"having fun trying!"

Before anything else I want to apologise in advance to my one IRL friend who knows about, and reads, this blog. In view of his problems at the moment, he's probably going to think "oh cry me a river". So, sorry, BFG.

But this is not an unusual experience among those of us TTC. Well-meaning friends and family who have no idea about what is going on in our lives, have got to the stage of asking Significant Other and me when we are going to have children. My aunts even go as far as to tell me that I'm "not getting any younger" (what? I'm not?? I wish I had known that sooner...). At first we would counter the questions with a casual "oh, we've only been together a year, let's see how it goes" but that doesn't suffice three years into our relationship. So instead we now say "well, fingers crossed..." Which usually leads to the nudge-wink-smirk "Ah, I bet you are having fun trying!" The only socially acceptable reply to that is to laugh and smirk back (Significant Other) or laugh and blush (me).

All the time, of course, we both want to yell - "fun? You think we are having FUN? Sit down, let us tell you how s£x is no longer fun, or romantic or even, quite often, loving. It is now just another stage in our carefully timed regimen of drugs, scans, procedures and testing. There are times when we have to do it, we have no option but to get busy and so we carefully plan mornings and evenings around it. The times when we are expressly forbidden to do it are actually a relief from something which has become a chore. Our baby, if it ever exists, will be conceived either while I am lying on a table in a freezing cold room after a female doctor has injected me with Significant Other's sp£rm, or in a petri dish. We are not having a fun time trying, we are hating every moment of this energy-sapping, money-draining, dignity-robbing, relationship-testing, life-consuming trek."

But we can't. So we make the gender-appropriate responses and move on.

cl0mid...

...tasty...

questions

Today was a very quiet day at work with even more folk away on holiday than last week. I was also mostly entering data onto a database which, as anyone who has ever done it will agree, is repetitive and eventually automatic. That left my mind free to wander /wonder.

So this evening I have questions.

1. Why does the man with the synthetic shirt and the hygiene issues always find me on the bus?
2. And how could he possibly smell so bad at 7.15 in the morning?
3. Last week I lost over 4lbs in weight, so how come this week I put on 5lbs?
4. Why, when I have put 5 clean and ironed shirts in the wardrobe for Significant Other, does he go to the ironing basket and pull out one that is so creased it concertinas and wear that one to work?
5. Why am I still occasionally gleefully replaying the P0nting run-out from yesterday's cricket match in my head?
6. Am I too old (at 41) to have long hair?
7. Why do Significant Other and I talk to each other in "lol-speak"? (nom...)
8. Why do I still think "please God..." even though I lost all vestiges of faith almost 2 years ago?
9. Why is my darling cat still sneezing, even after 5 days of antibiotics?
10. Why am I so completely, illogically, insanely, convinced that I would get (and stay) pregnant if Significant Other and I were married?????
    

CD40/CD1

Aunt Flo finally arrived this morning, bearing her usual gifts of backache, nausea and cramps. Never mind, she is here and I am back to CD1 for my last round of Clomid and my last cycle of IUI.

Also England regained the Ash£s this afternoon, after some quite extraordinary play at the Ov@l. Watching the highlights this evening, glass of wine in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, was deeply, deeply satisfying. :-)

my darling cat - update

My darling cat's ear infection has cleared up, for which I am grateful.

However:
She has a slight heart murmur
She is losing weight although her appetite is fine
That and elevated blood and urine glucose levels are leading the vet to think that she is on the road to feline diabetes
She has a slight upper respiratory tract infection for which I have to give her antibiotics.

My poor little darling cat :-(

CD36

The fridge is stockpiled with chocolate and rose wine.
The big comfy knickers are laundered and ready.
A new box of painkillers has been bought.
Everything is ready - but what has become of Aunt Flo?

st@tus upd@tes

Ah, F@ceb00k. Once just a way to play Scr@bble, to check to see if that witch from school who made your life a misery in the 5th Form failed her degree and ended up working in a fast-food outlet, and to keep up with friends without actually talking to them more than once a year. Good times...

Now of course, as every IF gal knows, it's called In Your F@ceb00k. In the time that Significant Other and I have been TTC / losing babies, friends have variously changed their profile photos to scans of their girlfriend's uterus, updated their status on a daily basis to "Smug is...only 10/9/8 days away from being a mummy", sent friends a gift list for a baby shower (we don't even do those in England, your life is not an episode of "Fr1ends", woman, get a grip) and sent weekly round-robin emails detailing weight gain, feeding regimen, sleeping patterns and stool texture. Okay, I lied about the stool texture, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

Today I was given 2 scoops of Other People's Good News: 1 lovely (and she is lovely, I'm envious but not a total b1tch - yet) baby girl born around the same time ours should have been and 1 photo of a pregnant-for-the-second-time belly, with the always welcome "time you had one of these" email message. To be fair, she knows nothing of our struggles but - how do you respond to that??

