Planning...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was right

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

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

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

Hmmmm

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing with it

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pick me, pick me"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bank manager can wait

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

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

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

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

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

Out of sorts

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

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

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

Back home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short pause

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

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

See you in ten days...

Amazing day

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

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

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

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

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

He gets it

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

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

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

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

A hug in an envelope

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

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

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

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

Phew!

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

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

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

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

Riding along in my automobile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When did I become so blase?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh boy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New camera

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

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

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

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



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

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

The extra guest at the party

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

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

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

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

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

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

Utterly spoilt

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forty-one

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

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

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

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