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.

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.

One step up and two steps back

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."

Falling out of love with sex

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.

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...

We all go a little crazy sometimes

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.

Ovulation-induced grump syndrome?

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!

The bitch is back

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.

I don't even like Coldplay...

...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.

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.

The opposite of sex

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".

Sex and infertility

This is our 21st month of TTC and I have to say it doesn’t do much for a girl’s sex life – we’re both absolutely sick of it.

Some of the tests we may have to take as things progress are going to make shagging even more of an effort. One involves us doing the deed and me hot-footing it down to the surgery to have some scaffolding erected up me and a sample – this is FOUL – of our mingled “juices” taken. The purpose of this is to see if my vagina is murdering hubby's sperm. He's Scottish and I'm English, so who knows, perhaps it resembles Culloden in there.

I keep hoping it won’t come to that and trying to take each day – or test – at a time and keep a sense of humour, but it’s difficult. I genuinely thought, when we started TTC in spring 2006, that I’d be knocked up by Christmas so it’s disappointing to have just gone through another Christmas and not to be. Everyone keeps saying "All in good time" - how rage-inducingly fatuous is that?!

We had a really bad patch about a year ago where hubby was getting so stressed about the whole thing he couldn't perform, but we seem to have got over that hitch and things are fine in that respect now - except, of course, for the fact that it isn't bloody working.