An egg but no soldiers

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.

The egg has landed!

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

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

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

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

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".

A helpful chat with the doctor (no, really)

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.

Second consultation at the fertility clinic

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?"

A Bank Holiday visit from the witch

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

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!