Barren Blog

A birth, an update and an apology

2010-12-19T13:32:00.002Z

I gave birth to a perfect baby boy on a misty morning in mid September.

I am so sorry to have been away for so long. I can see from recent comments particularly that my absence has let regular followers down and even caused some upset, and I feel terrible about that. Let me try to explain myself...

My son's birth didn't go exactly as planned. The tale is a post in itself - and one I promise to write - but the long and short of it is that he had to be delivered with forceps, as during the final part of the pushing stage his heart rate started to drop alarmingly with each contraction. That twenty minutes was the most terrified I have ever been, because I thought that after everything I was going to lose him right at the end. I'd had an epidural (in desperation after twenty-six hours of labour!) so he was on the fetal heart monitor, and his gentle, fast thudding was the soundtrack to my labour. The sound of when the thuds started to taper off into the occasional soft thump continues to haunt my nightmares.

A doctor was summoned and the expression on her face made my blood run cold. She told me we had to get him out now, and that forceps would be necessary. The next few minutes were simultaneously a blur of speed and seemed to last a lifetime. I watched with almost detached horror
as I was cut and the forceps inserted, and then I was told to push like there was no tomorrow. This I did, and then the room was filled with the best sound I'd ever heard (only recently superseded when he started laughing for the first time) and my screaming baby boy was delivered onto my stomach, shitting himself effusively in the process and covering us both in black, tarry meconium.

The reason for my long absence from the blog is that the combination of forceps and the speed at which his head was born left me with what the medical profession class a fourth degree tear. This means the cut in the vagina tears through the perineum (which in my notes is described as "completely disrupted", for which read "gone") and anus and into the bowel. I had to be taken immediately to theatre to address the blood loss and also to have a rectal specialist stitch me up, which took nearly two hours.

The upshot of all of this is that only now, with my baby just reaching the three month milestone, am I returning to normal life. The recovery process has been slow and physically gruelling; the pain of sitting in the early weeks was something else. Would you believe that today is the first time I've felt able to sit at the desk chair and spend time on the computer? It's true.

I'm describing all of this in a factual and rather clinical way because the last thing I want is anyone to think I'm eliciting sympathy. I don't even feel sorry for myself, never mind expecting other people to. I have what I've wanted forever, a healthy baby, something I know many people yearn for and can't have. If sustaining a bit of damage to my nether regions in the process is the price to pay, so be it. Flesh heals but I know that the pain of infertility does not. I am so very, very grateful for my beautiful boy.

I always, always intended to blog as soon as my son was safely born. It's just taken me a lot longer than I anticipated to be physically up to it. My reasons for not blogging more during the pregnancy are more complex. I'll do my best to explain...

I'd heard it said before I was pregnant that the first twelve weeks are the worst; that this is the time of fear and uncertainty about whether things will proceed as planned. Not so for me. I developed a wrenching dread of miscarriage and all complications of pregnancy after the first trimester, to the point where at the slightest twinge I was misguidedly consulting Dr Google and self-diagnosing with the worst case scenario every time. I did have quite a few complications as things turned out; nothing life-threatening for either my son or me, but enough to render me a nervous wreck and a frequent flyer at the local maternity assessment unit. The staff there were, for the most part, understanding and sympathetic; many times I was told that such levels of anxiety are common in IVF pregnancies because every step of the way you doubt both that this miracle is actually finally happening, and that your body, for so long your enemy, has the ability to do it.

I also became incredibly superstitious. I'm talking to the point of OCD. I wouldn't have the pram in the house till we were both safely home from hospital. And I developed a totally irrational superstition about my blog. Don't ask me why or how the idea came into my head, but I became fixated that if I continued blogging - and particularly, if I continued in my usual style, with comic griping about the trials and tribulations of stretch marks, having your cervix headbutted, and lakes of curious-looking discharge - that something bad would happen.

I know that's not really an adequate explanation for a nine-month absence, and worst of all for leaving regulars hanging as to my health and that of my baby. I only hope that it explains my action, or lack thereof, at least in part. I never, ever intended to upset or let anyone down.

I have so much to say about pregnancy, childbirth and the early weeks of becoming a mother. I sometimes feel like my brain is teeming with unwritten blog posts; a line will come to me now and then and I want to write it all up so much. I have so much to tell you all! I can only hope that those of you who can forgive my long absence stay with me and have the patience for shorter, less frequent updates snatched when the baby is asleep, as he currently is.

As always, thank you to everyone who has ever read and/or commented on my blog. I now need to catch up with the journey of all those bloggers I came to treasure, whose stories I've also been away from for too long.

I honestly, truly promise to write more soon. My birth story simply has to be committed to the blogosphere - after all my other graphic entries, a tale in which my anal sphincter is torn in two (yes, really, at 10 o' clock and 2 o' clock, according to the diagram in my notes) is too good not to tell! So I mean it when I say I'll be back soon. For now, lots of love.

Pregnancy: The end of the first trimester

2010-03-10T17:55:00.001Z

A fortnight ago I experienced something I never thought I would: a happy scan, in which my husband, mother and I were able to view the movements of a healthy 13-week old foetus.

I was so nervous going in - more nervous than I'd been for the egg collection, more nervous than for the pregnancy test, more nervous even than I was for the seven-week scan which told us whether there was a heartbeat or not. I think my trepidation was fed by the terrified sense that, having come so far, it would all be taken away from me. I was utterly petrified that there'd be a problem with the baby, or that something might have happened to it weeks before without my knowledge.

In reality the scan couldn't have gone better. The sonographer was able to get amazingly clear pictures, and the baby obliged us by swimming about and even sucking its tiny thumb for long enough to pose for a photo. It looked completely healthy - everything that can be right at this stage was right, with particular highlights including a strong heartbeat and evidence that the stomach and digestive system have started to work.

It was, in short, an amazing experience, and one I thought I'd never have. I couldn't believe how formed, developed and active the baby was even at this early stage. I'm utterly convinced I can feel movements now at neatly 15 weeks, although all the books say this is impossible until at least 20 weeks for first-time mums.

Bah to the books, say I. They are wrong on more than one thing, let me tell you. In fact, I'm here to bust some pregnancy book myths and blatant understatements, in my usual frank and abrupt style.

1. Slight constipation is common in early pregnancy

Try: you will be unable to defecate for days, occasionally creeping into a whole week, at a time. You will be so bunged up with crap that it occasionally hurts to walk. When you go to the toilet to pee, but in the throes of a bad spell of constipation, it will hurt to even twist the amount you need to in order to pull up your pants. You will be perpetually starving and will eat constantly even as you quake with fear that you are adding to the shit storm. Eating brown bread, fibre and lots of fruit doesn't help, as the lying books claim. Fibre and fruit are ALL I eat. Oh, and every time you do manage to go to the toilet, any minor amount of straining will leave you bug-eyed with terror that you have somehow dislodged the baby.

2. There will be some minor aches and pains as your body stretches

Every day will be an adventure of twinges, cramps, weird stabby sensations and bubbling. You will not be able to work out whether these are due to the excessive amount of wind and crap you are storing, or to normal pregnancy pains, or to a problem you should speak to the midwife about. You will quickly establish yourself with said midwife as a nutcase paranoid nuisance who phones up at every ache. Every time you do this you will feel obliged to say "It's an IVF pregnancy" in an effort to justify why you are so obsessive and terrified. The pains you will experience are not just in your abdomen. The best ones are the ones that feel like someone is stabbing a red-hot poker up your vagina and anus simultaneously. This is especially fun when it happens in a meeting at work.

3. Your vaginal discharge may increase

You may need to insert a pillow into your underwear and would be at risk of drowning if you spent long enough in a sealed room. This too will terrify you every time it happens because a) it's completely alien to all previous experience (for me anyway) and b) every time a splat descends you will assume you are bleeding and therefore miscarrying. Sometimes the discharge will be scary-looking and mucousy, prompting you to demand the midwife do a vaginal swab at your booking visit, which her expression indicates she was not expecting. The results will be normal, making you look like a fool. Other times the splat will be so watery that you will first wonder if you wet yourself. When you establish you did not, you will immediately decide your waters must have broken, which will prompt you to drop everything and leap in a taxi to the hospital to demand another scan, for which you will have to wait three hours in a state of pacing horror. I wish I was exaggerating but this happened last Friday.

4. You may feel emotional

You will burst into inconsolable tears when a knitted duck character on the comedy TV programme Harry Hill's TV Burp doesn't get picked because it doesn't have wings. You may also get so upset when your furniture plans for the spare room are out by a couple of millimeters that you give yourself a nosebleed. Again, I wish I was lying.

5. Nausea may be worse in the mornings

You will develop a new morning routine: get out of bed, retch extensively into toilet without bringing anything up. Climb into shower to be immediately struck by urge to retch further, which you do directly into the shower plughole to save you clambering out again. Dry yourself. Retch more. Attempt to brush teeth and discover this worsens the retching desire tenfold. Repeat, daily, for six to eight weeks. (And I'm lucky that my morning sickness stopped at 13 weeks - I know lots of people for whom this wasn't the case!)

That's my top five myths busted, and I'm only up to 15 weeks! However, make no mistake: I'm not complaining. I'm merely shattering myths and illusions in my normal way. But however much it may sound like I'm whining, I love every second of this. It really is the definition of a dream come true, and I think that's why most of my moans relate to being uncertain about symptoms to worry about and those which are normal. Having never been pregnant before, I just don't know what to expect and when something aches, or twinges, or leaks, I immediately assume something has gone wrong.

This is something I need to get over and I plan to ask my (beleaguered) midwife for advice on how, because I can't spend the next 25 weeks panicking about every bubble of wind. I imagine twinges and pains will get a lot worse before the end - I should think my first Braxton Hicks contraction will see me summoning the National Guard - and all the worrying, ironically, isn't good for the baby, despite me wanting to dedicate every second and fibre of my being to doing things that are good for him or her.

It is amazing what the body can do. I cannot believe I have already created and grown this tiny, 9-centimetre long perfect person. There isn't a second of a minute of a waking hour when I don't think about my baby, wonder how and what it's doing and pray it is OK. Neither is there an instant when I'm not overwhelmed with gratitude that we have got this far.

I feel, for the first time in nearly half a decade, that my body is doing what it is designed to do. It really is an awfully big, exciting adventure and I can't wait to see what happens next.

The long-awaited update (it's good news)

2010-02-11T17:30:00.002Z

Yesterday I had my booking appointment with the midwife who will hopefully see me through this pregnancy and beyond.

I'm so sorry I haven't updated the blog with my news. The excuses I cite are a combination of taking time out from writing to focus on being well and getting used to the amazing change of being pregnant after four years of infertility heartache, and also a fair dollop of sheer superstition.

I honestly felt if I shared my news, I would jinx it. It's totally irrational and very unfair on those of you who've been commenting and asking for updates, but it was how I felt and it was very strong.

Only now as I approach the 11-week mark am I starting to feel more confident about actually taking home a baby at the end of this. I have gone through the past two and a half months battling a daily, sometimes hourly, terror of miscarriage. I don't think it will ever fully abate until I give birth, but it is starting to lessen as the weeks progress and my body changes.

I got the news on December 29 following a blood test at the fertility clinic. But if I'm totally honest, I already knew the IVF had worked. I took a pregnancy test on Christmas Day - stupid, foolish and potentially distressing, I know, but I couldn't resist it. I figured starting my fourth Christmas Day with a negative test surely couldn't be any more heartbreaking than the previous three had been.

It was a very, very faint positive. But it's the first time in my life I've had any sort of line in the right box, so it was momentous. Hubby was downstairs when I did it and my voice cracked into a barely audible rasp as I croaked for him to come and look.

I then did what I always do: started obsessively reading about pregnancy testing after IVF online, and convinced myself that it was a false positive caused by leftover HCG hormone in my system from the trigger injection I'd administered some 12 days previously. The general consensus seemed to be to wait until 14 days had elapsed and test again. This I duly did on the morning of December 27, and the positive line was darker. And I really started to hope.

It was still with a thudding heart and knocking knees that I answered my mobile on the afternoon of the 29th, knowing the person calling was a nurse from the clinic and that she had my results. I was stood at work in a glorified stationery cupboard, hiding away as I knew I'd cry either way. To hear the nurse say that not only was it a positive, but a strong one, was just indescribable.

Relief, joy, gratitude - it was a far cry from how I'd felt the night after the embryo was transferred back into my womb. That evening found me crying hysterically because I was sure I'd ejected said embryo during a particularly strenuous visit to the toilet (what can I say, the IVF drugs had bunged me up).

No, my embryo didn't fall out my bum but dug itself in and managed to find a snug home inside me, where I have for so many years longed for a baby to be. I had another moment of drama when I had a very light bleed on New Year's Eve. At that point I was just over four weeks pregnant and became convinced I was going to miscarry on just about the worst night of the year for such a thing to happen. But I was lucky, the bleeding stopped and the clinic, during my weepy phone call to them, said such things are common at around the four and eight-week mark, when periods would have been expected.

I started to feel a lot better, and properly pregnant, when my seven-week scan showed a strong heartbeat and a growing embryo, in the right place (as ectopic pregnancy had been a big fear). And while I am far from reassured, after everything we've been through, that things will be all right (I don't think I'll feel 100% content until I'm holding my baby in my arms), the changes in my body and the symptoms I've experienced have grown my confidence little by little.

I want to - and will, if you want me to - write more about how I am feeling and what it's like being pregnant after all this time and all those tears. But I'm going to leave this entry here for two reasons, the first being because I just wanted to give regular readers a long-awaited and much-deserved update.

The second reason is more complicated. This blog has been about my infertility struggles, and I'm unsure of the protocol of how to proceed. I'd like to keep writing about my experiences through pregnancy and beyond, but I am very aware that my outcome will be bittersweet for people who have not been so lucky.

I have suffered myself - many times over - that heady mix of elation for someone you genuinely like and feel a connection with finally having the success she has yearned for, combined with the inevitable and unavoidable feelings of desperation about your own situation. And to be honest, sometimes I have chosen not to read on.

What I don't want to do is inflict a pregnancy blog on a community of readers who don't want it. I couldn't bear it if I thought I was causing anyone struggling with a similar situation to my own pain. I know how badly it can hurt. So I would really appreciate comments on whether you think I should continue with the blog or leave it here, with a happy ending infertility-wise, but without an ongoing commentary on pregnancy, that longed-for condition which has, at times over the past four years, seemed almost mythical to me in terms of how hard it was for me to achieve.

Finally, for now - thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has asked how I am doing, wondered about my outcome or spared a fleeting thought to wish me well. I appreciate every comment and every thought more than you can know.

The tale of the egg collection

2009-12-19T14:22:00.003Z

Thanks for all the good wishes ahead of Tuesday's egg collection - every one was much appreciated and brought me support. Here's the story of how the day went.

I was nil by mouth from midnight the night before, and had assumed I'd be too anxious to sleep, but in fact I was exhausted by 9pm and retired early to a surprisingly decent night's shuteye. I woke at 6, lay for an hour contemplating what was ahead, then rose.

I'd bought special organic unscented shower gel and deodorant for the day of the egg collection and embryo transfer as we'd been advised both by the clinic and by friends who've been through IVF that strong perfumes should be avoided.

I showered, stared for a while at my hideous, gnarly unpainted toenails and then got dressed in the exact same outfit, down to the socks, that I wore for my HSG so very long ago. My logic was that a) the garments in question rank among the most comfy, cosy clothes I possess and b) I survived that so, in the same way that I always tie the exact same red ribbon on my suitcase handle when I fly because so far every plane has landed safely, I'd survive this.

My mum arrived to collect me absurdly early - I inherited this trait from her - and we arrived at the clinic well in advance of my 9am slot. I had started to sense a flutter of panicky nerves during the car journey, but sitting in the waiting room I could feel my body determinedly relaxing in the way it does immediately before trauma. My most pressing concern was the amount of pain I was by now in from the bloating caused by so many follicles. My stomach was hugely distended and uncomfortable, and I felt like I needed the toilet all the time. I could not wait to get those eggs out of me and into petri dishes.

Hubby and I were both summoned into a consulting room by a nurse I hadn't met before. I didn't really warm to her: she tried to make jokes, and I suffer from sense of humour bypass on aeroplanes and in distressing clinical situations. When her cheerful remark that the drug they'd give me was so nice she'd "like to get some for the weekend" was met with a blank stare, she shut up and gave us the facts: they were running a little behind, so we'd need to wait in reception some more before going through to prep me for theatre.

This we duly did. I wasn't irritated that they were behind schedule - these things happen in hospitals - but I do remember glancing at the clock when it reached 9.45 with something like despair, as I'd assumed I'd be nearly done by then. Fool that I am.

It was gone 10 when we were eventually escorted to the ward and introduced to the ward sister, who I immediately liked for her warm but no-nonsense manner. There are four beds in the ward - amazingly, the clinic perform five egg collections each weekday - and I was the fifth and last patient of the morning. That meant I didn't get a bed to prep in, because there were two beds in use by recovering women, one awaiting the imminent return of the current operatee, and one with the girl before me in it. We were therefore shown to hardback chairs immediately adjacent to the curtain around my predecessor's bed.

It was fine at first but my abdominal discomfort started to increase - I guess the timing of the hCG injection means your eggs start to mature right before the collection - and sitting on an unyielding chair was no fun. Hubby was doing what he does in airports (I'm terrified of flying): reading a book and studiously ignoring me. The girl in the bed next to me started to complain about her own abdominal pain, which irritated me because at least she was lying down.

The sister then returned and went through the paperwork. She gave hubby a pot with his name on it, and me a credit card thing with mine. We then had to go over to the computer and scan both - they each had a barcode - to "lock us in" to the system and make sure everything that either squirted out of him or was gouged out of me was assigned to us.

After that the sister explained that the doctor - head honcho consultant, I was pleased to learn - would come and put a portacath in my arm ready for the administration of the drugs once I got to theatre. She asked if I had a problem with needles and was rewarded with a hollow laugh.

Hubby was then dispatched to produce his sample. I sat chewing my nails, fully expecting his sheepish head to emerge from the wank room and announce he couldn't get hard. I had a variety of waspish responses ready should that eventuality occur. My favourite was "You need to get a grip - literally".

He was back surprisingly quickly and sufficiently flushed and furtive to suggest that his endeavours had been successful. I asked as much and he announced that they had.

"Where the fuck's the sperm, then?" said I. He explained that there's a little window in the room - sort of like a dumb waiter - where the man puts the pot and then presses a buzzer when he's done, presumably to spare him the mortal embarrassment of walking out into the ward clutching his juice. How very thoughtful of the clinic. Shame stirrups don't come in embarrassment-free models.

Hubby returned to his book looking decidedly pleased with himself. The sister returned, congratulated him - yes, really; blokes need so much bloody encouragement - and then told me to get changed into a theatre gown, over which I was allowed to put the dressing gown and slippers I'd brought along.

I ducked into a tiny changing room furnished with lockers and a load of theatre clogs, presumably for girls who forget their slippers. Luckily I'd brought with me what I lovingly refer to as my "fluffy feet" - a pair of whimperingly soft and furry bedsocks which I wear nightly on my return from work until they get up and walk to the washing machine themselves.

The theatre gown was similar to the one I'd worn for the HSG: press studs in the back of the neck, then loose ties at the shoulders and waist, and otherwise open to the four winds. I was very glad of my dressing gown as I trudged back to our seats.

At this point, the girl in the next bed really started to get on my tits. The doctor was with her when I returned, putting in her portacath. I have sympathy for people who are afraid of needles, I really do, but for fuck's sake. I have no idea how she coped with the daily injections. Anyway, she was squealing and weeping and just generally overreacting in a highly vexing fashion. Hubby saw the expression on my face and his lips curved with amusement. After it was in, she immediately - immediately, mark you - started giggling and claiming to be hysterical, until the doctor pointed out wearily that she hadn't actually administered any drugs yet. At that moment my - and I like to think, the doctor's - mind was made up: drama queen. And she didn't even appreciate that she had a bed.

A few minutes later a new nurse came to collect her. I couldn't see through the curtain but I soon heard the nurse say, "No, sorry, you can't wear that - we need to be able to talk to you. Didn't you bring a CD?" and I knew that she must have not read the admission notes, which expressly forbid iPods, properly. "Nooooo," wailed Norma Desmond. "I need my music!" I mean, I ask you. The nurse sighed and said, "What were you planning to listen to? We have a few spare CDs if you'd like to choose one." The response, uttered whiningly: "Some chuuuuuurch muuuuuusiiiiic.".

After she departed I knew I had probably about half an hour still to wait. I was hoping they'd transfer me into Norma's bed, but they didn't. By this point my stomach was really hurting - it was like having horrendous wind - and the only way I could get comfy was to slouch back in the seat and prop my feet on the low magazine table in front of us. This was fine until a man arrived, presumably to produce a sample, and elected to sit in the chair DIRECTLY opposite my naked vagina. I was less than thrilled.

By this time it was nearing 11am - a lot longer than I'd thought the whole process of checking in would take. I started to worry that I'd ovulate the eggs and ruin everything, but hubby assured me that they wouldn't allow this to happen. Finally, Norma was wheeled back into her cubicle, blessedly quiet now, and the doctor came to say good morning and insert my portacath.

It went into the vein in the crook of my elbow fine, no worse than a blood test really despite what I've heard, and was taped securely in place. The doctor flushed some saline through it to make sure the liquid was going into me and then said it'd be just a few minutes more.

Shortly after that, a new nurse appeared and introduced herself as the theatre nurse. She took my CD - Sarah McLachlan, about the most soothing artist I own, with the particular album chosen for the presence of a song with the line "it'll all be worth it, worth it in the end" - and, after a quick peck on the lips from hubby (for me, not the nurse) led me down the corridor to the theatre.

At first glance it looked like a torture room from one of Eli Roth's less palatable films. There was a low sideboard spread with heinous implements, including pliers (what the FUCK could they possibly need those for? screeched my brain) and an ominous bed upholstered in black leather on a sort of raised dais in the middle. I had to walk to the end of the room, with another nurse beckoning me like a floor manager in a TV studio, and was instructed to insert my barcoded credit card into a reader. A voice then spoke to me from the wall. If I was a religious woman, I might have thought it was God, except it said "Hi, I'm Emma, the embryologist, can you confirm your name and date of birth please?" which doesn't seem like the sort of thing God would say.

Having duly confirmed my vital statistics, the nurse took my dressing gown and slippers and I was asked to clamber on to the bed and lie down. I was wearing my glasses, having sensibly left my contacts at home in case the drugs made me fall asleep, and the nurse said I could keep them on if I wanted to. This relieved me as things are always scarier when you can't see properly. I had to confirm I didn't have any allergies and wasn't wearing any nail polish (which, surely, they could have seen for themselves.

Once I was in position, though not yet in the stirrups, my blood pressure was taken. Next, a clip was placed on my left forefinger and an oxygen mask over my face. The doctor was bustling around with who-knows-what at the business end, and the theatre nurse told me she was going to administer the pain killer now, and then once it had taken effect, the sedative.

I didn't feel anything for about a minute but then suddenly it was like this warm, woozy sensation flooded me, starting in my legs and soon taking me over completely. The best way I can describe it is like being very, very drunk, but without the queasiness and room spin that often entails. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't quite pleasant. But one thing about it was that I knew I was no longer in control of my faculties; that I probably couldn't leap off this bed and run away if I wanted to, and that was a bit freaky.

Happy it had taken effect, the nurse started pumping in the sedative. And then it seemed things started immediately, although time sort of took on a fluid quality so perhaps there was a delay. The doctor said she was going to examine me, and I felt an icy cold speculum being cranked open inside me. It twinged a bit more than a speculum usually does, which made the words "Oh, fuck" scoot across my mind. Then that was removed and the scanner put in its place, which wasn't so bad.

"We'll do the right side first," the doctor said, and then there was a terrible pain. It was brief - it lasted maybe 15 seconds - but it was bad. It would have been the needle penetrating my vaginal wall and going into my right ovary. I must have gasped, because they all told me it was OK and how well I was doing.

I don't really remember much about the eggs on the right side coming out, just a feeling of intense pressure, slight crampiness and the sense that a lot of implements were rummaging around very deep inside me. Then I heard the dreaded words, "And now the left side" and braced myself for that stabbing pain again.

I remember nothing after feeling that. They said I might not remember any of the procedure - I like how I remember the pain of my wall being perforated but not something boring like being put on a trolley - and I certainly don't recall it ending, the scaffolding being dismantled and me being put back on the ward.

I woke up after what I assumed was only about ten minutes. I was in bed, in a curtained cubicle, in the recovery position, no longer wearing my glasses. I stared for a while at the curtain until I could focus and noticed that it was printed with images of bridges and famous buildings from the city where I live. I then became conscious of awful cramping pains in my lower tummy, and flipped on my back to ease them. A nurse checked on me just as I was doing this and told me I needed to lie on my side in case I was sick. She helped me roll over and then told me to sleep. I lasted about a minute on my side and then flipped back again. I'm nothing if not disobedient.

I dozed for a while but it was noisy on the ward - I had the sense there were throngs of people milling about - and I wanted my mum. I must have been woozier than I thought and whimpering as much because after what seemed like only a few minutes, the nurse was back asking if I wanted anything. "My mum," I said, so she went to get her. The sound of my mum's voice asking, "Is she OK?" as she was led down the corridor was music to my ears.

It turned out I had slept for nearly an hour and a quarter. Mum got a bit freaked when the first thing I said was that the bridge was on my curtain, until she looked and saw that it was true. She was with hubby, and they each took one of my hands, my mum chafing the one she held between her own as if I'd just come in from the cold. She put my glasses on me and the nurse propped up my bed so I was sitting. The cramps were still bad but subsiding and I started to feel better quickly.

I was given toast with strawberry jam, orange juice and coffee. I hadn't imagined I'd be hungry in a million years, but having not eaten since dinner the previous night I found I was ravenous. My mum read out a checklist of the things I needed to demonstrate before being discharged: namely, sitting up, eating, drinking, walking, and urinating. Anxious to be home, I did all of them.

The embryologist came to see me and told me they had got ten eggs, which she said was really good. I was told to phone at 10.30 the following morning to check fertilisation, and with that was sent on my relieved, if not merry, way.

The only issue on the way home were speedbumps, which jarred my tummy something rotten. But once back in my house I spent the afternoon snoozing in bed and on the sofa, and by evening felt as right as rain, if still a little bloated and sore.

I'm still tired and feel like I've written my fill today, but I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about embryo transfer - all ten eggs fertilised, and we ended up with three good embryos, one of which is now (hopefully) nestled inside me. All in all, it's been a dramatic week.

IVF, weeks 4-6

2009-12-14T19:59:00.003Z

My egg collection is tomorrow morning at 9am.

How do I feel? There's a scene in the film Armageddon where one of the astronauts about to take off answers that same question. His verdict is: "98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe it's more like 98% scared, 2% excited - it's hard to tell but that's what makes it so intense." That sums up my mindset this rainy, chilly evening.

I managed fine with the injections in the end. I got to be quite the dab hand with the old liquid siphoning by the finish. Inevitably on my last day I performed the maneouvre perfectly. Had my last morning injection been a gymnastic routine, I finished on the equivalent of a perfect en pointe dismount.

I managed to escape with only a little bit of thigh bruising and several sliced fingers, and the side effects haven't been as bad as I feared. I've suffered with migraines in the past so I was pretty well resigned to having one of those once the hormone cocktail kicked in, but I've avoided them so far. There was a thudding headache every day between day two and six, but a headache is very different to a migraine and I was able to cope.

The nerves I felt going for my first scan were about as jittery as anything I've experienced throughout this process. Because of my high FSH level I'd convinced myself there was a chance I might not respond at all. My big dread was the monitor revealing two stubbornly small and flaccid ovaries which had refused to produce so much as a pimple.

There was no need to worry. To be fair, the secret voice in my brain which is currently insisting that this whole thing might just work had told me I had nothing to worry about because I'd felt my ovaries kick in round about day five. It was the same feeling I had on Clomid - a sort of low ache, almost like you have wind, worse on the right side.

The head doctor at the clinic did my scan with her trademark - and actually increasingly appealing - no-nonsense style. The hell with KY jelly and easing it between my lips - the Renault was rammed, bammed and thank you mammed into me with very little in the way of opening pleasantries. Which suited me fine as I was burning to know what my pesky ovaries had been up to all that time. Despite the twinges I'd felt, it still seems weird that a little jab in your thigh flab every morning can make eggs grow there.

Immediately the doctor murmured "Oh, this is good," and I craned my neck to look at the screen. Even I could see them - oval, shadowy follicles clustered on my right ovary. She counted five, then twirled the Renault and located seven on the other side. Withdrawing the scanner with similar gusto to that with which she had introduced it, she proclaimed this to be excellent progress and sent me on my merry way with a view to presenting myself for a final scan on Saturday gone.

The jabs got a bit sorer after that, presumably because there wasn't much expanse of thigh flab left that hadn't already been skewered and injecting into a bruise isn't much fun. But I persisted and as I did the windy ovary pain got a bit worse each day, and my stomach started to bloat.

Saturday's scan went like a dream. I now have 14 follicles, seven on each side, all of which the doctor deemed to be the perfect size. I administered my hCG injection last night - it stung like a motherfucker, being cold out of the fridge, and the injection site on my beleaguered thigh flab is puffy and inflamed, but it is done and I now have no more needles to deal with. Hurrah and huzzah. I felt like cracking open the champers but since I've sworn off alcohol for the duration of this - might as well treat my body like a temple being the logic - I had to make do with water with lemon.

I've felt emotional but not as much as I feared. I imagined I'd be breaking down in tears at adverts, or howling in anguish on the train platform when I'd just missed one (both of which are exhibitions of myself I've been driven to previously by fertility woes).

But since the first scan revealed all was well, I've actually felt happier and more positive than I have for a while. It has to be said that this is down to some fairly wonderful caregiving by my legendary best friends, mind you. Friday night saw me not fretting and angsting over the next day's scan, but instead munching pizza, sipping peppermint tea and giggling in my PJs on their sofa. To be distracted, taken care of and amused during this nightmare has been wonderful.

So now. A short description of my physical state.

My stomach is distended like a malnourished orphan and I fancy that I can feel every one of those 14 follicles jostling for position on my ovaries.

I have unpainted toenails, as instructed by my egg collection admission form, which also forbids me from wearing makeup (unthinkable; surely a slick of mascara won't harm my eggs), deodorant (but cunningly, I have bought an odourless organic one - a girl doesn't want to be smelly), perfume or body lotion.

(It is worth pointing out that I have not had unpainted toenails for longer than it takes to remove one coat and apply another for at least 15 years. I always thought I had quite pretty feet but it turns out it was the varnish making them so. They are butt ugly naked. My nails are a sort of pallid yellow colour - as a result, one imagines, of nearly two decades of continuous varnish-wearing - and they look bigger, ganglier and sort of masculine. I hate them. My mother - from whom I inherited my obsession with toenail varnishing - was appalled.)

I now need to pack my bag - I'm instructed to bring a dressing gown, slippers (with which I can hide my unattractive feet, thank fuck), a toilet bag and a favourite CD with me. Then it's early to bed in the hope of some sleep. I'm not allowed to eat or drink after midnight, because of the sedative they'll give me. I'm to be there for 9am.

I'm told I may not remember the procedure - I bloody hope I don't - but I'll do my best, tomorrow or as soon as I feel well enough, to describe what I do recall here.

I very badly wish all this was over. But while I'm anxious, I know this is just another hurdle I need to get over in my quest to get what I want more than anything in the world.

Wish me luck.

IVF, weeks 1-3

2009-12-03T18:50:00.001Z

So. I started Synarel nasal spray on Sunday November 8, after a training appointment during which we were taken through the whole process in blow-by-blow detail. I've taken it every day, twice a day, since then.

I thought I'd have blogged more during the first weeks of IVF but it's surprised me how tired I've been and how little I've had to say.

I think one reason I haven't written anything is that there's not an awful lot you can say about taking a nasal spray. The bad things are, in no particular order:

1) remembering to take it at 9am and 9pm every day. This is inconvenient because I leave for work at 8 so most days I need to take it in the office toilet. There are days when I've been busy, distracted or just forgotten and then been stricken with panic at 11ish and forced to hare along the corridor to do my sniffling.

Taking the evening dose isn't much better. So far I have inhaled it during a ghost hunt at a castle in a rainstorm, sitting in the cinema during a film, at a salsa class, and round the side of a theatre ahead of meeting a moderately famous comedian.

2) sometimes when you snort in the wrong way, it goes into your sinuses and stings like when you were a kid at swimming class and inhaled chlorinated water. It also tastes bitter and unpleasant when it trickles down your throat, a bit like chewing aspirin without water.

3) the side effects haven't been too bad for me, limited chiefly to the odd hot flush in bed at night, several medium-strength headaches and one fainting episode (but that was when I was poorly anyway with a virus, and I'd just stepped out of a hot bath). One odd thing is that I seem to have low-level heartburn all the time in that when I eat or drink I feel a slight burning sensation in my throat and chest. But, like I said, no side effect so bad that I can't cope with it.

The good things are - well, there aren't any, unless you count the fact that I've responded to it. I had a scan on Tuesday which revealed two very subdued, deflated ovaries - and so they bloody should be, for what they're putting me through - and an empty womb with minimal lining. Everything as it should be after nearly three weeks on the spray. I now need to keep taking it up until the egg collection at which point I can replace this daily activity with the delightful alternative of ramming a pessary up myself.

So I was given the go-ahead to start the injections. I had a training appointment with my favourite nurse after my scan. To say it went badly would be to do injustice to the word 'bad'. I am completely ham-fisted and clumsy at the best of times. Dealing with tiny, fiddly-as-fuck vials and needles while under a reasonable amount of strain and immediately following a vaginal probe did not improve my dexterity.

For my first trick, I shattered the tiny glass vial which contained the dilutant solution. WHY do these need to be so small? I get that there's not a huge volume of liquid and we are living in an age when minimal packaging is considered environmentally sound, but for fuck's sake, I'm not a member of the Sylvanian Family.

