waiting time

Second IUI took place this afternoon, and now we wait. Seventeen days until POAS, how did we get through it last time? Significant Other isn't good at waiting, in fact he's quite pants at it. They kept us waiting for almost an hour at the clinic and Significant Other was up and down like a jack-in-the-box, anxiously asking when it would be our turn. In the end I suggested that he go back to work but just as he jumped up eagerly to leave, we were called.

And so we wait...

moving on a-pace

Who would have thunk it, tiny follicle is now apparently about ready to pop. I was amazed at today's scan as past experience has taught me that this part of the process takes my body over a week. Still, I am not complaining! I was shuttled from the ultrasound room to the clinical area and given my HCG injection and the IUI takes place tomorrow at mid-day.

I'm far too wary to be excited. Significant Other is having a stressful day at work so all he could say when I told him that tomorrow was the day was "it's going to be very difficult taking 2 hours off". He doesn't mean it, he's just scared of getting excited, same as I am.

But, cautious though I'm being, I still can't help looking at my glass of diet coke and hoping, hoping, hoping that it will be my last for several months...

lists

I had the second ovulation scan this afternoon, little follicle had grown a minuscule amount since Friday. Back again tomorrow...

It's another blue day. I'm not sure why so I've decided to blame the frankly un-summery weather and to distract myself by making a list of things to do between now and the IUI. I love lists, they give me something tangible to do, and give my life structure during that brief 5 minutes between making the list and losing the list.

1. drink some wine, that lovely Blossom Hill White Zinfandel I like so much
2. have as much coffee as I like, and make sure it's the good stuff, not instant
3. have poached eggs on toast for supper one night
4. use the lavender bath oil I was given for my birthday
5. clean out the kitty litter - okay, not so much of a treat but still something I can't do while waiting to POAS...

As I've said before, it's the little things...

reasons to be cheerful

Sunday evenings are blue times. It's the end of the weekend, it's the start of another 5 days at work, it's when I weigh myself and usually find out that I haven't lost an ounce.

But - what never fails to lift my mood:

• http://icanhascheezburger.com/
• http://www.theonion.com/content/index
• a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive
• my cat
  

birthday

It was my birthday yesterday, celebrations started with leaving the house early to go to the clinic for my first ovulation scan of this cycle. A follicle, as I live and breathe! Tiny, naturally, as the day 10 scan is far too early for my messed up 40-day cycle, but a follicle nonetheless. This was followed by the joy that is having my blood taken. I have small and impish veins; just as the nurse thinks she's in, little vein decides to go for a wander a little more to the left. Nurse pursues with needle, vein double-backs, nurse and needle follow. Finally stabbed and blood extracted, little vein shows its disapproval of the process by bleeding freely for some considerable time.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the South Bank and getting soaked. It was a nice day and I enjoyed spending some rare time with Significant Other. But the thought would keep creeping in - I was meant to have a 10-day old baby by now.

TWA

I work at one of the London hospitals which dealt with the injured from the July 7th bombings in 2005. It's not a day that any Londoner will ever forget. At our hospital non-urgent outpatient clinics were cancelled so that the nursing and medical staff could instead go and help out in A&E, theatres, and wards with room for the expected influx. People like me were used as runners, going from ward to pharmacy, from A&E to labs delivering forms, messages and in some cases anxious relatives as the portering service was stretched to the max moving patients and equipment from one place to another.

Then at about 3.30 an email from the chief executive told us non-essentials to start making our way home. In the final paragraph the CE issued some special instructions. As reprisal attacks had already begun, Asian staff members were advised to wear their hospital ID, complete with NHS lanyards, displayed prominently.

In the days and weeks that followed almost every one of my non-Caucasian friends had something to tell about their commutes to and from work. Mostly it was that no-one would sit next to us, regardless of how full the bus or tube carriage was. Often people would be quite obviously keeping an eye out, anxiously starting at any sudden movements and shifting away pointedly from shopping bags. For a long while none of my friends would listen to their MP3 players or use their mobiles on public transport. It was summer so outer clothing was minimal but lots of people wondered what would happen if this atmosphere of mistrust continued into the winter.

What brought those days so clearly to mind was an incident on the way home this evening. A friend of mine had sent me a small parcel to work. It has "fragile" written on all sides and so I was carrying it carefully in my hands and not casually tucked under my arm when I got on the bus. And I noticed that the driver eyed my parcel, as did 2 other people I walked past on my way to the top deck. The woman I sat down next to flinched away from me, eyes darting first nervously to my face and then dropping down to the parcel. She relaxed marginally as she read the hospital address written clearly on the top, but she took the first opportunity she had to move to a seat several rows behind for the rest of the journey.

It all just brought it home to me that I will probably now be forever guilty of travelling while Asian.

it's the little things

Goldilocks "forgot" again to replace the biscuits she Hoovered up.

