the royal parks of London.

I have to keep repeating it to myself, and it's very hard to do, but making exciting plans that might have to be cancelled if I get pregnant isn't giving up or admitting defeat.

It's giving myself another strand of hope.

Progress

This isn't the post I was going to write this morning, but I wanted to share my excitement with you.

Last night, DH came home from work and told me about a conversation he'd had with his boss. It went something like this:

DH: [Something boring about work]
Boss: OK. By the way, how's the IVF going?
DH: We did two cycles. They were both unsuccessful.
Boss: Sorry to hear that. How's your wife?
DH: She's OK. Tired and stressed.
Boss: Are you going to try again?
DH: Hopefully.
Boss: And if that doesn't work out, you can always adopt.
DH: Yes, that's what we're planning.

So there you go, straight from the horse's mouth - he's coming round to the idea! We may not be able to adopt, we may not even get that far down the road, but if it comes to it, he's not going to turn the idea down out of hand.

The cogs may turn slowly, but it seems they've been turning after all!

Optimism

You know that glass half empty-glass half full thing? Well, my dad once laughed at me because I was driving him somewhere and said we'd have to stop and get petrol "because my tank's only about one-sixteenth full".

I haven't always been a hopeless cock-eyed optimist. In fact, I can pinpoint the year that my attitude began to change.

I was about 17, and we were living in a place which was about four miles from the nearest town. I very seldom needed to go into town on my own, but I can recall two occasions, about four months apart, when I cycled into town.

The first time, I was irritated to notice that the road seemed to go uphill in both directions - on the way there and on the way home.

The second time, there was no difference in my level of fitness. I took exactly the same route, and the weather was very similar. But this time, the road seemed to go downhill in both directions, and it was a much more pleasant ride.

Of course, the reality was that the road was gently undulating, and there was probably an equal amount of uphill and downhill cycling in each direction. The difference between the two journeys lay only in my attitude - on the earlier ride, I concentrated on the difficult bits of the journey, while on the later one I focused on the parts that I enjoyed.

The interesting thing is that it was when I was 17 that I first encountered a major setback in my life. I went through something that was very difficult for me and forced me for the first time to face up to the possibility of failure.

Coming out the other side, I had learnt that I had the resources to cope with that failure and to turn it around. I had learnt the value of hard work. I had also learnt how kind some people can be and that support can come from the most unexpected places.

And learning all of those things taught me to look for the good in people, to work to achieve my goals, and not to give up when things got tough. They were great lessons which have stood me in good stead throughout my life, and I couldn't have learnt them without facing failure and a certain amount of difficulty.

I've seen how other instances of failure in my life have taught me a lot more than my successes. And perhaps that's what makes me an incurable optimist - because if things are going well, then they're going well. But if things are going badly, it gives me an opportunity to learn and grow, and I often end up with something better than I had originally thought I wanted.

I know now that it wouldn't have been right for DH and me to have a honeymoon baby - we had both lived alone for a long time and needed time to get used to living together before adding a baby to the mix.

We've learnt a lot about ourselves and each other and about our relationship in going through this whole IVF process. I think in many ways it's made our relationship stronger, because we're able to show each other how we're feeling and support each other through the hard times. It's taught us to communicate better and not to bottle things up or make assumptions about what the other is thinking.

I think it's also given me more understanding and compassion for other people - not just those going through IF, but those going through other difficulties as well. I see more shades of grey and am more willing to listen and try to empathise with the decisions that other people make.

So in many ways, I can be happy that we've gone through this experience for the things that it has taught me and the ways I have grown as a person.

But as the eternal optimist, I still can't let go of the hope that one day we'll be parents. This has been a learning process. I've learnt. Now let's get on with making babies...

Samson and the bald patch

So, on Saturday I finally got round to cutting our hair. When I phoned Foresight last week for more information, they told me they send off their hair samples to the lab once a week, on Fridays. Since we'd already missed the chance to get ours to them for last Friday, we decided to sort out our samples on Saturday and then send them off during the week.

The hair needed to be the newest growth (ie, the closest to the scalp), about an inch in length. The amount that we need to send is about a tablespoonful.

It turns out that that's an awful lot of hair. The woman on the phone told me that I should lift up the visible hair on top and take it from underneath - which was fine when DH was cutting my hair. Mine isn't long, but it does cover my neck, so he lifted up the top layer and took off an inch all along the nape of my neck. It feels a bit scratchy on my collar, but (I'm told) it looks fine.