And another thing. Why do they have to be glass? It's not like they can be recycled - they get thrown in a sharps box and incinerated as clinical waste, so make them plastic and easier to handle! I cut my hand in four places trying to snap one open in front of my initially amused and then anxious nurse. I left the clinic with four elastoplasts on one hand and another on my arm where I'd had my blood test. I looked like I'd made an extremely bungled suicide attempt.

I'm on four amps of Menopur because of my higher than average FSH levels, so having eventually opened a dilutant vial and sucked its contents into a syringe, I had to be shown how to pierce and dissolve four separate (glass) vials of powder. Each time, you have to squirt the contents of the syringe into the vial, dissolve the powder, and suck everything back up again. Fiddly doesn't begin to cover it.

After that you detach the big fuckoff needle and reattach a smaller injecting needle before easing the plunger up to 1ml, getting rid of the air and then doing the jab. For this you need six hands because you have to pinch your skin, insert the needle, depress the plunger and withdraw it all at virtually the same time. All I can say is thank fuck it's women who do the injections during IVF, as we all know men can't multitask.

At the clinic, I injected myself with a bit of saline solution to prove I could do it, then my first real jab was yesterday morning. I had set everything out the night before, like a cook before a big dinner party, and barely slept because I was so nervous about being able to manage without the nurse. But it went surprisingly smoothly - which, as I discovered this morning, was beginner's luck. It reminded me of the first time I parallel-parked my car after my driving test: it went in first time and I sat stupefied by how this could possibly have occurred. The next time, it took 40 minutes and involved tears, howls and a prang on the bumper.

Perhaps this morning's disaster was because I hadn't slept a wink, having spent the entire night convinced a demon was hiding in the wardrobe after watching Paranormal Activity at the flicks. I knew things weren't going to go well when I immediately sliced my forefinger opening the glass vial. I bleed a lot even from small cuts so was seeping all over the assembled sterile apparatus, but feared I'd be even more bumbling wearing a plaster so I left it.

The next problem was that I couldn't get the frigging syringe to suck up the fluid from the first vial of powder. I kept pulling it up too far and running out of syringe and then leaving a load of liquid in the bottom. If you're not superhumanly quick it seeps out the end of the needle anyway, and for a while I was making absolutely no progress. Time was ticking towards when I needed to leave for work, despite me allowing 20 extra minutes for the injection, and I began to get flustered.

Chanting "fuck, fuck, fuck" in a low but urgent voice, I eventually got all four vials of powder sucked up through a manoeuvre that combined the speed of a panther with the cunning of a fox (essentially, just tilting the vial, ramming the needle in the corner of it and twirling it quickly to attract all the liquid).

However, I had created loads of air with my epic syringe endeavours so the resulting mess looked a bit like a bubble bath by the time I was ready. I started remembering all the films where a murderer injects air into a person and causes a clot that kills them. So I had to tap the syringe for ages to get the bubbles to clear.

After all that, it seemed cruel that I still had to get through the painful bit. I was on my right leg today, which means as a righty that the angle and needle trajectory is more complex, so it hurt more than it did yesterday and I've developed a bruise for my trouble.

All this snorting spray and stabbing needles would be a lot easier if only I were a crack and heroin user. But what am I saying - if I were, I wouldn't need IVF since drug addicts get pregnant at the drop of a hat.

I needed comforting after all that and since hubby had fucked off to work long before I even began my endeavours, I decided waffles, maple syrup and blueberries were the way to go. They were good. But then my car wouldn't start. It has been making a low but insistent beeping noise for a bit now and I've been studiously and foolishly ignoring it. Having consulted the manual and talked to my stepdad, I knew all that was needed was some water in the radiator, but rather than sorting this out at the weekend when I had bags of time, I'd left it till a few minutes before my weekly 50-mile drive to the office I work out of on Thursdays.

I'd never topped up my radiator before but figured if I could inject myself with hormones then surely this couldn't be beyond me. So rather than driving to a garage where I'd be mocked for female incompetence and probably charged for the privilege, I decided, unwisely, to tackle it myself.

Well, I couldn't get the cap off, could I? I tried everything - pulling, twisting, tearing, even prising with my key - but it was all to no avail since my car was manufactured by safety-conscious, obsessive-compulsive Volkswagen. (I believe I howled "Come on, you German bastard" at one point.) Eventually, defeated, hormonal and weeping hysterically, I phoned my mum and yodelled for help which was provided - bless him - within ten minutes by my stepfather.

It remains to be seen what tomorrow will bring. I guess there's a knack to it and that you get better every day. I also think a good night's sleep will help. But the trauma has stayed with me today and I've felt extremely weepy. I suppose it's only natural, given I'm suddenly flooding my system with hormones after suppressing it for nearly a month, that I should feel odd.

I think, though, that being reasonably au fait, if a tad incompetent, with the concept of sticking a needle into my thigh after two days is testament to the fact that you can do anything if you put your mind to it, and want it enough. I think I'll leave it on that reasonably positive note.

Gaining the IVF drugs and losing my furry friend

2009-10-28T21:26:00.004Z

Holy sweet smoking shit at sunset.

My mum collected my IVF drugs today. The two SACKS thereof. I came home, saw said sacks sitting on my coffee table, with a note to say there was more in the fridge. I unpacked them and set the assembled goods before me in growing disbelief. It was like Christmas morning in the mad scientist's house. I then hastily repacked the sacks and forced down the ratatouille hubby had whipped up before I lost my appetite.

Hubby and I just spent half an hour in the spare room - the coolest, darkest room in the house, being as it is a forlorn place where a baby should reside - with the drugs and assorted paraphernalia spread before us.

It's just overwhelming. It's overwhelming. There are:

- two boxes of nasal spray
- five boxes of crazy glass vials with some kind of liquid-and-powder combo
- fifteen small needles in orange packets
- fifteen scary ass huge motherfucking needles in green packets
- about 250 (looks like) syringes
- a "sharps box" which looks and sounds like it should feature in Saw VI
- a packet of pessaries made of VEGETABLE FAT
- a partridge in a pear tree

I have so much to say right now and yet the terrifying nature of having these drugs ACTUALLY in front of me has rendered me virtually inarticulate.

The biggest news - and the reason I've been away for awhile even with IVF plans proceeding apace - is that my cat died.

I'm still not ready to talk about it in detail. Regular followers might remember I nursed him through cancer 18 months ago. We knew his time with us was limited as he had been diagnosed with kidney failure, but I was hoping he'd see me through my first cycle of this hell.

However, fate moved against us and he started having daily seizures ten days ago. Hubby had taken me away for the weekend as a sort of last ditch romantic break before IVF, but we had to cut our trip short and rush home so my mum and I could jointly make the decision that it was time to let him go.

The vet came to the house last Monday and my darling furby died in my arms on his favourite chair. It was the worst thing I've gone through to date. We buried him in the garden and since that awful day not a second has passed when I don't miss my best boy. Not having a furry companion has made the loneliness of infertility bite even harder, but any notion of getting another cat makes me feel unfaithful. I guess right now the pain of losing him is still too raw.

That said, I have written all of this so far without crying. It's all about crying less each day and I'm impressed I've managed to tell the story - badly, but I've got the words out - without dissolving. I think the fact I am still bug-eyed with horror about the sacks of drugs lurking next door may have something to do with it, mind you.

So that happened. Then my relative who'd just had two embryos transferred had her pregnancy test, and it came back negative. She started bleeding the next day. I know I said last time that I was jealous - and I was, fuck me, I was green - but I never, ever wanted her cycle to fail. She is hurting so much right now and my challenge is to be there for her as best I can while making my own final preparations.

So on day two, a fortnight ago, I visited the clinic for my bloodwork. Turned out my FSH is 11.7, which is a little higher than they'd like for IVF (though not off the map) but a lot higher than it should be for a 30-year-old. I'm told stress can play a part, and with my cat and various other factors I suspect that's had a significant effect, but the clinic did say it may also mean my ovaries are struggling and that in turn may mean a higher chance of a cancelled IVF cycle or indeed a total failure of my body to respond to the drugs. They've prescribed me a higher dosage of Menopur - four ampoules rather than three. Whatever the fuck an ampoule is. Up until this month I thought it was something to do with plugs. I guess I was off sick the day we covered this shit in school.

So I got my treatment schedule, and they want me to start the nasal spray a week on Sunday. I get to attend the clinic on Friday for a "teaching appointment" to tell me how to take it. I'm not sure exactly what kind of imbecile doesn't know how to take a nasal spray - I mean, what, am I going to stick the bottle in my ear? - but there we go.

I'm not squeamish about needles but some of those motherfuckers are big. My relative tells me the last one - the one with the HcG in it - is the worst, because that's been kept in the fridge and is icy cold right about when you start flooding it into your thigh. If my hormones fuck up we may not even get that far. Right now, this autumn just looks like one long track of increasingly steeper hurdles, each one of which may constitute the end of the road.

I also may jest about being intellectually evolved enough to figure out a nasal spray, but I'm clumsy, bad-tempered, impatient and liable to hurl small, fiddly things that don't comply with my wishes at the wall. How in the world I'm going to manage with the selection of Sylvanian Family-sized glass bottles, dinky vials and stabbing instruments currently shoved hastily in a chemist's carrier bag on my spare bed is anyone's guess.

The side effects freaked me out, too. I mean, obviously chest pain, decrease in breast size, vaginal bleeding, migraine, shortness of breath, vaginal dryness, hot flushes, night sweats, muscular pain and abdominal swelling are every girl's dream, but we've all read about the scary stuff associated with IVF. By which I mean the cancer. That's a c-word that puts all my fears about what's going to happen to and in and around my other c-word into perspective.

I'm particularly looking forward to the pessaries because I've always imagined what it would be like to shove a lozenge of vegetable fat up myself and wait for it to ooze stickily into my pants. Every night for fourteen nights.

My timings are such that the egg collection will happen shortly before Christmas, which works well in terms of holiday from work and rest potential. What potentially sucks is that if things go well and we get eggs, then embryos, my pregnancy test will take place New Year's Eve. Kind of a bum start to 2010 if it fails, no?

I have the word DAUNTED in block red capitals in my head, but it doesn't do justice to how I feel right now. I think a more accurate summary is that I feel a level of terror and anxiety sufficient to almost - but not quite - anaesthetise the pain of losing a 19-year furry friend. I so hoped my little kitty would see me through this.

And here are the tears.

A Daniel Powter of a period day

2009-10-13T22:04:00.007+01:00

God, I just feel awful this evening. I had a broken night's sleep, one of those awful pre-period nights where you're too hot and wake up hourly, bathed in sour sweat and just waiting to feel the telltale trickle between your legs.

Why do I persist in continuing to hope in the face of compelling evidence that my period is imminent? I have been in this nightmare for nigh on four years and yet not a cycle goes by without me trying to talk myself into the brown stuff being implantation bleeding, the swollen gut being the start of a bump and the sore boobs being caused by pregnancy hormones.

I think the dangerous hope fairy was spurred on this month by my scan at the clinic, which clearly revealed a follicle out of which an egg had recently popped. How can you not hope when you see that with your own two eyes?

But oh, god, it was hideous this morning when that dastardly trickle did start up, accompanied almost immediately by wracking cramps. I was at work, as I usually am when this happens to me - of course my body wouldn't be so considerate as to commence menses on a weekend when I'm free to hide under the duvet and howl to my heart's content.

No, I bottled it up as best I could - a feat made more difficult by a colleague bringing her new baby in for a visit (bad timing obviously not her fault, but I hid anyway).

I also had no Tampax in either my desk drawer or my bag - I only had one crappy Asda tampon from a packet which hubby once bought me because he "thought the box looked the same". They're bigger and somehow unwieldier than the plastic-coated Tampax Compaq that I favour (although you'd wonder why I have an issue with large tampons given the vast array of bulbous implements that have probed my nether regions in recent years). So I had to do the horrid drippy walk to the ladies' knowing I had a shitty tampon situation going on as well as being horribly devastated at our last-chance disintegrating into dust.

So after all that, I kind of expected I'd start crying as soon as I left for home but by that stage in the afternoon it was all buried too deep. It has taken a bottle of beer, a bath and a lot of thinking on the couch before it all splurged snottily out just now in a very weepy phone conversation with my mum. It just hurts so bad to fail, and fail, and fail, every month, despite trying so very hard.

I'm clinic-bound in the morning for my final day two bloodwork before IVF. Hopefully they will have the results of hubby's latest sperm sample, which he produced last week, and I can finally talk dates and get some concrete understanding of how things will progress from here on in.

A family member has just had two good embryos transferred following her first cycle, and god help me, I'm jealous. I know how hideous that makes me - she has tried just as hard as I have and for nearly as long, and I honestly thought I'd be a better person and find it in my heart to be happy for her if she had a good outcome.

Please don't think I'm saying I wanted - or indeed want - her to fail. I don't mean that. I just guess I underestimated how hard it would be to be bombarded with texts from her describing her emotions about her two living embryos, about which she tells me she already feels maternal, when we are still in limbo.

I think I also overestimated my own decency. Sometimes I worry I don't deserve a baby.

Nothing for today but to write it off as a reeeeeally bad job. I need, in no particular order, a hot water bottle. A cuddle. A glass of wine. My mum. My kitty. Bed. A bit more of a cry.

I also need hubby to stop irritating me. I am weepy right now, so most of the impotent fury has leaked out of my tear ducts, but I am also really angry with our situation, and there's nowhere to direct it other than at him. He has done absolutely nothing to comfort me this evening - he sat and fucked around with his iphone while I was crying on the phone to my mum right next to him on the sofa - and right now he is making an infernal racket searching for a bulb for my bedside lamp - it fused this morning as part of what has generally been a shitfest of a day.

At times like this I just wish he'd get out of my sight until I've done my monthly grieving and can interact with other humans again. Because right now even the sight of his socked feet is enough to enrage me.

In addition to my list of needs cited above, it goes without saying that I need to feel I am making some kind of progress through this hell. I'm losing my mind here. Guess I'll have to wait and see what tomorrow morning brings.

Awards galore (good on a period day)

2009-10-12T21:46:00.008+01:00

Aw, you guys! I can't believe I've been nominated for two awards by fellow readers battling their way through the unending nightmare that is infertility.

I really am touched and a wee bit teary - in a good way - at all the amazing comments I've had recently. I wasn't going to blog tonight - after spending the day in a trying-not-to-be-but-fuck-it-I-am-anyway spiral of hope because of it being day 29 with no bee-yatch in my pants, I got home and promptly exuded several millilitres of brown sludge. So it's coming. The fact my stomach resembles a beach ball and I want to knife everyone I meet should really have alerted me to this fact. Perhaps one of these relentlessly marching months I'll learn.

But when I checked in and saw the comments and awards mentions I just had to say thanks.

Really, honestly, heartfelt thanks to Hope Springs over at Moving On To The Next Plan for this:

And to Illanare at My Words Fly Up, My Thoughts Remain Below for this:

Now for the revelations - my OTT award first up, for which I have to answer a series of questions using just one word:

1. Where is your cell phone? Bed
2. Your hair? Red
3. Your mother? Lifeline
4. Your father? Difficult
5. Your favorite food? Curry
6. Your dream last night? Unmemorable
7. Your favorite drink? Wine (I know, I know)
8. Your dream/goal? Motherhood
9. What room are you in? Study
10. Your hobby? Comedy
11. Your fear? Arachnids
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Fertile
13. Where were you last night? Sofa
14. Something that you aren’t? Patient
15. Muffins? Waitrose
16. Wish list item? Daughter
17. Where did you grow up? England
18. Last thing you did? Bathed
19. What are you wearing? PJs
20. Your TV? Downstairs
21. Your pets? Cat
22. Friends? Essential
23. Your life? Unfulfilled
24. Your mood? Lousy
25. Missing someone? Cousin
26. Vehicle? German
27. Something you’re not wearing? Contacts
28. Your favorite store? Shoe
29. Your favorite color? Green
30. When was the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Today
32. Your best friend? Legendary
33. One place that I go to over and over? Clinic
34. One person who emails me regularly? Dad
35. Favorite place to eat? Curryhouse

And for my Honest Scrap award, here are ten things you didn't know about me:

1. I hate cheese. I mean, I REALLY fucking hate it. Can't be in the same room with the stuff when it's melted. I make hubby keep his (inevitably, he loves it, especially the blue mouldy veiny shit) in a sealed box in the fridge.

2. I think laughing really, really hard is better than any sexual move any man or machine could ever perform on me. I always have thought this, and I always will.

3. If there was a really big spider in my home and hubby wasn't around to deal with it, I'd have to call the police once I'd exhausted the options of male friends and relatives.

4. I'm such a big pain-wimp that I've never had my legs, eyebrows or anything else waxed and blanch at the thought. Yet I have handled an HSG with only a smidgen of braying hysteria.

5. I am the most irritable person I have ever met, except for perhaps my father. Hubby sniffling is enough to make me bark out insults with feeling.

6. I'm an unusually good cook for a woman who's quite slim (I flirted with bulimia aged 19). I make a lentil curry that hubby goes wild for and which I believe is restaurant-quality.

7. When I arrive at a pedestrian crossing to find someone already waiting who has failed to press the button, I mutter "Works better when you fucking press it", increasingly audibly. Ditto lifts.

8. It is only a matter of time before I make an error of judgement and end up in hospital as a result of the above action.

9. There is a place in Canada, on the water, where I feel truly at peace.

10. Right now I am looking at a framed photograph of Bruce Springsteen, who I have loved since I was 13 years old.

Recipients

1. MK at An Infertile Blog, who's about as pissed off with this whole shitty process as I am, and who got a laugh out of me the first time I saw her brilliant use of a pregnancy test image.

2. Melissa over at Stirrup Queens, who has awards galore but who provides an absolutely amazing and essential service to those of us facing this battle (and who gave me a big boost with her welcome back after my long summer absence this week).

3. Rambler, at My World, My Ramblings, for her recent post that puts very eloquently what I didn't know then and wish I didn't know now.

The barren woman's hate list: item #9 - Pregnancy vitamins

2009-10-06T21:45:00.004+01:00

It amazes me that I have not yet mentioned how much these little puppies vex me.

Let me first say that I believe they are extremely valid and important. I would advise any woman trying to conceive to make sure she at least takes her 400 micrograms of folic acid every day, even if she doesn't want to go the whole hog with the Omega-3 oils, because the advantages proper folic acid consumption give a growing baby are immense and proven.

But hell. My problems with pregnancy vitamins are manifold.

For a start, it's the marketing. Every brand is the same: a smug, beaming woman grinning beatifically and yet with some measure of surprise at her bump, as if mildly astonished to see it there. I start every day by waking and wishing I had a child. To then trudge downstairs and be confronted with said woman's joyous countenance before I've even ingested orange juice is sometimes more than I can stomach.

Secondly, the price. These vitamins are at least a third more expensive than regular daily multivits. If you go for one of the super-duper Omega-3 brands - "for brain and eye development!" sings the packaging, as if any wannabe mother plans on having a brainless, blind child - you're talking £10 to £12 for a 30-day supply.

Fair enough if you're one of the blessed souls that produces offspring using the following maths: select preferred month of birth (hmm, spring baby or autumn baby?), count back nine months, mount husband on appropriate day.

However, that's a lot of money every pay packet when you've been trying three years or more.

Yet still, doggedly, one almost feels pointlessly, I take them. Every day. Religiously, with my cornflakes and OJ. It actually bothers me if I'm away from home and forget to bring my vitamins with me. "What about the brain and eye development of the big fat fucking nothing that's growing inside you?" my inner voice yells.

I'm on Pregnacare at the moment. It's always either those or Sanatogen Pro-Natal, depending which are on special offer. (Both fulfil the brain and eye criteria, so it's an even toss.) I hate Pregnacare especially because they come in truly inconvenient blister packs, with a purple oblong folic acid tablet in one and a bulbous oil-filled brain-and-eye capsule in the other. The blister packs don't quite fit in the box with the instructions, which tend to get crumpled at the bottom and take more room than they ought, meaning you end up ramming and cramming the blister packs back in the box while pounding the whole lot off the kitchen counter (smug pregnant lady facedown, obviously) for good measure.

And this is how I start my days. Is it any wonder I'm losing my mind?

First IVF consultation

2009-10-05T21:08:00.004+01:00

So it has come to this.

Last Wednesday hubby and I attended our first IVF consultation, thus formally acknowledging on our medical history that infertility has beaten us and we have reached this juncture.

We met a lady who I hope will be our doctor from now on, though you can never tell who you're going to get at the clinic (in which respect it's a little like Forrest Gump's chocolates). I'd not met her before but I liked her manner instantly and by the end of the appointment she'd stared into my innermost recess with interest so I felt we'd bonded.

The session took way over an hour in total and, as is typical of visits to the clinic, wasn't what I'd expected. We first reviewed our progress, or lack thereof, to date and then discussed the fact that despite my cycles having righted themselves post-clomid, we're still not pregnant. I've tested for ovulation these past three months using home predictor kits and have had a positive each time. We've had sex bang - if you'll pardon the pun - on the right days. And yet we're still not pregnant.

Our doctor said that in an average month, consisting of average sex (is there any other kind? I nearly quipped but thought better of it) between an average couple with nothing much wrong with their average bodies, there is a 20-30% chance of a pregnancy. However, once said couple have been trying for more than three years, as we have, this probability drops to just 3% due to the likelihood of there being an as yet undetermined problem. Happy thought, isn't it?

Anyway we agreed that while we could wait interminably for a couple more years, this is not an option for us emotionally and that we need to move on. That leaves us with the option of IVF.

I knew all this from the previous discussion with the clinic's professor, of course, but the purpose of this meeting was to go through it all in glorious technicolour. And inevitably to stare up my bits once more. It'd be rude not to.

Yes, I had another scan with my old buddy the Renault Espace. This was because it has been nearly two years - which is appalling, in a passage-of-time sense - since our first consultation and my first triple-S session of Swabs, Smear and Scan. Quadruple-S if you then add in Sore. Or Shitty. Or...I'll stop now.

I forced hubby to come in with me as I think it's about time he started confronting some of the realities of this process rather than sitting in blissful ignorance thinking that the most traumatic thing any infertile person ever has to do is wank in a cup on demand. He wasn't happy but he acceded to my request and hovered uncomfortably at the edge of the room looking dubious while the doctor rummaged around looking for my ovaries.

I had a moment of vindication - all summer hubby has doubted my claims to be ovulating independently - when she identified a recently burst follicle out of which an egg would have popped about six days previously - on the day I thought I'd ovulated, and on my right ovary where I'd felt the telltale jabbing pain.

I very nearly shouted "Hah!" in hubby's face but revised my decision at the last second in case it cast aspersions on the robustness of our relationship. I had to content myself with looking smugly triumphant - or at least, as triumphant as it's possible to look with a remote-control-sized doppler hanging out of your undercarriage.

The scan checked out - both ovaries looked good, I'd clearly recently ovulated and was starting to form small follicles for next month, and neither looked polycystic, firmly placing the opinion of the very first doctor I saw at that clinic in the category of utter bollocks. My womb looked fine also, and was half-filled with normal-looking endometrium consistent with that stage in my cycle.

BUT WHERE IS THE FUCKING BABY, I hear you cry. Or at least I hear myself cry, on a daily basis. I have no idea what is preventing us from conceiving, and not knowing is frustrating beyond words.

I got dressed and we returned to the consulting room where the doctor took us through the seven weeks of the IVF process in elaborate, terrifying detail.

Three weeks of nasal spray to "control" - for which, read "shut down" - my natural system.

Two weeks of daily injections, self-administered in thigh or tummy, to pump me full of eggs.

Scans to look at said eggs. Lots of scans. (The local authority where I live is building a new road tunnel beneath the river to ease traffic congestion. Said tunnel will be able to be closely modelled on my vagina by the end of this process.)

The dreaded egg collection, or "harvesting". (And on that, why so many fertility terms are quasi-religious is beyond me. This word always puts me in mind of a choir of small children singing "We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land".)

This involves being sedated, strapped up and plumbed with the Espace, which this time will be accompanied on its journey by a needle which will pierce - and there's a word you don't want associated with your bits, unless you're a body art fan - my vaginal wall and pop into my ovary to extract the baker's dozen eggs I will be filled with.

At this point in proceedings, hubby has to have his wank. In, like, the CLINIC. In some shitty private room with no, like, windows or anything. Into a POT. I mean, the trauma of it.

They look at the outcome of said wank and if the sperm are decent sorts, mix them with my eggs and put what you have to imagine is the resulting gelatinous mess in an incubator overnight, the idea being that by morning several sprightly embryos will be jostling the sides of the petri dish in their eagerness to become kids.

But here's the rub: you might have fuck all embryos. You might - and by you, of course, I mean ME, the poor, beleaguered woman - go through all of that only to discover that for some unknown reason, your eggs and hubby's sperm just don't like each other (much like you and hubby on bleaker days). You might also have crappy embryos which would never, could never become successful pregnancies and just have to be binned.

If all goes well and you have at least one good-quality embryo, you go in the day after to have it transferred back into your womb via my old chum the balloon-toting catheter. I already have all the literature from the clinic about these procedures and weirdly on the day of the embryo transfer you're not allowed to wear perfume, body lotion or strong deodorant as "strong smells can be detrimental to your embryos". Who knew that?

You then basically cross your fingers, toes and legs and wait for a fortnight to see if the embryo(s) implant. If you haven't bled by the two-week mark, you go for a pregnancy test, and if it's positive, you presumably bellow with joy all the way home and then return in three further weeks for a scan. If all's well with THAT, you're turned over to the care of your local GP who will arrange a midwife for you. I cannot imagine the word "midwife" ever applying to me at this point.

If things fail at any of the stages mentioned above, you presumably cry until your lungs fall out your nose and then the clinic give you six weeks or so to "heal" physically and emotionally before you have a review consultation to discuss where it all went wrong, and next steps if any are available to you.

It's huge, scary as shit, deeply traumatic and life-changing. Where I am right now is terror - not of the process itself; I think I can handle that after everything I've been through already - but of it not working. I know I can drag my body through all the physical trauma and survive, but I can only do that because of the shred of hope that it will work and that this is just what I personally have to go through in order to become a mother. What I can't countenance is putting myself through all of that and failing.

The clinic want more early-cycle bloodwork from me - fuck knows why, they've taken blood at least 1,100 times; I swear to you, they're vampires - and more sperm from hubby, which as you might imagine he is overjoyed about. He goes on Thursday, actually - he's going to have a dry run, as it were, of doing his sample in the clinic to prepare him for what he genuinely referred to as "the trauma of the day". I told him I'd share his pain and that he could share mine by allowing me to inflate a cocktail umbrella inside his shaft when we arrived home.

Once the results of this final batch of tests are in, we can start. Nasal spray is likely to be November - I have no confirmed dates yet, which makes me feel a bit like I'm in limbo - so the egg collection/embryo transfer process is likely to be just before Christmas. This is bittersweet - I hate Christmas anyway so the prospect of spending it with sore bits doesn't really bother me - but equally it's an emotive time of year and I'm likely to be in pieces. On the other hand it will coincide with holiday from work so I'll have plenty of time to rest up and recover from the op - which, by all accounts, only takes a few days.

It's so weird. I suppose a tiny part of me - a part that's nowhere near my vagina, I can tell you - is excited because this might actually be it, after all this time. But a much bigger part is want-my-mum petrified.

All I know is that it's autumn now. Cold, crisp weather descended the minute the calendar flipped last week. This has been the most difficult year of my life.

There are days when I'm not doing so good, and days when I cope OK. The balance would be very much in favour of the former were it not for certain key things and people - encouragement from those who comment on my blog; the candid and frank relationship I have with my wonderfully supportive mother; an interesting and challenging job; a cosy home and a husband who knows how to do comfort food; my darling cat, who is on his very last legs but keeps plodding on for my sake; and most of all, the distraction, silly times, late nights, shoulder-cries and belly laughs provided by my dear best friend, who knows who she is and to whom I am eternally grateful for helping me pick my way through this mess.

And amid all the terror, this glimmer: I may end this year with a tiny embryo in my womb. That's a pretty amazing thought, and getting there justifies all kinds of nightmares en route.

It seems extremely lofty and pompous to use a quote from Paradise Lost to describe my ordeal, but fuck it, I watched Seven the other night and it's in my head, and I don't imagine I'm the first person to feel this line has a resonance with the battle of infertility:

"Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light."

Crying at the movies (again)

2009-09-13T21:45:00.000+01:00

I watched The Time Traveller's Wife on Friday night. It's one of my favourite novels and I was excited to see the film, though my not-as-good-as-the-book reaction was inevitable.

I expected to cry - it's a tearjerker and I've been known to weep at a TV advert in which a cartoon mobile phone is abandoned by its owner. For context, when I was reading the last few pages of the book, hubby banished me from the marital bed because my rasping sobs were keeping him awake. However, I underestimated how much the baby-related section of the story would get to me, now that we are where we are.

I first read the book four or five years ago, during a time of my life now reflected on as BGBFFN (before great big fucking fertility nightmare). Then, it was the romantic tragedy of the story that affected me - the concept of star-crossed lovers being parted by death.

I reread it about two years ago, by which time I was weepy at the end but now faintly irritated by the couple's persistent and excessive drooling happiness. At that time I remember crying more at the part where the main female character has repeated miscarriages because the baby shares its father's time-travelling gene and keeps travelling out of the womb before it is old enough to survive the journey.

In the cinema on Friday, this bit got to me so much that I could do nothing but sit and attempt to stifle what wanted to be great gulps of misery, while tears ran down my neck and saturated my T-shirt. There is a scene in which the newly pregnant heroine is told, by her husband who has travelled into the future and met their daughter for the first time, that it's OK, that this pregnancy will endure and that everything is basically going to be all right. Happy tears and hugs all round ensue, and I thought my chest was going to rupture.

My best friend, who was sitting next to me, wordlessly reached for my hand during this and the birth scene it segued into, which helped, but I couldn't recover. Most of the time I manage to get through the days and weeks and months and years of this intact but there are moments - and they're getting more frequent - when there's nothing for it but to howl.

So that's what I did when I got in my car after the movie. All the while thinking thoughts along the lines of "you stupid, stupid cow, it's just a story", but unable to do anything about how bad I felt. Because that's what I want more than anything else: for someone to look into the future and tell me I'm going to have a child.

I wouldn't mind if it's years away. I wouldn't care about whatever physical pain and trauma I have to endure to get there. If I could just be told, for certain, that it will all work out, that I will not die childless and alone, that all this misery will not ultimately end in more misery, that I will not be this unhappy forever, I'd be OK.

We are dealing with a challenging situation caring for my elderly grandfather at the moment. He is physically well but mentally not, and he requires constant and sometimes quite frustrating care. We're glad to do it, of course, but during the course of some of these ministrations both my parents have made jocular comments to me regarding how difficult they plan to be when they reach their dotage.

It perhaps reflects the morbid state of depression and despondency in which I now find myself that my reaction to these observations has been a sort of deep, cold dread. At the root of this is my horror - because horror is the only word for it - that by the time I reach my eighties, if we remain barren, I will have nobody to care for me or even spend time with me. It's a selfish and extremely negative viewpoint. But it's one of the things that scares me most.

It's been a tricky few days. I got my period on Sunday, a day early. That ticks off the penultimate "last chance saloon" month in which I might conceivably - fnarr - have got pregnant just before IVF.

(And on that subject, I am bone-achingly, stomach-clenchingly, mortally SICK of hearing tales about people who this happened to. I wish sometimes that I wore a badge which reads:

"Hello. I am infertile and about to start IVF. Please do not share with me 18 separate anecdotes about friends' cousins' colleagues' dolls who magically found out they were pregnant immediately before they started this process. I DO NOT CARE AND DO NOT WISH TO SHARE IN THEIR SMUG FUCKING JOY. Thanks."

I mean, please. Why do people imagine I would want to hear this? It does not give me hope. It does not give me cause to imagine I may be granted a similar heavenly reprieve. It just pisses me off and cements in my mind the notion that I must have been a really wicked bitch in a previous life to deserve this level of shit in my current one.)

Anyway. This means I may not actually have another cycle to call my own before we begin. We attend the clinic on September 30th to sign consent forms and collect drugs. I had assumed I'd then need to wait for day one of a new cycle before commencing the nasal spray to shut down my system, but a relative I saw over the weekend who is presently a fortnight into her spray said no, you can start the day you get the drugs, no matter where your cycle is.

In some ways, I suppose, it takes the pressure off. We know now, categorically, that any baby we might have will not be conceived in our home, in our bed, as a result of a natural act of love. Instead our child will be conceived in a petri dish in a clinic and replaced in my womb by a catheter. So it takes all focus off sex, and perhaps means we can attempt to rekindle a normal physical relationship.

In other ways, as I have alluded to before, there is a certain measure of utter despair that it has come to this, mingled with terror that I will go through all that only for it to fail.

I also found out this morning that a friend who has been battling with her own fertility woes is ten weeks pregnant. I'm pleased her nightmare is over but it hit me like a sledgehammer to the face.

What a miserable, bleating entry this has been! I should say that all the wonderful comments left by people who have missed my absence mean a great deal to me. To know that there are people out there who have been wondering how things were going for me, and who care and empathise that they've been going shit, is of so much comfort. I don't know what I would do without the support and catharsis afforded to me by this blog.

But in typical style I am going to end on a sad note, because I feel so very sad today. I've been listening a lot to Kings of Leon after watching them live at a festival this summer. The lines that resonate most at the moment come from their lovely song Cold Desert:

"I never ever cried when I was feeling down,
I've always been scared of the sound.
Jesus don't love me, no-one ever carried my load,
I'm too young to feel this old."

That just about sums it up for now.

A huge blow, a summer and a referral

2009-09-07T21:58:00.002+01:00

I've been away for a really long time and I'm sorry. I have so much to say that I might have to split my update into a few parts. I'm even unsure which part to tell you first. I guess the headline news is that we have been referred for IVF and will start in October. But I'll come to that.