I know it must seem like I'm a bit obsessed but it's the little things that get to you, isn't it? In the past 7 months, Goldilocks has bought exactly zero packets of biscuits but has continually helped herself when JJ, Barbara Woodhouse, Garbo and I have provided the provender.

It was only a packet of custard creams but it's not the money, it's the principal...

ups and downs

An ups and downs day today.
Downs

• Pregnant ladies day at work (Phoebe and Monica). They both work part-time and usually not on Mondays so I was a bit blind-sided when I was caught in the middle of the "thank goodness for the second trimester" talk at the kettle.
• Computer kept crashing every time I tried to save any of my work.
• Goldilocks ate the last of the biscuits and then "forgot" to replace them and Starbucks had run out of Rocky Road bars by 3.30.
• Got into a bit of an arguement with Significant Other over the Ashes highlights - fair enough he didn't want to watch it over dinner but he also kicked up a bit of a fuss when I asked him to record it if I wasn't home in time for the start. I used the Force to make the bus go faster...
• Ran out of croutons and I do love a crunchy salad (oh my god, talk about middle-class angst!!!!)

Ups

• My MP3 player proved my theory that it is intelligent and played almost all my favourite songs on random play on the way home, including "Falling" by McAlmont and Butler which took me straight back to the V Festival of 2002 and dancing in a tent with my best mates Marathon Man and the BFG.
• My internet connection at work being the only one that didn't crash until 1.30 this afternoon so I was able to listen to Test Match Special and keep my cricket-loving colleagues informed as each wicket fell.
• A lovely long chat with Fairy, all about her newly single social life. She's having a great time and she's starting to be happy again, which is just brilliant.
  
• The cricket score and watching the highlights (I won the battle and recorded them).
• Haagen-Dazs strawberry cheesecake ice cream for dessert.
• Realising that tomorrow is my last dose of Clomid for this cycle - fantastic!
  

that Sunday feeling

I'm feeling grumpy and unsettled andI have that "homework not done" Sunday feeling. It doesn't help that

1. Mr Thong and Yappy's Dad are fighting it out downstairs. The dance music won the first round but now the video-game bombing has the advantage
2. The batch of Clomid I have this cycle isn't coated so it tastes really quite disgusting, however quickly I try to knock the tablets back
3. I did an hour of ironing this afternoon but the basket is still overflowing
4. There are no chocolate biscuits left. I think that this upsets me more than anything else...
   

leather on willow

Significant Other is working in the other room so I am listening to TMS via my laptop, but very quietly indeed, so quietly that I didn't even yell out with glee as the third Australian wicket (Ponting) fell. Significant Other doesn't like cricket, his only comment on the topic is "why bother, it will only end in a draw". He thinks this is highly original and never seems to notice the polite but pained false laugh it elicits from his audience (usually my dad, uncle and cousins - all cricket mad).

But, bless him, he does try to get in the spirit of the thing for my sake. Yesterday he drew horns on the front-page photo of Ricky Ponting in the Guardian. It's not an in-depth discussion on the wisdom of not enforcing the follow-on but it meant the world to me!

howzat

Ponting out for 2. I have no words to express how very, very happy that has made me this afternoon.

Ah, bliss...

it begins again

We are going to have another cycle of IUI. I have a shiny new box of Clomid and the date for my first ovulation scan and away we go.

I've spent quite a number of hours hanging out in that waiting area (the term "waiting room" being altogether too grand for the partitioned-off section of corridor that it is) and have observed that there seem to be 4 quite distinct groups:
1) the wealthy overseas patients who seem faintly disappointed at first (the waiting area really is uncomfortable) but always come back out from seeing the medical staff smiling and reassured
2) the same-sex couples
3) the young Asian wife and the somewhat older husband
4) the middle-class 40-somethings who used to be called DINKIEs (double income, no kids)

Significant Other and I fall into a sub-group of the last one - the mixed race DINKIEs. We are never the only mixed race couple in the waiting area and on one occasion we were one of 3 matching sets (all Caucasian males and ethnic minority females at that).

Everyone at the clinic is really nice, all the patients are there for the same reason so there is no sense of curiosity or shame. In fact often you see some of the same women each time you go, as these things are quite carefully timed. Invasive and undignified procedures aside, it's not a bad place as clinics go.

But I still really, really, really wish that I wasn't back there again.

under pressure

Aunt Flo came a-calling today. (An American friend of mine used to call it "riding the cotton pony" which I love but have never quite had the confidence to say out loud). Apart from the usual pain and yuckiness, it's another reminder that once again my body has failed to do its womanly duty.

I'm starting to seriously worry about it now. The clocks, biological and otherwise, are ticking faster with each passing month. Either this next cyle or the one after we are going to have to start IVF. And if that fails, or if I do get pregnant but once again lose the baby, then I know that Significant Other and I will part company.

