auto rant

CD39 and I know that Aunt Flo must be on her way because I can see the signs. More tired than usual, restless, fraying temper, chocolate craving (no, wait, that's every day). Anyway, the biggest clue was getting into a real strop last night. Over my payslip.

Yes it arrived 5 days late because once again it went to my namesake in a different department (I never get hers though, which I think is weird) - but that wasn't why.

Yes, I had less in it this month as my union membership fees went up - but that wasn't why.

It was because of the deduction for tax. Now I am usually as resigned as the next person watching a goodly portion of my salary disappear but I know that it goes to pay for infrastructure and social benefits for those in need (and to fund wars and apparently politicians' second homes but let's not get into that right now). But this month, with Aunt Flo late as usual, BFNs because we never stood a chance this time, pregnant friends / new babies all over the shop and the upcoming IVF, I got hyper-resentful.

What about MY maternity leave? If I never get pregnant and stay that way for the normal amount of time? I've been paying for other people's maternity leave since I was 18 so where's my cut? It's not my choice not to have children, why should I be expected to pay for other women and not get anything in return? (Where is Significant Other's possibly unclaimed paternity leave, come to that?)

So, in the spirit of fairness, if I can't have children I would like my salaried leave, please. I think I have not only paid for it, but earned it too.

poorly

I woke up at 4.00 this morning sick to my stomach. Five hours and several kneelings at the porcelain altar later I feel marginally better and very excited about being able to retain a cup of ginger tea.

numbers

£3927.40 is the total sum spent so far

20 is the total number of blood tests done

17 is the total number of BFNs

17 is also the total number of strangers who have peered, prodded or poked at my lady bits

14 is the number of pounds I have gained since we lost Bean in February

6 is the number of times Significant Other and I have tried to talk about what to do if we can't have children

2 is the total number of babies made

0 is the total number of babies born

100 is the total percent of hope I have lost at this moment in time.

I don't understand

I have just got off the phone with my friend Too. She rang to tell me about a friend of ours Wren who, 4 weeks ago felt her leg aching. A few days ago the ache turned into swelling and she was sent off to her local hospital for investigation of a possible DVT.

They found no indication of deep vein thr0mbosis.

Instead, they found that Wren has metastatic disease saturating her whole body. They think that it started in her lungs and spread rapidly.

She is in a hospice now and her husband told Too that she is expected to live for a few days, a few weeks at the outside.

Wren is 46 and has two young sons. She stopped smoking 25 years ago, after having smoked for a couple of years.

She didn't feel unwell apart from the recent leg pain.

I don't understand how this could happen so quickly. How could it have started in her lungs and she not feel anything amiss? Why wasn't she allowed some symptoms so that she could be investigated and treated from an early stage and so maybe have more time with her boys?

How could she be well one day and dying the next?

I don't understand.

weekends...

...just not long enough

my parents

I come from a close-knit family of many (many) aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, people who aren't related but are called cousins or aunts or uncles - you get the picture. News spreads round the extended family by some kind of supernatural osmosis. If I sneezed right now, here alone in my living room, I swear that in 10 minutes a cousin would be texting me to ask how my cold is.

Loving and generous though my family are, they are also mostly deeply religious and old-fashioned (it's mainly cultural) and they would find it difficult to understand assisted conception. In fact, I heard one of my uncles on the topic a few years ago and he is most certainly of the opinion that some people can't have children "for a god-given reason".

This knowledge makes me even more grateful than I already am to my parents, who not only know all the sad and often gory details of our quest to have a child, but are incredibly supportive. To be sure, my dad has to have most of the information filtered by my mum due to immense squeamishness (he almost passed out 2 Christmases ago when he saw the massive, purple bruises on my arms where my screening bloods had been taken), but they had my IUI days marked on their calendar, have spent ages with Dr Google scaring themselves silly and are constantly buy us treats (fancy chocolate, expensive coffee, hideous souvenirs from their holidays) because they feel so helpless otherwise. Not having to pretend or hide this from my parents, as I know so many people in the ALI community have to do, makes this tortuous trek so much easier.

Anyway, the reason for this somewhat incoherent ramble is I have been re-reading some of my past posts and have realised that I spend a lot of my time on this blog bemoaning my fate. I just wanted to put it down in writing for me to read again later on another "sorry for myself" day.

money, money, money

Readers of this blog will know that I love my darling little cat to the point of distraction, and her recent bout of ill-health has been stomach-churningly worrying. Today I have found out the financial cost - £1286.76. That is all but £313.24 of my IVF savings gone.

I have pet insurance so I know that I will see a goodly part of that sum come back - but probably not before we have to hand over the money for our (first?) cycle. I hope I have been a good enough customer at my bank for them to grant me a temporary overdraft...

half way

Three friends have had babies this year. That's three delighted smiles produced, three congratulatory emails sent, three lots of newborn photos admired, three visits to a baby-clothes shop, three cards and presents chosen and sent, three little bits of my heart chipped away.

Three down, three to go.

a song for every occasion

I love Abb@. Always have, even when it was categorically uncool to do so. They had a song for every occasion, from getting ready to go out ("D@ncing Qu£en") to wistful summing-up ("H@ppy New Ye@r") via escape fantasies ("E@gle").

