Hope for the Best

Happy Birthday, Baby!

2012-01-06T14:58:00.000-08:00

My best boy is one year old today - how did that happen?

How did I go from wanting a baby, to losing babies, to struggling to conceive a baby, to paying a fortune and taking stupid amounts of medication to try to have/keep a baby, to nearly giving up on ever having a baby, to finally having a baby, to having toddler? However it happened, I am eternally grateful. I NEVER take it for granted. When it's hard going, I always remember that there are women out there who would give anything to be cleaning up baby vomit, getting woken at 3am or changing the pooey nappy of a screaming, wriggling boy. It's easy to remember, because one of those women used to be me.

Big Kid

2011-12-11T04:12:00.000-08:00

Feeling a bit silly about the last bit of my last post!

Thank you so much for the nice comments. I started my blog as a place to download about the pain of pregnancy loss and subfertility and it really shouldn't matter to me whether anyone reads or comments. I should be more mature than that. I think that, after coming across this amazing community of women (and some men), I have seen such an incredible amount of wisdom, courage, determination - and wit in the face of adversity - it DOES matter to me to feel part of that. I am, as my title says, still a big kid!

But, I also need to join in more, blog more and comment more. I've added the Creme de la Creme icon to my blog because, for the first time, I've submitted an entry!

Another Thing to Add . . .

2011-11-30T13:04:00.000-08:00

. . . to the list of things I thought I might never do be doing but am: organising a 1st birthday party!

December 4th is "the other due date" - the only other due date we had, apart from the one that led to our son. The one that led to such sadness that I went out of my way to avoid finding out any others for subsequent pregnancies. It's going to be very different this year. At the end of every 4th December, I always found myself imagining what I might have been doing had that pregnancy worked and getting tearful about the parties we should have had and didn't. Barring disaster (see, I still can't let go of the superstition and the fear that I might lose the wonderful gift I've been given), there's going to be a birthday party soon.

I've a post going round in my head about my feelings about the fact that there will almost certainly not be a sibling for my wee boy and the importance of gratitude, but there never seems to be time to write it. I didn't want to drop off the planet altogether, so this is a kind of place-holder for that. Mind you, as there have been no comments at all on the last post, maybe I'm sending this into nothingness - I never had much in the way of a readership before and now I'm effectively a "mommy blogger", I suppose it's not a big surprise but it did make me feel a little sad.

Oh My Ears and Whiskers!

2011-10-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

I feel like the White Rabbit at the moment - always rushing about and in a state of permanent lateness. I thought I knew what we were in for, being parents - I'd seen others do it before me and I'd certainly had long enough to think about it. And actually, I DID know - intellectually. The reality is something TOTALLY different. I've asked my sister and best friend why they didn't tell me how hard it was, but they laughed and told me I'd never have believed them - and they were right! Thankfully the rewards are as good as I'd hoped, in compensation.

I am back at work - four days a week, sharing one class of 37 children on a Monday and Tuesday and sharing another class of 36 children on a Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, I'm at home with the boy. He goes to nursery on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and his dad has him on a Friday. We like the nursery and he still has more days with us than them, and that's as good as we can make it just now. CM is still on reduced hours and I've taken a cut to drop a day, plus we're are now in our new home which is lovely but expensive. We would end up with the same amount of money if I only worked 2 days and the boy didn't go to nursery, but then if CM's job were to be reduced further or - please no - go altogether, and I was on a 2 day contract, we would be stuffed. It's not ideal, but it's realistic.

Like I said, we're in a new home - it's already amazing and it will be fantastic one day but at the moment it's very unfinished. On top of that, my parent's flat (which is downstairs) is still unfinished and they HAVE to be in by Christmas, so CM is working flat out when he's not at his job or wrangling the boy.

Between school-work, CM's work, housework and taking care of the wee one, there is no time left. And the wee one is in a full-on sleep regression - it's like we're back in the days of colic. We take turns to eat dinner, watch TV at 3am with him on our laps, I take him in to bed with me in desperation - he sleeps and I don't, much. He has also done the traditional thing and caught every nursery bug going - in fact he's been off nursery as much as he's been there. My mum has been amazing and taken him a lot, CM's boss is a star and has allowed him to be flexible with his days a bit. I have take a day and a half of family leave and this means I only have another 2 and a half left until next August! After that, it's unpaid leave - and we can't afford that.

Unfortunately, my boss is rather less of a star than CM's and I ended up in tears on my first day back when I was told I couldn't have the following day off to look after my sick child - even though it was an in-service day and there were no children in and therefore no cover required. I was allowed to take half a day, in the end, but it left a very sour taste. For the record - I know that they can't actually stop me taking a day, but when you're just back after maternity leave, you really don't want to rock the boat. On top of the polite disagreement over when I was to come back (again, they're not allowed to dictate that, and I pointed that out) and which day I was to have off (business manager suggested a Monday, so that's what I said to the nursery, signed a contract with them and then, 2 months later was told I'd be getting a Wednesday and there was no negotiation allowed) I am unimpressed at my treatment by fellow working mothers. I was told that I was lucky to have mat leave at all - it wasn't around in their day - and, when I told them I stood to lose my nursery place altogether over the change in days, that "these are the perils of being a working mum".