The reason I haven't written for so long is that something happened at the end of my third clomid cycle that upset me so much I felt unable to write about my experience until now. I decided afterwards that I needed a couple of months off - well, not off, as we infertile women know there's never REALLY a month when you stop trying - but at least off the clomid and away from the blog.

Since it was the start of summer and I had a lot planned - the weddings of two very dear friends, associated hen parties, a trip to a comedy festival and another to a music festival - I figured I'd have the warm months off and see where I was come autumn.

So what was it that happened? Well, I finished my third cycle of clomid knowing from the pain and general symptoms that I'd ovulated. I attended the clinic for my day 21 test and then the next day hubby and I headed up north for our wedding anniversary. We'd planned a lovely, romantic couple of days, the first staying in the castle where we had our wedding reception four years ago.

We were about 15 minutes from said castle when it suddenly struck me I hadn't called the clinic for my results. As if by magic, my mobile started to ring. I was driving so hubby answered. It was the clinic.

When they realised they were speaking to the husband, they gave him the message that was the reason for their call and then hubby attempted to relay this to me in the shambolic way that only a man can achieve.

The following conversation ensued:

Me: Well? What did they say?
Hubby: They said something about your blood being too high.
Me [IMMEDIATELY vexed]: What? What does that even mean? My blood's too high? What am I, a vampire?
Hubby: The hormone. The hormone was too high.
Me: WHAT hormone?
Hubby: The one with "ogen" in it, I forget.
Me: THERE ARE TWO! For the love of God, there's oestrogen and progesterone. Which was high? It should be my progesterone. Do you just basically NEVER listen when I talk about this stuff?
Hubby: Progesterone. That's it.
Me: Did they actually say the words "too high"?
Hubby: Well, they said high.
Me: High is good. High is what we want. TOO high is bad. TOO high means that basically my ovaries are about to rupture and fall out of my arse.
Hubby: They want you to go in on Monday.
Me: Oh my God, they really MUST be going to rupture!

By this point we'd reached the castle - what was supposed to be a slow drive up the scenic entrance track, pausing to reminisce when the castle came into view was actually spent shrieking at each other. Ho hum.

We parked up and I rang the clinic back and talked to one of the nurses. She laughed when I said hubby had reported it as "too high". No, she said, my progesterone was just really high - so high, in fact, that they were pretty confident I'd conceived.

I've replayed this conversation many times in my mind and I don't think I overestimated how much confidence she claimed they had. She was at pains to stress that both my progesterone and my oestrogen were elevated to such an extent that conception was very likely. She asked me to come in on Tuesday (day 28) for a pregnancy test - she said they didn't want to wait - and that "hopefully it would be good news".

Well, we were stunned. We weren't quite stupid enough to be happy, to be celebratory, but we checked in to that hotel with a definite sense of relief that this fucking nightmare might just be over. I barely registered saying hi to the clerk - who was the same guy who'd served drinks at our wedding - and only realised we'd been upgraded to the next best suite than the bridal one when we opened the door of our room.

I called my mum who wisely told me to tone it down - this was not a positive result, not yet - and enjoy the weekend away. She even said the words "put it out of your mind" - as if that was possible! Then I started unpacking and noticed the hotel had gifted us a chilled bottle of champagne.

A conversation ensued about whether I ought to drink any. I wanted to - the dark voice in my soul was piping up with "Of COURSE you're not pregnant" at this stage - and didn't want to at the same time. Either way I knew I'd regret it: if things turned out well I'd worry for the entire pregnancy that those glasses of fizz might have damaged the baby, and if they didn't I'd be bitter about ruining my anniversary for nothing. (I'll bet you've guessed how it turned out...)

In the end I compromised with the worst of both worlds: I had a glass and didn't enjoy it. I then laid off the wine during dinner, just in case, but other than both of us being low-level excited the whole time, we had a lovely weekend. It was sunny and warm, we walked lots and ate good food, we held hands and talked, and things were good. We didn't have sex but it wasn't a pointed not-having-sex, it just honestly didn't occur to either of us after three months of relentless babymaking attempts.

On the drive home, we stopped in to visit my best friend from university, who was at the time six months pregnant with her second. I really wanted to see her and was determined not to let my bitterness spoil the visit. It didn't - there was the inevitable pang when I saw her bump, but that's almost as natural to me as breathing these days - but I did rather foolishly share my potential news with her. She's followed my progress through this with compassion and interest - the original plan had been for us to be first-time pregnant together - and she was excited too.

Then it was a case of counting the seconds until I could visit the clinic for my test on Tuesday morning. I didn't sleep a wink the night before and the whole way there on the train, all I could think was that this might be the last day of infertility misery. I let myself dip a toe into the danger territory of imagining telling my nearest and dearest - imagining coming home and telling hubby - and I'm sorry to say I let myself hope.

The nurse at the clinic wasn't the same one I'd spoken to over the phone but she was equally as
encouraged by my results. My progesterone was well over 175, but my oestrogen was also high and she said that was a sign of conception. She drew my blood and said to call at 4pm for the results. Her parting shot was "fingers crossed"!

Well, you can imagine what the interminable wait between 8.30am and 4pm was like. But time always passes, even when you thinkk it has stopped, and eventually I was ringing the clinic from my failsafe private spot.

It works like this: the receptionist answers the phone, takes your name and puts you through to the nurses' station, where you sometimes (as was the case on this day) have to wait on hold for a minute or two while a nurse pulls your results. I was hopping from foot to foot. This could be it, I kept thinking, this could be the moment when everything changes.

I knew as soon as the nurse got on the phone. I knew by her voice. And to her credit, she didn't pull any punches. It went like this:

Nurse: Hello, I've got your results.
Me [I knew at this moment]: Yes.
Nurse: Sweetheart, it was negative.
Me [crying too hard to speak audibly]: OK, thanks.
Nurse: Are you OK?
Me: No. I was just really hopeful.

I apologised and hung up because I actually couldn't form words any longer. I then had the challenge of being at work and needing to get through the rest of the day before the howling that was coming erupted. I cried and cried for a few minutes, then pulled myself together and did what I do: I coped.

When I was calmer I called the clinic back, apologised for getting hysterical and asked them how on earth could my results have been so good and yet the test still be negative. They said they didn't know and that I should make an appointment to come to clinic and discuss next steps.

It was on the train home that I started losing it. I hadn't phoned hubby with the news as there was no way I could have recovered from that conversation. I walked home from the station basically wailing in the manner of a crazed person and then actually fell in the front door. Hubby emerged from the lounge and just crumpled too, and then we cried together for ages.

So, after that, I was done in. I cried so much that night that my eyes were puffy and inflamed for the next three days. I know other people go through much, much worse with failed IVF, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and all manner of other horrible endings, but for me this was the lowest point in my experience so far.

I had the option to continue with clomid over the summer but after considering it carefully I decided not to. Partly that was because I felt my body needed a break, and that all the headaches and ovulation pains were it screaming at me to give it one. Partly it was due to stress I was under in other areas of my life. I was also interested to see if I'd ovulate on my own after three cycles.

And that's what happened - I ovulated, if home predictor test kits are to be believed, twice over the summer. And hubby and I did the deed whenever possible, with a little help from some viagra for him on a few occasions. And no, I'm still not pregnant.

We had out clinic consultation a couple of weeks ago, and I'll talk about that and the plans for our first cycle of IVF next time. I just wanted to post something so all the people who've been kindly asking after me know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, although there have been moments when I've felt close.

Operation turkey baster

2009-06-04T21:32:00.006+01:00

My sex life plumbed new depths last night after I inseminated myself with a turkey baster.

Hubby and I had done really well by having sex every single day around when we thought - based on the last two months of clomiphene experience - I'd ovulate. We assumed I'd ovulate on Monday, as it was day 14 and for the past two cycles I've ovulated relentlessly on day 14. So we did the bad thing Saturday, Sunday AND Monday. For us, this is an Olympian achievement. Hubby even went to the doctor and got the viagra. And it worked.

But ain't life a bitch. I had some ovulation pain Sunday night/Monday morning, but nowhere near the level I've had the past two months. I thought perhaps this was due to my system being more saturated, it being my third month, and tried not to worry.

Wednesday dawned. Day 16. Way past ovulation time, you'd think. No. At 11am I was suddenly, out of nowhere, racked with low down, one-sided stabby pain so bad I thought I was going to be sick. I spent much of the afternoon either biting my own face to keep from yelping or trotting to the toilet to sit bent over my own knees in despair.

I went home - inconveniently, to my mum's rather than actual home, as she is on holiday and we're catsitting for my beloved and increasingly decrepid moggie - and informed hubby that the diary had changed, all our hard work had been for nothing, and today was the day.

He acted as if I'd suggested he donate me a kidney. "But I'm not in the mood," came his initial response, met with the riposte of a hollow laugh and the truthful assurance that I have not been in the mood for nigh on two years.

We left the argument and had dinner, with me seemingly secure in the knowledge that he knew what was expected of him and wouldn't baulk at the last hurdle after all our effort, and after I'd spent a day at work in insufferable pain.

Hmm. We got into bed and he turned decisively away and switched off the lamp. The following conversation ensued:

Me: What's going on? We need to have sex.
Hubby (petulantly): I'm not in the mood.
Me: My ovaries feel like they are rupturing. Do you imagine I am in the mood?
Hubby: We did it on Monday. Maybe there'll be some sperm still alive from then.
Me: I have been in mortal agony since 11am. I have now gone through this three months on the trot. I'm not prepared to take the risk that your sperm - which, let's face it, if they take after you are not exactly go-getters - might have survived my poisonous vagina for a period of days. Let's be having you.

A dismal attempt at sex ensued. It didn't work.

Hubby: I can't do it. It's too hard.
Me: On the contrary...
Hubby: Oh, just fuck off!

He then went to look at porn. (On my stepdad's computer. The shame of it.) I lay there and pondered how my life had arrived at this juncture. I heard him typing frantically and assumed he was either writing his own erotica or emailing one of his friends to complain about what a nagging bitch he'd married.

He eventually sloped back into the bedroom with a semi, and mounted me with the enthusiasm of a dead slug. It felt not dissimilar to shagging an overcooked piece of penne pasta. Eventually he dismounted with a flourish and wailed "This is so fucking awful!" before retreating back to his online porn. I followed him.

Me: Yes, it's awful for you. Now, if you can, imagine for one second what it is like for me. Sort it out.

I then went downstairs to assess whether my mum had a turkey baster of her own. (Inevitably, we'd left ours at home, still in its wrapper, so I figured if she had one we'd use it for the deed and then replace it with our own unused one.) She didn't.

One more diabolical shag attempt later, and I began to dress.

Hubby: What are you doing?
Me: I'm going home to get the turkey baster.
Hubby: Don't be ridiculous.
Me: I'm being far from ridiculous. Ridiculous is taking a horrible, side-effect-ridden fertility drug for three months and not having sex at the right time. Ridiculous is knowing for a fine fucking fact that there are eggs in me RIGHT NOW and not making ANY effort to fertilise them.

I didn't have my car - we'd come in hubby's - so after dressing in jeans with no knickers and a completely incongruous smart work jacket (the first things I grabbed), I snatched his car keys. As I was making my final preparations to leave, donning shoes and unlatching my mother's Fort Knoxian front door system, hubby appeared at the top of the stairs, in his pants, hopping ineffectually from foot to foot.

Me: What the fuck?
Hubby: You won't be able to work the steering lock.
Me: How hard can it be? (Then, unable to resist) Sorry, you're not best placed to answer that, are you?

A few minutes later I was back, having wrestled with the aforementioned frigging steering lock to the point where I considered attempting the drive with it still engaged. Hubby looked what can only be described as triumphant - that is, as triumphant as a man in his pants who is unable to sustain an erection in order to impregnate his desperate, sore wife can look.

Hubby: You couldn't work it, could you. It takes ages.
Me (hurling his car keys at his feet and snatching my mum's from the rack): Life's too short. I'm taking my mum's car.

And I did. It's new and she'd go bananas if she had any inkling I'd driven it, but hell. At this point it did occur to me that if this were a movie, the song playing during this scene would be "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".

Arriving at my darkened home it occurred to me that now might be a good time to cry, but I staved off the urge. The car clock read 11.33 and I figured that by midnight I could be horizontal, in the dark, weeping silently into my pillow. I sustained myself with this thought and grabbed the turkey baster from our kitchen drawer. It occurred to me to grab hubby's viagra at the same time - at this moment I was still envisioning an eleventh-hour reprieve in which we'd manage a shag and not have to resort to the plastic. However, the chemist's paper bag in which the tablets had previously resided was empty.

Back at mum's, I unwrapped the turkey baster and noted with dismay that it was not as I imagined it. Despite appearing to all intents and purposes like an oversized science class pipette, the plastic part was really hard and unyielding, and the implement itself extremely long (about 30cm). I began to wonder how I'd get the sperm into it, never mind into me. The packaging also said "WARNING: Contains latex!" and I had in my head that latex was a spermicide, so I washed it in warm, soapy water while hubby looked on in dismay.

Eventually I dispatched him back to the study with a cup. I busied myself looking for Vaseline with which to smear the end of the turkey baster. After the penne experience, I imagined I was in for a long wait. Soon hubby reappeared.

Hubby: How will you get it in?
Me: You worry about getting it out, I'll worry about getting it in.

Could I find Vaseline in my mum's toiletry cupboard? Instead I had to make do with a fingerful of her tiny pink pot of "magic fairy cream", which she used to use to rub on my grazed knees when I was a kid. It looks and smells like Vaseline but she somehow decants it into this tiny, battered Oriflame pot which I swear she's had for 25 years. I bet she never imagined it'd be used for this purpose.

Hubby emerged from the study brandishing aloft his glass of sperm. I say that. I've done more voluminous sneezes.

Me: Is that all? For fuck's sake.
Hubby: That's all there ever is!
Me: And we wonder why I'm not pregnant.
Hubby: How will you-
Me: Just piss off and leave me alone.

I took off my jeans and unscrewed the bulbous end of the baster and tipped the glass into the tube, careful to keep the implement horizontal for fear the sperm leak out too fast. I slightly misjudged the viscosity of it, but got most of it in. Then I covered the narrow end with my thumb and did my best to keep it relatively flat while I rammed the bulb back on the end. Everything in place, I lay on the bed, spread 'em and tilted my pelvis up. All the while, a lyric from a Tori Amos song kept repeating in my head: "This is not - this is not really happening".

I gingerly inserted the thin end of the tube into myself and pushed it as far as it would go without hurting. This was less than easy, because as you might imagine I was less than aroused. Never has George Clooney featured more prominently in my mind. When I decided the angle was as good as it was going to get, I tilted the tube more vertically and hoisted my hips higher, the better to allow the sperm to trickle in a downward trajectory.

I then made a fairly serious mistake. Without thinking the action through, I squeezed the bulbous end of the baster, exactly as if it were a pipette. However, at 30cm in length and with a bulbous end the size of, well, a bulb, I misjudged the strength of the air gust that ensued. (I also misjudged the fact that the baster was in my fairly sensitive vagina and not a fucking inanimate test tube at the time.) Never again, is all I'll say.

Hubby arrived just at the point when I had decided that as much sperm as was going to dribble into me had now been given the opportunity to do so, and extricated the device.

Hubby: How's it going?
Me: Fucking swimmingly. This is every girl's dream. Get my pants.
Hubby: Which pants?

Me: The pants I put on the nightstand when I assumed we were going to have sex, before I realised I was actually going to have to fuck a plastic tube!

He passed me them, and we switched off the lamp and curled up for the night without another word. Except for this:

Me (in the dark, after a few silent minutes of contemplation of what just happened): I have a question.
Hubby: What now?
Me: Where the fuck's your viagra? I was going to bring it.
Hubby: I already have it.
Me: And yet, when I got home and said I was ovulating, it didn't occur to you to take any.

I lay there, on the one hand strangely satisfied that, against all odds, I'd managed to get sperm inside me; on the other, fuming and sad that it had actually come to this. Nearly 24 hours on, I don't know what to feel. The ovulation pain has gone so this really is a waiting game now.

But never let it be said that I didn't try.

2009-05-23T23:45:00.006+01:00

I got my period on Wednesday morning.

It was due on Monday, and despite my best intentions, I fell into the heartbreak of hope on Tuesday morning when it hadn't appeared, since last month clomiphene made me so 28-day spot-on regular. I lasted all of Tuesday doing the awful thing of praying, actually praying to a deity I'm not sure I believe in, every time I went to the toilet.

The clinic had said to attend for a blood pregnancy test if I hadn't bled by Wednesday. But even while I hoped, all the time I was conscious of having no discernible symptoms, of not "knowing" or feeling anything. Then, walking home from my train on Tuesday evening, I felt a telltale squirt and just thought, No, please no.

I rushed into the house, hurled my laptop and handbag to the ground, charged past a baffled hubby and into the bathroom and there it was. Brown spotting. The indisputable, never-changing precursor to my fucking hellhole period.

I considered trying to pretend nothing had happened, that maybe it was implantation bleeding and nothing to worry about. I didn't even say anything to hubby to explain my dramatic entrance other than that I had been desperate for the toilet. But when I was treated to a more definitive reddish splurge as I was getting ready for bed, I knew the game was up and the cycle was over.

Well, I lost it. I lay on the bathroom floor and sobbed like I have never sobbed in my life. I cried to the point where there is no way of discerning where the tears stop and the phlegm and mucus begin on your face. I cried until my chest ached and my throat burned; until my eyes were piggy and swollen. And then I cried some more.

Eventually staggering into the bedroom, hubby's face just crumpled as he worked out in a glance what was up. I then lay down on the bedroom floor alongside my bed - why, rather than sinking into its comfort I know not - and wept some more, to the point where he considered calling my mum as he didn't know how to calm me.

I'm ashamed to say that's when I got nasty, blaming him for lack of sex since I knew from the clinic that I'd ovulated and had really good hormone levels after day 21. We didn't fight so much as carp, though, and I ultimately fell into an exhausted and miserable slumber.

Next morning the brown stuff had disappeared, but about 10am my period proper descended, all cramps and gore and guns blazing. I was just floored by the cramps this time, perhaps because it was the middle of the day on a workday rather than a weekend when I was dealing with the worst of them, and perhaps because clomiphene equals worse periods. I sat in a meeting at 2pm that day feeling physically sick with pain and almost blacking out when a particularly wrenching one bit.

I called the clinic at 4pm and told them in a shaky, breaking voice what had happened. I had considered a break from the drugs this month since I have a lot of other stuff going on, but they talked me into sticking with it as it's better to do your three clomiphene cycles concurrently and then take next steps from there.

Which is why I currently find myself queasy on day three of the pills, day four of my cycle proper. And I feel like this really is the penalty shootout in my football-match-analogised effort to conceive my baby in my own bed, rather than in stirrups in a clinic.

Hubby and I went out for lunch today in an effort to do something nice amid our despair. We had a nice meal but it took place in a shopping mall which seems to be a magnet for heavily pregnant women and new mums. Hubby started to look bleak when I uttered the sentence "There must be some sort of fertility ley line running through this place, maybe we can get us some of that". A few minutes later, after walking past the third set of identical twins dressed in matching outfits, I couldn't help but articulate that "it's like the fucking Shining in here; what's with all the twins?"

I hate being that woman, but I am, intrinsically, her until this nightmare is over.

After our lunch hubby and I went to the supermarket for our usual weekly shop. He appeared in the canned goods aisle grinning inanely and brandishing, I shit you not, a turkey baster. I had threatened to buy one earlier in the week when I informed him that, come hell or high water, I would be getting sperm into me for four consecutive days around ovulation this time, and that if he couldn't ejaculate it into me himself I would find another way.

He now clearly feels he has a get-out-of-jail-free card for performance anxiety, and while this seems a tad defeatist to me, at least we do have another option this month. The turkey baster is positively slimline compared with some of the equipment I've had to accommodate during the course of this, after all.

There was also something almost funny about the sight of him - a vegetarian, like me - bringing such a bizarre item to our trolley with such aplomb, even though the humour was more of the "has it really come to this?" variety.

An egg but no soldiers

2009-05-12T21:12:00.004+01:00

When I got home from work today, hubby announced that his sister had given birth to her second son this afternoon.

I accepted the news relatively graciously (I bit back "Oh fucking DID she"), and was and remain glad that mother and baby are both healthy and doing well. However, it has obviously been difficult to digest, not least because I went to the clinic this morning for my day 21 tests and have been feeling gloomy ever since.

The nurse rang with the results at 4.30 this afternoon and it turns out I have ovulated again, as I knew I had from the pain two Sundays ago. My progesterone levels are apparently really good. But the clinic has said that if my period comes - and let there be no mistake, it will - they want me to come in to discuss where we go next before embarking on my next course of clomiphene.

It was the nurse who vampirised me this morning who said this. I asked her why I couldn't just have my third go before the next-steps consultation, and she said if clomiphene is going to work it usually does quickly. Just dandy.

So then I come home to the news that fecundity abounds north of the border in hubby's family, and pardon me for not being over the fucking moon. Hubby has been impatient with me all evening and eventually pulled me up on my "mood". I asked him whether he would like me to jump up and down about how happy I am that his sister has two babies and I have none. At this point his phone beeped with the latest of the 870 slideshows and videos she - and she should NOT be using a mobile phone in a hospital - has decided we would like to see.

A fight ensued, mainly about my frustrations with him being unable to perform at the critical point in the month, which if I am honest is driving me to despair. He has approached his doctor about it and has been offered a prescription for a well-known erectile stimulant to help matters along, but he refuses to take it because of - get this, it's good - potential side effects.

Yes, that's right. It's fine for me to pump myself full of hormones and chemicals like a frigging brood mare, to have a headache and feel sick most days as a result, and to have stabby, jabby pains during the forced ovulation of however many fucking eggs this drug is making me produce, but will he take one little blue pill a couple of nights a month so he can get it up? Will he fuck.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice I am somewhat less chipper than I was in my last post. That's because right after those four days of fun, the entire world started to go wrong. My grandmother had a stroke. My beloved eighteen-year-old cat had a fit and was diagnosed with kidney failure; he has since stabilised but the condition will ultimately and shortly cause his demise. And a whole heap of other shit happened that has just left me exhausted and faintly curious to see what happens next.

I guess I should be hopeful after being told today that I've ovulated. But that happened on the Sunday and I just don't think we had enough sex. We did it on the Wednesday night, then on the Saturday afternoon, and that's it. We attempted it several more times but he couldn't deliver. The Saturday shag does stand us in reasonably good stead as I've read it's best the day before the egg pops out, but if it had been up to me - and I say this purely out of the urge to get as much sperm into me as possible, rather than any joy or desire for the act itself - we'd have done it Thursday, Friday and Sunday too.

Add to that the stress I've been under in the past fortnight and you do not have a scenario conducive to conception. I'm certain, absolutely certain, that it hasn't worked. A small part of me dares not hope after the utter wracking devastation my last period caused. But the majority of me already knows this cycle is a doomed deal.

Second clomiphene cycle: mid-cycle report

2009-05-04T17:08:00.001+01:00

It's been a really weird couple of weeks.

In several respects things have been rotten, but in the space of the past few nights I've had more fun than I have the whole rest of the year, and that's kind of made up for all the stuff that's gone wrong.

I got my period in the middle of the night of my last post, and cried so much that my eyes resembled those of a pig. It was a nasty one, with bad cramps and really heavy for the first two days. But I picked myself up and dusted myself off the following morning, and went to the clinic to get my new prescription, hoping that I'd manage to get hold of an ovulation enhancer rather than an anti-psychotic.

They gave me the correct drugs this time, and I spent the next five mornings taking the little tablets as directed. I actually felt a lot less bad this cycle than the first cycle. I was going to use the word "better" there and realised it wouldn't be quite accurate, as I did feel weird, but I escaped the daily headaches and didn't feel sick at all this time round. I wonder whether taking it in the morning made a difference?

Although I've got on with my next course, though, I've been really downhearted about the failure of the first cycle. During the early part of last week I was more dispirited than I've ever been. I was really stressed out and got to the point where I just couldn't imagine this ever working; couldn't picture the scenario where all this is over and we have a child, or even a bump. I was getting through the days and basically coming home every night from work and bawling.

Then a concentrated dose of fun happened and it has done me so much good. On Thursday night I went to watch one of my favourite stand-up comedians, Ross Noble, and had a blast as he put on a great show. He's the kind of performer where the show is completely different every night because so much of it is based on his random chats with audience members. So on Friday, I kept thinking how much fun it would be to go again that night, and how I deserved it after a shitty week and a failed cycle. I ended up calling the box office at 4pm and getting two returns in the first couple of rows, which was so lucky.

Having roped my best mate into coming with me, and into pizza before the theatre, we proceeded to have one of those brilliant, spontaneous evenings where it's all the better for the fact that when you woke up that morning you didn't know you'd be having so much fun just a few short hours later. The show was 75% different from the night before, and best of all, he did 20 minutes or so on fertility tests, which he hadn't even mentioned the previous night.

I watch a lot of stand-up comedy - it's my favourite thing to do - and I'd always wondered what it would be like to watch a routine about fertility issues. I figured it'd either be extremely entertaining because it would strike so many chords, or that it wouldn't be funny and would actually be quite difficult to watch because it's too close to home.

I'm happy to report that the former theory was on the money. I don't think I have ever laughed harder at a comedy routine. The focus of his material was going for a sperm test, based on his own experience, and the way he described it was genuinely hilarious, so much so that I was struggling to breathe. The whole audience seemed to love it but I felt I'd earned the right to enjoy it that little bit more - there remains something heartwarming about the image of myself howling with laughter at a subject that has caused me so many tears over the past three years.

As if that wasn't enough fun for one week, hubby and I then proceeded to have a splendidly silly barbecue evening round at said best mate's house on Saturday. Lovely food, far too much wine, sunshine, karaoke games and pure daftness ensued, and it was all just what the doctor ordered.

The only blip this weekend has been that I have ovulated. Which obviously is a good thing, but boy has it been painful. Last month I had a day where I was wracked with these stabbing, almost trapped-wind-like pains really low down in my tummy, and wondered if it was ovulation. When I asked the clinic about it they said it was and that clomiphene can cause pain during egg release because of the fact that the ovaries have been over-stimulated.

Yesterday saw me spending time crouched on the floor with my arse in the air as it was the only position in which I could get any relief. But the pain is fading now and we managed to have sex - only just, mind you, as hubby is struggling with performance anxiety AGAIN - at the right time.

Now it's a case of the dreaded two-week wait. I will not allow myself to get as hopeful as I did last time. The disappointment is too hard to bear if you have let yourself hope. And anyway, I actually don't think it will have worked this time, whereas last month I was absurdly confident it might. I've had a lot of stress and upset in the past fortnight, and I just can't see how that would be conducive to success.

Mind you, there's a lot to be said for happy hormones. If they play any part in aiding conception I may have some thank-you letters to write to my lovely friends - and to Ross Noble!

The egg has died

2009-04-19T13:28:00.003+01:00

My period's coming.

I haven't started bleeding yet but I have all the symptoms. Some of them - sore boobs, headache, crampy gurglings - I could convince myself are early pregnancy signs, but this morning brought the unarguable-with brown spotting, so I knew it was over.

I have cried on and off for the whole day, which is making my thudding head a lot worse but I can't seem to stop. I read back over my last blog post with all its stupid, lunatic hope, and I just feel like such a fool. How could I ever have thought it would have worked?

The one single saving grace of this cycle is that at least I didn't put myself through the heartbreak and financial wastefulness of a pregnancy test.

Tomorrow morning I shall have to get up earlier than usual - after a night broken by cramps; if past months are anything to go by, the brown spotting indicates I'll start bleeding properly this evening - and go back to the clinic to collect another prescription for clomiphene.

Then, starting tomorrow with the first pill, I have another week of feeling queasy, bloated and headachey virtually every day to look forward to, followed by a week of grim, miserable sex, followed by a fortnight of stupid, pointless hope before my next period brings the whole world crashing down around me.

Why hasn't it worked? Why the fuck hasn't it worked? We tried SO hard and despite hubby's moments of stage fright, we did have sex while I was ovulating. We know his sperm's good. We know from my day 21 bloodwork that there was an egg. So WHY DIDN'T IT WORK?

I feel utterly desperate. I hate this so very much. It's spring. It feels like everyone in the fucking universe is pregnant except me. I honestly don't understand why my husband doesn't just leave me for someone who can give him a child.

I don't have much else to say.

The egg has landed!

2009-04-14T20:40:00.002+01:00

It's official: I've ovulated, very possibly for the first time since 2006!

My blood test showed elevated levels of progesterone consistent with me having ovulated seven to ten days ago. I'm really pleased that I know my own body better than I thought I did, as those pains at the football last weekend were clearly my egg or eggs being released.

And I'm extremely pleased that the lowest dosage (50mg) of clomiphene has done the trick. The side effects weren't horrific but neither were they fun, and I really didn't fancy moving to a higher dosage. At least even if I'm not pregnant this cycle we can try again on the 50, and this time I'll recognise and perhaps even be able to time ovulation more precisely.

It's so, so, so hard not to let myself believe that it's worked. The nurse who called me this afternoon with my results said if my period hasn't shown up in 10 days, I should go to the clinic for a blood pregnancy test - more reliable on lower concentrations of hCG than urine ones.

Were my cycle to track its usual, non-gimp-month pattern, I'd be due on Saturday or Sunday. I don't believe I have ever wanted my period less, in all the time we've been doing this. I have absolutely no symptoms, of either impending periodhood or pregnancy, but it's still early for either so I'm not sure I can infer much from that.

It's impossible to think constructively about anything other than the fact I might now be pregnant. My mum just said the following words to me over the phone: "Just try to put it out of your mind." Honestly, mother. I forgave her though as she also told me she lit a candle for my potential pregnancy while visiting Sacre Coeur this weekend. After my and hubby's sojourn earlier in the year, Paris is aflame with candles praying for my fecundity!

It is perhaps foolish to be too hopeful, but I can certainly be positive. I can act like I'm pregnant until I know differently. I can symptom-spot and give myself a bit of TLC after all this stress. I can focus with every fibre of my being on what might be happening inside me right now.

And best of all, hubby and I don't have to have sex again this cycle! I am disproportionately pleased about this; as, I would wager, is he.

Tomorrow can't come fast enough

2009-04-13T11:49:00.002+01:00

I have wished away this entire, sunny Bank Holiday weekend counting down the hours till I find out if the clomiphene has worked and I've ovulated.

I'm due at the clinic at 8am tomorrow morning. I've been told to expect a blood test and that I'll get the results same day. All being well, it should show a raised level of progesterone consistent with me having ovulated about a week ago.

I'm not sure what happens next. I guess there are two possible outcomes of tomorrow:

1) if the results show I haven't ovulated, they'll up the dosage of clomiphene - hopefully without the anti-psychotic diversion this time - and we'll try again as soon as my next period starts. The worst of this - apart from the disappointment, the regret of all the side effects and nervousness for those a higher dosage will bring, and the sense that I don't know my own body any more - will be waiting for my period to come, as this could take several more weeks.

2) if the results show I have ovulated, again we wait, to see if my period turns up next weekend. If it does, the disappointment will be crashing. If it doesn't, then what? Will the clinic offer me a blood test to check for lower-than-low levels of hCG since this would technically be an assisted conception? Or will they just tell me to wait a week and do a normal pregnancy test? If I am currently this excited about a test to check if I've ovulated, I can't imagine how I'll feel awaiting the results.

I'm trying very hard not to allow myself to think about it, but it can't be denied that right now there is a chance I am very, very newly pregnant. When I do let myself go there, I veer between:

:: the yawning despair of negativity - "of course it hasn't worked", "it was the lowest dose and the first cycle", "we had sex at the wrong time and not enough sex at that";
:: superstitious doubt - "surely I'd know or feel something, or there'd be a sign after all that we've been through";
:: and terrifying, giddy hope - "I felt myself ovulate, and if I'm right, the sperm would have met that egg or eggs"

What's also weird is pondering what would happen next-next, i.e. after finding out the good - fuck, good's not an adequate word - the spectacular, amazing, wonderful, joyous, bestbestbest news.

Would I be immediately turned over to my GP and the practice midwife, like a normal pregnant woman? Or would the fertility clinic keep me on their books given how we conceived and the chance that it could be multiple? Will I - sorry, that should be would I - have to wait 12 weeks for a scan to see how many babies there are, or would we be offered earlier analysis so we know the score and can plan accordingly?

And what would it be like adjusting to being pregnant after all this time? Especially being newly pregnant, with nothing to show for it except my own secret knowledge of what's happening inside me? My family and close friends are obviously aware of this situation, so we'd certainly tell them immediately - I'm thinking at this moment of the bit in Jools Oliver's excellent book where she rings her mum following her and Jamie's success on, I think, clomiphene, gets the answering machine and bellows "I'm pregnant! I'm pregnant" repeatedly into the tape.

But I have been frank and open about my infertility throughout this ordeal, so there are lots of other people who know too. Would I tell them? Back when I thought conceiving was as easy as mounting your husband on the appropriate day of the month, I always used to think I'd wait, as is traditional, till my 12-week scan to break the news to colleagues, distant relatives and wider acquaintances. I'd hate to tempt fate, but at the same time I can't imagine keeping the news in.

I've heard it said that men think about sex once every minute. Well, let me tell you that I'd be thinking about possibly being pregnant a lot more frequently than that if I were allowing myself. But I do know that the more I build up my hopes, the worse it will feel if they're dashed, so I'm trying to rein it in a bit. A lot.

What I'm doing instead is allowing myself a few minutes at the beginning and end of each day - while lying in bed, either immediately before falling asleep or immediately after waking - to think about it, to think positively about it, almost to pretend that it's a done deal and I already know.

Those are without doubt the best moments of my days.

First Clomiphene cycle report

2009-04-10T14:29:00.004+01:00

Well, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster.

After getting over the initial hurdle of being prescribed an anti-psychotic rather than an ovulation enhancer - a 'mistake' at which all of my mates, to a woman, have chuckled a little too warmly - I got on with dutifully taking the five pills every evening upon arriving home from work.

