made my day

The lovely One Who Understands at http://onewhounderstands.blogspot.com/ nominated me for this award - thank you, what an amazing suprise.

The rules of the “One Lovely Blog Award” are: Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link. Pass the award to other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

I would like to pass this along to

• InfertileNaomi at 99 Reasons to Laugh at Infertility
• Best When Used By at Best When Used By
• C at Cats With Passports
• IVF 40+ at http://ivf40plus.blogspot.com/
• Mekate at I can't whistle
• Simple at Unconventional Journey
• Babychaser at The Baby Chase
  

There should be more on the list but so many of the blogs I follow have received the award already.

Thank you so much for reading my blog; while I wouldn't wish this struggle on anyone, it's very comforting to know that there are people who understand the battle.

ears

My darling cat has an ear infection. I am so thankful that it isn't anything worse that I am delighted to have to clean out her ears and put drops in them twice a day. She also had some blood taken so she has a shaved patch on her neck, which looks so sad.

BUT - she doesn't have any respiratory problems and her heart is good and strong. The relief is so great that it is well worth the £169 taken from my fertility treatment funds.

floods of tears

My darling cat spent a good while this afternoon sneezing and vigourously washing her little nose. She's stopped now, ambled into the kitchen and had a snack, settled back onto her favourite red jumper and is sound asleep.

I know that cat sneezes can be caused by anything and can mean anything. My darling cat is 15 years old and has (according to the vet) bad teeth. Google Vet tells me that infected dental abscesses can be the cause of sneezing... I completely freaked out and have spent the last 30 minutes in floods of tears.

Tears of worry for my darling cat, tears of hope for POAS-ing on Friday, tears because I think I have PMT (hence the tears) and therefore tears of advance disappointment for Friday. I am now bunged up, nasal, red-eyed and puffy-faced.

I have to get over myself and CHILL!! :-)

my darling little cat

it's all an act

My friend Phoebe at work is pregnant with her second child. Her daughter was conceived naturally but this baby is the result of IVF and is due in December. I'm very happy for Phoebe as she desperately wanted another child and had been TTC for 2 years.

Phoebe knows my history, she knows about both previous pregnancies and that we are trying again. She even knows I had my second IUI, which is why she stopped by my office today to ask how I was doing.
"Fine!" I said chirpily. "Just waiting to POAS but am feeling very good about it all." She asked how Significant Other is doing and I said again, smiling, "oh fine, anxious about the result but feeling positive".

"You've been so strong these past 18 months," Phoebe said. "I really admire how you've managed to stay so sane. I would have lost it completely by now."

You would think hearing those words would make me feel good, yes? No. I feel a fraud, and a liar and that I have stolen her admiration.

Because I'm a mess.

I miss my babies every day. I hate myself every day for not holding on to those pregnancies. I blame myself every day for letting my babies die inside me when I should have protected them and kept them safe and warm. It's the one place, isn't it? The one place in the world where you should be safe, inside your mother who loves you so much already.

I don't feel positive about this IUI. I know it's crazy but I also know I'm not alone in putting every single symptom, real or imagined, present or absent, under the microscope. I'm not feeling PMT-ish - is that good or bad. I'm going to the loo more - is that beta-HCG building up or did I just drink a lot today. Does my skin look different or is it the light.

Significant Other is also not feeling positive. We were working out the bill for this recent round, he said "how about I pay for this and you pay for the next?"

I keep looking at him and wondering - when is he going to leave me? Will he really wait for another cycle if this one fails? When will he say "enough" if we go on to IVF and that fails? If I get pregnant and lose it again, how long will he stay afterwards? I know that I have to have a healthy baby to keep this relationship together and the pressure is making me crazy.

Now I second-guess everything. At the weekend he got impatient with me because I asked him to get something down from the top of the wardrobe (I'm 5-foot nothing) and said "what would you do if I wasn't here?" - does that mean he's planning on not being here? He said he had to work after dinner this evening and went to the other room but when I went past he was looking at pictures of him and an ex-girlfriend - is he thinking of getting back together with her?

See? Not strong, not sane. Crazy.

Kay

Today was my best friend's 10 year anniversary. She and I had many nicknames for each other growing up, I'm going to use "Kay" to write about her.

We met on the first day of secondary school. Her deskmate had made an unkind comment about her, not realising Kay was standing right behind. As soon as she noticed, she and her coterie beat a hasty retreat and I, hapless 11-year-old that I was, said "she didn't mean it, I think she was talking about someone else".

Kay, with the grace that I soon came to realise was characteristic, let my inept lie pass unremarked and smiled. We were best friends from that moment until she died, far too early at the age of 31.

She was amazing, was Kay. She had a congenital disease with which she battled every day of her life, but you would never have known unless she told you. She had to take medication with every meal and very early on we developed a system to hide this from others. It was simple, but hey - we were 11 years old. At the appropriate time in the meal, Kay would glance at me and I would drop something, kicking it discretely so that it landed near to her. Kay would dive under the table, retrieve the fork / spoon / salt cellar and slip a tablet into her mouth. All through school people must have thought that I was both incredibly clumsy and incredibly rude to make someone else retrieve what I had dropped.

Because Kay refused to be defined by her disease or treated any differently, she hardly told a soul about it. Even later in her illness when she developed diabetes and needed to eat regularly and at certain times she was reluctant to say anything. She would get incredibly angry at her doctors who, with the best intentions, would often say things like "you've done so well to do your 'O'-Levels / go to university / travel / get married considering..." She felt that it took something away from her achievements.

Kay wasn't ever going to be able to have children, her body just wouldn't have been able to stand the strain pregnancy would have put on it. It was, apart from the disease itself, one of the biggest sorrows of her life. When she got married to her soulmate, the sorrow became even harder to bear. I would go and stay with her when her husband was away and we would have long, late-night discussions about if it would be possible for me to be a surrogate. I would have done anything for Kay and we were actually going to make enquiries when she got sick with what turned out to be her final illness.

One of my most treasured possessions is the last birthday present Kay gave me: a wire egg holder. I keep it on the kitchen window sill and every day it reminds me of my beloved best friend, and of life's little ironies.

in yer face

I have been faced with baby-overload today. It doesn't usually bother me quite so much but, when you are waiting to POAS, everything and anything stabs.

This morning, flushed with the victory of having persuaded (or rather blackmailed) Significant Other to come with me to help me buy and bring home a new ironing board (oh the glamour), I stopped first in the shopping centre's loo. And there, pasted to the back of the stall door, complete with colour images, was an advertisment for a nearby clinic which offers 3D scanning to pregnant women.

A couple of hours later, we were in our favourite pub for brunch and the paper. I bagged the review section of The Gu@rdi@n and settled back to read and the opening article was a 2-page spread (complete with pictures, natch) about the emerging literature on bringing up children.

Back home this afternoon my good friend Too rang for a chat, and to tell me that her sister-in-law had given birth to twins. Her sister-in-law is 46 and hadn't even been trying to get pregnant.

Also in the news yesterday, 51-year-old J@ckiey B.udden is reported as wanting to have a baby as a tribute to her late daughter. She is quoted as saying "I am sure I can get pregnant naturally so I don't even need to think about IVF". The poor woman lost her daughter earlier this year and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I will admit to you, dear interwebs, I found her complacency just a little bit galling.