DH, on the other hand, likes to keep his hair very short at the back and has no hair to speak of on the nape of his neck. I ended up lifting random bunches of hair all around the back of his head, snipping off whatever was underneath, then replacing the random bunch. The back of his head is now pretty unevenly covered, and he has a bit of a ridge in one area where you can see that a middle layer of hair is missing.

But there was one place where the scissors must have slipped a bit, and however I tried to arrange his hair, I couldn't cover up the little bald patch that I'd made. It's about half the size of a penny, and I'm sure the hair will grow over it fairly quickly. And of course the great thing is that it's on the back of his head, so as long as I keep him away from the barber for a couple of weeks, he should never know about it.

But I wonder when he's going to get bored of calling me Delilah...

The new clinic

So, I was going to tell you about the information pack from XXXX clinic.

It talks about statistics - the average live birth rate for my age group (unfortunately, I now fall into the 40-42 age group, though I am at the lower end of it) is about 12% - XXXX clinic has a 24.7% live birth rate. Their rate for the 38-39 age group is 42.5%.

They say they pride themselves on assisting couples who have complex problems or have been unsuccessful elsewhere. Currently about 75% of their patients have had unsuccessful treatment at other clinics. They also claim not to select patients on the basis of age or clinical history.

I suppose that still leaves it open to them to reject patients on the basis of current FSH or AMH levels, and I have seen people comment on message boards that they haven't been allowed to start a treatment cycle because their FSH level was too high.

The cost of the actual ICSI procedure is cheaper than at our old clinic, but with more extras - during the treatment cycle there are daily blood tests which are billed separately, and there will almost certainly be more drugs. Looking at it now, I'm thinking the total cost will end up being much the same as our last two cycles, but I'm prepared for the strong possibility that it will go over that.

Before making an appointment, you have to fill in a very detailed form with full medical history of both partners. We didn't have to do this when we booked into the other clinic, and it does give me confidence that they'll be looking at our particular history and test results and tailoring the treatment to us.

So the next thing we need to do is get a copy of our file from the old clinic and fill in all the paperwork to send off to XXXX clinic for an appointment. The wait for an appointment is likely to be around eight weeks after that, and then they do a monitoring cycle before going for the actual treatment. The next time I'm going to be able to fit a treatment in with work is late May/June, which should fit in reasonably well if I start the ball rolling now.

I wouldn't say I'm excited about it, but I do feel more optimism than I did before IVF #2, when it felt as though we and the clinic were just going through the motions for the sake of being able to say we'd done all we could. This time, the treatment will be very different, a lot more tailored to my specific circumstances, but also a lot more onerous.

If he'll just give me the chance to get started, I can see this having a chance of working...

Quick whinge before I leave for work

Every year in January and July, I have to deal with the part of my job that I hate the most - liaising with my contacts in each of the 17 offices around the country to work out people's training needs for the next six months and then booking people onto courses.

It's a thankless task, and I've discovered that it's impossible to please everybody - and even more impossible to persuade more than half of the people I have to deal with to meet the deadline they're given.

But I think what I hate the most at the moment is that most of the people I'm dealing with are in their twenties or early thirties. They've been out of university a few years and have gained professional qualifications, many of them picking up spouses along the way. And in my experience, there are way more women than men in the lower echelons of my profession.

What all this means is that every time I get in touch with my group of contacts, at least one of them either has just disappeared on maternity leave or is just about to. And there are usually several people who need to be taken off the waiting lists for courses because they're disappearing off on maternity leave too.

And when I have to do the course bookings on the day AF shows up, every new person I have to congratulate on her impending maternity leave makes me wonder all the more why it's never my turn.

Perhaps I'll hand in my notice today and see if I can go and get a job on an oil rig or in a seminary or something...