The side effects started at the end of day two with a stinker of a headache, but that was a) nothing I couldn't handle and b) not entirely unexpected, as I used to suffer dreadfully from migraine while I was on the Pill. It was one of those headaches that sits just behind one temple, and that evening found me lying on the couch with a cooling gel strip plastered to my forehead looking not unlike a lunatic.

By day three I was feeling queasy, with certain smells - like coffee - making it worse, in a what I felt was an unnecessarily cruel simulation of pregnancy symptoms. I usually drink several coffees a day at work but have completely gone off it this month, switching to peppermint tea. I'm not sure whether it's because I know caffeine would be bad for any baby or babies that might result from this course of medication or whether I genuinely have developed a hormonal aversion to the smell, but for whatever reason I can't stand the thought of it.

Day three - Wednesday - was actually my worst day as I had some low cramping plus general nausea all day, and then the headache returned in the late afternoon. I got a bit worried then in case things got progressively worse, but actually days four and five were OK - still slightly headachey and out of sorts, but nothing dramatic. By the time I took the last pill on the evening of Friday 27 March, I felt quite positive that I'd got through it without too many negative side effects.

By a stroke of luck I took a trip to London that weekend with my friends - a belated birthday present to go to Wembley Stadium and watch England play Slovakia. It was something I'd always wanted to do before I was 30, and I'm glad to have achieved it. Now if I can just have that baby...

Going away for the weekend was great as it took my mind off the residual nausea that was still lurking somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach. When I returned on the Sunday night I felt refreshed, focused and ready to get busy with hubby.

We'd made our first foray into the newly chemical-pumped recesses of my reproductive system before I departed on Saturday morning, and having both booked the Monday off work, we were able to get down to it then too. I'd guessed that ovulation would probably occur last weekend, which coincided with days 14 and 15 of my cycle, but I felt there was no harm in making an early start.

Then last weekend I definitely ovulated. I mean, I felt it. I'll look like a fool if my bloodwork on Tuesday shows that I haven't, but I was sitting at another football match last Saturday when I became aware of a stabbing, twisting sort of pain very low down on one side of my lower abdomen. It went on all day and got progressively worse.

I had to work immediately after the football but completed what I needed to do as soon as I could and then rushed home, threw open the front door and yelled something along the loving, enticing lines of: "I think I'm ovulating. Start taking your clothes off."

Still in pain as I was, our efforts were memorable for all the wrong reasons. I've probably never had sex mid-ovulation before - certainly not mid-Clomiphene-induced-ovulation - and it hurt. It hurt like hell. Not the sex, but the pressure the (ahem) thrusting put on my aching ovary. For context, it hurt almost as much as the HSG. At one point I had to bite my hand to keep from crying out - again, for all the wrong reasons! I knew if I told hubby I was suffering it'd put him off and he'd insist on stopping, so I just went with it and didn't say anything till afterward. But regardless of how sore it was, I felt hopeful that we'd tried at the right sort of time.

Then we hit some problems. Even though I was pretty sure the pain indicated ovulation had happened on Saturday, I'd read that it can hurt for two or three days and the egg can be released at any point during that time, so naturally I wanted to have another go on Sunday when I woke to find the pain still there. And herein lies the problem. I am like a woman possessed when I think I am ovulating. I honestly could not give the remotest fuck about hubby's enjoyment of the act, and I certainly don't get anything out of it myself. It becomes a dogged, almost workmanlike act, and all I care about is getting sperm into the right place, then lying still for as long as I can.

Hubby has trouble with this, which in my kinder moments I can see is fair enough. I should probably be thankful that he hasn't left me for a twentysomething sex kitten who is interested in sex for reasons other than the end product. But then in other moments I think it is fair for me to feel that way after everything I have been through to get us to this stage. It's a tricky one and I've referred to it before as the opposite of sex.

The upshot is there was no money shot that night. He couldn't do it. As you might imagine, this did not make me happy. My reaction did not make him happy and we had a nasty, nasty fight before he retreated into the spare room - from where it is notoriously difficult to make a baby.

On Monday I phoned the clinic and told them about the pain over the weekend - seeking reassurance, I guess - and the nurse said it definitely sounded like ovulation, that it might last another day or two, and that my bloodwork on Tuesday 14th would likely show elevated progesterone levels and therefore a good response to the lowest dosage of clomiphene.

So now it's limbo. I have to wait till Tuesday for my blood test, then wait for results which will tell me whether I'm right and it worked or I am a psychosomatic freak. If it's the latter at least they know they can always prescribe me that anti-psychotic.

And here's the kicker. If my blood results show that it did work, I'll have to go back for another blood test a week or two later to see if I'm pregnant or not. My period is due, insofar as mine are ever due, next Saturday, the 19th. My mum thinks I should "break the cycle" this time round and not succumb to the temptation of a pregnancy test.

It's so weird to think that right now, I probably have a better chance than I've had all these long three years of there being a tiny cluster of cells working its way into my womb. I really hope, if there are, that my little cluster finds it a warm and welcoming environment, somewhere it can hang on tight.

Clomid and criminal incompetence

2009-03-23T19:59:00.006Z

What has happened to me today beggars belief.

My period came, as you know, on Saturday. I attended the fertility clinic this morning and explained I was on day three and had come for my first course of Clomid. The nurse took blood, because it'd be rude not to; after all, I donate several vials of the stuff every time I cross the threshold - it's almost like visiting a vampire.

She said she'd call later with the results but that they were basically checking my FSH levels (again) and I should be fine to start my Clomid tonight. She then gave me the prescription and told me I had to go to the hospital pharmacy to collect the drug, as the fertility clinic don't (for reasons that baffle me) keep it on the premises.

The hospital is a good long walk from where I work and it was already gone nine, so I called my mum and she offered to pop by my office, collect the prescription, fill it at the pharmacy and drop the pills off at my house ready for me to take the first one on arriving home from work.

This afternoon at work, I missed a call from the clinic when I was in a meeting with my boss. The nurse who'd foraged for my blood (in both arms, it's worth saying, as she couldn't find a vein - just another fun fact that contributes to the nightmarish whole of this day) said to call her but that it was nothing to worry about.

I rang the clinic but they'd closed for the day. After much soul-searching I decided she'd have said so or tried again to call me if something about my bloodwork indicated that I shouldn't proceed with the drug, so I planned on taking the first pill on getting home. After all, I didn't (and don't) want to have to wait another cycle.

I had it all ready with my glass of water but decided to read through the leaflet first to get a feel for the side effects, as well as any info on activities I should avoid, like alcohol.

Thank fuck I did that. For I hadn't been given the clomiphene I was prescribed by the hospital pharmacy. Oh no. I had been given a drug called clomipramene instead. It is an anti-psychotic, anti-depressant used to treat severe phobias, narcolepsy and obsessive conditions.

As soon as I saw the name I thought something was wrong, but when I read on and it listed the conditions the drug was used to treat, I knew for sure. Hubby was infuriating during this, piping up with fatuous little comments like "Maybe it's got a dual purpose" - the stupidity of which defies belief; I mean we all know infertility can induce psychotic episodes but let's be realistic here - and "The pharmacy knows what it's doing".

Oh no it doesn't. Right now there is probably some psychotic dude somewhere in the city, crouching in the corner eating his own faeces and wondering why he is ovulating.

I rang my mum and together we rang the pharmacy and the on-call doctor at the clinic, and raised a level of hell previously unseen outside the scarier parts of the Bible. I mean, I know I am reporting this in a slightly wry and facetious way but this could actually have been very serious had I taken the drug. I could have had any manner of adverse reaction. And worst of all, I might have persisted with it, believing any ill feeling simply to be a side effect.

Anyway, the upshot is the pharmacy - fearing, I think, being sued - were extremely horrifed and apologetic, and offered to exchange clomi-psych for the correct drug this evening. Cue a trip for my mum and I to the hospital where we exchanged white paper bags with a very sheepish gentleman in the foyer in a scene reminiscent of a film - except for the fact that the plot would be too preposterous to believe.

It being dark in the car, it was only when I got home just now that I realised there were no instructions in the box and that clomiphene was spelled clomifene. With absolutely no faith whatsoever that the drug was correct, I was forced to put in another call to the on-call doctor, who just so happened to be my favourite dice-rolling professor.

She was actually very nice - again probably due to her horror at what had, and could have, happened - and she assured me that the 'f' spelling was just the US name for the drug. She talked me through the dosage instructions and the side effects, and advised me that since this was day three, I should go for it.

I have just taken the pill. It felt somewhat momentous, a bit like the red pill/blue pill scene in The Matrix. I am now going to run a bath and contemplate the prospect of my ovaries rupturing, which my old friend the internet tells me can be a very rare reaction.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: you couldn't make this up.

Managing Mother's Day

2009-03-22T13:32:00.003Z

When I awoke yesterday morning and my period still hadn't come after 42 days, I decided to get the weekend pregnancy test over with as I figured starting Mothering Sunday by failing another one would not be enjoyable.

It was inevitably negative. My period then descended at about 6pm yesterday evening, while I was at my mum's helping to create a series of curries for a dinner party we were having. It came in a big, unannounced-by-symptoms gush as I was halfway up the stairs, ruining a pair of pants and meaning I had to borrow some of my mum's.

My periods, when they do come, are so much worse now than when I was a young teenager. It's so odd because I'll go through four or five months of having a regular cycle of about 30 days, and I'll think things are getting back on track, and then I'll just randomly miss one or even two. And then when it does eventually descend, it's like it is wreaking revenge for the hiatus by being super-heavy and super-painful.

The cramps actually woke me up at 5am this morning. I grabbed a hot water bottle and chomped a couple of painkillers, but in the hour or so before heat and analgesic took effect, I was reduced to lying in the foetal position - pause for irony - and whimpering to myself.

It was never, ever that bad when I was a young teenager and twentysomething. I don't understand what is happening to my body. I've said this before but I do often feel I am at war with myself.

Anyway, the upshot is that I intend to present myself at the clinic tomorrow morning when its doors open at 8am with a view to starting my first course of Clomid tomorrow. They told me to come on day two of my next cycle; I have no idea what to expect but feel better for there being at least some course of action to take.

I do know from a colleague at work who has just started Clomid in her quest for a second child that the side effects are unpleasant. She's suffered with headaches and has been sick several times. Her top tip was to take the pill in the evening as she said the worst of the nausea hits quite quickly, so it's better to be dealing with that at home than at work.

I also know that I'll be reunited with my old friend the Renault Espace scan-doppler thing mid-cycle to see if the Clomid has worked and I've ovulated.

My biggest fear is that hubby gets stage fright again due to what he will perceive as the pressure of having to perform at a certain time if the medication succeeds and I do ovulate. I can't voice my fear to him as I don't want to put the idea in his head. If it does happen, I can't imagine finding it easy to be sympathetic. Given that I will be pumping myself full of chemicals and having regular probing visits from the Renault, I feel the least hubby can do is muster an erection.

It's Mother's Day today. My third one since this nightmare began. I haven't found it too hard, mainly because I still think of the day as being about my mum and nana, as I always have done. What's weird is when I hear of the Mother's Day plans and celebrations held by my peers in recognition of them as mothers. Then I feel sad and like a failure, as if I've not properly grown up by being unable to achieve that status myself - always a daughter but never a mum, just like the old mantra 'always a bridesmaid, never a bride'.

I did have one of my typical dark and bitter inner rants while browsing the Mother's Day cards and gifts at the supermarket yesterday, laden with an armful of yellow roses for my mum and tulips for my nana. There were loads of cards with sentiments along the lines of "For my wife on Mother's Day, well done, aren't you BLOODY clever for bearing my children".

Strangely, though, there wasn't a single card that read: "For my wife on Mother's Day, I'm really sorry you're barren".

More crazy behaviour

2009-03-16T21:04:00.005Z

I'm not, as my nana would say, in the best of fettles at the moment.

A colleague and my best friend from university have just announced pregnancies - in my mate's case, it's her second.

I have done the gracious congratulations and I am happy for her, inasmuch as you can apply the word "happy" to a situation that makes you feel like you are being stabbed repeatedly in the throat with an ice pick.

I don't mean to sound like a bad friend - and in fact, it is worth saying that she is an exceptionally good one to me, because she broke the news as she knew I'd prefer her to, in an email which ended with her saying that I wasn't to feel pressured to send my congrats and that she'd understand if I needed some time before getting in touch.

Unfortunately, I read the email shortly after arriving at work one morning, and had to repair to the toilets to cry for twenty minutes before being able to control myself, but she wasn't to know that. The thoughtfulness of allowing me the privacy and reflection time afforded by an email was an extremely graceful gesture on her part. After all, she has nothing to be sorry for. This literally is just the way the cookie crumbles.

No, one of the things that makes me sad is that these circumstances have inevitably meant we've grown apart a bit. I still love her dearly and deeply, but we don't see enough of each other and try as we both might to empathise with the other, there's a slight lack of understanding between us now that can't be helped by either of us.

I can't really fathom her frustrations with the tiredness and difficulty of motherhood any more than she can imagine what it's like to yearn for pregnancy so badly that it physically hurts.

Before all this we always shared everything and went through lots of life-changing experiences together, not least preparing for our weddings, which were less than a year apart. I remember us traipsing round what felt like every wedding dress shop in Scotland and northern England, having an unseemly amount of fun. We both assumed that sharing baby stuff and all that went with it would naturally follow. But it feels like things have worked out very differently for me than they have for her.

Anyway, there was that, and then a day or two later a colleague made her announcement. She's not a colleague I know well enough that she knows about my situation, so she broke the news with chipper joy and I didn't know how to make my face make the right shapes and my mouth form the right words.

I think she was puzzled by my frosty reaction and I've agonised over whether to email her and explain myself, but have decided against it in the end. I'm sick and tired of feeling like I have to make excuses, as if I'm some irksome toddler, for a situation beyond my control that I hate, hate, hate and never wished for.

But the thing that has vexed me more than anything else of late was the remarks made by a TV presenter last Friday night, which saw the screening of the UK's biennial charity telethon Comic Relief.

The woman in question - the culprit - was Davina McCall, a woman who found fame presenting the braindead shitfest that is Big Brother. She has three children, or twelve, or eighty-seven - I can never remember as she appears to be pregnant every time she graces the screen. I'm amazed they haven't televised her squirting one out during the annual Big Brother bonanza. After all, it must be like shelling peas by now.

Anyway. Davina was presenting a link about children - babies, mostly - in Africa dying of diseases like malaria and AIDS. It was deeply, deeply upsetting television. After the film ended, up pops fucking Davina with: "This call goes out to all the mothers out there. It takes a mother to understand the suffering of these children. Come on, mums, we're all in the same boat..."

It went on and on, and I started to feel like something was crawling up my spine and setting each vertebrae on fire as it went. Because what the fuck? So because I'm barren I'm not entitled or expected to feel any sympathy at the sight of a baby dying in agony? How DARE she?

This sort of idiocy is voiced quite often, though. It's amazing, the stupidity of people. It always happens when some sort of dreadful crime is reported - a child's murder or sexual assault, say - you get these muppets showing up in TV news footage uttering ridiculous statements like "Speaking as a parent..." as if to imply that everyone without children must be sat at home silently applauding the criminal. It's sheer nonsense. It's insensitive and just basically ignorant.

I ought to pause for breath. I'm hammering the shit out of this keyboard.

My period appears to be on its way. I'm on day 37 and actually got a bit hopeful last week that our Parisian love-in might have borne fruit. I bought a two-pack of pregnancy tests in Boots after a lunchtime "craving" sent me in search of a vanilla bean smoothie, and did one of them that night, which allowed me to retain some hope by attributing the negative result to the weak evening wee brew.

By yesterday morning, still with no symptoms when really I should have sore boobs and brown drizzle by now, I did another one and got into a complete fury when it was negative. I actually managed to snap it into three pieces, sustaining minor cuts to my hand in the process.

It's coming to something when you think that a single pink line in a plastic window looks smug.

My plan is to give Clomid a whirl when my period eventually does descend. It can't hurt, and I clearly haven't ovulated since this cycle has grown to epic lengths and those tend to be anovulatory.

I just hope they don't grill me too much about my emotional wellbeing when I present myself at the clinic. I'm too near tears on this most of the time to be able to lie convincingly. And while I very much think I should explore the avenue of infertility counselling, I don't particularly want to stall the process any further by making the clinic think I need to be psychoanalysed before commencing medication.

It's just as well they can't see me in my own time, mind you. I do the strangest things. If the destructiveness with the pregnancy test above isn't odd enough, try this for size as a parting shot: I had a bath an hour or so ago. Standing up to dry myself gives me a full frontal view in my bathroom mirror. I stood there and sang the following in a crazy falsetto to my lower abdomen whilst whacking it with the towel: "Look at you, you pathetic piece of shit that doesn't work."

Now that's not right.

A helpful chat with the doctor (no, really)

2009-03-01T13:36:00.003Z

I visited my GP this week for the first time in a year or so. The reason was a sore and weepy eye which turned out to be a blocked and infected tear duct - I knew all that crying would catch up with me one day - but after he'd diagnosed and prescribed treatment for that, he asked how fertility stuff was going.

"It's an unending nightmare," I said frankly. He said he'd just heard about a couple he'd referred having success on their first IVF cycle ("Oh fucking DID they," thought I, reflexively bitter as per) and had hoped it was us. It made me happy to think that he cares, as the production-line impersonal nature of the clinic has been one of the things bothering me.

I described our diagnostic procedures and consultations to date, and admitted that I wasn't especially happy with the clinic, and particularly with the head professor, who I cannot forgive for her "Don't expect to get a six every time you roll a dice" inanity.

My doctor laughed when I told him what she'd said - not in a nasty way, but in a way that belied incredulity that a fellow medical professional could be so insensitive. "It's OK for her," he said, "she's got four kids!"

"She's in the wrong job, then," I replied, mentally placing another dark mark (indeed, four of them) against her. It's not that I'm opposed to being treated by a woman with children - on the contrary, there's an element of "I'll have what she's having" hope associated with that - but her fecundity certainly explains her inability to empathise with her desperate, infertile patients.

Anyway, I talked through my current concerns - which are that we're being railroaded into Clomid when my periods have actually regulated over the past four or five months. Temperature monitoring and symptom spotting indicate that actually I am ovulating - as did a home ovulation tester kit six weeks or so ago - and I don't believe Clomid is necessarily the answer for us if the issue is not ovulation.

I really want to have the post-coital test to determine whether I'm murdering hubby's swimmers before they even infiltrate my cervix. I have visions of a war movie happening in my vagina every time we have sex, with his sperm gasping their agonised last to the strains of Barber's 'Adagio for Strings'.

(When I say I "really want" to have this test, I obviously don't mean that in the every-girl's-dream sense. Nobody wants to hotfoot it to the clinic with their legs clenched to allow a team of strangers to peer up their hole at the aftermath of what should be a private act of love. I mean that I want the test in the sense that I want to explore every possibility before we identify the most suitable treatment.)

The professor at the clinic had refused me the pleasure, citing the fact that the condition was "very rare" and so their protocol was not to deem it necessary. At the time I argued the toss with her, saying that surely rare meant still a possibility, but she was not for turning. My GP explained things to me in slightly clearer terms. Evidently the test is pretty unreliable - the number of sperm that ooze out or die of natural causes during your post-shag journey to the hospital can skew the result negatively. If only the professor had bothered her arse to explain this to me, I wouldn't have spent the past six months wondering. Ho hum.

My GP also said Clomid was worth a shot. He agreed that my periods regulating was a good sign, but he said I may still be ovulating infrequently and that Clomid may be a chance to right things and conceive naturally - or as near naturally as damn it - with "a minimum" of adverse side effects (those triplets again). He said if I was worried about side effects, I had a lot more to fear from IVF than from a course of Clomid, and that I could try it for a cycle and if I hated it, not do it again.

In short, a twenty-minute chat with a GP who has throughout this ordeal professed that fertility is not his area of specialism has proved more useful to me than countless sessions at that bloody clinic, however many awards it has won.

I discussed the conversation with hubby and we've decided that if we have no success this cycle, we'll give Clomid a bash next. I'm currently just past halfway. Watch this space.

The barren woman's hate list: item #8 - Facebook

2009-02-25T22:32:00.001Z

The problem with Facebook is that it's full of people you don't really like or care about.

I want to qualify that statement for the select few people who know my real identity and are also friends with me on Facebook. What I mean to say is that I have 100 friends on Facebook. That puts me in a camp of people who, whilst not Facebook sluts, accepting friend requests left, right and centre just to boost their total, certainly have more Facebook "friends" than they have real, genuinely close buddies.

The majority of Facebook friend lists are made up of old schoolmates and fellow university alumni, ex-colleagues and people you worked in shops with during summers when you were 20. I haven't seen many of the people in my Facebook friend list for years; nor do I want to in several cases. But I know the ins and indeed the outs of their reproductive prowess - and in many cases I know what their reproductive systems look like on the inside.

I don't know what planet you'd need to be born on to have the remotest desire to change your Facebook profile picture to a scan photo. The profile pic is meant to be something that represents you - be that a photo or a cartoon, it should be personal and meaningful. It should not be a photo of the contents of your uterus. I elected to use a photo of myself paddling in the Gulf of Mexico as my profile pic. It never occurred to me to use the snap of my Fallopian tubes, taken by the radiologist during my HSG.

It's amazing how many people do it, though. It actually induces a roar of misery in me when I log on and see that "X has changed her profile pic" next to a grainy black-and-white thumbnail of an ultrasound.

Obviously the news of the pregnancy is not a shock, because the smug bastards have already announced that to the world through the medium of Facebook status updates. You know the sort of thing. "X is pregnant!" followed by 807 messages of congratulation; then for weeks thereafter, "X has morning sickness because she's pregnant", "X's back is hurting because of her big fat pregnancy", "X wonders if you're all aware that she's pregnant, isn't she BLOODY clever?"

I've considered - at some length - staging a protest by using Facebook to describe my own progress through the hell of infertility. "Helen is on her way to the hospital to have a series of unpleasant instruments rammed up her bits." "Helen is bleeding like a stuck pig for the 36th month since this nightmare began." "Helen is lying on her back with her legs up the wall as her husband's sperm trickles slowly but surely onto the pillow."

But that wouldn't be appropriate, would it? And not just because many of my Facebook friends are also professional colleagues. It'd make people uncomfortable, for one thing, and it'd force them into lavishing sympathy on me. It would just not be the done thing.

Which is exactly why Facebook shouldn't be used to crow about pregnancy. The people close to a pregnant woman, who really matter in her life - her partner, family, closest friends - should already know and care that she's pregnant, and should be giving her the love, congratulations and support that she needs. The majority of people on Facebook - the ones she went to school with ten years ago - couldn't give the remotest fuck, and nor should they. So stop bragging.

Turning 30

2009-02-23T16:39:00.005Z

I knew it'd feel like a milestone, but I wasn't expecting a slight surge of positivity.

It seems like I've been in a negative slump for so long now - one that's left me unable to write here, as I felt I had nothing of value to say - that the sudden arrival of go-get-em energy that's hit me since my birthday on Thursday has caught me unawares.

It's not all good - the anger's back too, and I'm crafting, in my head, another of the barren woman's hate list posts like those I wrote when I first started the blog. But then those posts, as grumpy as they are, were quite healthy in that they helped me vent.

I'm annoyed with myself, for slowing down the pursuit of pregnancy, for letting myself be stymied by apathy and defeatism. I think the 30 milestone has made me realise that, actually, there is a finite amount of time left for me to achieve this. I know I'm still young enough for a first pregnancy to be achievable, but what if we have to go through all this again for a second?

I'm also cross with the clinic we're with and the treatment we've been offered. But I also feel proactive. I feel like doing something to try to address the situation, which I haven't felt for weeks - even months. I honestly think I'd started to give up.

For my birthday, hubby took me to Paris. We're coming out of what has been the hardest patch of our relationship to date. But we're coming out of it. And in Paris, walking hand-in-hand along the banks of the Seine in milky February sunlight, I started to feel like we could actually have a baby this year. We deserve a baby. We'd be good parents. We can do this.

We walked into Notre Dame and I paid two euros to light a candle. Hubby asked me why I wanted to do this - I'm not religious - and I just shook my head as I knew I'd cry if I tried to articulate that I planned to ask for a baby.

I think he knew anyway. It may sound crass and selfish - particularly to people who are comforted by their faith - that I just leapt on the bandwagon of a pretty church to pray for what I want, but all I can say is that to me it felt like the right, even the only, thing to do.

We wandered around the cathedral while I tried to decide on the best place to light my candle and say my prayer. I was anxious to get it just right, but I was distracted by the hordes of tourists photographing the staggeringly beautiful stained glass windows and the soaring arches of the ceiling.

In the end I chose a place just beneath the statue of St Theresa. I felt drawn to her and have since learned - thanks to Wikipedia, as my level of theological ignorance is shameful - that she said "Patience obtains everything", which seems germane.

On our way out I discovered a spot that would have been much better - just beneath an effigy of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus - but I still felt I'd done the right thing. All day in Paris I imagined us bringing our child there in years to come; that night in our hotel, I dreamed of having a perfect red-haired boy. Obviously we rutted like rabbits the entire time we were there in the hope of achieving a miracle - though if we have, I shan't be following the Beckhams' example and naming the child after the city. Paris Hilton and her antics have put paid to that notion.

The most beautiful passage I've read about asking for a baby is in Mitch Albom's 'For One More Day'. I wept like a kid during most of this book but the bit that made me disgrace myself on a train was the passage where the protagonist's mother - who has died; the whole book is about him getting another day with her after her death - tells him about her own efforts to have a baby in an effort to explain to him how much he was wanted. I was going to paraphrase the passage but I won't do it justice, so here it is in full.

"'You know, for three years after I married your father, I wished for a child. In those days, three years to get pregnant, that was a long time. People thought there was something wrong with me. So did I.'

She exhaled softly. 'I couldn't imagine a life without a child. Once, I even...Wait. Let's see.'

She guided me toward the large tree on the corner near our house. 'This was late one night, when I couldn't sleep.' She rubbed her hand over the bark as if unearthing an old treasure. 'Ah. Still there.'

I leaned in. The word PLEASE had been carved into the side. Small, crooked letters. You had to look carefully, but there it was. PLEASE.

'What is it?' 'A prayer.' 'For a child?' She nodded. 'For me?' Another nod. 'On a tree?'

'Trees spend all day looking up at God.'"

I'm going to leave it there for today, but I promise to write soon - it'll help me unwind my confusion over what we should do next. And I may also be posting a good old rant...

One step up and two steps back

2008-12-15T20:21:00.005Z

It's been a long time. And I have a lot to tell you. I'm sorry I've been away so long - I have not been able to deal with writing about any of this, for many reasons that are too complicated and dull to go into here.

My health is really suffering from all this now. I've lost over a stone since this time last year, and I just feel really rundown and old a lot of the time. I suspect I'm now caught in a vicious circle where my low body mass index, and general drawn and pinched demeanour, are actually contributing to my fucked up menstrual cycle. How in the name of all that's holy does one break such a circle?

Anyway. The update. Firstly, the appointment at the clinic. It went better than I expected, in that it was much better to go with my mum than with hubby - on whom, more later - but it happened on a day when I was really poorly with a horrid gastric 'flu that had me chucking up in the ladies' outside the clinic reception before I ventured in. I thought I may have to excuse myself to be sick halfway through my consultation, but managed to last until we were on our way out.

We saw the same consultant I saw in January - the one who told me I had PCOS, which was then discounted by the professor we saw in May. And herein lies the first confusion: she reiterated my PCOS. I said I'd been told I didn't have PCOS. She looked perplexed and thumbed through my notes, then said my symptoms in fact WERE consistent with PCOS, and that the ovarian scan she'd conducted herself - an aside which gave me a pleasant reminder that she has stared at the inside of my reproductive system - showed an ovary that was, in layman's terms, screwed up. (She didn't say that. She said it looked polycystic.)

I asked why I didn't have any of the other symptoms of the condition. She said it varied. I asked why my periods had been normal for years and then gone daft at the age of 27. She said these things happen. I started to feel the angry worm crawling up my spine. My mum intervened.

After we'd agreed to disagree, I summarised my reason for requesting a new appointment ahead of the one-year sentence imposed on me by Professor Fuckwit - namely, that I had not had a period since July, and it was now November. Annoyingly, some of the wind was removed from my sails of self-righteous indignation by the fact that I was in fact menstruating as I sat there - and I had to admit as much, but I concluded by saying my period had "done this on purpose because it knew I had the appointment coming up". (She looked worried. Note to self: try to appear more sane in future.)

We went over the dates of the paltry few periods I have had in 2008, and I reiterated my concern that of the five or so there have been, only one - the one I had in Florida, weirdly - has been what I'd consider "normal" based on my previous, pre-Pill history. She made a lot of notes. She then weighed me and had a massive go at me for being underweight, which - quite rightly - she said wouldn't be doing my cycle any favours. I countered by observing that weight GAIN and difficulty losing weight were typical symptoms of PCOS. She looked somewhat abashed and moved on.

I then asked what we do next and said I was not prepared to hang about in limbo until next summer. I pointed out that my 30th - and with it, fertility that will dwindle at an alarming rate - was impending. And then she said the magic words: that I don't have enough periods to give me a decent chance of conceiving naturally, and that she was prepared to prescribe clomiphene.

In order to progress this, I now have to present myself back at the clinic on day two of my next period. They'll give me the drug, which I take for five days, and then I go back for regular blood tests and scans to determine my ovulation pattern, if any. If any because they start you on a low dose and up it depending on how you respond.

She then listed the side effects. Mother of God. In no particular order: depression, irritability (ha! got you beat on that one), spots, nausea, migraines, hot flushes, night sweats, vaginal dryness (and let's face it, after nearly three years of TTC it's hardly Angel Falls in there already), dizziness. Slightly more serious side effects include a 25% chance of twins and a 10% chance of triplets per cycle on the drug. Oh and if you believe the papers, an increased risk of womb, ovarian, breast and stomach cancer. Let's be clear: this drug is no fucking walk in the park.

Because it's not a cakewalk, she then asked about my support network. She explained Professor Prat had last time noted that I "seemed unduly anxious" (let's pause for OUTRAGE at the use of that particular adverb) and was concerned at my ability to cope, although my "record showed I'd dealt well with the HSG".

My mum - sensing, I think, apoplexy on my part - stepped in and smoothly explained that I had a devoted support network in herself, my dad, my stepdad, my grandparents and friends, all of whom know about my plight. She glossed over hubby but that's because my mum is pissed off with him at present - again, of which more later.

Here's the thing. It's currently, as I type, day two of my next period. And I haven't been to the clinic to get my clomiphene.

Partly it's that I'm scared. I'm just a great, big wimp. The side effects are not to be sniffed at - and as much as I want a family, twins are in the "oh my god that would be amazing" camp but triplets are very firmly in the "now, hang on a second" one.

Partly it's timing. It's nearly Christmas; I'm really busy at work, which is good as it gives me a lot to focus on to distract me from babies, but also means I'd struggle with daily migraines and/or any one of the other side effects you care to mention. So part of me thinks, what's one or two more months in the grand scheme of the 30 we've been trying?

But mostly it's because I actually do doubt my support network - and not my family or friends, but hubby. As this has gone on, he has grown more and more distant from me. He refuses - point blank refuses - to discuss his feelings. He wants nothing to do with this blog, which in some respects is a good thing as it's personal and I'm not always complimentary towards him (though I'd argue that when I'm not, it's warranted). But he has equally pooh-poohed the concept of couples' infertility counselling, which I'm keen on, and even of just discussing it between the two of us.

And we're fighting a lot. They're nastier and nastier each time. We had a humdinger a couple of weekends ago which culminated in me throwing him out of the bedroom for saying to me that I would "die alone and childless". Yes, he really did say that.

And we're not having sex. An increasingly insistent voice in my head keeps saying that if we were dutifully doing the bad thing three times a week, I'd be pregnant by now. Once or twice a month does not constitute dedicated TTC, and I actually have started to feel that by implying we ARE having regular sex - or at the very least, by not admitting we're not - is tantamount to lying to the clinic.

And another thing. His sister's pregnant. With her second. This news was hurled rather spitefully at me during the aforementioned fucker of a fight. He's known for a while but apparently there was "never a right time" to tell me. (To which, I am ashamed to say, I responded: "Oh, grow a pair!")

We're meant to be going to see her for a pre-Christmas visit very shortly, and as much of an arse as I know this makes me, I really don't want to go. She's far enough along that she will be starting to show and I just don't want to deal with that, not a few days before my third Christmas of this.

So there you have it. My big update. I've got the prescription I wanted, but am too scared to take it. I don't know whether infertility has damaged my marriage beyond repair. I don't know if there genuinely is something wrong with me or whether our dwindling sex life is to blame.

In short, I'm the very definition of the Bruce Springsteen song 'One Step Up', which I quote here (slightly paraphased in order to assign myself the correct gender) to end this post:

"Woke up this morning, the house was cold,
Checked the furnace, she wasn't burning.
Went out and hopped in my old Ford,
Checked the engine but she ain't turning.
Given each other some hard lessons lately,
But we ain't learning.
Same sad story, that's a fact,
We're one step up and two steps back.

It's the same thing night on night,
Who's wrong, baby who's right?
Another fight and I slam the door on
Another battle in our dirty little war.
When I look at myself I don't see
The girl I wanted to be.
Somewhere along the line I stepped off track,
Going one step up and two steps back."

Another autumn waiting game

2008-10-20T21:45:00.004+01:00

I managed to get an appointment on 13 November which, given previous lead times, is not that bad.

I intend to take my mum with me this time. Her support during the HSG was invaluable, and she's just better than hubby at times like this. Mum asks good questions and keeps me calm, whereas hubby sits there like a mute and then fucks off to get his watch fixed afterwards.

