the walls came tumbling down

In the last 3 months I have:
had a chest infection
had IVF
lost my grandmother
had my third miscarriage
had a cyst painfully removed from my breast
congratulated 4 friends and 1 cousin on the birth of babies / new pregnancy
been living with uncertainty about the future of my relationship
been facing the very real possibility I may never be a mother

And, apart from on this blog, I've been very successfully pretending that nothing has happened.

Until today when I got an email from one of the new mothers. It was a nice email, with a photo attached, telling me about the baby, about how amazing it all is, how exhausted she is and - how she thinks I too must be wanting to start a family. And with that one sentence my carefully-built protective wall came crashing down.

squelch

My right boot sprung a leak this morning just as I left the house, into one of the rainiest days of the year so far. I spent the rest of the day squelching everywhere as our neonate general manager told me that drying my feet against a colleague's radiator breached infection control and health and safety rules. (The radiator in my office has been kaput since October).

I hate having wet feet so by the time I got home I was in a very bad temper.

Until I went into the kitchen and found that Significant Other had brought home pancakes because it's Shrove Tuesday.

It's amazing how the combination of flour, milk, sugar and eggs with syrup poured on top can lift a mood :-)

Valentine's day

We weren't feeling particularly Valentine-y this year, what with Significant Other's whole "I don't know if I can be in a relationship without children" and my "'I don't know what to do with myself'" mind-sets.

Luckily, yesterday was also my favourite aunt's 60th birthday celebration and we, with 3/4 of the rest of my family, descended on her semi in Hertfordshire to drink champagne and eat cake(s).

It was by far the best Valentine's day I've ever spent.

anniversaries

Loribeth wrote this moving post on anniversaries. I'm sure that pretty well everyone in the ALI community can relate to it.

I know that I can. Today is a year since we lost Bean.

Will the pain ever stop?

snow days

Last weekend was fun. We talked about nothing, Significant Other decided nothing but we ate a lot and walked a lot and it was fun.

We did find out one thing though. Apparently, unlike in England, snow doesn't paralyse the public transport system in the rest of Europe. We could go from Amsterd@m to Delft in the snow. On a train. On time.

Amazing... :-)

not yet

The abyss remains unstared at, but we are going away for a long weekend tomorrow and the plan is to spend some time thinking and talking about what to do next.

But it's really for Significant Other to decide what he wants to do, because I already know.

I'm not ready to give up on treatment yet.
I'm not ready to give up on trying to have a child, build a family.
I'm not ready to face the pain and emptiness and - well - despair that decision will bring.
I'm not ready to give up on trying to give my parents a grandchild.
I'm not ready to give up on the dream of some day in the future possibly having a grandchild of my own.
I'm not ready to watch Significant Other battle with the twin demons of facing a life without children, or making a life with someone else.
I am not ready to not pick up the pieces of myself and remake them into someone who will never be a mother.

I'm not ready. Not yet.

the pause button

I lost the last pregnancy over Christmas, we went away for New Year and during that time we were either drinking, eating or laughing with friends. Since we came back to the metropolis, we have been pretty much gunky-b00bie-focussed.

But now that fun is over and we are faced with the big, black abyss which is What Next? We haven't had our WTF appointment with the consultant yet, we haven't really discussed whether we are going to have another shot at IVF (a brief, 30-second moment yesterday when Significant Other said that the first go took too much out of him I don't think really counts as "talking about it") and I can't even begin to think about what's next if we don't have another go.

Bizarrely, the time spent either being sliced and diced or in a c0deine-induced marshmallowy other world has been a relief. But today is exactly one month since I started to properly bleed (floods rather than spots) and exactly 6 months until I am 42 and no longer eligible for IVF in this country.

It's time to take our fingers off the pause button.