Random thoughts

• I was telling someone at work this week about the hair analysis thing, and saying that I was going to be scalping DH some time in the next week. She joked, "What, so you're sending off your DNA so they can clone you? Isn't that a rather extreme way of getting a baby?" Now there's an angle I haven't explored yet...
• A couple of weeks before Christmas, I was halfway through the two week wait for IVF #2 and I went into a bookshop that was having a closing-down sale. I haven't told anyone this, but there was a beautiful little set of books that I bought as a present for Rucksack. If there's no sign of a baby coming for us by the time my sister's baby comes along, I'll probably give it to him/her as a Christening present.
• I have similar signs of naive optimism all over the place - the big pack of Granola bars that I bought from Costco because my SIL once said that eating one of those before she got out of bed in the morning was the only thing that used to control her morning sickness, the little teddy bear I bought for DH over a year ago with the t-shirt saying "No 1 Dad" and the little rucksack on its back that I intended to give him when I told him I was pregnant, the highchair I bought for my goddaughter 10 years ago that her mother returned to me when I got married saying, "You'll be needing this yourself soon" (and I do use it - when my nieces come to visit)...
• Today is CD 27 of my first cycle after IVF #2. My first cycle after IVF #1 was only 24 days. My cycle is usually 25 or 26 days, so I'm expecting AF to show up any minute now. I've had PMS, but no spotting. I want AF to show up, to prove that everything's still working.
• One of the things that IF robs us of is blissful ignorance. If you find out that you're pregnant at 6 weeks gestation, you're spared four weeks of worry and stress. I've fantasised that my last AF wasn't a real AF and that I'm actually pregnant from IVF #2. I'd love it if someone suddenly told me I was 8 weeks gone, but I know it's just a fantasy.
• The postie just came and delivered the information pack from XXXX clinic. I need to read and digest the information, and then I'll probably tell you all about it tomorrow.
• I'm having a hard time at work at the moment. The firm seems to have been taken over by a bunch of intellectual pygmies with the vision of myopic rhinos. It's hard to see things you've put your heart and soul into being trashed. It's harder for my head of department, who is a wonderful and caring man with a huge intellect and great vision and has worked there for 20 years and built the department up from nothing.
• That woman has another post up on her blog. She seems to be trying to pick a fight. She wants to keep arguing until she's crushed me and proven all my arguments wrong, because she is the Holder of the Truth. I'm not playing. I'm crushed enough already, thanks.

Inertia

Could it be the snow? Another couple of inches have fallen overnight, and it's still falling thick and fast. I just had to cancel my appointment with the osteopath, and my back is protesting gently, but once again, there's no way I can get the car out of our street.

Could it be reluctance to stop enjoying the foods that I know are going to be banned while I've still got them in the house? We're eating the Christmas goodies as fast as we can (as our expanding waistlines will attest), and we invited the neighbours round on Sunday to help us clear some more food from the fridge, but we still have loads of chocolate left.

Could it be exhaustion? To get these hair samples off to Foresight, first I need to get hold of DH and scalp him. Even when I'm working from home, he's out of the house from 7 am to at least 7 pm, then we need to eat, and then we just collapse in a little heap and stare blankly at the goggle box until it's time for bed. His eyes are red-rimmed with exhaustion, and my insomnia is back.

Could it be fear? While we're still planning the hair analysis, the healthy-eating diet and the treatment at another clinic, we still have hope to cling to. Could it be I'm just scared that when we eventually make the appointment, that hope will be taken away from us? I need a good dose of that courage that Egghunt was talking about yesterday.

Whatever the reason, I printed off the forms yesterday at work, but couldn't bring myself to start cutting his hair and answering all his questions when we finished supper, so we've now decided to put it off till the weekend. They only gather together the hair samples and send them off to the lab on Fridays, so that essentially means we've put it off by another week.

We haven't written to Mr No Nonsense to request the copy of our file (he told me on Monday that we both needed to request it, so we need to write a letter that we both sign).

I have rung the potential new clinic and asked for an information pack, but haven't had a response yet and haven't followed it up.

So I'm not totally inert - but I am giving a pretty good impression of a bear that's retreated to its cave to hibernate. It feels a bit like the time before we arranged our first fertility appointment - we talked about it and went round in circles for about three or four months before finally taking the plunge - and then hugely regretted all the shilly-shallying around afterwards.

Must ... get ... back ... in ... action ... again... (but not right now...)

Treacherous tear ducts

Yesterday was my follow-up appointment with Mr No Nonsense after failed IVF #2. I went on my own, because DH finds it hard to get time off work.

I called the clinic up in the morning to make sure the appointment was still going ahead, as the minor roads around here have not been gritted and we had another inch or so of snow overnight. Nurse First Time answered the phone, and she recognised my voice and confirmed my appointment time before I even said who I was. She then remembered which direction I was coming from and recommended the best route to take in order to avoid the roads which are really bad. That's the sort of personal touch I'll miss if we move to a big London clinic.

I had a bit of trouble getting the car out of our road and almost gave up and cancelled the appointment. Then I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way there and arrived just in time, having allowed bags of time.

Mr No Nonsense was the friendliest and chattiest that I've ever seen him - surprising, since the meeting was essentially our parting of ways. He said his recommendation was that we should not try again, as our chances of success were vanishingly small.

I said we were thinking of having one last try in another clinic which seems to have had good results with older women. I named the one I had decided on (we'll carry on calling it XXXX) and the Lister, which TBD recommended. He said he doubted if XXXX would treat me. As he put it, "They'll both be happy to take your money for an initial consult, but there's a reason why XXXX has such good statistics - if someone doesn't look too hopeful, he just won't take them on for treatment." I'd heard that suggested somewhere else, so it wasn't a huge shock to me - and to be honest, if he thinks he can't help me, I'd rather he didn't take my money and give me false hope.