The main reason I want her moral support is that I don't want to leave this appointment having achieved nothing. Whether it's a Clomid prescription, a laparoscopy referral or even the number of a sympathetic counsellor, I want something tangible and real to come out of it. And if I get too upset to articulate as much - my throat usually starts aching with the urge to cry the minute I walk through the doors - I want my mum there to voice these thoughts for me.

My bizarre three-week cycle has not resolved itself. I bled for two days last week, then it tapered off again but - this is new - hasn't yet vanished altogether. I now spend my daily trips to the ladies' staring in dismay at what isn't actually period but can only be described as Unpleasantness.

I amused myself a few minutes ago. I was listening to my iTunes library, contemplating writing this blog post, and 'Glorybox' by Portishead came on. It's one of my favourite songs - I always used to think, in the days when I had such thoughts, that it'd be a good song to have sex to - and it contains a sentiment close to my heart at present with the refrain "I just want to be a woman".

Anyway, with this in mind, I suddenly thought: the song should be renamed in my honour. 'Gorybox'.

Thirtynothing

2008-10-14T21:46:00.006+01:00

I'm going to ring the clinic in the morning. I got another period on Sunday, a scant three weeks since the last pathetic short bleed. This one stayed for yesterday but vanished overnight, meaning it's now three full months since I had a proper, five-day clear-out.

I don't know what's the matter with me. It's so horrible going through the days knowing there's something wrong with your body but that nobody in the medical profession a) knows what it is or b) cares, till I'm 30 at least.

My 30th. It's four months away and I'm dreading it. One shouldn't dread one's 30th birthday - or at least, not for any more sinister reason than bidding a nostalgic farewell to one's debauched twenties, and acknowledging a fleeting concern about the onslaught of cellulite and wrinkles.

I just feel like I don't have much to celebrate. I know that's selfish - after all, there are people much worse off than me - but I just feel things haven't worked out the way I'd planned. My life plan says I should have an 18-month-old on my hip as I toast this birthday. I should at least have a bump.

I know I do have things to be thankful for, and that I have achieved stuff in my life. I have my own home and assets ranging from a nice little VW to a decent coffee maker. I have a job I enjoy and find stimulating. I have good friends whose company I love.

But I also have a troubled marriage where a lot of the time I wonder if we have run out of things to talk about. Seven years together is a long time. Hubby actually said, during one of the alarmingly frank and honest conversations we've been having about The State of Us of late, that most "normal" couples have, by this point in proceedings, generally reproduced and thus have something important, engaging and time-consuming on which to focus their combined efforts. We have a dragon tree plant. That's slowly turning brown.

I should state for the record that he didn't say this to be nasty or to upset me. He just said it because he thinks it. And I fully agree with him.

It's odd, watching adverts on TV, how many of them depict what I guess is deemed to be a "standard" life cycle. Ads for banks, for insurance, for any type of product or service with connotations of security and robustness, often feature an archetypal "boy and girl meet, fall in love, get married, have babies, raise babies, collect pensions, die" series of vignettes. It's not even just ads for banks, come to think of it. There's an ad for a fucking chocolate bar that depicts a similar series of events. But what happens if it doesn't work out like that for you? Which products should us thirtynothings buy?

Enough maudlin musing. What else do I have on the eve of my fourth decade? Well, I have an errant body that feels, most of the time, like it's at war with itself. I look haunted. I'm dropping weight at an alarming rate. I weigh right now what I did at 18. I tried my wedding dress on the other day and it hung off me like a sack on a skeleton. At least, I suppose, I'm not going into 30 the wrong side of "plump". At a time like this, perhaps a girl should simply appreciate her pert breasts and flat stomach and shut up her moaning.

So. I shall ring the clinic tomorrow and relate the latest turn of events. I'm considering demanding a laparoscopy. That's about the only diagnostic thing left to do to me now, and I strongly feel we should leave no stone - or indeed, organ - unturned.

One thing's certain. Should I be able, in February, to muster sufficient puff to extinguish all 30 candles, I know what I'll be wishing for.

A long time coming

2008-09-29T22:28:00.004+01:00

My viewing of The Sex Education Show is inducing apoplexy each week.

I knew this would happen. Hubby warned me it would, too. And they haven't even done the programme about fertility yet - that's tomorrow night. So far they've tackled how to spice up a knackered sex life (sadly, I fear it is too late for a doctor on that score for us); how to avoid catching a series of scary rot-inducing diseases (answer: condoms); and how pregnancy affects sex and the body.

The pregnancy episode in particular induced some serious yelling at the TV. It followed an equally annoying programme called Would Like To Meet Again, which follows up couples who were set up on blind dates by the programme makers two years ago. Cue Jack and Jill, or whatever their names are, who're - guess what? - married with two babies. Well, congratubloodylations Jack and frigging Jill, you smug, smug shits.

Then the sex show started, and it was all about pregnancy. Hubby ascertained this, made a small noise somewhere in the back of his throat, and retired upstairs with his book and some body armour.

"Labour can go on for up to four days," said the programme, which went out of its way to depict a near-religious level of awe for the appalling suffering women put themselves through in the name of giving birth. Well, diddums. So far my infertility's gone on for two-and-a-half years. So you'll pardon me if my heart doesn't bleed - another part of me's doing more than enough of that on a monthly basis.

Then there was a bit that explained the changes pregnant women's bodies go through, complete with two exceptionally smug ladies wielding different-sized bumps. The programme discussed the concept of the "mask of pregnancy", whereby a woman's forehead and cheeks can darken. This had in fact happened to one of the women, and I found myself absurdly pleased by the sight of her stupid brown patchy face.

(I realise I am sounding like more of a bitch here than possibly I ever have before, which is saying something, but I'm trying to be honest. I know it's not just me who feels this horrible, impotent rage.)

It got me wondering about what "the mask of infertility" looks like, if there is such a thing. I think there is. I was looking through old photos earlier, trying to locate one of a scary stately home I once visited which one of hubby's colleagues also has a horror story about. I couldn't find it, but I did find lots of snaps of myself as a teenager and student. Some were taken a decade ago, some 12 years ago, so it's reasonable that I should look older now - but what shocked me is how much sadder, and somehow less alive, I look. I really, really miss the girl I used to be before this. I see her only rarely now, and find there are fewer and fewer people who can bring her out.

Anyway, the programme concluded by filming a birth. Our intrepid narrator Anna was present throughout, which involved spending most of a day and night in a maternity ward getting bored or scared by the sound of screaming. At one point, she asks the camera: "Did you ever think waiting for a baby would be such a hoo-hah?"

No. I fucking DIDN'T.

I'd managed to get myself so riled up that I didn't think I'd cry at the moment of birth. But then they played that bloody song, the one that goes "Baby, you've been a long time coming/Such a long, long time/And I can't stop smiling". And that really fucked me up.

After all that, they called the kid Willow. I mean, I ask you.

The perils of breaking my testing routine

2008-09-28T20:38:00.000+01:00

By golly, I'm cross about loads of things just now.

In the main, as ever, my rage has to do with my own body. That period I mentioned last time left after just one day, and is yet to return. I feel bloated and "unclean", in that I feel like I've not had a good clear-out for a bit.

I got spectacularly drunk on Friday night, and ended up maudlin and weepy about various things. I also ended up very hungover on Saturday. More hungover - and certainly more sick to my stomach - than I deserved to be for the amount I'd drunk. When I was still hugging the porcelain at 7pm, hubby suggested - as he is wont to do when I display ANY symptom more dramatic than a mild headache - that perhaps I was pregnant.

I dismissed such tomfoolery as the musings of a madman, but it did get me thinking that it was weird to have bleeding at 26 days and then ZIP. So, like a foolish bitch, I bought a test. (Can you sense where this is going?)

Anyway, a horrid experience ensued this morning. I actually watched the progress of the dye across the windows of the test - as I've said before, I tend not to do this, preferring to pee on the test then quickly hide it under a piece of loo roll so I can enjoy what I like to call "the shower of hope". (That's before emerging, reviewing the blank windows, and collapsing onto "the toilet of despair", naturally.)

This morning I didn't. I sat on the loo and stared dolefully at the windows as the dye crept across them. And then nearly swallowed my tongue. Because - it was a ClearBlue test, the kind that forms a blue cross if it's positive - both axes of the cross started to show.

I was honestly nearly sick. Hubby had a day off today and he was still asleep at this point. I started preparing my speech, which I decided was going to begin with the words: "You need to wake up FUCKING FAST!"

For whatever reason - incredulity, I think - I decided to leave it and have the shower, which, going by past experiences, should have been "the shower of joy" but actually felt more like "the shower of bone-melting terror at what I might have done to this potential baby by having so much white wine on Friday night".

But then I got out and looked again. This time I was met with the familiar sight of a totally blank emptiness where the vertical cross should be. Holding it to the light and the weak dawn in the window revealed it to be utterly negative.

I didn't cry. I don't think I'd ever believed the line in the first place. I just disposed of the stick, got dressed and went to work without saying a word to my still sleeping hubby. I did look up false positives on t'interweb and learned that often the line "lights up" as the dye makes its initial progress across the windows. Indeed, it's something I'd probably have experienced before now had I not adopted this silly test-taking routine.

I shall be going back to said routine, though. I can't go through that again.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here

2008-09-20T13:21:00.004+01:00

After just 26 days - the shortest cycle I've ever had - my period descended into my (new, Victoria's Secret) pants on Thursday morning without ANY warning and with the sort of force that would make Niagara Falls resemble a drippy tap.

Cue a horrible few minutes attempting to clear things up in the ladies' at work whilst muttering sentiments along the lines of "you little stupid nasty evil bitch" to my own vagina.

The mess was so bad that I even toyed with the idea of chucking the ruined pants altogether and going through the rest of my day commando. I will now ALWAYS keep a spare pair in my desk drawer. And my bag. And my car. I will become Knicker Lady.

Anyhow, that's another cycle, quite literally, down the toilet. Coming early and without warning is new, too. Usually I get crampy grumbles for at least a day. Mind you, it made up for the lack of early cramps by really wracking me with them later in the day. At one point in the early evening it was so bad that the only comfortable position was on all fours with my head touching the floor and my bum way up in the air, groaning gently. And I wonder why hubby doesn't fancy me anymore.

Earlier in the week, my friend had texted me suggesting I get humping on September 19, as she'd worked out that on that day I'd be exactly the same age as she was the day she conceived her son. I've just replied this morning to explain that my period has put paid to that idea.

I'm thinking of having a tattoo done just above my pubic hair: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Next month marks our two-and-a-half-year TTC anniversary. It's nearly Christmas. I'm nearly 30. To borrow a line from Charlotte in Sex and the City: I'm exhausted. Where's my baby?

Falling out of love with sex

2008-09-09T21:45:00.004+01:00

I watched a new documentary tonight on Channel 4. It's all about sex and how little the Great Uneducated British Public know about it.

It's quite lighthearted, presented as it is by a genuinely amusing and likeable journalist named Anna Richardson, but at its core is a worthwhile programme that aims to educate people about sex, warts, hairy bits, odd noises and all.

Two things struck me. The first was how little I care about sex these days. I know I've ranted about this before, but it genuinely is odd how completely my sex drive has disappeared. I'm not repulsed by it, or anything - and of course, I still engage in it regularly in the interests, fruitless though they may be, of attempting to make a baby.

No, I'm just left utterly cold by sex now. It has almost become a procedure similar to those elements of personal grooming that veer towards the clinical - trimming your toenails, maybe, or cleaning out your ears. I do wonder if I'll ever get my mojo back.

OK, the ear-cleaning analogy reminds me that, actually, three things struck me about the show - this is something I've banged on about before so I'll keep it brief: how BLOODY wimpy are men?

One clip featured the intrepid Anna - who also endured a Hollywood bikini wax AND a cringeworthy Tantric sex session with what can only be described as two raddled hippies - going through a smear test in the interest of having a full sexual health check-up. She was bearing up with her customary wit and good grace. Then it showed some weedy bloke having a cotton bud wiped - WIPED, mind you, not RAMMED or INFLATED or EXTENDED or any of the things us girls have to deal with, especially us reproductively challenged girls - round the end of his willy, and wincing like it was some hitherto unimaginable method of torture.

Back to seriousness. The second thing that struck me about the programme was related to the trailer they showed for next week's episode, which featured a brief flash of a woman giving birth and then went on to imply that the programme would cover pregnancy and fertility.

I shall watch this with interest. It seems that in addition to having her inner sanctum probed for evidence of chlamydia or similar, Anna will also be undergoing a fertility MOT to assess her ability to reproduce.

I wonder how sensitively the programme makers - and Anna - will handle this. Thus far the show seems to be aiming predominantly to educate the teenage/youth audience, with some wry in-jokes for us seasoned twenty- and thirtysomethings. If it takes this approach to fertility issues, I'll probably end up severely fucked off - because it will be more focused on telling teens how easy it is to get knocked up than on addressing the heartache of infertility.

I hope I'm wrong, though, and it handles the subject with skill and tact. There'd be nothing wrong with a bit of humour, either, although I'd probably nominate anyone who was able to make me laugh on the subject of my barren womb for a Nobel prize.

People keep telling me I should watch Juno. (The look I usually give in response to this suggestion would curdle marble - and if I know the person well, it's not a Look, it's more a Torrent of Abuse.) Apparently, it's not, as I have previously stated, "about a smug, pregnant eight-year-old". Apparently, it features a remarkable performance by Jennifer Garner, who portrays the infertile woman in line to get Juno's unwanted baby. Apparently, it's funny.

Good luck to it. Well done on all the awards. Good job if it did feature an infertile woman played with sensitivity and dignity.

But there's no way I could watch that film. I know it's meant to be a comedy, but I think I'd rupture a lung crying.

All I want for Christmas...

2008-08-25T15:41:00.005+01:00

Tricky couple of days. My period came yesterday - marking August 2008 out as the 28th month since we started trying for a baby.

In some ways, the dwindling summer and the length of time that has passed means I'm now resigned to another year ending without any "happy news". I anticipated the 2006 and 2007 festive seasons with first a certainty, then a forlorn hope, that I'd meet the expectations of my family and "be preggers by Christmas". I had secret visions of sitting at the dining table either rejecting lunch because of morning sickness or else tucking in with a sizeable bump nestled beneath my mum's "good" tablecloth. Smiles all round. It was a nice image.

I don't feel any such hope this year. Christmas is just going to be another tough kid-oriented nightmare to get through before we can present ourselves back at the clinic next spring, having served the ridiculous year-long sentence that has been imposed on us in punishment for my daring to be under 30 and infertile.

But even though I no longer really feel capable of hope, it's still upsetting when my period arrives. Which I suppose means I am still capable of hoping, just not of admitting to it.

Yesterday afternoon saw me sitting in the hospital visiting my grandfather (another story altogether), thumbing through a magazine someone had left lying around. It featured a full-page ad for one of those reborn dolls - a snip at just £80, as opposed to the usual "thousands of dollars" (so the ad claimed).

God, I wanted one. I fully appreciate in the still-sane part of my brain that getting a doll that resembles a newborn baby would be a Really Bad Idea. I mean, what the fuck would I do with it? Cuddle it when I got home from work? Get a pram and wander about the estate with it looking (as all women with prams do) vaguely smug? Actually start to believe it was real? No. It doesn't bear thinking about.

But I still want one.

Hubby saw the telltale flood threatening to spill over my lower lashes and grabbed the magazine to see what I was torturing myself with. "No," was his simple but firm advice. My mum's, when I mentioned it to her later, was more ferocious: "Absolutely not! Don't you DARE!"

And they're both quite right.

But I still want one.

Anyway. My last two periods have resembled the ones I used to suffer with when I was a teenager - really heavy, really painful (and this from a woman who's had an HSG); basically proper periods, the like of which I haven't seen for many years.

Perhaps this is my body finally getting back to normal. In the absence of anything obviously wrong, and of a better diagnosis, I do wonder whether my years on the Pill totally screwed up my system. Maybe things are only now getting back in sync. Or maybe it's related to the frigging harvest moon. Who the hell knows?

Last night I barely slept because of tearing, wrenching cramps. Hubby fetched me a hot water bottle when he got up and I lay with it clamped to me for an hour, trying to find the positive in the situation. Aside from a rather interesting mottled red patch on my tummy from the heat, I struggled.

But if all this pain and gore really is an indication that my body is back to its un-Pill-polluted teenage strength, I'll accept - even welcome it.

After all, with regular ovulation and a sustained effort from hubby and me, is there - just maybe - a chance I could be pregnant by Christmas? Or is allowing that thought simply setting myself up for a heartbreaking end to a difficult year?

I do not want to start another Christmas morning by failing a pregnancy test. And every year that bloody song upsets me because of the line "Baby, all I want for Christmas is you".

Back from a "summer" break

2008-08-19T21:43:00.004+01:00

Summer's in inverted commas because it has done nothing but relentlessly piss down since the back end of June. Don't you just love British weather?

I feel bad that I've been away from the blog for so long, but I really needed a rest from even thinking about TTC, never mind doing it. (Not, of course, that I ever properly stopped thinking about it - it's never more than a second from my thoughts, and I'm never more than a minute away from tears on the subject these days - but you know what I mean.)

Hubby and I have had a holiday - hooray, break open the Champers! We went to Florida to see my cousin. It was lovely, hot and relaxing, which is exactly what we both needed. And although we got on a lot better over there than we have been doing, we only had sex about three times during the fortnight. (Yes, alas, gone are the olden days of twice-daily whilst on holiday.) I think that shows how very bone-wearyingly sick we both were of the whole thing before we went.

Things have drifted backwards a smidgen since we got back - I'd suggested, in an effort to maintain that "holiday glow", that we have a date at least once a month where we go out for dinner and DON'T MENTION BABIES, but we're yet to arrange our first trip out. It's easy to slide back into the old routine.

But we can't slip back into the old routine. There were a few weeks, not so long ago, where I genuinely feared this marriage was knackered. I very much didn't want it to be, but equally I couldn't see a way out of the mess we'd spiralled into. Now I still think there's a mess to clear up, but at least I'm sure we both want to get our hands dirty in the clean-up op.

I've had one period since last I blogged - it came, inevitably, as I was sliding into my bikini bottoms for my first day on the beach in Florida. I swear my body is at war with itself. But on the plus side, it was the most normal period I've had in months - it came and stayed, for one thing, rather than pissing off for a week as soon as I'd been out to buy tampons.

After it ended we had a few tentative TTC sessions where I actually attempted to retain the dollop afterwards - for the past six weeks I've been making like a carefree twentysomething and going directly to the loo without passing go or collecting £200. And I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a dark part of my mind that fervently hoped we'd conceive in Florida. I even, in a weaker moment on the plane home, had names picked out: Peter for a boy, as we stayed in St Pete (and it was hubby's father's name) and Tallahassee for a girl. (I'm just kidding about Tallahassee.)

We then have continued our tentative foray back into the world of babymaking since our return. Hubby actually ravished me the other night - no ravishing has been done in this house since early 2006, let me tell you - and caught me unawares so that I hadn't had a chance to do my usual bedtime ablutions beforehand.

I ended up making him go to the bathroom to collect my contact lens kit, be-pasted toothbrush and a bowl for me to spit the foam into so that I didn't lose the sperm. That was almost funny, and it's the first time I've felt a twinge of anything like humour towards the concept of TTC for a long while.

I've not been back to the clinic, but am considering going this week. I sort of feel a bit ashamed that I haven't gone in for a blood test, but at the same time I was so deeply upset by what they said to me in May that I genuinely couldn't face the place.

My period, had it followed a 28-day cycle, would have been due yesterday. It didn't come, and I did my first pregnancy test since June. (Oh yeah, I'm ROLLING in cash now I'm not buying those bloody things every ten minutes. What credit crunch?)

It was negative. And I hurled it at the wall.

Some things never change...

Getting by with a little help from my friends

2008-06-22T11:10:00.004+01:00

Last night I had a perfect evening which has given me a big boost in the "surviving the break from babymaking" stakes.

It followed a not-so-perfect day, during which it had rained relentlessly, I had spent 90 minutes on the phone renegotiating our mortgage - which, in these credit-crunching times, is going to cost us around £100 more each month from August - and hubby and I had fought. (The argument was primarily about the fact that months ago, around the time I was stressing over the HSG, I assigned him the task of sorting out the mortgage situation, and he proceeded to do precisely nothing.)

But sometimes I think that good nights following bad days are all the better for the contrast. This one involved all the following aspects, which came together to make a perfect whole:

Good food. As possibly the world's fussiest eater, with a long list of dietary idiosyncrasies that renders me unable to stomach several whole food groups, including meat and dairy, I very rarely have a restaurant or dinner-party experience in which I love and gobble up everything put before me. Last night I did: a starter of fried soft-shell crab with chilli and cashews, followed by tempura barramundi served with homemade chips and mushy peas. Yum.

Good drinks. The evening included just enough alcohol to make me merry and relaxed, but not so much that I have a headache this morning - in short, the ideal amount. I also discovered the nicest cocktail I've ever had - a summery concoction involving raspberries, hazelnut liqueur, gomme syrup, vodka and Chambord. I had three.

Fun. We were with friends whose company I really enjoy, and there were several laughs big enough to hurt. Even hubby lightened up, although one of the best moments was sort of at his expense - after the restaurant we came back to our house and ended up playing somewhat drunkenly on the Wii. Hubby got so worked up flailing around during a boxing match that he actually broke wind - dramatically. It's juvenile, and you probably had to be there, but our collective wails of comic disbelief and revulsion afterwards brought tears to my eyes.

Ambience. The place where we ate had a live band and a very chilled atmosphere. Despite it being wet, it was warm, and there was a covered veranda out back where we drank our post-feast cocktails.

After our friends left, hubby retired immediately to bed and I sat up, finishing my wine and listening to the song that the evening had put me in mind of - an indie anthem from my university days entitled 'The Day We Caught The Train', which I always associate with good times as it includes the line:

"And when you find that things are getting wild, don't you need days like these?"

In short, evenings like that make living without what I really want bearable.

But then. I'm going to end by quoting another song I love - I seem to do this a lot, and hope readers don't find it cheesy; it's just that professional lyricists often put it so much better than I ever could. Anyway, this one's by Shawn Colvin, and is called 'New Thing Now':

"And it feels so good to doubt you, I could almost live without you, but not quite. Not quite."

A restorative break from babymaking

2008-06-09T20:13:00.004+01:00

First of all, thanks for all the comments and messages, and I'm sorry I've been away for so long. I just reached the point where if I didn't take a break from it all, I think I'd have lost my mind.

As it is, my period came this morning after 37 days - so not a crazily long cycle, but not brilliant either, and certainly not indicative of ovulation, which casts a certain amount of doubt on the asinine confidence of my dear friend the professor at the clinic.

But I'm having a rest. This is the first month in two years that I haven't given the remotest fuck whether I'm pregnant or not. Although perhaps that isn't entirely true, as I did do two pregnancy tests when my period hadn't arrived after three, and then seven days. But I wasn't upset when they were negative.

I've decided that my body, and more than that my mind, need a rest from this. If we are going to have to wait a year - and we are, unless I can muster up the strength and/or finances to go private or seek a second opinion - then I need to get to an emotional place where that doesn't make my chest feel like it's going to explode. And the only way I can do that is to withdraw.

So my decision is as follows. To hell with weekly blood tests. To hell with sex. I want the summer off, to get my head together and remember who I am, and I want a holiday. To that end, I'm off to Florida to see my beloved cousin for a fortnight in July. Come August, we'll see where we are and I'll resume the blood tests with a view to either demanding ovulation drugs from the clinic in the autumn should they reveal that the dear professor is, as I suspect, an idiot, or seeking help elsewhere.

It feels weirdly liberating to have made such a decision. It's a decision that friends and family have been telling me I need to make for months. But it's all very well people SAYING you need to take a break - until you've reached that point yourself, you just want to stab people who say such things in the forehead with a large fork.

Aside from safeguarding my own sanity, another big reason why I'm putting fertility stuff on hold is that things are very bad between hubby and me. They have been shaky for months, but recently they've taken a sharp downward spiral and we need to sort it out. I can't conceive (no pun intended, but that wasn't bad!) of bringing a child into a failing relationship, having grown up in a broken home myself.

So there is work to be done. It sounds soooo corny but I think I need to spend some quality time with myself. I've sort of forgotten who I am, through all of this. I've come to view myself as either a clinical patient, mother-without-a-baby, or complete failure. "Doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere," as Tori Amos says. But recently, for one reason or another, I've caught a glimpse of the girl I used to be, and I want to coax her back. I miss her.

I'm going to keep up the blog, though, even though I'm physically taking a break. I've got so much out of doing this blog - from the pure therapy of writing and venting and getting it all out, and also from the support and genuine relief of discovering that there's a whole network out there of fellow bloggers experiencing exactly the same thing. It's so important that we write for, and to, and about each other. I can't put into words how much comfort I've gained from it.

So there you have it. I'll be around, and I'll write whenever I feel like it. And who knows - inevitably there's a small but insistent voice in my head murmuring about all those couples who stop trying and then...

But secret hope is not what this is about - I'm not trying to fool the fates into smiling on me. This is about trying to get my marriage back on track and my life back. Wish me luck...

Twilight descends on my baby dream

2008-05-29T22:02:00.005+01:00

I'm sorry I haven't posted for so long.

I feel that I've completely run out of inspiration, and of things to say. The doomy feeling of apathy that had - if I'm honest - sort of descended even before the showdown at the clinic last week has just deepened and I don't feel able to deal with fertility stuff on any level.

It's just impossible to get my head around another year of waiting. What I really should be doing is picking myself up and being proactive, the way I usually am: getting my bloodwork done, maybe seeking second and third opinions.

But I'm not, and haven't. I was supposed to go this week for another blood test but I haven't. After the butcher's job made of my arm last week, when I ended up with a huge purply bruise that made me resemble a heroin addict, I felt my vein needed a rest. I plan to go in the morning but it's a bugger having blood taken repeatedly in summer when one wants to wear short sleeves!

At the core of me, I just now feel that it is never, ever going to happen, and that if I am to have any semblance of a life, I need to start dealing with that.

I feel like the medical profession has turned its back on us. I feel like nobody will help us. And I feel like we are barely coping with this anymore, as a couple and as individuals.

I think Blackadder said it best: "I think the phrase rhymes with 'clucking bell'"!

Second consultation at the fertility clinic

2008-05-20T23:09:00.004+01:00

Well, that was a waste of time.

I was initially heartened when I realised we'd bagged a session with the head honcho consultant - the one who's a renowned authority on reproductive medicine in our area, and whose name is on all the plaques that adorn the clinic's reception. But we might as well have seen Tinky Winky the Teletubby for all the help she gave us.

She said there's nothing obviously wrong with us - his sperm's fine, my tubes are fine, and apparently all my bloodwork was fine. This, it would seem, indicates that I DO ovulate and DON'T have PCOS. The consultant last time who thought my right ovary looked polycystic was apparently wrong. (I suspected all along I didn't have PCOS.)

She then said IVF would be the next step as a solution for the dreaded "unexplained" infertility. However, she's reluctant to do something so invasive at the moment - because, get this, "time is still on our side".

So Professor Winky then told us to come back in a year.

Yes, you read right - a year. Another year of this - of hope and disappointment every month, of life being on hold, of limbo, of misery, of money wasted on pregnancy tests that are never positive.

I asked about the fertility drugs I'd been so sure I'd be given today, and she said I don't need them. She says Clomid comes with risks, there's a 10% chance every cycle of twins and more side effects than you can shake a stick at. I'm not stupid and completely understand why she doesn't want me to go down this route if I don't need to. But a YEAR?

We were offered counselling because the prof said she was "concerned at the level of anxiety" - probably as a result of my smacked-arse expression when she uttered the words "a year". And maybe it's something to look into because I fear for my sanity, I really do. A year.

They also took blood (more? why?) and said I now have to have a blood test every week until they can establish a detailed ovulation pattern. And here they threw me a bone: if it does turn out, after a couple of months of monitoring, that my ovulation is erratic, we can try Clomid later in the year.

I'm rambling a bit here but it's because I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that the experience I thought would bring an end to our limbo has actually intensified the sense of helplessness. Of course, I'm glad there's nothing deal-breakingly wrong with either of us. But equally, for it to be "unexplained" seems doubly frustrating.

And I have to say, the prof did come out with a surprising array of pointless comments and platitudes. The spine-curlingly annoying words "try and put it out of your mind" were used, as well as the truly infuriating "you can't expect to get a six every time you throw a dice". What does that even mean? I never asked to be Rainman, I just want a fucking baby after two years of trying!

Hubby, as usual, sat there like a mute throughout and refused to comment or react to anything. She even pulled him up on it - she said "You're very quiet - is there anything you want to say or ask?" and he just said no.

Afterwards, he was more concerned with heading off to get a replacement for his watch battery before the jeweller's shut than with seeing how I was doing. I actually think he's pissed off that there has turned out to be nothing wrong with me, because previously he was coasting along on a sea of relief at it all being my fault.

The big question is, where do we go from here? Can we make it through another year of this without killing/hating/leaving each other? Will our already clinical and somewhat dull sex life dwindle to nothing again against a backdrop of mounting pressure and frustration? Will I resort to mothering dolls and small ornaments?

Find out in the next exciting instalment of "How The Fuck Did This Become My Life?"

The fertility clinic looms (again)

2008-05-19T22:51:00.004+01:00

So, tomorrow looms and I am not feeling like I expected to.

I assumed I'd feel similar to last time: hope, trepidation, anxiety, excitement, nervousness.

I don't. If I'm being completely honest, which I said I'd always be in this blog, I feel like I am past caring. I feel like I could not give the remotest shit about what happens tomorrow. Give the appointment to someone else, for all I care. I don't even want to go. I'm so SICK of all this that I seem to have reached some sort of impasse where I have accepted my infertility and it can go fuck itself.

Obviously, this is some sort of bollocks reaction to stress and frustration. Of course I care - after everything we've been through it'd be a nonsense to say I suddenly don't. But it's certainly true that I am bored, bored, bored of all this. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Still, it is what it is and we are where we are. (Hark at me with the platitudes.) I think that perhaps I'm inexplicably angry with it being here after waiting so long for it since the HSG.

Or maybe it's not so inexplicable: maybe the fact it's finally here has reminded me that the past six weeks of my life have been a pointless blur in which nothing has mattered or even registered except for this one appointment. And now the time has come to deal with that appointment, to get through the minutes of it and learn whatever it is that we will learn, my brain has suddenly said, "You know what? I'm done coping with this."

It's weird how people behave in the waiting rooms for various fertility stuff. I may have made this point before - apologies if I have - but you know how in dentists' and doctors' waiting rooms, there are always magazines and people always thumb through them, however idly?

Well, in fertility clinic receptions there are also magazines but they just sit in the centre of a table in a stack so neat that you know it's never been dislodged. Nobody reads. Nobody talks - the couples who are there together just sit in silence, contemplating. Wondering how the hell they ended up on the road that got them there, I guess.

Time for bed. Tomorrow's a big day.

We all go a little crazy sometimes

2008-05-12T22:13:00.004+01:00

I haven't been posting much lately, and it's kind of because we're in a state of utter limbo between now and the fertility clinic a week tomorrow. I just feel there's not an awful lot more to say that doesn't just echo what I've said already - that is, being unhappy that I'm not yet pregnant.

Hubby and I are going through another bad patch. Last night we had sex for the first time this cycle and I have to say it was tedious. Throughout, the only thought in my head - I mean, literally, the ONLY one - was "I wonder if that truffly-coloured paint is too dark for the bedroom". This is not the type of thought sequence a 29-year-old woman who used to enjoy a good seeing to should be having.

I also made the mistake of losing patience during foreplay. (By foreplay, of course, I mean the vague pawings hubby attempts - and bless him for trying, but it doesn't mean much when executed with the enthusiasm of a baked worm.) "Can't you just fuck me," I said, the unspoken conclusion to that sentence being "so I can get on with my book".

"I just want to touch you," he replied somewhat forlornly. To anyone other than a bitch whose heart has been hardened by two years of fertility misery, that'd be quite sweet. It just annoyed me. And I'm sad to say my patience evaporated at that point and I started the unforgivably nasty sentence, "But it'd be over much faster if..." before realising my crime and catching myself, ashamed.

The above is exhibit A of me at my worst, but hubby is not blameless in this either. On Saturday night, after quite a nice evening together drinking wine and watching a film, he totally lost his temper after we got into bed. He accused me of "stealing the covers".

Now, I imagine this is a common theme between long-term partners. It's an old chestnut for us, too, in that hubby prefers to fall asleep cool and unencumbered by duvet but then - and here's the rub - gets cold in the wee hours and wants the OPTION of covers to be available to him. I, on the other hand, furl myself up in blankets and curl into the foetal position - let's all pause for an ironic chuckle at THAT one - and stay that way all night. So, inevitably, there comes a point where hubby is grasping for covers that have been clamped to me in the vicelike grip of a corpse. It's just a basic sleep-incompatibility. It's not either of our faults - it just is what it is. Sounds familiar.

On Saturday, however, hubby flipped in a style much more reminiscent of me. He actually hauled the duvet off the bed and attempted to abscond down the stairs with it wrapped around him like a toga at one point. This should have been funny, and indeed I did let loose a rogue giggle at the sight of him, and that caused him to REALLY wig out. He hurled a glass of water over me (and his side of the bed, the daft twat) and was on the verge of frustrated tears.

It scares me, what this situation is driving us to. I know he's desperately sick of it too, and I know that we should be kinder to each other to help ourselves through this. But it's hard when it feels like you're the only two people in it - it's inevitable that you, surviving in your way, clash against the other person trying to cope in theirs.

I had my own hissy fit this evening. After sitting down to dinner I discovered hubby had accidentally (he claims; I suspect spite as his inherent Scottish frugality means he won't willingly dispose of anything that hasn't provided at least two decades of faithful service) thrown out my lime pickle. I am OBSESSED with lime pickle - it's unthinkable that I could consume curry or chilli without it.

