I got my period on Wednesday morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An egg but no soldiers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second clomiphene cycle: mid-cycle report

It's been a really weird couple of weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The egg has died

My period's coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't have much else to say.

The egg has landed!

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.