I'm happy for all my pregnant / new parent friends, I am really. No, I AM happy for them, like I said, envious but not yet a b1tch (note the use of the word "yet" for the 2nd time, I fear that b1tch-hood is not far away). But still - I'm seriously considering a F@ceb00k boycott until I too can change my profile photo to a grainy picture of my own innards.

love of my life

I told Significant Other last night that he isn't the love of my life. He was okay with that.

I met the love of my life 15 years ago and fell head over heels at first sight. We have seen each other every day since then, apart from when I have been on holiday.

The love of my life has always been there for me, unjudgemental and loving. Has stayed with me while I cried on the worst days of my life, has looked on tolerantly as I made dreadful wardrobe decisions, offered company when I was alone, made every one of my guests feel welcome and loved, has cheered my every single day since the first afternoon we met.

I don't know what I would do without her.

respite please

Apparently the last 18 months haven't been quite hard enough: losing two babies, relationship crises (yes, plural), car getting written-off before Christmas, having to spend £4k on new windows, work-related problems (me, not Significant Other), failed IUIs / timed interc.our.se, watching friends getting married, pregnant and having babies. That's a fairly full schedule for less than 2 years.

But not full enough it seems as last night, just before dinner, I got a call from the vet to say that my darling cat's blood tests showed "cause for concern" with grossly elevated liver enzymes and elevated creatinin. We have to take her in on Monday for another blood test, and a urine test the results of which should "give a better indication of prognosis". Not "diagnosis" but "prognosis". Maybe I have worked in the health service too long, or maybe it's because that was what they said about our second baby before her heart stopped, but I have such a feeling of impending devastation.

I've had just about as much as I think I can manage for a while so please - god /Gaia / universe / overlords from outer space - no more. Just for a little while? We need to re-group and we need my darling cat who is, after all, our one surviving child.

nope...

...not knocked up yet.

Frack.

treating a cat

How to give your cat her treatment for an ear infection:

1. Hunt all over the flat, find cat curled under your bed, dead centre
2. Try and sweet-talk cat out, she ignores you
3. Significant Other goes round other side of the bed and starts moving shoes and backpacks
4. Cat runs into the hall through your legs, you give chase, cat runs back to bedroom to be scooped up by Significant Other
5. Significant Other sits on the sofa, cat held firmly but gently in his arms
6. You approach them sideways, bottle of gunk-clearing liquid in your hands
7. Cat looks at you reproachfully - she never thought you would be the bad guy
8. Your heart breaks a little as you squirt liquid into her ear and "massage" in for 10 seconds
9. Cat shakes her head, liquid lands on Significant Other's lips.
10. Cat and Significant Other both look at you reproachfully
11. You put a bunched-up wad of cotton wool in your cat's ear, gently swirl, withdraw it covered in ear gunk
12. You repeat with the other ear, this time you cat shakes her head and expels the wad of cotton wool with which you were cleaning her.
13. Ear gunk lands on your cream-coloured dress, but still you and Significant Other think she's been very funny and cute
14. Significant Other puts cat down, she stares at you both in outrage and stalks off to the kitchen to await your apologetic offering of a snack
    
15. It's an hour later and time for the second stage - ear drops
16. You search for the cat, she's not under the bed or behind any curtains. She is finally found under the spare room bed, squashed up against the wall behind all those boxes you haven't quite got round to unpacking since you moved in 11 years ago
    
17. Significant Other makes to scoop her out, she cries, Significant Other gets upset, cat senses her advantage and makes a run for it
18. This time you catch her, she struggles, you get a long scratch on one arm
19. Significant Other takes her, she snuggles into his body, you feel both betrayed and betrayer
20. You put in the ear drops and "massage" her ears, and she is free to go
21. She belly-crawls under the bed, you feel dreadful, five minutes later you hear crunching from the kitchen where she is wolfing down the remains of her earlier snack
22. You go to the bathroom to apply S@vlon to your bleeding arm and then -
    
23. What you have been distracted from most of the evening stares at you
24. An HPT all ready and waiting for the morning...
25. And, after 2 weeks of waiting, you suddenly don't want to take it because then you'll know - and you won't be able to pretend to yourself any longer...
    

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.