Well, I went berserk. Just mad. I ranted and raved like one demented about how I couldn't believe he had done this heinous thing to me. All the while he sat there chewing his chilli in a deliberately irritating fashion, and occasionally wincing when my voice reached glass-shattering proportions. Eventually I stormed out, dressed like a clown in the first outerwear I pulled out of the cupboard, which happened to be unseasonably furry boots and an oversized fleece. I pulled up, tyres steaming, at the supermarket where I discovered that they were out of the one brand of lime pickle I really like. I very nearly cried.

I'm calmer now but wondering just how on earth hubby and I are going to fare if things get worse before they get better.

One thing's for sure. That truffly-coloured paint is definitely too dark for the bedroom. Glad I got that sorted.

A Bank Holiday visit from the witch

2008-05-05T20:03:00.005+01:00

My period came today.

I know I mentioned symptoms last time, but I wasn't 100% expecting it. Sure, it was due on Saturday, if we're going by the crazy notion of my old pre-Pill 28-day cycle, but since it hasn't done that for two years I wasn't expecting it to this month. Plus with all the kitty-related stress I half thought it wouldn't show at all. The other half of me, as always and against my better judgment, held onto a sliver of hope.

Wrong. I was sitting having a sunny Bank Holiday tapas lunch when a familiar wrenching pain made itself known in my lower tummy. I crept to the toilet and sure enough, a horror movie make-up kit had exploded in my (new) pants.

I tried not to let it bother me. I continue to be trying that right now, as I sit here typing and nursing a glass of wine. After all, with all the stress and chaos, I expected this month to be a write-off. That and the fact hubby and I have barely seen each other, let alone screwed each other, was pretty indicative of an unlikely pregnancy month.

But then.

I so wanted to be one of the people who got pregnant right before my HSG. I then wanted to be one of the people who got pregnant right after my HSG. Now, a fortnight from the Clomid summit at the fertility clinic, it's getting ever more certain that it will be only with the help of drugs that we will conceive.

Oh well. What's another month, really, when we're into our twenty-fifth? And it's not like this month hasn't given me lots of other things to appreciate, from the big stuff of my baby kitty coming through his surgery, to little stuff like having a huge amount of fun staying up playing silly games till 5.30am on Saturday night with friends.

The frustration still makes me want to go and yell in a field, though. But not now - got to go and deal with these nasty cramps.

Mothering my furry friend

2008-05-01T21:22:00.003+01:00

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. It's been a traumatic week, but the good news is my lovely little cat seems to have come through the operation OK.

He's really been through the mill - the vet kept him overnight because he didn't wake up too quickly from the general anaesthetic, and he also needed a drip to support his kidneys. He looks just terrible - shaved neck where they drew blood, shaved paw where the drip was, and a huge, scary, Cat-of-Frankenstein-esque scar on his back, surrounded by skin that's been dyed blue from the surgical antiseptic solution. My poor darling.

I was so relieved to get him back yesterday morning, and spent the day nursing him. I just watched him all day, and cuddled him lots, and hand-fed him his food and his medicines, and made sure he had plenty of warm, cosy places to rest. During my lunch he started crying for attention, so I left it and cuddled him till he fell asleep, and just ate the cold food later on.

I might sound like I'm being martyrish and holier-than-thou, but that's genuinely not my intention - I loved every second of taking care of him as I was so glad he'd come through OK. I don't know what I'd do without him.

Later, my mum said it was my first taste of motherhood. The endless watching - to make sure they're comfortable enough, and warm enough, and fed and watered, and not in danger. And goddamnit, I was good at it. Really good.

My period's on its way - all the signs are here, including ravenous hunger and aching boobs. For the first month in ages I don't have pre-period hope/anxiety that I might be pregnant. The trauma of the last couple of weeks - in fact, of the whole month, including HSG-buildup - has been such that I honestly haven't had time to dwell on where a fertilised egg would be right now, and ooh, was that a symptom?

In any event, hubby and I haven't had a shag since about 14 April, so if I were pregnant it'd be with the next Messiah...

No, the thing to do now is rest, relax, get my period out of the way and then focus on our follow-up appointment at the clinic on 20 May.

Bring it on. I'm ready for my Clomid, Mr deMille!

Off-topic but bear with me - I'm hurting

2008-04-24T21:22:00.005+01:00

This isn't going to be a post about fertility stuff, which I realise may irritate my readers since that's the point of my blog. However, it's also a blog about me and how I'm feeling, so I'm hoping you'll understand as this is what's upsetting me most just at the moment.

My cat has cancer. The vet recommended at least trying to operate to remove it, which is happening on Tuesday morning.

However, because he's 17, there's a chance he won't survive the operation. They will do a comprehensive bloodwork beforehand (he and I are similar creatures, it would seem) and if all is well, they'll go ahead, but there's still a chance his heart could stop during the surgery.

This means that when I drop him off at the vet's on Tuesday morning, I will have to say goodbye as I may never see his little ginger face again.

I've booked Tuesday and Wednesday off work. I figure I'll be around to nurse him round the clock if all goes well. I will stay up and near him all night Tuesday night. I can't bear the thought of losing him. I know he's 17 so I have to be realistic - but not now; please, not now.

He's such a good, sweet, affectionate little cat. My mum and I sat and sobbed over him for the best part of an hour this evening, and agreed that if it all goes wrong we will bring him home and plant a rosebush above him.

I told him he has to survive. I'm reluctant to put him through surgery at his age but we have to at least try to save him.

I said he has to be around to meet my baby one day. I hope they will be great friends.

When did I get so old?

2008-04-22T20:14:00.002+01:00

I had the unnerving experience today of frightening myself when I caught my reflection in the mirror.

It had been a long, rush-around, hassly day. Also, I was annoyed: the three-year manufacturer's warranty on my car expired yesterday. Today, whilst driving back from a business meeting - at the very moment I pulled up in a very long queue for a very busy tunnel - a small, insistent orange light began blinking on the dash. Consulting the manual informed me that said light means "serious engine fault, please consult qualified mechanic". Just dandy.

Anyway, I made it home in one piece and then called the vet's to see if there was any news on my cat's tests. The receptionist confirmed that the results were in but refused to tell me anything - apparently we have to speak to the vet in the morning. Not going to be good news, really, is it?

(At this point, a small note: What in the name of Jesus and all his apostles did I do in my last life that I have been cursed with spending THIS one on the phone to medical professionals chasing various test results?)

Having reported all of this in flat tones to hubby, I decided to jump in the shower - and that's when the scary old woman in the mirror accosted me. I need my roots done - my hair used to be a nice coppery auburn shade but since fertility stuff, or maybe just bad genes, the grey's crept in and I now have it professionally tinted every six weeks - and my hair was hanging in lanky, tousled hanks with a vivid white stripe along my parting.

My face, conversely, resembles that of a pus-tastic adolescent. I have about four volcanic spots and a load of other blotches that suggest general run-downness (and possibly some crazy hormonal activity on the side).

Worse than that was my eyes. They're just - it sounds pathetic, but it's true - so sad. Hubby said the other day that he feels there is a shadow hanging over me; over us both but visibly over me.

Our appointment on 20 May seems impossibly far away. And I increasingly feel like my own self is slipping away. There's nothing in my head anymore other than wondering about fertility stuff. No matter where I am, or what I'm doing, my yearning for a baby is always there, bubbling and scratching and clawing away under the surface of the reasonably normal being I manage to project to others.

There's a picture of me that hubby likes, that sits behind where I am right now, on a shelf in the study. It's of me about six years ago, on holiday in Canada, thinner, sunkissed and grinning. Where did she go? I miss her.

Ovulation-induced grump syndrome?

2008-04-20T15:11:00.005+01:00

Two things have irritated me today.

The first was the undercooked excuse for a poached egg hubby served me this morning. Before you recoil in horror at me complaining about being made breakfast, let me just provide some context. Yesterday, in the supermarket, hubby announced he wanted a cooked breakfast today, and proceeded to canter about gathering up the wherewithal to make it.

I didn't pay much attention, as I was in my usual supermarket survival mode of keep-head-down-and-thus-keep-lid-on-irritation-with-disproportionately-high-volume-of-pregnant-women-who-shop-here-I-mean-wtf-is-there-something-in-the-water. But I do remember being glad at the prospect of waking up to strong coffee, hot food and Sunday papers.

However, hubby got up this morning having reassessed his priorities and decided that watching Dr Who in his pants was infinitely preferable to slaving over a hot stove. He was also in a black mood, probably because he knew the doomy sex bell was tolling and he'd have to perform today.

So he did the classic male thing of doing a chore when they don't want to do said chore, and thus doing it so badly that they'll never be asked to do it again. The egg I was given was not so much "poached" as "very recently laid". It was even less cooked than one of MY knackered eggs.

So that was the first thing. The second thing happened after hubby and I had finally done the deed - an experience which made me feel like a teenybop Playboy bunny who has married a geriatric billionaire, I might add, because of him hamming up the back pain.

Nevertheless, we got through it. And then, when I was lying there afterwards, silently willing his swimmers up through the gleaming tunnel of my newly sandblasted tubes, I was seized with the sort of sneezing fit that basically renders all your good work useless. Bah.

Still, on the offchance that I might have retained a couple of dogged specimens, I do think I might actually have ovulated. There are signs: sore boobs, the delightful egg-white (another reason for being repulsed by my oozing breakfast), and a weird stabbing pain low on the right-hand side. Sadly the right-hand ovary is the incompetent one but perhaps it has been shocked into action after watching the sea of dye whoosh past last week.

Before I go, I must share a link to a brilliant blog I've just found. For anyone currently going through first-time fertility treatment, it's massively inspiring because this woman has one IVF baby and is pregnant with her second.

It's also hugely funny - I read through her archive back to 2006, and her post about her HSG made me laugh out loud. I'm a tough crowd, so that's no mean feat, especially these days - in fact, hubby was so disturbed by the unfamiliar sound that he came trotting up the stairs with tissues and an expression of trepidation, assuming that, as usual, I was crying!

Dealing with insensitive people

2008-04-19T19:10:00.003+01:00

I had an awkward encounter at the gym today with the mother of a girl I was quite friendly with at school. We chatted about my job and hers, and the fact we're both married. Then the cringeworthiness started.

Friend's mum: "So, do you have any family yet?"
Me (chanting "argh, argh" in my head): "No, not yet."
Friend's mum: "You shouldn't wait too long. Are you planning on starting a family soon?"
Me (through gritted teeth): "Yes, hopefully soon."
Friend's mum: "I keep telling my daughter, now is the time, before you turn 30. You career girls these days, you wait so long-"
Me (teeth now having gouged chunks out of own jaw): "Actually, I've been trying for two years. We're starting fertility treatment for my polycystic ovary. I had an X-ray of my tubes last week. It's really very distressing."

Perhaps I shouldn't have bitten her head off. But perhaps people should think before they speak.

In other news, we took the cat to the vet's last night, where they drew some cells out of his lump to send off for analysis. We won't know anything till the middle of next week. I'm not going to dwell on this because I basically can't deal with the prospect of him being taken away from me as well right now.

Hubby's back is apparently "a little better" so I plan to lift his no-sex fatwa tomorrow. By force if I have to.

The bitch is back

2008-04-17T21:52:00.003+01:00

Not a good day.

First off, we found a lump on my cat's back. He's nearly 17, so I've had him more than half my life, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm besotted with him and always have been. I love him like a baby, which is appropriate given he's the closest thing I'll probably ever have to one. A lump at age 17 can't be good news, so he's booked in at the vet's tomorrow for an examination. Another thing to worry about - and my worry barrel is pretty brimming just now.

Next - and this is more in the "infuriating" than "upsetting" category - hubby is complaining of having "done his back in". What this means in reality, given he's only 34, doesn't have a physical job where back injuries are commonplace, and has no genetic conditions that predispose him to back pain, is that he slept a bit funny and has had a twinge. However, him being a bloke, this is The End Of The World.

The word "agony" has been used. Much ibuprofen - a good deal more than I ingested last week - has been consumed. There is talk of time off work. Most importantly of all, sex is off the menu. No, siree. He refuses point blank - apparently, it'd be "impossibly painful".

I struggle to sympathise. Surviving the HSG has somewhat inflated my perception of my own pain threshold - perhaps arrogantly so - but bitchiness aside, I feel that he should just get the fuck on with it, the way I usually have to do.

We know - we know - that there is a higher incidence of pregnancy in the month or so immediately after the HSG. This week - tomorrow, in fact - sees day 14 of this cycle. Do I need to draw him pictures?!

It just seems a shame for me - and yes, me; it was me on the table - to have gone through all that for us to waste potentially the brightest opportunity to conceive since this whole sorry business began.

The logical part of me knows I must wait only another month until our follow-up at the clinic and hopefully our first course of ovulation-stimulating drugs. But I want to make the most of this chance! If our baby can possibly be conceived without pumping me full of hormones in a manner not dissimilar to a cow being readied for breeding, then surely that's a good thing!

Told you I'd be ranting again soon. Don't hate me too much.

Uncharacteristic sentimentality

2008-04-15T20:39:00.007+01:00

I had the massage on Saturday afternoon, and it was lovely. I'm really glad I waited till after the HSG and had it as a treat/reward, as I think my body appreciated that more than it would a pre-emptive massage when I was still scared.

Before we got started, the therapist asked me if I was stressed about anything in particular. (Wild laughter ensued.) I explained what had happened on Friday, and her reaction was great.

"How did they get the dye into your tubes?" she asked. "Oh, through my cervix," I said, with the casual detachment of the war-wounded. "With a big, huge catheter."

"So were you unconscious?" she queried, goggle-eyed now with horror. "Oh no," said the valiant cowgirl, with a breezy sniff. "They don't anaesthetise you. I took ibuprofen."

"But that's HORRIFIC!"

"Oh, it wasn't so bad - but that's why I'm here..."

Joking aside, I've had some time now to reflect on the experience and my main reaction, aside from relief at the result and that it's over, is massive gratitude.

Regular readers will know (and very possibly love) me as a cynical, bitter cow who rants in an occasionally comical way about her experiences, and indeed this is a very apt description of me in everyday life. However, I do have a squidgy side, and all the lovely comments, messages and support I've had - both from complete strangers, and from my network of friends and family - has brought it to the fore.

My overwhelming gratitude naturally lies with my mum. To accompany me to such a nasty procedure, and to spend the rest of the day - which she'd booked off work as a holiday, as had I - nurturing me and looking after me as if I were a sick child was just so selfless and caring. And of course my previous post described my gratitude to the nursing staff, to whom I've already sent a thank-you card.

But I also want to extend a huge flood of thanks to all my friends and family. My mobile phone didn't stop beeping on Friday with "how r u?" texts, and I can't put into words how much they all meant.

I'm equally grateful - and this is REALLY rare for me, as I generally tend to view the fact of my infertility as evidence of my catastrophically bad luck - that my tubes were clear and I had a good experience. By and large, those women who had an awful time seem to be the ones whose tubes were blocked. I am quietly in awe of my huge good fortune at getting a clear result.

God, will you hark at me?! I started this blog partially because so much stuff I'd read in inevitably pink books about infertility was mawkish, sentimental dross. And yet here I am spouting it!

I do apologise - the moaning me will be back soon...

The tale of the HSG

2008-04-11T17:15:00.008+01:00

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who's sent me comments and emails wishing me luck for what happened today. I've gained an enormous amount of support and comfort from your messages.

The next thing I want to say is intended for anyone reading this who hasn't yet had their HSG, and who, like I was last night, is terrified. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. I got myself into a virtually hysterical state last night - I was so scared of what I believed, having read numerous scary accounts, was going to be pain on a level that I couldn't cope with. It wasn't. It hurt, I won't say it didn't, but it never went beyond tolerable.

The final part of my opening preamble has to do with the results: my tubes are clear! I'm so happy about this as it means that next we can hopefully try a drug to make me ovulate, as it looks as though everything but my polycystic ovary is in order.

After my hysterical outburst, I got drunk last night and watched a stupid thriller. The wine helped me sleep initially, but I woke at 5am sick with dread. After tossing and turning for 90 minutes or so, I got up, vomited, showered and then inanely decided to paint my toenails. All I can say is that when one's legs are destined for stirrups, one wants one's feet to look presentable.

I tried breakfast but it was a mistake as it didn't stay down for long. I dressed in the most comfortable outfit I could find - long, black, stretchy cotton skirt; T-shirt; snug cardi; flat, slouchy boots - and said goodbye to hubby as nicely as it's possible to say goodbye to someone at whom you've just yelled "Would you for the love of Christ stop fucking SNEEZING!"

My mum turned up early and I traipsed out to the car in the manner of a condemned woman walking to the scaffold. I was armed with water and painkillers - I didn't want to take them too early - and I had very little to say.

We arrived at the hospital and I downed my 800mg of ibuprofen in the car. After finding the X-ray suite quite quickly, I was surprised that we only had to wait five minutes before the nurse who'd be doing the test came to collect me. This was a very different experience to the pelvic scan where I nearly ruptured my own bladder due to my appointment being delayed.

The nurse took us to a seating area just outside the room where the test would take place. I told her I was terrified. She then spent 15 minutes explaining every minute detail of the procedure to me in a manner that was warm, kind and patient enough to make me well up now just remembering it. Her name was Joan and I didn't get her surname but she's the most wonderful nurse I ever met. She said that many women arrive terrified and leave thinking that the experience wasn't even a quarter as bad as they'd imagined it would be. She also said that she believes the internet features a disproportionately high volume of scary stories, for the simple reason that women who've had an awful time are more likely to be traumatised enough to write about it.

Joan went through the paperwork with me and I felt myself relaxing gradually as we talked. Partly this was down to the agreeably dreamy zen induced by taking way too many ibuprofen, but a lot of it was down to Joan's skill at relaxing me in the manner that a horse whisperer would calm a frantic pony.

Joan gave me a plastic bag and showed me into a changing cubicle. She told me to strip my bottom half naked, but that it was fine for me to leave my T-shirt, bra and socks on. (Waste of nail polish.) As I was changing I heard her asking the consultant radiologist if my mum could sit in. I distinctly heard him say "Absolutely not" and then I distinctly heard Joan insist. Again, I'm forever grateful.

I emerged wearing the gown I'd been given, which was open in the back, but this was made less embarrassing by the fact that they'd also given me a cotton robe to wear over the top until I got in position. However, the gown was blue and white, the robe was bright blue and really oversized, and my socks were red and stripy (donned that morning in an effort to be cheery; I was also bedecked in tiger's eye jewellery to bring me courage). The overall effect was lunatic asylum meets Ronald McDonald.

There was a flat bed in the middle of the room with steps up to it. I was asked to lie down and put my head on the pillow. They laid a blanket over my hips and thighs - similar to the blanket you get in a smear test. Joan explained that if I could establish a breathing pattern and maintain it, this would help me deal with the pain and keep my muscles relaxed. My mum stood behind my head and started stroking my hair. This really helped, and I started breathing deeply.

There were now three other people in the room in addition to me and my mum: Joan, another nurse, and a female radiologist (the guy had vanished, presumably in a fit of pique after my mum was allowed in). They got the cameras ready and moved them over my stomach. My mum was asked to put on a lead apron so she wasn't at risk from the radiation. The others all wore these too, so for a moment it looked like a scene from Delia Smith Goes Bad.

Joan then said they were ready. The other nurse lifted the blanket and bunched my gown up so that my naked bum was on the bed. Joan told me to bring my knees up, put my ankles together and let my legs fall apart - exactly as if I were having a smear. There were no stirrups, but they placed thick foam wedges under my thighs so that my legs didn't get wobbly from being held in that position.

First of all, Joan said she was going to clean my vagina with a warm antiseptic solution. (I resisted the temptation to tell her it was perfectly clean enough, thank you, after I virtually scrubbed it raw in the course of my morning ablutions.) She took a warm, sopping wet sponge and wiped it down, firmly, the full length of me. She then got a new sponge and repeated it.

Joan then inserted the speculum, all the while telling me what she was doing and what sensations I should expect. It went in fine and she cranked it open - always an uncomfortable moment, but nothing I wasn't familiar with. She then said she was going to insert the catheter, and that it might take a minute or two so I wasn't to panic if it didn't go in right away. I was staring at the ceiling during this and focusing on my breathing, but my mum told me afterwards that the catheter was blue and about the girth of a drinking straw.

This was the part I was most scared of, but I honestly didn't feel it pass through my cervix. I was amazed when Joan said, "That's gone through first time, sweetheart". After every stage - the speculum going in, the speculum being opened, the catheter going in - Joan, the other nurse and my mum told me how well I was doing. That really helped me too.

Joan explained that she was going to inflate the balloon on the end of the catheter, and that this part would cause a sharp period-type cramp to come on suddenly. This was absolutely accurate - it came really quickly and built to the level of a bad day one period pain. It hurt, but it was tolerable.

Joan then said she was going to start putting the dye through, and that this would cause the cramping to intensify a little. Again, this is exactly what happened - the cramp sort of wrenched slightly and got a bit worse. I wanted to gasp but I felt that if I interrupted the steady breathing pattern I'd established, I might lose it altogether and suddenly lose my handle on the pain, so I didn't. I just kept breathing. I'd been lying with my hands folded on my chest like a corpse, but at this point my mum took my left hand and the other nurse took hold of my right hand. (She'd previously told me to resist the urge to clutch my stomach when the cramping started, so maybe this was to make sure I didn't - it was nice of her, though, whatever the reason.)

After about 15 seconds - literally, it couldn't have been more than that - Joan said, "That's it - that's great - we're done". I couldn't believe it. I'd been on the bed for about 15 minutes, but most of this time was spent waiting for them to assemble the equipment. The nasty part - from speculum going in to Joan saying we were finished - lasted about four and a half minutes.

Everyone told me how well I'd done, and I just felt overwhelming, dizzying relief. Joan deflated the balloon and removed the catheter, and the cramping subsided immediately. She then removed the speculum and pushed a big, pillow-like pad up against me to stem the flow of dye.

I stayed lying down while I gathered myself and they moved the camera off me. It took about five minutes before I felt able to sit up, and when I did, my mum came round and they tilted the screen so we could see the pictures. Joan explained that they'd only had to use 3ml of dye, and that the test had gone so fast because it had immediately shot through both my tubes and spilled out the ends - i.e., my tubes are clear.

She then took us through around 12 moment-by-moment pictures which showed the catheter and balloon in place in my empty womb, then my womb full of dye, then both tubes filling up, and finally the dye spilling out the end. One of my tubes was really long and straight and the other was more bunched up, but Joan said this was simply because of the position of my insides on this given day, and that she was happy both tubes were perfect.

When I felt the headrush subside, I got up and was shown to a bathroom where they'd put my bag of clothes ready, along with some soapy solution, wet wipes and dry wipes, plus a sanitary pad. I cleaned up, stuck the pad in my pants and got dressed.

Since my mum was with me, I was allowed to leave straight away - but not before I thanked Joan profusely for being so nice and patient with me. I had to resist actually hurling myself at the woman and hugging her, I was so grateful.

For the rest of today I've felt sporadically crampy - some of them quite sharp - and sore, and I've leaked dye and gunge. I'd probably have had an easier day if I hadn't sucked up my day's entitlement of painkillers in one go, but I remain glad that I did, because perhaps the during-cramps would have been much tougher to take if I hadn't. However, the after-cramps have been easy to deal with as I've been chilling at my mum's, eating comfort food and watching Pretty Woman.

I'm so grateful to Joan and the other staff for making this as easy on me as possible. I'm also grateful to my mum for coming with me, putting up with my uber-bitch mode this morning, and watching what must have been the difficult sight of her daughter undergoing a distressing gynaecological procedure.

I'm also soooooo hugely relieved that my tubes and womb are clear. Hopefully this will mean that we can make some progress really soon!

I've booked my massage tomorrow to reward myself for being brave and going through with it. But take note - I'm the biggest wimp going, so if I can do it, anyone can.

Hitting rock bottom

2008-04-09T20:43:00.003+01:00

So today was a good day.

After not even a millilitre more of blood overnight, I rang the hospital this morning and spoke to one of the nurses who will be doing the HSG on Friday. She asked what a normal period was for me and I said one day of very heavy bleeding, following by two days of medium and then another two days of light. Even though my cycles are all to hell, that actual pattern for my period itself has never changed and has been the same since I was 13.

The nurse said that it could well be a stress-induced blip, but that there were no issues with actually doing the test provided I'm not pregnant. That's the one thing they have absolutely to rule out, as she explained that if I were and they pushed a catheter through my cervix, that would cause me to abort the baby. The foetus, she said, but let's face it, the baby.

She then said that the fact I've bled very lightly once last Wednesday and then again on Sunday could - possibly - indicate that actually I am. Apparently such things are common early on. She even said they've had two women this week cancel their HSGs because they've fallen pregnant. (I loathe them both with a vitriol that surprises even me.)

She told me to go straight to the fertility clinic (luckily, it's just five minutes from work - this call took place by the side of a road at almost 9am this morning!) where they would do a blood pregnancy test - apparently, that's the only thing that's accurate enough early on. I told her I'd done a urine one on Saturday morning but she dismissed that as she said they're not reliable until six weeks into the pregnancy. (They should put that on the fucking BOX!)

I obediently presented myself at the fertility clinic this morning and only had to wait 15 minutes among other ashen-faced, desperate women to get in for my blood test.

The nurse said I could phone up for the results - can I just reiterate, this was to find out over the phone whether I am pregnant or not - this afternoon at 4pm.

Time never passed more slowly than it did today. I know she didn't mean to, but the nurse really got my hopes up - having a medical professional confirm that I MIGHT be pregnant in a month where I thought all hope was lost really got me excited.

Stupidly.

At 4pm I phoned up. The number they'd given me didn't work. All it did was go, "BONG-BONG-BONG: This number is not valid" in a smug, probably pregnant woman's voice.

I checked my diary, where I've written the fertility clinic number for reference. It was the same number. "BONG-BONG-BONG" etc ensued.

I checked the website. Same PISSING number.

I called a few directory enquiry lines. Same number. By now I was nearly deaf from BONG-BONG-BONGs because for some insane reason I kept thinking that it would magically work if I just rang it one more time.

Eventually I started fretting that the clinic would close before I had defeated BONG-BONG-BONG lady. So I called the hospital - other side of the city, but surely these people share contact details - and eventually got through to their switchboard, having to give a garbled and increasingly hysterical precis of my story to every different person I spoke to.

Switchboard lady was nice. She detected the telltale wobble in my voice and said she wouldn't cut me off till she'd got a number for the fertility clinic. Six minutes later I was connected to the sister at the clinic.

She was so lovely to me, and that's when the tears finally came. She explained the test had come back negative. I didn't say anything. She said, "I'm so sorry, darling" and that was it - I wept like a kid.

I explained how scared I am about Friday, and how the conversation with the other nurse this morning had given me this unexpected jolt of hope that I'd hung everything on. And she listened. She just listened. She even asked if I wanted to walk over to the clinic and talk in person. She deserves a medal. People as good and kind as her would get my eyes wet at the best of times.

So I eventually got it together enough to get through the rest of the day, but on the way home on the train I just kept hearing "I'm so sorry, darling" again in my mind and I have to say I sat in that carriage with huge, fat tears just dripping down my face. I didn't even care. I then had a HUGE crying jag when I got in and saw hubby.

Two glasses of red later and I'm really calm, but so very sad and scared.

Now what?

2008-04-08T19:36:00.003+01:00

Oh dear, this week is not going well. For a start, hubby crashed the car today. Not badly - he's fine, which is the main thing, and it's really no more than a shunt and a dented bumper - but it's not what either of us needed.

Back on topic, my period has dwindled to virtually nothing. I basically only bled properly for one day, Sunday. Yesterday I was surprised at how light it was - my usual pattern is at least three days of heavy flow - and today it's all but gone. This is unheard of for me after two days.

I can't work out whether it's just been really light as a result of me being so stressed out about all the tests. The fear has really kicked in about Friday now. I certainly don't want to have the HSG if this hasn't been a proper period, for three reasons:

1) My cervix won't be properly open if it wasn't so the catheter bit will be more painful.

2) I haven't had a proper period since 25 February so my womb is likely full of endometrium and other crap. Surely this would skew the results of the HSG, which needs an empty womb to determine if there are any lurking gremlins?

3) I suppose there's an outside chance that the pregnancy test I did on Saturday was too early and I might be pregnant. Dreams can come true and all that.

Mind you, don't think that I just want to cancel because I'm scared. This actually couldn't be further from the truth. I'm terrified but also sort of psyched up for it now, and it will be a crashing disappointment if I have to put it off for anything other than The Best reason.

It's just so hard to get advice - the relevant department of the hospital is only open between 9 and 5, and I work in an open plan office. I suppose the best thing to do is ring them tomorrow and explain the situation.

I briefly considered phoning NHS Direct for guidance this evening, but they're really more for people who are urgently ill right now. They'd dismiss me as a nut-job if I rang up asking whether my period had been heavy enough to justify having a catheter rammed up my hole at the end of the week.

I then checked for infertility helplines in the wild hope that someone manning one of them might have at least HAD an HSG and be able to offer an educated guess as to what I ought to do. Sadly there aren't many - the one I did find quoted an out-of-hours number that was clearly residential. Still, desperately, I rang it anyway and the phone was answered in an aggrieved tone by a man whose mouth was full of food. He denied all knowledge of there being an infertility counsellor in residence, and I felt like a prize tit.

Why oh why couldn't I just have had a normal period?!

It doesn't seem like a massive amount to ask.

The period has landed

2008-04-06T19:18:00.005+01:00

It's here!

Whether it was exercise that worked, or the fab suggestion from a fellow blogger, or maybe just going out for dinner with friends last night and forgetting about it for a few hours, my period finally descended in the early hours of this morning as unseasonable April snow fell outside.

I'd like to think it was the suggestion from s.e. that did it, because that enabled me to utter possibly the most romantic sentence I've ever said to hubby: "Why don't you shag me and see if we can smoke it out that way?" Thanks for the tip - and thanks to everyone else who's left comments too. I really appreciate them all.

With it starting overnight, I've now got five full days for it to finish before the HSG on Friday. The way timings have worked out means I might still be bleeding a little on the day, but by that stage I'm usually very light so I'm hoping it will still be able to go ahead. I shall call the hospital in the morning to check.

Am I scared? Do bears shit in the woods?! But at the same time I'm keen to get it over with, and to have some light shed on the state of my tubes.

It does scare me to think that this time next week I will know what it feels like to have a balloon inflated inside my cervix. I feel vaguely sick whenever I think about that.

I've only had one wobbly moment today. In the car, the song 'Common People' by Pulp came on the radio, and I had the experience again where one random lyric really got to me. It was the line "You'll never fail like common people, never watch your life slide out of view", and once again I suddenly had wet eyes, because it does rather feel like my life has disintegrated, or at least contracted around this one focal nightmare.

I picked myself out of my funk by substituting the word "common" for the word "barren" and drafting another little parody in my head. (Am I doing this too much?!) My favourite bit was "I said pretend you've got no hormones", but I didn't share when hubby asked what was up following my self-congratulatory snort. I wasn't convinced he'd get why it was funny - mainly because it isn't, really.

Update on my extremely stupid body

2008-04-05T10:10:00.004+01:00

Well, still no bastard period.

I finally did a test this morning and, of course, it was negative. But where is my period? It's never done this before - it has started and then retreated for a day or two before returning with a vengeance, but it's never started then vanished for four days.

We're now in a position where one of three things can happen:

1) My period arrives today or tomorrow, behaves itself, and finishes on Thursday in time for me to have the HSG on Friday morning. As by far the best option, this is pretty well guaranteed NOT to happen.

2) My period stays away until later in the week, thus ruling out the HSG by being still in full flow when it's supposed to take place. I have to cancel the HSG, cancel my day's leave from work, and basically cancel my LIFE until my turn on this hellish merry-go-round next month.

3) My period stays away full stop. I have to cancel the HSG because I can't have it till I've had a period - aside from anything else, it's been six weeks now and my womb will be full of endometrium crap, so that'd skew the results anyway. I then have to exist in a state of semi-derangement wondering if I'm magically pregnant (though by now, if I were it'd be the next Messiah since hubby and I haven't had it off since mid-March) or if in fact my entire reproductive system has somehow crawled out of my vagina and disappeared on a Ferris Bueller-style jaunt without my knowing.

FUCK. I hate this. It's ridiculous because, as scared as I am, I actually want the HSG now. I want it over with, I want to know the state of my tubes, I want to have made some progress. And I suppose a small, dark part of me wants to punish my lazy, useless, incompetent collection of rude bits, in a sort of "you've messed me around so much, so let's see how you like THEM apples" motif.

The grumbling crampiness and sore boobs of this time last week have all but vanished and I don't feel the least bit periody. Could I somehow have just missed one? Of all the months for that to happen!

Now that I've tested and categorically know there's no baby, I'm going to head to the gym and pound the crap out of myself to see if I can kickstart it that way.

If that fails, I've officially run out of ideas.

Are you kidding me?

2008-04-04T23:24:00.005+01:00

A pregnant bloke?

A PREGNANT BLOKE????

I'm sorry, but are you HAVING A LAUGH?!

It's really a sad state of affairs when it's easier for a man to conceive than it is for me.

I got my period in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Saying that, what I mean is I got a smear of blood on Wednesday which I assumed was my period, so after a) crying so much my eyes puffed out and b) having a massive fight with hubby about the fact that I'm scared of the HSG, I got up for work and, on the way, rang the hospital to book in for the hideoussalpingogram itself.

The lady I spoke to was lovely, and I'm in next Friday at 11am. However, my period never actually started. Aside from the nocturnal smear of blood and a little bit of brown sludge over the past few days, I've not started bleeding properly.

What the fuck's it playing at? I'm booked in now, and if it doesn't start flowing tomorrow, it won't have finished in time for the HSG to happen.

It's one thing to have polycystic ovaries. It's one thing not to be able to conceive even after two years of trying harder than I've ever tried for anything.

It's quite another when your own body seems hell-bent on making life as difficult as possible.

How do you wage war against yourself?