He said we could try the Lister and they probably would take us on, but that he still didn't hold out much hope.

We briefly discussed donor eggs - he wasn't sure how much of a donor programme the Lister has, but at the current clinic they don't have one at all because of the shortage of donors. They do have link-ups with clinics in Spain and the US for people who want to go the donor route.

I asked whether he would recommend using donor eggs with DH's sperm (something that we almost certainly wouldn't do anyway), and at first he said he would, since there are some normal sperm in DH's sample. Then he flicked through to have another look at DH's SA results and muttered, "Hmmmm, I'd forgotten how bad these results were." So I guess that makes it a no, which makes things simpler in a way.

He mentioned embryo adoption as a possibility, but again couldn't help with sourcing the embryos, as his clinic is too small to have a regular supply of embryos from people who have finished their treatment and are willing to donate, and there's no national register.

I held it all together pretty well and managed to give a reasonable impression of a mature and responsible adult until the end, but then my dappy old tear ducts let me down and started leaking salt water all over his consulting room, revealing me as the overemotional female that I apparently still am. He wasn't enormously comfortable with that and immediately offered to go and get me a tissue, coming back with a box of tissues and Nurse First Time.

After we finished, Nurse First Time invited me to go into another room with her, but I said I just wanted to get home. It was only as I was going out to the car park that it occurred to me there might have been something more to discuss rather than her just giving me the chance to compose myself before I left, but I think it's over anyway - I've said goodbye to that clinic and all there is left to do is to get a copy of our file from them to take along to whatever appointment we have next. Or maybe just to file away at home somewhere to prove that we did all we could.

As I was waiting to leave my parking space, someone else was driving in and got stuck on the snow and ice. I leapt out of my car clutching a plastic seaside spade and dug her wheels free. As a distraction technique, it worked to clear my leaky eyes until I got safely home.

And then I got on the internet and found that there's another whole post on that blog I was responding to at the weekend. And it's basically attacking a lot of what I said, which the author has a right to do if she wants to, because it is after all her blog. But to find that people who have IVF are being universally condemned as people who are willing to "kill their children in order to give birth" - that was hard. As well as being totally untrue.

But never mind that it made me feel even worse on one of the saddest days of my life. It was probably meant to, in order to make me recognise my sin and repent.

Bread sauce

You ask, and I provide...!

Bread sauce is a wonderful traditional accompaniment to poultry dishes. It is part of the traditional British Christmas dinner, and is traditionally served with turkey or goose at Christmas. (So, you get that it's traditional? I'm just reading this back and noticed how many times I used that word!)

You can also serve it with chicken, although it's a bit of a faff to make from scratch on a regular basis. It's a thick sauce which, when cold, can get pretty solid and goes very nicely with the meat in a sandwich. (Good old stodgy British food at its best - a sandwich made of two slices of bread with more bread in the middle!)

In medieval times, bread was frequently used to thicken sauces. Bread sauce is the sole survivor of these medieval sauces, and this makes it one of the oldest sauces in British cooking, flavoured with spices brought in from some of the earliest explorations across the world and thickened with dried bread.

Here's a link to Delia Smith's recipe for bread sauce.

Because my comments are still going astray...

My comments on Wordpress are still going astray, and there are two things I really wanted to say on other people's blogs today.

The first is HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Myndi and Short Stuff.

The second is a response to this post by Egghunt - or more accurately, to the post she links to. The comment below is the response I tried to post to the linked post - but because that blog is also a Wordpress blog, my comment disappeared into the ether again (fortunately for me, and unfortunately for the rest of you, I had copied it before I pressed 'submit', so I didn't lose it altogether). Anyway, this is what I said, expanded a bit from the original.

It's simply not true that "every IVF procedure will 'eliminate' almost two dozen embryos" - no clinic can guarantee that every person treated will get anything like that number. Clinics in the UK aim to collect between 5 and 10 eggs, and I have never known anybody over here who had as many as two dozen embryos.

From 6 eggs on our first IVF, we got two embryos, both of which were transferred. From 4 eggs on our second, we had one embryo - none were 'eliminated', but all died inside me and were duly mourned. There was also one other embryo on our first IVF that died within 24 hours of fertilisation - nobody 'eliminated' it or 'got rid of it', it just died.

In the normal run of things in natural conception between healthy couples, it is estimated that only about 25% of embryos that fertilise actually implant. So it's not surprising that a large number of those created through IVF also fail to survive, especially when you consider that many cases of infertility are caused by abnormalities in the eggs and/or sperm, so that the proportion of embryos which are healthy is also likely to be lower.

