The fertility clinic looms...

So, in just 48 hours time I will have experienced my inaugural fertility consultation. I'm led to believe that what we can expect from the first appointment is:

• repetition of a lot of questions which we've already answered
• the removal of more blood from my veins (you could now fill an entire new person with the volume of blood I've had siphoned off in the interests of investigating my plumbing)
• another scan, both of the pelvic and business end variety

More than anything (OK, not more than anything - that moniker is reserved for how much I want a baby) I just want to know the timescales we're dealing with. If the IVF waiting list is years long - enough to put me well into my thirties and with dwindling natural fertility - we need to know now so we can start both saving hard and begging, borrowing and stealing to pay for it privately.

As I'm trying to be throughout this blog, I mean to be entirely candid about our experiences of the fertility clinic and, if it gets that far, IVF itself.

In the meantime, sorry to be so dull but I don't really have a lot to say whilst I'm battling the butterflies about Tuesday. I'm awaiting the appointment with so many mixed emotions that it's hard to make sense of them:

• relief that it's finally here
• frustration that we've had to wait so long
• a selfish sense of "why me?" disbelief that it's got this far
• fear about all the invasive procedures to come
• worry about how my marriage will fare through this pressure
• guilt that he's having to go through this simply because he married a barren woman
• dread that we'll ultimately be told I can't have children

There's a Sarah McLachlan song called Answer which I've interpreted towards this whole experience. The lyrics, which routinely make me have to rummage in my bag for a tissue whilst listening to my iPod on the train of a morning, go like this:

"If it takes my whole life/I won't break, I won't bend/It'll all be worth it/Worth it in the end/For I can only tell you what I know/I need you in my life"

I sing this, sometimes, in my head to the vague non-entity that I pray will one day be my baby.