This morning while driving to my parents, I realised that they even have a song for those of us going through fertility treatment:

"Sometimes when I'm mad
There's a part of me that seems to be a little sad.
Sometimes when I scream
There's a voice in me that says 'you shouldn't be so mean'
Oh no, oh no.
Part of me is acting while the other stands beside
Yes, I am to myself what Jekyll must have been to Hyde

We're like sun and rainy weather
Sometimes we're a hit together
Me and I
Gloomy moods and inspiration
We're a funny combination
Me and I"
(From "Me a.nd I" by Abb@)

Abb@ RULE!

tired and bored with myself

I have been allowing waves of self-pity to wash over me. It has been neither attractive or productive, quite the reverse. I seldom spend time peering at myself in the mirror in the ladies' loos at work - for one thing the lighting is brutal, for another the combination lock has been broken for years so it can be used by all and sundry - and I work in an hospital - so it's not a place you want to linger. But yesterday morning I was putting in my contact lenses so was forced to take a long look at myself.

And I was shocked by what I saw: dry and dull hair, huge bags under red eyes, face puffy and sore from too many tears and hardly any sleep, a 15-year-old shirt with 2 holes in it. The last time I looked this haggard was the evening of my best friend Kay's funeral 10 years ago. Something about that memory made me break the surface, shake the self-pity water from my eyes and strike for shore. (Yeah, I think I've worked that metaphor to breaking point).

Anyway, enough. In the words of Mr Spr1ngsteen, I wanted to change my clothes, my hair, my face. Luckily for me, in a moment worthy of a Hollywood film, I was handed a coupon for 50% off a hair-cut at a new and swanky salon which has opened next to the salad bar near work. I took a deep breath, walked in and made an appointment for that evening.

Also luckily for me, after work I was meeting Too, in town for just 2 days, for a quick glass of wine. Had it not been for that, and for Too marching me to the door of the salon, I don't think I would have had to courage to go. This is a seriously trendy place, staffed by narrow people clad in black and sporting aggressive hairstyles, mirrors all around and dance music pumping over the noise of the hairdryers. A supermodel/hairstylist took my hair from dry, near-waist length dullness to just below the shoulder, layered shine. Fuelled by the two glasses of wine on an empty stomach, I went a bit wild.
"Perhaps a side parting?" I suggested, throwing caution to the wind (while the woman sitting in the next chair was getting a pixie-cut from a purple-haired boy).

I don't think that the side parting really works for me, it looks a little bit care-in-the-community, but the point was that I had made a change that I intend to sustain. No more railing at the universe and at my body for what is, after all, just a tiny set-back. I now have a drug-free few weeks in which to lose some of the cl0mid weight, try and re-connect with Significant Other and get ready for IVF.

Basically, I've pulled on my big-girl knickers and I'm ready to go on.

cycle abandoned

Dr Kind-Eyes broke it to us gently - either I am not going to ovulate this month or I ovulated very early (CD9 or CD10) with an unviable egg. Either way, my last Cl0mid cycle is over with no IUI.

Next stop IVF.

TW3

The title of this post refers to an old BBC programme. Similarities end with the title.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Was_The_Week_That_Was

So it's been a little bit of a hit-and-miss week. First ovulation scan on Tuesday. The pregnant doctor, after waving the Magic Libido-Vanishing Wand, said "hmm." Never a sound you want to hear.
"There is nothing to see on the left," she continued, pushing the probe over to emphasise her point. "And only a very small follicle on the right" (pulls probe over to the other side briskly). "Come back on Friday but do an ovulation test on Thursday."

Despite my misgivings (I have PCOS and seem to always test positive on an OPK, even when I was pregnant - I did a test for a laugh. I didn't get out much during the most recent first trimester), I duly PIAC and yep, tested positive. So I had to go back in for another scan on Thursday morning, it showed zero movement on follicles but the doctor decided I needed to have a blood test. And another scan on Friday. And another blood test on Friday (this time a student nurse who missed the vein twice in my right arm before the supervising nurse stepped in and did a little vein chasing in my left).

Anyway, scans seem to indicate that I am not going to ovulate this month. I have to go in for another scan tomorrow morning to confirm, but the single, non-growing follicle seems to indicate that this has been a complete waste of Clomid.

The news has affected us both in different, yet similar, ways. I have reached for chocolate in all its varied and delicious forms and been on the verge of tears every waking moment. Significant Other has, apparently (thank you for sharing, honey), been "thinking of what might have been had we not met" and yesterday chose to tell me that earlier this year he had looked up an ex-girlfriend ("we went out for a year, I had real hopes but it didn't work out") on F@ceb00k and found that she had married someone else and had a baby ("oh well, but I'm glad she's happy").

He's not a bad person, he's just sad. The past 18 or so months have been tough on both of us, but sometimes I think tougher on him because the fertility problems are mine and not his.

I just wish that he would think things through before he says them.

where's that hidden camera...

I know that child-care isn't always easy to arrange but - what makes women bring babies to an infertility clinic? There were three in the waiting room this afternoon, 2 young enough to be in prams and one toddler of not more than two years old. Their mothers weren't even accompanying infertile friends, they were the ones waiting for appointments.

The toddler was a charming child who passed the time by squirting milk out of his bottle at me and the woman sitting next to me while both his parents smiled fondly at him. Next he threw the bottle across the room at another waiting woman and again, his parents just smiled at him and then his father silently held his hand out to the woman to get back the bottle. The toddler then decided that what he wanted most in the world was to sit in the chair that I was on and started to try and push me off it. His mother looked at me and asked if I wouldn't mind...?

At this point my name was called and I stood up with alacrity, anxious to get away from what I was beginning think could only be some kind of hidden camera TV show ("Britian's Funniest Infertility Moments"?) to find myself being led to the ultrasound room by a new, and visibly pregnant, doctor...