There is an awful lot of misinformation about and prejudice against IVF, and until I found myself in that situation, I always thought I would obey the Church's teaching without question. My decision to go ahead with IVF involved a lot of research about exactly why the Church is opposed to it, a lot of prayer, and more mental anguish than many people can imagine, because I knew that for the first time ever, I was deliberately thinking of doing something which was at odds with what the Church taught.

The author of the post Egghunt linked to obviously came to a different decision, and that's fine - had I lived in the US, where my research indicates that adoption would be much less difficult for us than it would be over here, I may well have come to the same decision.

But although the Church is opposed to it, for reasons some of which I believe it may reconsider in years to come, Jesus Himself never said anything about IVF - obviously, since it didn't exist in those days. But he did say a lot about love and compassion for your fellow human beings, and about how only God can judge us, and we shouldn't judge other people.

It worries me to hear and read comments from people (and I'm not just referring here to the original poster Egghunt linked to) who seem to believe that they are 'better' Catholics than me either because they have never faced this decision or because they have made a different decision from the one I made. I'm ashamed to say that I used to have that attitude towards Catholics who used contraception or had sex before marriage.

I like to think this experience has given me more humility. I'm a sinner, as all of us are sinners, and I'm no better than anybody else. But I only have one Judge, and I too would react with extreme anger if some other member of my church's congregation took it upon themselves to write me a personal letter and tell me that what I had done was sinful.

And now for something completely different

Yesterday I made the most amazingly delicious soup I've ever tasted, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you, in case you ever have all these ingredients to hand.

First, you need to have a big family party. Serve stuffed olives and antipasti before the meal begins. When you finish the last few about a week later, keep the garlic-infused olive oil that's left in the bottom of the bowl.

The family party should also involve plenty of bread sauce, of which about half is left over, because you made the same amount that your mother always provides on Christmas Day, forgetting that half of that is used for the Boxing Day party and sundry other big family meals over the next few days. Cheat point - my bread sauce came out of a packet, so it's as simple to make as emptying the packet and stirring it into the milk as it heats up.

The family party should also involve a large ham boiled in Coca-cola - seriously, if you've never tried this, you must! All I did was put the ham in a large saucepan (technically, I think it's called gammon before you boil it - never did work that one out!), add a large onion cut in half and then pour in enough Coke to cover the top of the ham (or gammon). Bring to the boil - it is a bit difficult to tell when it's beginning to boil, because of course it fizzes from the moment you put it into the saucepan - and then simmer for the same amount of time you would if you were boiling it in water (this depends on the weight of the gammon. Or ham). When the ham is cooked, remove it from the saucepan and keep the liquid, with the onion still in it, in a large jug.

A week later, cut a large butternut squash into big chunks, drizzle the leftover olive oil from the stuffed olives and antipasti over it, and roast at gas mark 6 for about half an hour.

When the squash is ready, pour the remaining stock (about half of what you started with, as you've been using it in stews and sauces during the intervening week), complete with the by now pretty much shredded onion, into a saucepan. Put it over a medium to high heat and when it looks close to boiling, add the butternut squash and the leftover bread sauce. Reduce the heat a little so it doesn't boil and heat for a bit longer until everything is thoroughly warmed through.

When you get bored of waiting for it to be ready, take it off the heat and put the whole lot through a blender, then leave on the stove for later.

When your husband walks in several hours later, heat it up while he takes his wet boots off and freshens up a bit. Serve it with freshly-made bread, and I can guarantee that he'll be delighted that he just spent four hours taking five different trains through the snow and ice to get home to you.

A decision?

I'm on my own again this morning - in all this snow and ice, I've sent DH away to make sure his parents are OK, get some shopping in for them, etc. The easiest way for him to go is to take the train straight from work and come back the next day, so I'm expecting him back some time this afternoon. I'm glad he's gone, especially as their boiler broke down yesterday, and although it was repaired within 24 hours, I think he needed the reassurance of being able to see them and see that they're all right.

With the evening to myself last night, I wrapped myself in a blanket and ate too much cheese (boy, did I feel sick by the time I went to bed - will I ever learn?!) while watching Top Gear on the telly.

I also had a phone call from a very dear friend. We each have the calling plan for our phone where UK calls are free for the first hour - let's just say this was a two-call conversation.

She is the only person I knew before all this started who had gone through IVF. She conceived twins on her second attempt, and although her circumstances were totally different (she and her husband needed IVF because her husband had had chemotherapy for cancer, and they had frozen some of his sperm before he started treatment), she is the only one of my family and close friends who really understands what we're going through. She has also come out the other side and survived, so is a fantastic person to talk to about it all.

