Back from a "summer" break

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...

A self-basting turkey

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.

Welcome to the Barren Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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