A sucky situation gets suckier

2008-03-31T19:21:00.004+01:00

I phoned the fertility clinic this afternoon. They'd told me to reschedule my April follow-up appointment if I hadn't had the HSG, as there was no point discussing treatments and next steps until they've determined whether my tubes are OK.

The follow-up was booked for next Tuesday. This morning when I got up to no period again, I finally accepted that there isn't physically enough time between now and then for me to get my period, finish it and also have the HSG, so I called them to explain as much.

It turns out the next available appointment isn't until 20 May. I'm so upset we're going to have to wait another six weeks. I know six weeks doesn't seem like much in the context of two years, but it's just so frustrating. The receptionist implied that if I'd wanted an earlier appointment, I should have cancelled earlier. I pointed out that unfortunately, since I have no more been blessed with the powers of clairvoyance than I have with a fertile womb, I was unable to do this. Anyway, the stupid hospital didn't even send me the HSG summons till a week or so ago.

It's just - argh - May?! I fear at this rate I'll be menopausal before I actually get any treatment. After our January consultation I felt a stab of disappointment when we were told our next appointment would be April - it seemed like months away. (Nothing gets past me.)

Now there's just more waiting. My stupid, evil, twisted bitch of a period still hasn't turned up and until it does I have the spectre of the HSG hanging over me. When it eventually DOES turn up, I will not only have the usual despair to deal with but also the terror of the imminence of the HSG. And then another interminable wait to progress any further.

To top it all, hubby went berserk when I arrived home tonight and broke the news to him. He started ranting about how the system is unfair on us because of my useless cycles - we have no way of predicting when I'll menstruate, but the NHS seems to want us to plan procedures months in advance based on exact period maths.

He then started bellowing about letters of complaint - about what?! They haven't done anything wrong - it's just bureaucracy, and the fact that there's a very long queue. All in all he behaved like a little boy who'd been told he couldn't have the sweets he wanted. I can understand his frustration - Christ, 'Frustrated' is my middle name - but I could have done with some comfort rather than a big rant. After all, it's MY useless system that's screwing us over.

Of course, this degenerated quickly into a fight which featured lines such as "It's me lying there in stirrups while they erect scaffolding up my fud - I don't want to complain about them yet!" He kept moaning about how "unfair" it is. Ha! He's a fool if he hasn't yet got to grips with the fact that this entire situation is UNFAIR.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this sucks more than I ever thought it was possible for a sucky situation to suck.

Bollocks to everything.

Some dark nights of the soul

2008-03-29T11:31:00.006Z

So I'm not doing so well. My period still hasn't come and coping with the will it/won't it stress is becoming increasingly tough.

It's 35 days now. Tomorrow it'll be a week late. I'm really, really scared to do another test. After the last one, I sort of swore off the evils of pregnancy tests as it's just too depressing. I can feel my pee retreating back up my urethra every time I even consider the one remaining in my bathroom.

I'm still so desperately hopeful. This month really feels like a last chance saloon, for so many reasons. It's the last cycle before it's been two years. It's the last cycle before the dreaded HSG. And sometimes I think that it's the last cycle before I totally lose my mind.

Symptom-wise, it's really difficult to tell whether I have anything to hope for or whether it's just pre-menstrual stuff. I've got really sore boobs. They're spiky and sort of prickly when I lie on my tummy. If I lean over when I'm not wearing a bra, they reeeeally ache. And leaping about on Easter Monday doing my Elle McPherson video (yes, my life is THAT tragic) I had to hold them.

Two mornings this week, including this morning, I've woken up utterly convinced that my period has come. It generally comes overnight - I wake up with cramps and then when I go to the loo, there it is. This morning I woke at 6am with dull cramps coming in waves. They weren't as bad as usual but I also felt a sort of wetness, and I was just certain. I was like a dead woman walking heading to the bathroom. But there was nothing there.

It's got to the point that every time I go to the loo, I sit there praying and begging whatever powers exist for it not to have come. Then when I wipe and there's nothing, it's like I've received a stay of execution. I'm sure I sound ridiculously over-dramatic, but that's how I feel.

I've had some bleak nights this week. I've gone through five or six nights of having really vivid dreams. Some are nightmares - hubby and I have been watching the box set DVD of Twin Peaks, and it's pant-wettingly scary. In fact as I sit typing this, in broad daylight, I'm trying not to glance out the door and down the stairwell as I'm pretty sure the evil BOB will be climbing towards me if I do.

Other dreams are just weird. Last night I dreamt that my mum and I were on a weird journey where we had to clamber over all these round hillocks. Not hills or mountains - just these odd grassy knolls that kept appearing in our path. It was hard work but after each hillock we'd arrive at a nice house and be able to rest before having to climb over another one. If any aspiring dream interpreters can shed some light on what in the name of giddy fuck this might mean, I'd be interested to hear it!

My period must be on its way. I mean, it just must be. Right now I've still got the grumbly feeling low in my tummy. I bet it'll come tomorrow.

Why can't I get pregnant? Why? I'm so very, very sick of all this.

A load of old cobblers?

2008-03-25T19:35:00.006Z

I watched a really interesting programme last night about alternative therapies - specifically, reflexology and massage - which covered how they can play a part in helping women get up the duff.

Now, normally I'm quite cynical (had you noticed?!) and I tend to file all such notions under the generic heading of "a load of shite".

And even though the programme included a lengthy segment featuring smug mummies surrounded by children who were allegedly conceived with the help of an alternative therapy, the presenter was quick to point out that in the absence of any convincing clinical trials, there's just no way of knowing which of the women would have got pregnant anyway.

(Speaking of which, hubby and I will in a week's time creep into that sad, forgotten percentile of couples who don't conceive within two years. Whenever you read a book about fertility - and I've read LOTS - they always quote the statistics in the first chapter: take 100 couples; by the end of the first month 20 will be pregnant, and so on until you get to the 24th month, by which time 95 couples are pregnant.

As of 6 April - the night I took my last Pill, which I remember both because it was also the night of my dad's retirement party, and because I'm an obsessive-compulsive freak - we are in that sorry 5%. Depressing, no?)

Anyway, back to the New Age bollocks. While the programme didn't convince me that reflexology would help me to conceive - after all, as I've said before, thinking positively isn't going to make my ovary magically not polycystic, and neither is a foot rub - it did help me make two decisions.

1) When my period comes (which it hasn't yet, of which more later) and I know the HSG is nigh, I'm going to treat myself to a full-body massage at the beauty clinic. I've had this once before, as a birthday present, and it was fa-a-bulous. So as a gift for myself, and in an effort to relax me pre-pokery, I'm going to indulge.

2) I want my mum to come in with me for the HSG. I realise many of you will be appalled at the prospect of inviting your mother to sit in on a procedure where your genitalia are splayed to the four winds, but there's method in my madness. First of all, my mum and I are really close. She knows all about what I'm going through, and she's coming with me to the appointment anway - she's more of a comforting presence than hubby, who I'd just end up shouting at.

My other reason comes from a section of last night's programme in which they hooked a woman up to electrodes that would administer a small - not excruciating, but sore - shock every so often. Thing was, she was alerted to when a shock might happen by a big red X on a screen in front of her, so she got to anticipate the pain rather than be surprised by it. They monitored her brain's activity throughout this Mel Gibson-inspired vignette.

The first time, she had no-one to comfort her, and of course her brain went bananas. The second time, they had a complete stranger go and hold her hand. The effect was amazing - her brain dealt with the experience much more calmly. Thirdly, they had her husband hold her hand, and this time she barely registered on the angry-brainwave-measuring-thingummy at all.

This, they concluded, proved that touch - ANY human touch, even from a stranger - helps people deal with painful and/or traumatic experiences. The touch of a loved one REALLY helps. Hence my mum theory.

Who knows when it'll actually happen, though. No period. Cracked and did a test on Sunday - which was the day it was due, so not a very impressive length-of-time-before-cracking.

I might as well have weed on an Easter egg.

Return to sender

2008-03-22T15:49:00.008Z

I thought long and hard about the title I'd give the post announcing the news that I'd finally received the HSG summons from the hospital.

"Oh no, wait a minute, Mr Postman" sprang to mind, as did "Signed, sealed, delivered - up yours". However, I've decided to go with the Elvis classic since returning to sender and pretending it doesn't have to happen is what I'd really like to do.

Things I like about the letter:

1) It's really long and detailed. There's loads of information about what will happen to me on the day, moment by moment, and it's written in quite a friendly, colloquial way that recognises I am a human being not a lab rat.

2) It's honest. It says it'll hurt, it says I'll probably be distressed enough afterwards to need someone to accompany me home, and it says I might have to wait for ages on the day if they have an emergency to deal with.

3) I really wanted to like three things, but I can't think of a third. Oh well.

Things I don't like about the letter:

1) It's a TAD patronising. (I know I said above that I quite liked its colloquial wording, but you should know by now that I'm a contrary bitch.) For instance, it opens with the following sentence:

"Your doctor has requested that you have an X-ray test of your uterus (womb) known as a HYSTEROSALPINGOGRAM (HSG) examination. This rather long word describes a fairly simple procedure..."

This reminded me of the Billy Connolly routine in which he rants about the childlike way TV meteorologists read us the weather. "This is the country where you live," he exclaims in a baby voice, "and this is a wee cloud!"

I mean to say, if I'd got this far without knowing what a uterus is, I'd be in trouble. Also, the jovial "rather long word" thing rubbed me up the wrong way (as the catheter will no doubt also do). I'll decide when we do the jokes, thank you Mr Radiologist.

2) Even though it says, several times, that the procedure hurts, it doesn't mention taking painkillers beforehand. Now, the consultant at the clinic was very clear that I should do this, so it's not as if no-one has given me this instruction, but I really do think it's important enough to be reiterated in the appointment letter. In many of the hellish accounts I've read online, one of the issues common to those women who'd had a bad experience was that they hadn't taken any painkillers beforehand. Bit of an oversight, that.

3) At one point it lists the benefits of the procedure, and these are shaky at best. For instance, it includes the fact the test is done without local or general anaesthetic as a benefit, whereas I'd categorically class that as an officially shitty aspect of the affair.

The pros list also says that "the results of the test are needed to determine the next stage of your fertility treatment". Really. You don't say. And there was me thinking I was undergoing this for my unbridled passion for speculum-loving.

They didn't need to slip the word "fertility" in there. I fucking KNOW that's why we're doing this. They might as well have included a triptych (now THERE'S a word) photo of a big scary catheter, me on a bed with my legs akimbo, then a grinning baby, with the caption "THIS plus THIS equals THIS!"

To be fair to the letter, it also lists the risks - my eye was immediately drawn to this paragraph due to the close proximity of the words "cervix" and "perforate", which I feel should never share a sentence. I shan't dwell on this.

It concludes by saying I will be given a "large pad to soak up the excess dye" until I "can get to a toilet", and that the hospital will provide me with a panty liner for going home. I don't think so. I've seen NHS-issue "panty liners" before and I've slept on thinner pillows.

There's some dodgy wording that I could make light of elsewhere in the letter. One bullet point explains that I "will be covered with a sterile cover". Do they mean all of me, like some kind of shroud for the unclean barren bint? Or just the business end? Surely they can't mean that whole "dignity blanket" fiasco you get with smears. I mean, to be honest, my dignity is the least of my concerns. My dignity went out the window months ago. I'm much more worried about searing agony.

I've kept my favourite bit of the letter for last - this actually made me giggle. In the bulleted list of what will happen to me on the day, it states:

"The nurse will ask you to sign a consent form or, occasionally, the doctor, which is a legal requirement."

My question is: Where do I sign him? Is it some sort of pervy notches-on-bedpost, cervixes-on-table tally he's keeping, evidenced by scrawled signatures on his white coat? Why only "occasionally"? Does he only let the pretty girls sign their names across his heart?

Ah, it helps to be silly. I actually feel a lot more OK about getting the letter than I thought I would. Perhaps this is because I'm still in relaxed mode after a week off work and some good times recently.

Or perhaps it's because the bizarre hope I mentioned earlier in the week hasn't yet left me. I fear I'm approaching the HSG with a sort of misguided "yeah but it's fine because I won't ACTUALLY have to have it" nonchalance.

Who knows. Period due tomorrow. We can but wait and see.

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things...

2008-03-18T14:34:00.004Z

After a fantastic reunion weekend in my university town, and two days into a restorative week off work, I find myself in the unfamiliar position of feeling quite good.

The weekend comprised lots of reminiscing, lots of good food, a decent amount of gin (but not so much that the days were blighted by hangovers), and a healthy dose of proper laughing. The fact I've returned home to a week's holiday rather than to the usual routine means I've held on to the happy hormones, too, instead of going back to my ranty, miserable self immediately.

As a result, things have been calm between hubby and me, and I find myself in this weirdly positive frame of mind. I can't really put it into words other than that I feel we've turned a corner of some sort.

Which is daft, as we haven't - still no HSG summons or other correspondence from the hospital, so we're no further forward. It's looking like we'll have to cancel our April follow-up at the clinic, since they told me not to darken their door again till I'd had the HSG.

So why the optimism? I'm stupidly trying to over-analyse what's probably just a serotonin hangover from a fun weekend. But the Thing - the Thing I'm thinking all the time but have avoided saying for four paragraphs of drivel because I'm scared to voice it - is that I feel really, properly hopeful this month, for the first time in ages.

What I mean is that I feel genuine excitement that it might have worked. I obviously feel what you could broadly label as "hope" every month, but usually it's competing with my own deep-down knowledge that my period's on its way. This cycle feels different, and I want to believe so much that it feels different because I feel different, and that I feel different because, actually, I'm pregnant.

God, typing those words is so amazing... if only it were true.

OK, so the logistics. Right now I'm 23 days into my cycle. Were I following a 28-day pattern, my period would be due on Easter Sunday. (What IS it with my cycle and big calendar events, by the way? Luckily I'm not religious so Easter Sunday means little to me other than an excuse for a roast dinner at my mum's and some chocolate. But even so, that's Christmas Day, my birthday and Easter that have coincided with cycle day 28 so far this year. I daren't count forward to our June wedding anniversary...)

Have I ovulated? No idea. TMI alert: I did notice, about 10 days ago, some suspiciously egg-whitey stuff that COULD have been the "cervical mucus" they tell you is a sign. But I symptom spot so dementedly often that it's hard to recall with any degree of accuracy what was real, what was imagined and what was simply dreamt. I found an old ovulation test yesterday and peed on it out of interest - it came up with a faint line to show I had some luteinising hormone, but it wasn't darker than the control line.

Have we tried enough? Well, we've not been as rampant as last month - basically because we're both still knackered - but we've managed it every three/four days or so between my period drying up and now. However, last week, we did it on Thursday night and then, with me being away, not again till last night, so there's a good chance we missed ovulation altogether.

So what next? I have zero symptoms except for vaguely tingly boobs, but that's about normal for this point in the month. It's way too early for symptoms anyway. What I need to do is decide whether I should use either of the early-response pregnancy tests sitting in my bathroom any time soon.

I don't want to do them and lose this nice feeling. I haven't felt upbeat for so very long. But equally, it seems somehow horribly foolish and embarrassing to walk about the place feeling all jaunty and hopeful if there's no reason to.

Does that make sense anywhere other than in my own head?!

The ramblings of an insomniac

2008-03-11T20:25:00.006Z

The weirdest things are making me think of the HSG (though still no hospital letter). At the gym I was on the machine that works your inner thighs by you spreading 'em wide and then using the weight to bring them together. To get started you have to sort of straddle it and open your legs as wide as you can - a position at which I am becoming increasingly adept.

Anyway, as I assumed the pose, I was immediately transported to a dramatic visualisation of the HSG. The soundtrack to this increasingly vivid scene is eels' 'Novocaine for the Soul' - "you'd better give me something to fill my hole" being my reimagined version of the lyrics, in response to the lack of anaesthetic on offer.

So then last night I couldn't sleep, and I started thinking about other reimagined song lyrics and titles. Once I started, I couldn't stop. It reminded me of that scene in Roxanne where Steve Martin reels off 20 different jokes about his nose to shut up a big, fat idiot in a bar who insulted him. (Read them here - very funny.)

So. While I can't pretend to be as funny as Steve Martin, and while some of them are just plain tragic, here we go with my list. Any additions would be most welcome!

1. Obvious: "Bye bye baby, baby goodbye" - Bay City Rollers
2. Literal: "I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding" - Leona Lewis
3. Emo: "We'll carry on, we'll carry on, though we're broken and defeated" - 'Welcome to the Black Parade', My Chemical Romance
5. Determined: "Success is my only motherfucking option - failure's not" - 'Lose Yourself', Eminem
6. Crude: "And I don't wanna make love to you" - Etta James
7. Self-pitying: "Why does it always rain on me?" - Travis
8. Instructive: "Knock me up before you go-go" - Wham!
9. Gloomy: "I told you I was trouble, you know that I'm no good" - Amy Winehouse
10. Helpful: "You raise me up so I can reach the stirrups" - Westlife
11. Desolate: "I walk this empty street, on the boulevard of broken wombs" - Green Day
12. Demented: "2, 4, 6, 8, ovulate" - Tom Robinson Band
13. Nihilistic: "I want to be someone else or I'll explode" - 'Talk Show Host', Radiohead
14. Cryptic: "But I feel something is wrong, lately I feel this cake just isn't done" - 'Northern Lad', Tori Amos
15. Upbeat: "So no-one told you life was gonna be this way. Your womb's a joke, your ovary's broke, your sex life's DOA!" - 'I'll Be There For You', The Rembrandts
16. Wistful: "Wouldn't it be nice if I were pregnant, then we wouldn't have to have it off" - The Beach Boys
17. Frustrated: "Give me a minute, a girl's got a limit, I can't get knocked up if my egg's not in it" - Oasis (from 'The Importance of Being Fertile', no less!)
18. Dark: "Twisting and turning, the speculum's burning, it's breaking the girl" - Red Hot Chili Peppers
19. Pleading: "The drugs you gave me, nothing else can save me, IVF" - 'SOS', ABBA
20. Angry: "Oh, look at all the fucking babies" - 'Eleanor Rigby', The Beatles

Come on, fellow bloggers - together we can get to 100! And there's a Creme Egg in it - I mean it, I shall post one - for any that make me laugh out loud.

Try something new today

2008-03-09T22:44:00.004Z

I've been trying something of a different approach this weekend. Since not-eating-and-crying-lots isn't getting me anywhere apart from a bit thinner, I thought I'd try the opposite. Well, not the polar opposite, as that'd involve bingeing-and-laughing-lots, neither of which are all that practical to achieve on a daily basis - but you get the idea.

My basic theory is that I need to be kinder to my body - to try to work with it rather than being at war with it. I reckon this should involve equal measures of being good to myself and treating myself - basically acknowledging that right now everything's pretty shit, and trying to compensate in other ways, but also trying to be healthier, both mentally and physically.

So. Out goes the "no food" diet and in comes the "extremely healthy superfood" diet. My fridge is currently groaning with broccoli, bean-crammed soups and blueberries, none of which are a million miles away from the type of fare I consume normally, but this time the idea is I'll put the effort into whipping them into nutritious lunches.

I'm also going for the burn at the gym. This is partly because even though I recognise the risks of the "no food" diet (the chief one being "death"), I DO still want to lose weight. I read in the paper that infertile women who lose 5% of their body weight can improve their chances of conceiving. At nine-and-a-half stone, 5% of my body weight is around six pounds. I've already dropped more than that over the past few weeks, so my goal is to maintain at the same time as toning up and boosting fitness.

The gym makes me feel better, anyway. Must be the endorphins. Today I did a very good cardio and weights workout, followed by the stretching exercises I used to do religiously when I was young and skinny whilst listening to chill-out tunes on my iPod. It was quite therapeutic, and I caught myself enjoying it - actually feeling like I was doing something positive with my body for once, as opposed to glugging wine in the bath and staring at it hatefully.

I also indulged in some retail therapy yesterday, investing in a new red coat and boots to go with the skinny jeans my newly svelte frame has made possible. I do like shopping, though hubby pissed me off by claiming I looked "very red" - a compliment, surely, only if one is a tomato - and then, later, "like Little Red Riding Hood".

All this attempted positivity hasn't completely removed thoughts of babies from my mind, though. This evening we went to see Derren Brown at the theatre. He was really cool - extremely entertaining and infuriatingly bamboozling in equal measure. Just before the interval, he explained he'd be re-enacting the old Oracle-style medium acts from the 1920s and 1930s during the second half. He invited audience members to ask a question - any question - on a piece of card, seal it in a black envelope and drop it into a bowl on the stage.

I couldn't resist. "Will I get pregnant this month, my 23rd of trying?" I wrote. However, 1,300 other people also had burning questions - many of which, IMHO, were fatuous and inane compared with mine - and he didn't get to it. At one point he started picking people at random and guessing stuff about them (with an astounding degree of accuracy), and he instructed us to think hard and thus direct our questions to him.

Well, I can tell you that I had a headache from thinking so hard, but it didn't work. But then, I suppose it'd spoil the show to end on a conversation with an infertile woman who desperately wants to be told it'll all get better, wouldn't it?

See. The old negative me hasn't gone far.

I don't even like Coldplay...

2008-03-06T22:08:00.005Z

...but their songs have a strange ability to make me cry just at the moment.

I was listening to the radio today and that track - I didn't even know its name - with the lyrics "Tears stream down your face when you lose something you cannot replace" had tears, well, streaming down my face like a loony in the car.

I've since looked up the song - it's called 'Fix You' - and the lyrics are rather pertinent:

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?"

The lyrics didn't put me in mind of my lack of baby, as most songs-that-make-me-cry do. No, in fact this one got me thinking about what has happened to hubby and me.

Although we still love each other - fiercely, I think - our sex life is shot to shit. And it's mostly my fault. Sex has become such a frustrating reminder of the bits of me that don't work as they should that I wonder how I'll ever get back the passion I used to have. I can't imagine going back to having non-baby sex - of doing it just for the sheer fun of it.

I was musing on this last night as I lay simultaneously trying to fall asleep and retain sperm. I had a migraine yesterday evening. We decided, after some discussion of why this might be, that it would be worth doing the deed just in case the reason for the migraine was ovulation. Neither of us wanted to bother, so it was a valiant effort. The phrase I would use to describe the expression on both our faces as we battled on is "grim determination".

Afterwards, I lay there remembering the time we had it off on the kitchen table in hubby's (shared - how gross were we?!) student flat because we couldn't get upstairs fast enough. This 9 1/2 weeks-esque vignette is a far cry from the routine now. Hubby at least still tries, and all I - the ungrateful, embittered bitch that I am - can feel is irritation with him for bothering with foreplay when, really, what's the point?

The last time I recall us having good, relaxed sex was on holiday in Corfu in July 2006. We'd only been trying for three months, so it was early enough that neither of us were scared yet. We had that gorgeous, drowsy mentality of being on holiday, where the routine goes: wake up, have sex, have breakfast, sunbathe, read, swim, have lunch, have sex, snooze, have drinks, have dinner, have moonlit walk, have sex. And, crucially, we had no fucking idea what lay ahead of us.

The closest we get to "holiday sex" these days is that the night moisturiser I'm currently using smells a lot like aftersun. The other night, afterwards, hubby told me I smelled like summer.

I feel so bad sometimes - when he signed up for better or for worse, I don't think he ever imagined this.

The barren woman's hate list: item #7 - Baby on Board stickers

2008-03-03T20:20:00.002Z

Let's face it, it was only a matter of time before I turned my attention to these things.

To be honest, they irritated me even before the fertility stuff. Are those of us unfortunate enough to be driving behind these muppets supposed to slap our foreheads sheepishly and say "Darn it! I WAS going to rear-end you and total both our cars, but now I know there's a kid involved I'll refrain." Nowadays, as you might imagine, the stickers positively incense me.

I mean, they're bragging. That's it, pure and simple. They scream "I'm fertile! I'm fertile! I'm fertile!" in a loud voice. People may as well tape photos of their vaginas, cocks and balls to their rear windscreen, accompanied by a sign that says: "The collection of hairy objects pictured above are all in fine working order!"

I was expressing these opinions publicly once, and was told rather sniffily that Baby on Board stickers actually are very sensible because they alert the emergency services to look for a baby when they attend the scene of a car crash.

Big hairy bollocks. No, they don't. You're not going to tell me paramedics will only consider the prospect that a child might be aboard if they see one of those stickers! I'd imagine that the first thing ambulance crews are trained to do is assess the vehicle to determine the number of occupants. It beggars belief that they'd only check for kids if instructed to do so by a Little Miss Naughty sign from Mothercare.

Mind you, road rage is not something I've experienced only as a result of recent trauma. I've always been a horribly angry driver. My worst habit - and I've been doing this for years - is to bray "Come on, let's be FAHKING 'AVIN YA!" in a deranged fake Cockney accent when traffic lights turn green and the person at the front of the queue isn't IMMEDIATELY poised to pull away.

I also hate over-engineered gadgets in cars, such as the thermometer in mine that DING-DING-DINGs alarmingly if the temperature drops below 3 degrees. It does this in the middle of driving, and scares the bejesus out of me every time. In fact, mark my words, if I'm ever in a one-car crash that seems to defy explanation as to how it happened, it will be because of that stupid thermometer dinging in my ear. I've been known to shout at it - hubby once climbed into the car just as I was roaring "Shut up! I don't care how cold it is! I COULD - NOT - GIVE - A - TOSS!" He got that look on his face, the one that says "What have I married?".

There's a good reason why the scene in Fawlty Towers where Basil batters seven shades of shit out of his car with a branch is one of my favourite comedy moments ever. I can actually see myself doing the same thing.

Yes, when all's said and done, it's not really a big surprise that fertility stuff has turned me into a boiling, raging monster. I was halfway there already.

Confessions of a control freak

2008-03-02T15:10:00.007Z

I was really pleased to discover that I'd lost weight when I ventured onto the bathroom scales earlier today. I was so inspired, in fact, that I compounded my virtuousness with a trip to the gym, figuring that lunchtime on Mother's Day would be a good opportunity to visit the place while it was empty of its usual harem of smug yummy mummies.

Some people comfort eat and actually balloon in difficult times, but whenever I'm upset about something I don't eat; don't even feel hungry. Right now I'm very rarely eating lunch, and am subsisting most days on my morning routine of juice, cereal and folic acid, followed by nothing until dinner. I do always have a decent evening meal with hubby, but my current state of mind means I just don't have an appetite most days. Hence the half-stone drop which the doctor would argue I can ill afford (my BMI is 20) but which has left me curiously pleased with myself.

Part of me knows this is stupid. In order to conceive and sustain a pregnancy, I need to be fit and well myself, and not eating isn't exactly conducive to that. Plus my periods are irregular enough on their own without a drop in body weight making things worse.

So another part of me wonders if I'm subconsciously trying to punish my body in a stupid "you won't conceive so I won't bloody feed you" stand-off - in which the only loser is going to be me.

But the deepest part of me fears this is a return of the flirtation with eating disorder that I experienced once before, at 18. I'd just arrived at uni but hadn't yet met the friends who'd make my second-to-fifth years there the best of my life. I was homesick and unnerved, and in a stormy relationship with a not-nice bloke who told me I was fat. I responded by going through a six-month spell where I made myself sick after every meal. I eventually controlled this idiotic behaviour myself, without medical intervention, confessing all to my mum during a trip home in which she commented on my plummeting weight. I promised her I'd never do it again. To this day, I haven't.

Older and wiser, I now recognise this as a desperate attempt to gain the driving seat in a situation that I didn't feel I was in control of. I hadn't settled at uni, wasn't happy with the boyf, and didn't really know what to do about either of those issues, so I picked something that I could control, and went for broke.

The same could be said of the current situation. I'm not in the driving seat in any way - we are at the mercy of the NHS and of biology - and I completely feel like everything is spiralling out of control. When you add in the fact that I just feel so bloody sad most of the time - I know that sounds pathetic, but there it is - it's quite easy to see where the cracks are starting to form.

But like I say, I'm older now, and wiser. In point of fact, I've just had an oat and raisin cookie and given myself a good talking to. It's not much, but it's a start.

Mother's Day - pah, bah and grr

2008-02-29T14:36:00.005Z

The subject of today's rant was going to be Mother's Day. As you might expect, I am sick to the crusty ovary of adverts for it, of pink posies everywhere I turn, of entreaties wherever I look for mums to put their feet up and relax in a warm bath of self-congratulation.

So that's what I was going to moan about. But then I thought no, it's not exactly fair of me to complain about a day that recognises the achievement of having a child. After all, it IS an achievement - I can't manage it, can I? - and I can't call for the cancellation of a world event just because it pisses me off. And, crucially, I also appreciate my own mum, and I imagine Mother's Day is a lot harder for people who've lost their mothers (or their children) than it is for people like me who've never been mums.

I was also going to bemoan the fact there isn't a Barren Women's Day, where those of us going through fertility treatment are given flowers and chocolates in recognition of our efforts.

Fortunately, before going off on this tangent, I did some research and discovered that there IS a National Infertility Day in the UK, on 19 July - though I don't think Hallmark have cottoned on yet. (Hmm, business opportunity? "Roses are red, violets are blue, your ovary's fucked but I still love you.")

In other news, still no letter from the hospital, so definitely no HSG this month as my period has now tapered off and this would be the ideal few days in which to do it.

I spoke at length this morning to a family member who is also going through fertility investigations. She's a little older than me, so the clinic's moving faster, and she's learned this week that she has to have a laparoscopy, during which they will also perform the HSG. The benefit of this is at least she's out for the count during the procedure, but the drawback is of course that it's abdominal surgery, which has its own risks and painful recovery process.

By a weird coincidence, we've been seeing the same consultant at the clinic. She also endured the scan with the condom-clad Espace, except they "couldn't find" one of her ovaries. (How? HOW? Surely there are only so many places it could be? It's not going to be in her ear, is it?!) It looks likely she has fibroids and potentially another issue underlying that, hence the surgery to investigate further.

We had a good old natter and wry chuckle about how pants the situation is, and how "hilarious" it is that our respective life plans are all ballsed to hell. We also had the "I hope we get pregnant at the same time" conversation - because we both recognise that any joy we felt at the other's happy news would be diluted by anguish for ourselves. I'm not ashamed to say that a little part of me dies whenever I hear that someone is pregnant. I don't think that makes me a bad person. I just think it makes me a woman who is going through a very difficult time.

A rant on bags and wombache

2008-02-27T18:56:00.004Z

I'm having a glass of very cold white wine.

While I was travelling down the escalator to catch my train home, some scum-sucking, bottom-feeding shitbiscuit of a human being ripped the little leather dog off the new Radley handbag that I got for my birthday and ran off, cackling maniacally.

I know that in the grand scheme of city crime, this is not a big deal. I also know that I am lucky: I was wearing an iPod, a new watch, and carrying my work laptop (in a Radley briefcase which also has no fucking leather dog anymore, as I ripped that one off in a fit of pique when it kept jamming in the zip).

In fact, that my assailant chose to purloin a small leather dog rather than any of the more valuable possessions listed above indicates what a profoundly stupid turd she (yes, she - no doubt she has 17 babies at home as well) is.

But the pointless stupidity of the crime makes it all the more enraging. I mean, what, pray tell, does she plan to do with it? Sew it onto her crappy Asda bag and pretend it's designer? Start a leather gimp-dog kennel for Barbies?

The bag was new, and from my mum, and lovely. It's now sitting looking rather forlornly at me, with the empty "lead" on which the dog once hung dangling ineffectually, rather like a flaccid penis.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so upset if I weren't already pissed off about the fact that I am bleeding like a stuck pig, and suffering one of those periods that makes you wish you were a boy, and hate boys for not having things like wombs that cramp and ache and twist all the livelong day.

It's the sort of period where you waddle leakily to the toilet every two hours only to discover that you're too late and scenes from the Saw trilogy have been reenacted in your pants. The sort that delivers unexpected stabbing wind-type pains up through your bits, which cause you (even in meetings) to leap out of your chair with an aggrieved expression, in the manner of someone who has suffered a similar fate to Edward II.

So that's why I'm having a glass of very cold white wine.

Living in limbo-land

2008-02-25T17:34:00.005Z

The dreaded bug is much improved by a day of rest, thankfully. Having eaten little since Saturday night, my appetite has been restored by some magic ginger biscuits and I've just indulged in tuna with salsa verde and spinach, which hubby (bless him) made when he got back from work to cheer me up.

However, my [insert suitably enraged expletive] period has retreated into the hills once again, after nearly breaking my heart when it arrived unexpectedly this morning. It's been an odd one all round as I've had no major cramps - usually on cycle day one I'd be doubled up. I suspect it's executing the trick where it comes, disappears and then returns with a "this time it's personal" vengeance three days later, bringing with it extra-strong cramps just so I realise what a lucky, lucky lady I am.

Earlier, while it was still in full flow, I thought I'd take the opportunity of being off work to ring the fertility clinic. I'd been instructed to do so on the first day of my next cycle so we can get the infernal HSG booked once and for all.

After being put on hold for a small eternity listening to the fucking score from The Piano (I mean honestly, do they REALLY think that's going to calm women in my position? The way I am feeling right now could NOT be addressed by soothing Michael bloody Nyman music!), I was told that my referral letter had only gone off to the local hospital's X-ray department on 14 February, as they had to wait for the results of my epic collection of swabs and bloods to come back first.

I learned it can now take up to six weeks for the X-ray department to pull their fingers out (no doubt of some other poor bitch's bits) and get in touch. Evidently I have to wait for them - I did ask if I could ring and see if they could fit me in since my cycles are so unreliable, but "it doesn't work like that". I asked the nurse point blank if it was likely to be this cycle and she said no. She said I'd probably get the letter with the instructions in "a few weeks" and should then make contact on the first day of my NEXT period.

Quite apart from the fact that we have our follow-up appointment at the clinic scheduled for 8 April, and will have to cancel it if by that date I have not yet had the HSG, which is now extremely likely given the nuances of my cycle, have I mentioned that I am FUCKING PETRIFIED of having this test? Having it dangling in front of me like some sort of perverse speculum-carrot, and getting psyched up for it only to be told it'll be at least another month, is like a form of torture in itself.