I told her about IVF #2 and that we were thinking of changing clinics and going to one in London. Instantly, she said, "Not XXXX?" and mentioned the one that's currently top of my list. I cautiously asked her what she knew about it, and she had nothing but positive things to say.

Somehow, although she never went there herself, and although her IVF treatment was almost 10 years ago, I trust what she has to say almost more than I trust my own research.

So it might change again a thousand times, but for today, I think my mind is made up - and for today, that gives me a sense of peace. And now, because I've got the house to myself and it's cold outside, I'm going to go and soak in a really long hot bath with a good book...

Mind games

So, this is the post that's going to make you all realise what a total fruitcake I am (if you hadn't already).

For the first time since we started this whole business, this month I have no two week wait. I know for absolute certain that I can't have conceived this month. There are two reasons for this certainty. One is that at the time I was ovulating, we were staying at my SIL's house, sleeping on the floor on a peculiar arrangement involving a cot mattress and the cushions from a sun lounger, with seven other people and two dogs in the house, I had a bad back, and there was no way we were getting any action.

The second reason is that DH suffers from delayed ejaculation, and even at the best of times there is a fairly mechanical extra step we have to take in order to get his crippled swimmers anywhere near my rotten eggs - and we haven't taken that extra step at any time during this cycle.

After I got the BFN (twice) on the last IVF, I stopped taking the Cyclogest and my period showed up as normal. Approximately 10 days later, I experienced all the usual symptoms of ovulation (though I still haven't gone back to charting, so don't know what my BBT has been up to).

So only an absolute fruitcake would keep catching herself noticing symptoms and wondering if they meant anything...

Choices

The first time I went to the US, I had been working in China for 18 months. It was the early 90s - before the big cities started to have Western supermarkets and stock Western goods in a lot of places. You could only get cheese in Beijing - there was only one type available, and the excitement when we had visitors from Beijing and they would bring a block of standard Beijing cheese with them was huge. Deodorant had to be sent from England, and even if Cadbury's chocolate had been available locally, my volunteer's salary wouldn't have been enough to allow me to buy it.

I went straight from there to the US, and the biggest feeling I remember on my first trip to Walmart is of bewilderment. There were such riches in there - you'd have something on your shopping list and not only would you be able to find it, but you had a choice of several different brands. The choice paralysed me - I wasn't familiar with these American brands, and I just didn't know which one to pick. I ogled and admired, and then I left the shop with empty hands.

I'm facing the same problem now.

When we first realised we might have a problem, I discovered that there was a hospital five miles from our home which offered fertility treatment. It was the natural choice, and the only one we could get to without travelling for at least an hour each way. When I realised how intensive the treatment was, and how many visits to the clinic would be needed, I was grateful that it was so close.

After Mr No Nonsense was so dismissive of our chances at the follow-up appointment after our first IVF, I wondered if we might be better off going somewhere else. But there was nowhere else nearby, and proximity and the fear of the unknown won out over the thought of having to juggle travelling for a couple of hours a day during treatment with working full time and everything else. Plus, although Mr No Nonsense was a little brusque, Nurse Perfect was, well, perfect, and I was happy to stay with her and the other staff, all of whom knew my name and treated me with friendliness and consideration.

Now we're looking at it again. I've come round to the idea that if we chose somewhere near where we both work, we wouldn't have so much added travelling time, because I could just nip in there on the way to work.

And this is where our problem begins - because halfway between my office and DH's office, and about five to ten minutes' walk from both, is Harley Street. And Harley Street is stuffed with fertility clinics. So suddenly I'm that 23-year-old in Walmart again, bewildered and dithering.

Do we go to the chap who specialises in couples who've had failed treatments elsewhere, who gets the best results in the country and who gives you a blood test every day during treatment (including Saturday and Sunday - eurgh, more travelling into London) and adjusts your medication according to what it shows? But he's also the most expensive in the country, and I've read a number of complaints about the impersonal way patients are shuffled through the waiting-room and the fact that they're often seen up to two hours after their appointment time - which would negate the advantage of being near the office.

Or do we go to the chap who used to work with that one and has now set up on his own? He uses similar methods, has studied under the master, but is less well-known and so less busy (and less successful).

Or do we go to the clinic that's attached to one of the famous teaching hospitals, where the daughter of one of my colleagues had a successful treatment last year? That may not be possible, because I've heard that they have quite a low cut-off limit for FSH levels, and mine is probably above that.

