Welcome to the Barren Blog

So, it's a new year and it struck me that one way to cope with the way I'm feeling these days, and also with the rocky road ahead of us, would be to have an outlet where I can express my feelings with impunity.

The background to this blog is as follows. I'm nearly 29, and my husband and I have been trying to conceive (TTC) for 21 months with no success.

We've had his sperm tested and got a normal result, so we know it’s my fault. I've been referred to the local fertility clinic, where we have our first proper consultation in just over a week's time. I'm hoping to use this blog to record details of the procedures I go through and the emotions I deal with, in the hope that it'll be therapeutic for me and also hopefully help anyone out there who's feeling similar.

Despite infertility having consumed me - and consumed is the only word for it - for the better part of two years, we're really just at the beginning of the road to determining a) what's wrong with me, b) whether it can be fixed, and c), depending on the results of a) and b), how we can get me knocked up.

Right now I'm on cycle day 41 with no period (cue Geordie accent: “Day 41 in the Big Barren Uterus, and the housemates are bamboozled by the absence of Aunt Flo”), no sign of period, and no positive pregnancy test (keep getting negative results).

I've had four sets of blood tests over the past months (my arms resemble pincushions), which have collectively indicated that although I have a good reserve of eggs and am not going through premature menopause, I don't appear to be ovulating regularly, if at all.

I've also had a pelvic scan, which was fine – it detected nothing obviously wrong; everything's in the right place, there're no sizeable blockages, cysts or otherwise, and I’m not really a boy!

So what IS it? The options are a hormonal imbalance, something internal with my plumbing that's as yet undetected, or the delightful "unexplained infertility".

I have to say, in an abstract sense, it’s all really interesting – I didn’t really listen in biology at school so I’ve learned loads about the reproductive process. For a while I did the whole charting my daily temperatures fiasco - this is a slightly obsessive-compulsive thing to do and therefore not ideal for someone with a slightly manic personality.

The temperatures were all over the place so I gave up in the end without ever being entirely sure I was doing it right. You have to do it before you move or even speak in the morning to get an accurate reading. And I did it orally – apparently doing it up the business end is more accurate but I have not yet reached the stage where I’m prepared to start the day by ramming a thermometer where the sun never shines…