All I want for Christmas...

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I still want one.

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

And they're both quite right.

But I still want one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back from a "summer" break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some things never change...

Getting by with a little help from my friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A restorative break from babymaking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twilight descends on my baby dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second consultation at the fertility clinic

Well, that was a waste of time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fertility clinic looms (again)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for bed. Tomorrow's a big day.