Or do we try the one which offers a deal on three treatments for the price of two? We did say we'd try three times in total, and this will be our third attempt. Can I cope physically and psychologically with another three attempts?

Or do we go to the one which specialises in treating older women with gentle IVF, where they use lower doses of the stimulating drugs and aim for fewer eggs but higher quality? Fewer eggs than I had on my last cycle would mean one mature egg - that really would be putting all my eggs in one basket, but if the quality was better...?

Or do we choose one of the others that I haven't even looked into yet - but maybe I should, because one of them might be the perfect one?

I think I'll be happier once we've made a decision - in reality, that means once I've made a decision and then explained my reasoning to DH, because he takes no part in all of this research, however much I try to get him interested - and presenting him with all these options would just upset and confuse him.

But who's to say I'm not upset and confused too...?

Wordpress blogs

I just wanted to let Myndi and Egghunt know that I'm thinking of them - I've been trying to comment on both your blogs the last few days, but when I press 'submit', my comments just disappear. Hopefully I'll be able to comment on your blogs again soon, but until that happens, please don't think that I'm ignoring you - I will keep trying!

The other side of it

It was a wonderful Christmas celebration with my family, and overall we had a very good fortnight. But...

When my brother and sister-in-law, who were seeing my sister for the first time since she announced her pregnancy, were exclaiming over her in excitement and trying to work out whether the baby had been conceived in Spain when we were there for their wedding, I was reminded that I ovulated on their wedding day. We were having our last-ditch attempt before going for our first appointment at the clinic, and we had high hopes for a little Spanish baby - before we got home and Mr No Nonsense shattered our dreams with his blunt assertion that DH's sperm were so bad that we would never be successful on our own.

When Niece #1 was chattering away to DH on the way back from setting off the Chinese lanterns, she said, "I'm going to get married before #2 and #3, because I'm the oldest. And then I'm going to be a mummy before them as well." He reported this to me as a cute thing that she'd said. And I said, "I'm seven years older than her mother."

When I was waiting for DH to meet me at the supermarket and help me carry the shopping home, I overheard a conversation between an expectant father and a middle-aged woman. He was saying that he wasn't really excited about the impending birth, and they launched into a long conversation about sleepless nights, dirty nappies and what hard work parenthood is. Before I accidentally told them a few home truths about people who don't appreciate how lucky they are, I picked up my heavy shopping bags and started to trudge home without waiting any longer for DH.

These are just three examples among so many. Reminders of what we're missing crop up in both expected and unexpected places, and often seem to hit me just when I'm feeling at my most vulnerable.

I had another long talk with DH about this about Monday. I said I knew we could have a generally happy life without children. But I also knew that for as long as I'm not a mother, I'm going to feel incomplete, and I'm going to be wounded day after day by little comments and incidents which remind me of what I'm missing out on.

He's not doing so well either. He was completely knocked back by our first IVF failure, because as soon as I'd had the embryo transfer he was absolutely convinced that I was pregnant, and that our problems were over. In his mind, he made no allowance and no preparation for the possibility of failure, and he's been struggling ever since.

It all came to a head on New Year's Eve, when he refused to come out with me - because he just wanted to close his eyes and forget that 2009 had ever happened. I'm glad I now understand that, and we've done a lot of talking since then and hopefully understood each other a bit better.

But when will this ever get easier? If we don't have children, will the little incidents, comments and overheard conversations ever lose their sting? And will I ever manage to go more than an hour without thinking about this?

Family Christmas celebration

Wow, three whole days since I posted, and here's what I've been up to...

We had a marvellous time with my family. My parents arrived on Friday and stayed until Sunday early evening.

On Friday I made mince pies and boiled a ham in Coca-cola - if you've never done this, I can heartily recommend it. Not only is the ham beautifully tender and delicious, but it makes the most fantastic stock - I used some for the gravy on Saturday, and will use the rest to make some soup later in the week. I also made a cheese and onion pie for Friday's supper - one of my father's favourite things.

I was up early on Saturday to start cooking - we started with parma ham and melon, then we had roast goose with two types of stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, ham, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sprouts, carrots and peas, and a gravy that was about 80% Coke from the ham and 20% port. For pudding we had a choice of Christmas pudding with cream or brandy butter, trifle or mince pies. Then there was a cheese board. My mother had made the trifle and brandy butter and brought them with her, and I did everything else.

My parents, younger brother and his wife, sister and her husband and three children, DH and I sat down to the meal, and my other sister and her partner popped in briefly and took goose sandwiches away with them.