I just feel I can't go through this again. We tried so hard this month, and hoped so much. I wept and wept this morning when my period came - but then, as usual, I picked myself up and got on the phone to sort next steps, only to be told I have to do it all again.

It's like climbing a mountain and giving it your all, only to reach what you thought was the summit and see an infinite line of ever-larger peaks that you have to surmount. At which point you'd be sorely tempted to swig the last of your hipflask of gin and chuck yourself off the precipice.

Talk about a double whammy

2008-02-25T07:53:00.003Z

I was floored yesterday pm by an out-of-nowhere tummy bug which had me hugging the porcelain for most of the afternoon and evening. Not to provide too much information (that would be unlike me, wouldn't it?!) but it was the kind of bug where halfway through expelling satanic matter from one end, you get a nudge from the other end to announce its urgent need to be pointed at the toilet too.

Anyway, the Exorcist-like expulsion stopped late last night, but I was so muscle-sore and basically pissed off with the world afterwards that I barely slept. I was so knackered and poorly, in fact, that I didn't pay much attention to the grumbles in my womb or the fact I couldn't lie flat on my tummy in comfort because of spikily sore boobs.

Having finally fallen asleep at 6.20am, I knew when the alarm sounded at 7 that this wasn't going to be my day. A tentative trip to the bathroom confirmed it - there was no way I could go to work and actually be any use to anyone there. I made the decision, made the call and crept back to bed for some much-needed sleep.

I've just got up again as there's another call I need to make now it's gone 8am, and I've been to the toilet again. Guess what? I got my period.

Testing, testing

2008-02-23T13:18:00.004Z

I peed on a stick again this morning, in a display of flagrant disregard for economic prudence.

Wasting two tests in one week when I categorically know I'm not pregnant is really silly, but I helped my friend move house earlier today and knew I'd be lifting a lot of heavy boxes, so I had to be sure. It would have been more foolish not to check. Or at least that's what I've told myself to justify my profligacy.

I knew the test would be negative, and of course it was. In fact, I didn't take it as diligently as I usually do. My pre-test preparations usually involve re-reading the instructions (which I could probably quote verbatim right now, having studied them so many times, but there's that pesky obsessive-compulsive streak again. I'm like the smug kid in the exam who knows the set text off by heart but still takes the time to read through it carefully, while everyone else is flipping through pages and scratching answers into the paper with increasing hysteria).

I take extra care to pee only onto the furry bit at the end, for exactly the recommended number of seconds, and ensure I keep the test pointing downwards until I've replaced the cap. My OCD streak then flashes once more, as I have a habit of placing the test reverently on the bathroom floor and covering it with a towel or a piece of loo roll until sufficient time has elapsed that I may look at the result. I find this method allows me to hope for longer. It's just too depressing to watch the non-development of the blue cross in the window, because I understand from women who've had positive tests that the relevant line appears IMMEDIATELY, in bold technicolour.

Anyway, this morning's session had none of this assiduous attention to detail. I splashed wee onto the stick - all of it, not just the fuzzy bit; it was like Niagara Falls in a hurricane - with an attitude of brazen indifference. I hurled the test onto the floor in a cavalier fashion, and gave it a hard stare that would have made Paddington proud as the blank window stayed blank. I then snorted, chucked it in the bin, ripped the cardboard packet in half for good measure, and jumped into the shower. For all that, though, I still cried.

A horrible story, and my rage

2008-02-21T20:38:00.004Z

I fear this post may make you all think badly of me. But there was a story in the news today that just made my heart ache and my head spin. A newborn baby, found dead in the woods, having been dumped there shortly after birth.

I know there's a chance the mother could have been so ill, or disoriented, that she didn't know what she was doing. I know that the baby could have been born dead, and she panicked. I know that I have absolutely no concept of her personality, her background, or the circumstances that led her to abandon her child. I know that I have no right to judge her.

But I said I'd always be honest here. And what I honestly feel - in addition to the heartbreak over the poor baby, who I can't even think about without breaking into tears - is rage. Because how can it be fair that a person who is capable of dumping a baby in winter gets to HAVE one, and a person who wishes for a child with every atom of her soul, every minute of every hour of every day, doesn't?

Of course, that's just the point. It isn't fair. It isn't fair at all, but then neither are lots of things. The logical part of me understands that. But the other part of me - the yearning, desperate part that cries at song lyrics and adverts - wants to stand on something tall and scream.

A big, fat birthday negative

2008-02-19T17:45:00.005Z

Reader, I peed. I answered my "to pee, or not to pee" question in the affirmative. I got up for work this morning, went into the bathroom and, with the calculated cunning of a serial killer, turned on the shower so hubby wouldn't hear the cellophane rustling. (Pound signs spin behind his eyes in the manner of a fruit machine whenever I "waste" a test.)

It was negative. Of course it was. I didn't actually get upset - I knew it would be, and when it was, there was just a feeling of "ok - that's done". Didn't cry at all.

Instead, I gathered myself together, went to work and had a good day - really nice lunch, plenty of chocolate - and I was doing fine until Counting Crows' 'The Long December' came on my iPod on the way home. At the line "maybe this year will be better than the last" I surprised and embarrassed myself by finding that my eyes were suddenly swimming.

Perhaps I'm pre-menstrual. I mean to ease the pain by imbibing much red wine, and perhaps a cheeky gin and tonic, later tonight. Guilt-free alcohol consumption is a small consolation for the blank pregnancy test currently lying in the bathroom bin, but whatever gets you through the night...

I've got a problem with my Wii

2008-02-18T18:44:00.007Z

No, what follows is not one of my typically scatological rants. Hubby bought me a Nintendo Wii for my birthday - a present that was not, I suspect, entirely selfless, but I have to say I love it.

I had requested one in the hope that it'd help me banish the bingo wings I've developed since we got married; if muscle pain is an accurate gauge, the plan's working. I played with it late into Saturday night - now I can barely type, and audibly grimaced whilst reaching up for a hand-hold on the train home tonight. Which alarmed the man next to me.

(That we spent Saturday evening avidly playing with a Wii is evidence of how interesting our sex life is at this point in the month, when it no longer matters. The activities we'll consider on the tacit understanding that we won't have to have sex are increasingly preposterous. I fear it can only be a matter of time before the evenings find me embroidering and him gluing together a miniature replica of the HMS Ark Royal.)

It's also extremely good for venting frustrations, both of the fertility and general variety. The boxing game in particular excels in this respect. Selecting that option in the Sport menu for the first time, I amazed (and frightened) hubby by flooring my large, male opponent within seconds. Twice in a row.

"Whoa, take it easy," hubby said in a vaguely uneasy voice. "Who are you visualising?!"

I expect he thought I'd name my psychotic ex-boss. I expect he thought I'd name a living entity. He was clearly not expecting me to name my own sexual organs.

"Oh, my ovaries," I said. "Them and my uterus. Basically the whole sorry collection."

Anyway, to the point of this entry: I bought the test. I just sort of found myself in Boots after work, with it in my hand. (I actually had to hide amongst the multivitamins for a bit, as a colleague was paying at the till, and I didn't want to start a rumour - particularly not one that's likely to be unfounded.)

I've not yet decided whether I'll actually do it in the morning or wait and see if my period's late. To pee, or not to pee - that is the question.

Wishing and hoping

2008-02-17T12:42:00.008Z

As the days count down towards both my 29th birthday and day 28 of this cycle, both of which occur on Tuesday, I find myself in the familiar territory of hoping against all odds that we have conceived this month.

Even though I haven't had a 28-day cycle since I came off the Pill (the best I've managed is 33), it's entrenched in my psyche that day 28 is the day on which it is reasonable to start thinking about pregnancy tests.

I used to be able to set my watch by my period. It would come at 10am on cycle day 28, come rain, shine or, indeed, prospect of sex. That I once had such a reliably regular cycle is the one thing that makes me doubt the fertility clinic's current draft diagnosis of PCOS. I just don't understand how I could have developed the condition and not known anything about it throughout my teens and early twenties - even during the prolonged, erm, periods (sorry) when I wasn't on the Pill.

So even though Tuesday is unlikely to bring my period along with my birthday cards, I can't help but wonder. Despite the cynicism borne of 22 months of disappointment - despite even my own better judgment - I have started symptom spotting. Every pelvic twinge, every grumbling cramp nearly reduces me to tears as I assume it heralds the arrival of my period; meanwhile, every passing moment of nausea, feeling of lethargy or tender ache in my boobs brings with it a stab of fierce, almost painful hope. To hope so hard is physically and emotionally exhausting.

I haven't done a pregnancy test yet. I haven't even bought one. (If I added up how much I've spent on pregnancy tests over the past 22 months, it would approach a monthly mortgage repayment and probably induce heart failure in my frugal husband.)

I have a vague plan of doing a test on the morning of my birthday. I'm fully aware this could spoil the day - it spoiled Christmas Day, which also happened to be cycle day 28. But I'm willing to accept the high probability of starting my 30th year in tears on the loo with a blank-windowed plastic stick in my hand. I'm willing to accept it because of the payoff if things turn out differently.

I'm not even going to try to put into words how wonderful it would be if I got a positive result - all I can see when I try to visualise it is the word JOY written across the sky.

A 28-year-old, nulliparous lady

2008-02-14T19:46:00.007Z

Got a letter from the fertility clinic today. It was an interim report on our referral appointment, addressed to my GP, but we'd been sent a copy. It's good that they're keeping us in the loop and progressing things, but the way the letter is worded sums up everything that's clinical and inhuman about this whole experience.

I am described as "a 28-year-old, nulliparous lady". Bonus on the lady front - my private education ensures I articulate myself well even when inside I'm chanting "fuck, fuck, fuck" - but even I, with my two English degrees, didn't know what nulliparous meant. Turns out it means "has never given birth to a child". Bit of a sledgehammer to the heart, that one - though I suppose it's better than "childless" or, my own blog moniker, "barren"!

The letter goes on to recount my medical history ("nothing significant of note"), smear history and summary of menstrual issues. It does the same for hubby (though with fewer references to periods and more references to sperm). It then says, and I quote:

"As a couple they have a history of primary sub-fertility. Their coital frequency is normal and they deny any sexual dysfunction."

Do you see what I mean about how it's worded? I'm not saying I'd have preferred it to state baldly that we "shag three times a week and aren't into kinky stuff", but come on.

It then talks about my blood pressure, which was "raised at 142/95, but that could just be the stress of attending clinic". She's not kidding. In my defence, I'd say anyone's blood pressure would be raised if they'd just been informed they were to have five vaginal swabs and a scan with a Renault Espace. (Also, little does the consultant know my blood pressure is always high. Like my dad, I exist in a perpetual state of semi-apoplexy.)

The next paragraph describes my "normal, anteverted uterus" - which research tells me means "tilted forward" - and my crazy right ovary, which "displays multiple small antral follicles arranged around the periphery". I liked that term, arranged. Made it sound like an exhibition - like it had made an effort to dust off the old follicles in preparation for the scan.

The same paragraph goes on to state, somewhat intriguingly, that "there was no evidence of hirsutism". Whether this means simply that I don't have a beard, or that during her miner's-lamp explorations the consultant was also checking my most intimate crevices for hairy patches that put me in mind of the transformation scenes in werewolf films, is not elaborated on.

That particular paragraph concludes that "both ovaries were accessible". (Yes, but not without serious manoeuvring by the Espace. Everything was accessible to the four winds after that thing withdrew. I travelled home feeling not unlike the Dartford Tunnel.)

The letter finishes up by surmising that our "primary sub-fertility" is likely a result of "an ovulation factor", i.e. PCOS. It then describes what has to happen next - that is, bloodwork (done) and HSG (aaaargh).

It says nothing about the process for booking in for the HSG, though, which I'm a bit concerned about. My period's due next week, on my birthday (but of course) - it's unlikely it'll come, as it likes to string it out for weeks, but if it does I need to get the appointment sorted pronto or we'll miss another cycle.

Oh well, Valentine's wine to drink and chocs to nibble. Hubby's card this morning simply said, "I hope that this is the year". I wept into my Special K.

Spring has sprung

2008-02-10T16:27:00.001Z

On my way out of the hairdresser's yesterday afternoon, I was stunned by the unseasonable warmth of the day. The air even had a slightly smoky, sweet scent that suggested someone, somewhere, was barbecuing. It was the first time since October that I've looked up at the sky and felt a stab of pleasure just at being outdoors.

Of course, February tends to do this. We'll get a couple of days of mid-teens warmth - all the flowers will start to bloom; tortoises will crawl out from hibernation; people will, as I witnessed in Sainsbury's this afternoon, begin to wear sandals - and then wham! Next weekend we'll be knee-deep in snow.

I turn 29 next week. If my birthday isn't accompanied by howlingly bad weather, then my mum's, the week after, surely will be. For the past two years we've spent my mum's birthday in the fracture clinic with my nana, who has fallen on ice and broken a bone for two consecutive Februarys. With a whole extra day in this leap year in which to injure herself, my mum has jokingly forbidden her to leave the house until March.

If this post seems uncharacteristically poetic and whimsical as I muse on the strangely clement weather, don't worry. The moan is coming...

What's hard for me about spring, aside from the fact that it marks the passage of yet another season and still no baby, is that it's THE season to be pregnant. Flowers coming into bud, trees being reborn, lambing season - the analogies are just teeming. Everything's in bloom, it would seem, except me.

I think the reason I struggle with other pregnant people is that the sight of them really brings home the slamming realisation that my body doesn't work as it should. Everything else that I have achieved in my life - good grades in exams, my degree, my M.Litt, getting jobs, getting promotions - has been arrived at by a direct equation of hard work + effort + desire = success. This is the first thing I've really wanted that I haven't been able to get simply by pouring blood, sweat and tears into it.

Tori Amos sings, in one of my favourite songs, 'Spark', from the album From the Choirgirl Hotel, which she wrote immediately after miscarrying: "She's convinced she could hold back a glacier/But she couldn't keep baby alive/Doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere/Here, here, here".

I think that puts it really well. Not being able to do something as basic and innate as reproduce makes you doubt what the hell you're actually for.

A self-basting turkey

2008-02-09T12:32:00.000Z

I've talked this week about the depressing nature of TTC sex, and I've been thinking (Carrie Bradshaw alert again) that it must be even harder for couples who weren't sexually compatible in the first place.

We're lucky that we had a fairly decent sex life before all this started, and yet the experience has categorically dampened both our appetites. Imagine having none to begin with! It'd be ghastly.

There are aids available to help people struggling with the difficulties of TTC sex. We tried Preseed - a lubricant that comes in a little plastic tube with a twist-off cap, which you squirt up yourself 20 minutes or so before intercourse.

Anyone thinking "Wouldn't that spoil the spontaneity?" has clearly not been TTC for long - the level of checks, balances, red days, green days, temperature charts and everything else that have to be consulted pre-shag are similar to the preparations made prior to the take-off of an aircraft!

We didn't use Preseed because of any, erm, friction issues in that department, but purely as an experiment to help hubby's swimmers. (This was back before the sperm test, when we feared they might be struggling as much as my eggs.) It's supposed to contain minerals to help them swim and acts to balance all the acids in the hell-waters of the poisonous vagina (nicked that line from Ben Elton), which the Preseed marketing people describe as an environment not unlike Mordor.

We only used it about twice. It made me feel like one of those self-basting turkeys - and I'm a vegetarian, so that turned my stomach. And I don't think the image of his wife returning from the bathroom in a sort of waddling squat, barking "Come on then, this stuff isn't going to stay put for long!" did a lot for hubby.

As a result, I have about 16 tubes of the stuff gathering dust in my bedside cabinet, and not the faintest idea what to do with them. Suggestions on a postcard, please.

The opposite of sex

2008-02-05T21:26:00.000Z

Hubby and I've been doing the bad thing a tad more regularly of late. This is a cunning ruse to save me from the HSG by becoming one of the couples I keep hearing about, who got pregnant just after they had abandoned all hope.

When I say "more regularly", I do not mean that my life now resembles an episode of Sex and the City. What I mean is that we've ramped it up to three dismal attempts per week rather than our customary two.

Twas always thus - hubby's a few years older than me, so it's the age-old problem that I'm probably just reaching my randy peak now, while he, ahem, climaxed when Yazz was still in the charts. So it's no surprise really that any attempt to boost our quota quickly degenerates into an experience akin to picking a lock with a herring.

If I sound like a nasty bitch, it's because I am. But don't imagine that I consider myself to be blameless in the decline of our once decent sex life into something clinical. On the contrary, my military attitude to "the right time", and my total loss of interest in anything other than the raw mechanic of getting sperm into me, cannot put hubby in mind of a wild sex kitten.

"A feminine receptacle, that's what I am," sang The Beautiful South. Quite. TTC sex is iredeemably crap. The notion that it's all rather exciting and debauched as you finally kick contraception to the kerb is utter bunkum. I should think most couples have been together so long that they've certainly cooled their interest in sex with one another, if not reached the active-avoidance-in-favour-of-watching-telly stage, by the time they start trying for a baby...

In fact, I think the world is ready for a practical, no-punches-pulled, two-step guide to more fulfilling TTC sex - and I'm the girl to write it.

Step one: Position

This is crucial to the success of proceedings in two key ways. It clearly has a bearing on how well you perform your "feminine receptacle" duties - woman on top is hardly conducive to efficient storage of the dollop. However, the position you finish in also needs to be easy to rework into a comfy post-op arrangement with minimal fuss.

There are three basic post-op positions:

i) Lying flat on your back, ideally on or in bed.

Pros: This is easy to get into - especially if your stance for the deed itself was missionary. It's also easy to remain essentially lying down for a good while without losing the will to live - and if it's the end of the evening, you can just go to sleep.

Cons: Although putting pants on does contain things somewhat, there will be spillage - so not on the Egyptian cotton. (I've actually entertained the idea of approaching the people who make Dragons' Den with a pitch for some sort of plug designed for TTC. I reckon it'd be made out of the same stuff they make earplugs with - one size fits all, and it's rinsable. I can just hear Duncan Bannatyne's response. "For that reason, I'm pulling out.")

ii) Lying relatively flat with a pillow under your bum.

Pros: As above.

Cons: You need either an old pillow or one whose owner won't complain about a certain musky, mushroomy odour afterwards...

iii) Lying on your back with your legs up the wall.

Pros: Just feels more dedicated to the cause, this one. You feel like a genuine protector of sperm.

Cons: Uncomfortable, unsustainable for long periods, and faintly ridiculous, this position is not conducive to post-shag chill time. You'll list legache, backache and neckache among your immediate sources of misery, and should you reach for a slug of wine to numb the wretchedness, you're liable to choke to death.

Another caveat with this position is that it has to be scrambled into immediately. Even a few seconds of delay can ruin everything. The sensation of lying almost vertically upside down whilst the very substance you're seeking to retain dribbles down your back is a dispiriting one.

Step two: Accessories

No, not sex toys. I'm talking about stuff to occupy you afterwards. You're going to be lying around for ages, and I can guarantee hubby will get bored talking to you and slope off downstairs to watch The Battleship Potemkin or similar.

A book or magazine; the Sunday papers; an iPod; a coffee or glass of wine, depending on the time of day and your state of mind - all these come in handy, as does the phone, provided you won't feel too sordid carrying on a conversation while sperm trickles listlessly into your gusset.

It's worth assembling these items before you begin, otherwise you'll have to send hubby to collect them, which he may not relish. "Lying there shouting orders like bloody Cleopatra" is a post-coital accusation that has been levelled at me, along with the truly arresting "Just put a collar on me and call me Fido".

The power of positive thinking?

2008-02-03T13:40:00.001Z

Engaged in conversation with my uni mate via text message on Friday night, I attempted one of the wisecracks that are beginning to characterise my strategy for dealing with that big, messy bundle of emotion that comes under the generic heading "fertility stuff".

We were debating the logistics of care for her baby during a planned trip from her home in Fife to see her sister play in concert here in March. "If u like, my mum wld b happy 2 babysit," I texted. "She's gr8 wth babs and won't ever get chance 2 use her skills due 2 my fckd repro sys!"

My poor mate probably didn't know how to respond to that, and who can blame her? This is what I'm increasingly tending to do in conversations that veer towards reproduction - I'll attempt (usually crap) "jokes" in an attempt both to make light of the situation and to avoid any uncomfortable silences in which the assembled company wonders if I'm going to get upset.

I did it again last night. We had friends over for hubby's party piece dinner of tuna steaks, salsa verde and spinach. It was a superb night - another much-needed dose of really good fun. After a fair bit of wine, the evening reached the point where we were all demonstrating the various quirks and freakish talents of double-jointedness that we'd been blessed with... as you do. (I seem to have more of these than most - I can do a selection of impressive bendy things with my fingers, and it's comforting to know that should my career ever veer off track, there'll always be a place for me in a circus sideshow.)

Anyway, this was the backdrop for another of my barbed little jibes at my own situation. It had just been revealed that both hubby and I can sit on the floor in a weirdly yogic position that implies doubly-double-jointed hipbones.

Much merriment ensued. "It's such a shame we can't have children," I then unnecessarily pointed out. "Imagine how bendy they'd be!" I don't know why I did it, and continue to do it, other than that taking the piss out of it, and ranting at it, seems to be my natural coping strategy.

The response I got to my text "joke" on Friday was as follows: "Aw mate, don't say that, think positive, it's bound 2 help in some mysterious way".

At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to sound like Carrie Bradshaw, that got me thinking. Thinking positively is not something I've been doing throughout this experience. Optimism's not, as any readers who know me personally will be well aware, something that comes naturally to me anyway. I'm not the most upbeat, life-affirming type of gal in the most ordinary of circumstances, having inherited my father's propensity to "rage against the coming of the night". Being positive in the face of the genuine adversity of infertility is a ridiculous notion.

But would it help? Usually I think that people who skip about the world grinning inanely and proselytizing about the glass being half-full would be immeasurably improved by being shot at dawn. The procedure needed to turn me into one of them would be reminiscent of Jekyll and Hyde, and infinitely more traumatic than the HSG!

I categorically doubt the effect of positive thinking anyway. A recent study said that being optimistic and upbeat had absolutely no bearing on the survival rate in cancer patients. Now don't imagine that I've finally disappeared up my own arse in a fit of self-pity by comparing my situation to a terminal illness - I am not (yet) that self-obsessed. All I'm saying is that smiling lots and visualising flowers unfurling is not going to make my ovary magically not polycystic.

To put it more succinctly, I turn to a passage from Ben Elton's Inconceivable - a brilliant novel that's by turns funny and heartbreakingly accurate, and which is far superior to its subsequent film adaptation, Maybe Baby.

"I keep screaming inside, why the hell should I have to imagine a baby? Why can't I just have one?! Far less nice people than me have lots, and it's just not fair."

That's the absolute crux of it. Instead of an egg each month, I have a boiling ball of rage, frustration, jealousy and a sense of plain old Kevin the Teenager injustice.

Hormone soup

2008-01-31T20:14:00.000Z

Got my first migraine for ages overnight last night - when I was on the Pill, I used to get them every month, which in retrospect was a pretty big clue that my system wasn't too happy. They used to render me completely incapable of doing anything other than lying in a darkened room, whimpering.

I still maintain that one of the most romantic gifts hubby's ever bought me was a packet of gel cushions, which you stick to your forehead during a migraine. They're really cooling and go some way to dulling what can be an agonising pain. He brought them home unexpectedly one day, having "seen them and thought of me", as the saying goes. I know it sounds daft to say I considered that romantic, but there it is - it was just a really thoughtful present.

Anyway, I managed to shift today's onslaught with a handful of painkillers and an extra 15 minutes in bed, which was good. The fact I also have a suppurating pustule on my right cheek, and my moods are swingier than - erm - a swingset, suggests that perhaps my hormones are in turmoil. Good - I hope it means I'm ovulating!

Got a letter from the clinic this morning, which caused my sphincter to liquefy as I assumed it was the HSG summons. It turned out to be confirmation that my smear was normal, which is great news. All I need now is the results of my bloods and then we'll be able to proceed.

I've sort of calmed down a bit about it all for the time being. Now that I know it's going to be a few weeks, I guess I've accepted that there's no point passing the time in a state of bug-eyed horror...

Good, solid baby advice

2008-01-28T19:51:00.000Z

In a (successful) effort to amuse me, my fab cousin sent me a great spoof email about babycare.

These are some of the best pics from it. I have to say, the one with the tramp is my personal favourite!

The scary thing is, I used to work with a woman who would actually have benefited from these instructions!

The barren woman's hate list - item #6 - pregnancy films

2008-01-28T19:10:00.000Z

I realise that there is emerging something of a theme to these diatribes - that is, anyone who's pregnant when I'm not makes the list.

However, I couldn't resist mentioning the recent spate of teenybop, American Pie-style rom coms with pregnancy as their theme, all of which imply that getting a bun in the oven is as simple as selecting a new lip gloss - and then, during the labour scenes, that ejecting said bun is only about as uncomfortable as a bikini wax.

Knocked Up would be the most obvious recent example - and boy, did they trail that film relentlessly - but last night I witnessed a trailer for a new flick called Juno, which appears to be about a gestating 8-year-old. A bus swooshed past me this morning carrying a board for the film. "Everyone's gonna love Juno!" the tagline claimed confidently. I can assure them that they're wrong.

It's worth saying that last night's trailer for this celluloid knife in the heart was sandwiched between the Pampers ad where the baby girl is trying on her mum's shoes, and the Clearblue Digital pregnancy test advert.

Tell me why I don't like Mondays.

An evening off from all this

2008-01-27T00:34:00.000Z

Just come in from what has felt like a complete night away from all this fertility crap, and it's done me a world of good.

Went with a friend to another friend's flat for pizza, Corona and an entertainingly stupid scary movie. After the film we were chatting and I ended up mentioning my blog. It's kind of weird that I haven't really discussed it with them yet, since they're two of my best mates. But at the same time, one of the reasons I set this blog up is so I can rant into the ether and not risk - as I have genuinely feared might happen - losing friends by becoming "that miserable bitch who moans about babies 24/7".

Anyway, when I told them what the blog was called, they completely took the piss - in an affectionate way - and ended up inventing a Victorian patriarch character called Baron Blog, complete with peaked cap and breeches. It was really funny and it felt ace to have a bloody good laugh about it all - it's been too long since I've done that. I'm lucky to have friends around me who can make me see the stupid side of all this mess.

My conclusion is that having the piss taken out of you is good for the soul. I'm so very sick myself of having the same old bollocks conversations about fertility problems. Usually it's insensitive acquaintances or relatives piping up with the "Still not pregnant yet?" queries, followed by the tea-and-sympathy remarks you get when you admit to having fertility treatment: "Just have to wait and see what happens... fingers crossed... must be so hard for you".

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying I don't need or appreciate sympathy, but it's made me feel a good deal better to be made to giggle helplessly about the ridiculousness of having a blog by this name. So cheers, girls, if you're reading this, from Baron Blog.

The return of the prodigal period

2008-01-26T09:50:00.000Z

My stupid period, having shown itself briefly last weekend and then retreated, came properly on Wednesday night.

I therefore presented myself at the clinic at 8am yesterday morning for my day 2-5 blood test. This is the fourth or fifth time I've had this test now, and my results have always shown a good egg reserve, so I'm not sure why I need to have it again except that maybe the clinic prefers to do its own series of tests rather than relying on my GP's results.

This might be wise - the last time I visited the doctor for bloods, the nurse took about 10 minutes to work out which coloured tube my blood needed to go in, all the while musing aloud "I should really know this by now" whilst I sat silently seething and thinking "Yes, you bloody should."

Their finest hour was when the doctor gave me the assorted baggie of pot and paperwork for the sperm test. After I arrived at the clinic and fished said pot out of my cleavage to present it to the receptionist, it turned out we'd been given the brown paperwork that's designed for drug testing of athletes' spunk, rather than the green documentation for infertility!

Getting my period also meant that I thought I'd have to book in next week for the dreaded pingu-whatsit. However, I chatted with the nurse who relieved me of some nine vials of blood yesterday morning and she reckoned it would take at least a month for my referral to come through from the hospital's X-ray department. Apparently they need the results of the smear and swabs I had last week - to make sure all is well with the cervix before they break it, I assume!

I admitted to the nurse how scared I am and she said that she wouldn't lie, the procedure is unpleasant and can be very painful. But she also said it's better to be prepared for that, as often it's the women who go in expecting nothing worse than a smear who panic when they experience the pain and end up having a truly traumatic time.

Anyway, the upshot is I have to await a letter, and then when I get my next period (so some time this decade, then) I'll need to ring up and book in. This means I have a reprieve for this cycle. I mean to pray very hard to a God I'm not sure I believe in for me to fall pregnant this month so I can avoid the HSG altogether. (I love that phrase, "fall" pregnant - like it's easy, like it's something that you just trip into unexpectedly. A better description for me would be "claw my way desperately" pregnant.)

So, the cards are dealt, the "dye" is cast - or soon will be, right up where the sun don't shine. I'm frightened, Aunty Em, I'm frightened! Catheters and speculums and cramps, oh my!

More scaredy wuss-ness

2008-01-23T22:04:00.000Z

I'm not sleeping brilliantly these days, plagued as I am by images of catheters plunging into the depths of my uterus and spewing twin jets of dye into its every crevice.

And it's just occurred to me that my grand masterplan of chomping a fistful of ibuprofen an hour or so before the pingu-pillage might be foiled by the hospital's somewhat lackadaisical attitude to timekeeping.

Before I went for my pelvic scan in March, I was issued with written instructions urging me, several times and in block capitals, to drink copious amounts of water beforehand. Having a full bladder evidently pushes all the relevant organs to front stage, thus making for a clearer picture. I followed the instructions to the letter; my mum, who accompanied me to the appointment, adopted a military attitude towards my water consumption, even bringing a bottle in the car with us to "keep me topped up".

The scan was scheduled for 9.20. Had it taken place at the appointed time, everything would have been fine. Unfortunately, we were still sat waiting at 9.55, by which point I can confidently say I have never needed a pee more in my life. You have to wait for such scans in the radiology suite with all the pregnant women - which was nice - but my stomach was so distended by my groaningly full bladder that I could easily have passed for six months gone.

Nerves didn't help - this was my first diagnostic test in a properly clinical setting. I suppose I was scared the scan would reveal some sort of gurning gremlin, squatting in my tubes like a germ in the S-bend of a toilet cleaner ad and chuckling malevolently.

By the time we were eventually called in, I'd taken to dementedly pacing the corridor and thinking for the first - and hopefully last - time in my life that I wished I'd brought some Tenalady. It's actually quite painful to need to pee that badly. I'm certain that had I laughed - admittedly unlikely in the circumstances - coughed or sneezed, there would have been an embarrassing accident.

The nurse who scanned me actually had the gall to tell me off for having "too full" a bladder. She said she was scared to press on my tummy with the scanner - presumably in case the slightest pressure caused me to issue forth a steaming geyser of wee. This was a fear I wholeheartedly shared. She instructed me to go to the loo and "pee a bit - but not a lot" - a feat which requires a pelvic floor like a steel trap. However, I managed it - but not before having to hop off the bed and hobble down the hall clutching my aching bladder like Gollum. "Tricksy little nurses - they advises us to drink but they lies!"

Anyway, to return to the point - my latest witching hour concern is that, should I be compelled to wait an age for the pingu-pokery, my painkillers might have worn off before I even go in. Argh and thrice argh.

Rampant dread about the HSG

2008-01-20T14:56:00.000Z

Thought my period had started yesterday, which would mean I'd need to book in for the HSG this week as it has to be done within 10 days of a new cycle starting. My plan was to call into the fertility clinic for my day2 blood tests tomorrow morning and while there book in for the procedure, probably for Friday.

That spurred me to do some more detailed research about what the HSG actually entails, and I have to say I am now absolutely sick with terror. I want to cry whenever I even think about it.

I've read a few blog sites where women have posted about their experiences, and a disconcertingly high proportion have used phrases like "the worst pain I've ever experienced", "excruciating", "100 times worse than delivering twins vaginally" and "I passed out it was so bad" to describe it.

I'm a big wimp at the best of times and have been lucky in that I've never experienced severe pain in my life. I've never had a tooth out, have only one filling, have never broken a bone or had surgery, and until all this started, the most invasive procedures I'd ever endured were routine smears. I've never found smears to be that bad, and while speculums are cold and uncomfy, I've never felt that they actively hurt, so I'm really hoping that stands me in good stead for this...

The consultant at the clinic told me that I should take 800mg of ibuprofen beforehand to "ease the cramps". She said I'd feel these when the dye is pushed through my tubes, and that they are like bad menstrual cramps. OK, thought I, period pain is nothing I haven't dealt with before, and there was something reasonably reassuring about it being a familiar type of pain rather than something unexpected. But from reading some of the comments on the web, it seems these "cramps" in actual fact resemble late-stage labour contractions, and that DOES scare me.

There are also lots of people who found the insertion of the catheter through the cervix unbearable. That bit really worries me - after all, the worst part of a smear isn't the speculum but the bit where they scrape your cervix. It's not active pain, it's more a sort of unpleasant, fingers-on-blackboard sensation of what the FUCK are you doing touching one of my ORGANS?!

I almost want to be cross with the women who've posted comments featuring words like "agony" and "excruciating" - but then I suppose they are just sharing what the experience was like for them in an effort to prepare others.

Having said all this, my period has now vanished altogether, so I don't think it was a period after all - perhaps just some spotting as a hangover from the travails of the Espace earlier in the week. I need to ring the clinic tomorrow to find out what I should do. Part of me wants to get this horrid HSG over with - spending the next couple of months sick with dread over it doesn't appeal to me. And of course, even if it's horrible, it's worth it to find out what's going on.

However, there's a really big part of me that just wants to have one more cycle before getting it done, in the desperate hope that a miracle will occur and I'll conceive without having to go through it.

In the words of Eliza Doolittle: Not bloody likely.