We are both longing for a child (it used to be "children" but beggars etc). The difference is that I want our child and he wants a child. And he knows that there is nothing wrong with him and he can have a proper family if he was with someone younger and whose body worked properly. Losing the second baby brought it all home to him even more than losing the first one did and he told me then that he couldn't say how long our relationship would last without children.

The next few months are, I think, going to be a bit challenging.

collywobbles

Yet another stomach upset brought me home early from work today. It's not all bad, I feel a bit better now and have brought some stuff with me to do later on this evening when I feel even better still.

I've been feeling bad about signing the downstairs neighbours up to receive mail from the RNID. Not on their behalf, but on behalf of the organisation. So I logged back onto their website and made a donation. Restores my sense of karma a little bit.

baby blues

Tomorrow would have been our baby's due date. This is the second time in 8 months that I am facing this empty day but our first lost baby's due date wasn't so bad because we had just found out I was pregnant again. No such distraction this time, alas.

I don't know if Significant Other has remembered, he's said nothing and I don't want to bring the topic up as it will hurt him. It's all made a little bit harder because three of my friends are pregnant and while I am delighted for all of them, I do find it tough sometimes. Today I had a wobble and just kept on thinking "it's not fair"!! Rachel and Ross haven't been trying as long and Rachel is years younger than I am, Phoebe and Joey already have a child and Monica and Chandler have a child too and she's younger than me. My better self has resurfaced this evening, though, and I am feeling a little less selfish.

childish

Our downstairs neighbours are incredibly noisy. There are three of them: Glamour Puss, Mr Thong and Yappy's Dad (Yappy is the dog).

One of them, we think it's Yappy's Dad, loves to play some kind of "blow-em-up" video game. He plays that every evening from around 8.00 until about 12.30.

Mr Thong is into dance music but never seems to listen to an entire track all the way through. Instead he prefers to take the track back to a particular favourite phrase over and over and over again. He likes his music loud enough to make our floor vibrate.

Glamour Puss switches on the CD player as soon as the two men leave the flat in the morning, around 7.00. She at least listens to songs all the way through. To give her credit, she does turn the volume down so that she can have yelled phone conversations in Polish for an hour or so.

They've lived downstairs for almost 2 years now, and only once have they very kindly turned down the noise at 1 am when Significant Other went to complain. I think I must be hormonal or something because this morning I had just had enough. I logged on to the RNID and have got Glamour Puss put on to their mailing list.

I haven't told Significant Other what I've done, he'd be very shocked and rather annoyed at me. Probably right, too. But it's done now and I have to say - I feel very much better about the sounds of virtual bombing coming up through the floorboards...

A glass of wine

I got dizzingly drunk after work last night. It wasn't my intention at all. The plan had been to have a nice, civilised cup of tea and a chocolate eclair in Patisserie Valerie and then go to an event at the Wellcome Collection.

However the tea turned into a glass of rose and the eclair turned into another glass of rose.
"Another?" asked JJ as she drained her white wine and got up resolutely, purse in hand. And then after three glasses of wine the symetery of drinking a fourth pleased us both...

I remember getting home. I remember a brief conversation with Significant Other's friend who was staying with us last night. I remember Significant Other insisting I drank a lot of water. And I remember waking up around midnight to find my cat sitting on my chest, fixing me with a baleful glare.

How did I get so drunk so quickly? I know that half-way down my second glass of wine I was feeling more than a little tipsy so why did I go on to have two more? Am I turning into a middle-aged binge drinker? If you suddenly find that I am blogging about smearing on bright red lipstick and calling waiters "darling", please will you phone Significant Other and tell him to take me home? Thank you.

Back to Life

I’m indulging in an orgy of nostalgia this evening. 80s music is pouring from my laptop, I have a strange craving for a Secret chocolate bar and a glass of Aqua Libra and my hair, because I didn’t attack it with the GHDs this morning, is doing a pretty good impersonation of Crystal Tips.

The reason for this retro mood is earlier this week I got back in contact with a friend I haven’t seen for about 20 years (god bless Facebook). Naturally, after the first email I made a bee-line for my old photo albums and plunged myself back into 1989. I was more than a little disconcerted to find that my hair-style is the same. In fact, because I didn’t iron the frizz flat today, I fastened it back with a clip I’m almost certain I’m wearing in a photo in which I am dressed in a mustard-yellow skirt, complete with braces, a white bat-wing t-shirt and black pixie boots. Don’t judge me hastily, I did much, much worse…

I haven’t seen the people in the photos for almost two decades, how can that possibly be correct? Despite the grey hairs and the occasional “call that music?” comment, I don’t feel I can be old enough for that amount of time to have passed…