Nieces #1 and #2 had their own little table (actually our coffee table) and behaved beautifully, eating every scrap of food they were given and staying in their seats throughout the first three courses, until I cleared their table and put on a video for them while we had our cheese. I gave them their drinks in the dolls' teaset again, which was a popular move. #3 was also very happy to stay in her highchair as long as I kept plying her with parsnips and sprouts.

We had musical Christmas crackers, each containing a tooter that played a different note, and #1 'conducted' as we played several tunes on the tooters.

Our family tradition is that on Christmas Day we have our Christmas lunch and then watch the Queen's speech before my father dishes out the presents one by one. I had recorded the Queen's speech, so after we finished eating and persuaded #1 that we'd played enough songs, we watched the Queen and then exchanged our presents.

Then we went out for a short walk (or waddle, after having that much to eat). It felt so much like Christmas that we were amazed to see other people going about their business, coming out of shops and acting like it was just another ordinary day.

We set off more Chinese flying lanterns - one for each household. DH and I made our wish together as ours floated off into the heavens, and my parents, brother and sister did the same for theirs. #1 and #2 danced about excitedly watching them fly away, and #1 ran up the hill with my father to follow each one for as long as she could, while #3 looked on with an expression of total bemusement.

On Sunday I set the breadmaker going just before we left for Mass, so when we got home we were able to have freshly made bread with cold meat and cheese for lunch. We then lit the fire and had a cosy afternoon chatting, reading the papers and watching the cricket. The cricket was a real treat for my father, as it's only shown on satellite TV and he doesn't have that at home.

My parents left shortly before teatime to go and spend a couple of days with my sister, and after they'd gone DH and I toasted teacakes on the fire for our tea.

Yesterday morning we were back to getting up at 6:15 for the 7:10 train into London for work, and the day really dragged. Today I'm working from home - at the moment I'm just waiting for my study to warm up, as we turned the heater off in there over the weekend to use it as an extra fridge for all the party food.

All in all, it was a weekend to remember - a marvellous day on Saturday, and then I was pleased to be able to give my parents a real and much-needed rest on Sunday.

Just a quickie

Thanks so much for all your comments yesterday - it appears I do have more than five readers after all!

We're having all the UK family over for a Christmas celebration today - 8-10 adults and three children for roast goose with all the trimmings - so I must get down to the kitchen and get to work...

Have a good day, and thanks so much for all your support.

Good riddance to 2009

Yesterday DH and I went shopping to prepare for the Christmas celebration we're having this weekend with my family. Very unusually, I left my mobile at home, and when we got home in the early evening there was a text message from one of the neighbours inviting us round to see in the new year.

DH said he had a headache, and I thought it was probably dehydration, as neither of us had drunk much during the day. I plied him with drinks, massaged his temples and fed him a nice supper. He started to relax and feel better, but then when I was ready to leave at about 10, he refused to come with me.

It may seem unreasonable for me to expect him to come out when he has a headache, but before I mentioned going out he said that he was feeling better. There's also a history here. He very often grumbles about going out or tries to wriggle out of invitations. I look at his father, who hasn't left his house since October 2007 other than when DH and I have taken him in the car, and I worry about DH turning into his father.

As I set off next-door on my own, I was almost in tears, feeling a sense of dread that this was my life from now on, going to parties on my own and making excuses for my antisocial husband - and increasingly tied to looking after him as he turns further and further inwards.

I had a lovely evening with the neighbours, and at midnight we went outside and set off Chinese flying lanterns. We each wrote a wish on our lantern to be carried up to the heavens - can you guess what mine was?

I actually almost lost it when the wind caught my lantern as I was trying to light it and it looked for a few moments as though it was going to go up in flames without ever taking to the air. It just felt too symbolic of the loss of my dreams in 2009.

Fortunately, someone came and helped me to sort it out, and a couple of minutes later my lantern soared into the air and floating off above the rooftops, carrying my wish with it.

The neighbours are good friends and know about our IVF, and one in particular gave me a huge hug at the end of the evening as he said in such a gentle and caring way that he really hoped all our dreams would come true in 2009.

And then I came home to my snoring husband.

We had a long talk this morning and I told him how I felt last night and how I worried that he was turning into his father. He really opened up and told me how he's been feeling since we got back from Lanzarote. He gave me a lot to think about, and I'm glad we had the conversation - and as it turns out, I was right to be upset and worried about his refusal to come out last night.

It turns out we have a lot to work through in 2010. We're both glad to see the back of 2009, and now that we have the clean slate of a new year, we're hoping that one day soon we'll be able to look forward with optimism to whatever the future holds.

I hope 2010 will be better for us than 2009 has been - and I wish all five of my readers a very happy 2010 and hope that it brings good things to you too.