Despite all this, I am happy - not all of the time, I get sad, angry, frustrated often - but the baseline is happy. I laugh more than I did and I love more than I did. My wee boy is a continual source of joy and amazement - and surprise, as I still sometimes see a toy or a bottle and think "I've got a baby!!!! How did that happen?!". He has just started crawling and is into everything. He is very investigative - fascinated by how things move and fit together. My mum reckons he'll be an engineer - as long as he's happy, he can be what he wants (remind me of that in a few years!). He still vomits fairly often, to varying degrees, and we've been referred to the paediatricians to get that checked out, but the GP says she isn't worried - it happens and it is lessening, he is putting on weight ok and appears unbothered by it. It'd just be nice not to have to change both of our clothes so often, keep spot cleaner next to the sofa and have to feed him dinner twice on occasions. We tried infant Gav.i.scon but all it did was make him constipated, poor soul.

We had a nasty scare two weeks ago when he managed to cut open the bridge of his nose! We were celebrating my mum's 70th birthday at a hotel about an hour out of town. My nephew had the wee boy on his lap, sitting calmly on a sofa, when the wee one lunged to grab a flower from a vase on the floor (he's such a nature - lover!). The vase got knocked over and broke and our poor wee boy's momentum was too much for my nephew (it's sometimes too much for us too) and he fell forward a bit, cutting his nose on a bit of broken glass. Our experience of this was hearing a crash and turning to see my nephew, looking white, holding our screaming baby, whose face was totally obscured with blood, at arms length. My heart stopped.

Luckily, my brother-in-law is a doctor, with a previous specialism in paediatrics, and my sister is an ex-midwife so they swung into action, cleaning off his face to make sure his eyes weren't affected and applying pressure to stop the bleeding - it took 40 minutes. It took the same amount of time for an ambulance to arrive. All that time, I was holding my baby while he screamed and my sister and brother-in-law took turns to press on his nose. It was horrible. When the paramedics arrived, the pressure was taken off, he stopped screaming and smiled up at the lady treating him - bless him. On the ambulance ride, he drank a full bottle of milk (to help with possible dehydration from shock and blood-loss), burbled away to himself and played with some paper towels - the paramedic was clearly more worried about me than him. We had a long evening at A&E getting him checked out and steri-stripped (they didn't want to use glue so near his eyes and he wouldn't lie still enough for stitches). We had to go back the next day, having fasted him (not fun!) in case he needed a general anaesthetic to be stitched if the steri-strips weren't holding things. Luckily, they were so we got home. We were back that evening as he spiked a fever of 39 degrees, but they gave him a thorough check-up and decided it was an unrelated virus.

All in all, a very unfunny weekend. Two weeks later it's almost completely healed. He will have a scar, but it could have been so much worse. Oh the guilt though - my poor nephew was devastated but luckily both CM and I were able to comfort him at the time and reassure him that we did NOT blame him and it was something that could have happened to any of us - and we meant it. That's not to say we don't blame ourselves - we should have been closer, we shouldn't have let anyone else hold him, we shouldn't have taken him etc etc. I have discovered that there is a serious amount of guilt that comes with parenthood. It was also an un-needed reminder of how easily things can go wrong - we know this already - the fact that he was pregnancy number 7 and yet our only child was enough proof for us. I'd just really like a quiet life with some reassurance in it now, please.

Finally, this might well come across as the infertile's idea of the ultimate nightmare post - a combination of whining and gloating about parenthood. If so, I am truly sorry. I have not forgotten where I came from. Tomorrow I am going to take down the photos on the staff bulletin board of my baby and my 2 closest work friends' babies, all born within 4 months of each other, because I discovered that a new colleague is going through IF and her latest cycle of IVF has failed. It's a tiny, tiny thing, but I remember what it meant when others took care of me in small ways. I know how I would have felt, seeing baby photos at work every day, so down they come - and my friends will understand.

Phew!

2011-07-13T01:43:00.000-07:00

He's fine!

Bizarrely, not only did they not find a hernia in my wee boy, the four-year-old in the bed next to him who was in for the same operation also did not have a hernia. It was phantom hernia day at our local children's hospital. When the nurse told me that the surgeon hadn't found anything wrong, my guilt was enormous - we had put him through all that for no reason. However, after some thought and discussion, I realised that there was nothing else we could have done - there was a lump there that came and went quickly, a GP did say she felt something that indicated that a hernia was the reason, ing.uinal hernias don't fix themselves so what else could anyone have done - for the doctors and for us, the only sensible, safe thing to do in those circumstances is to check it out. Thankfully, the operation was being done laparoscopically, so all he had was one tiny incision at his belly button where they popped the tiny camera in. Of course, the poor soul had had gas and the equivalent of an epidural - which I wish we could have spared him - but he has recovered really well.

I couldn't believe it when I heard the surgeon tell the family next to us that their son did not have a hernia either, though. I didn't know whether to be relieved that we weren't the only ones with imaginary lumps or to be worried about the surgeon's eyesight! The other wee boy is older and had had a double ing.uinal hernia at birth (which was corrected with surgery), so his family knew exactly what to look for (unlike us novice parents). His mother was stunned - we spoke afterwards and apparently her son's "hernia" pops out quite often and gives him pain. Both of us are to keep an eye on our sons for the next 6 weeks, take a photo of the "hernia" if it pops out and go back for a follow-up appointment. I'm fairly sure we won't see ours again - we only saw it once before. One of the more junior doctors suggested that our wee one's lump might have been a hyd.rocele, which can self-correct, so maybe that's the answer. All I know, is that I'm very relieved that my wee one came through OK - but still keeping a close eye on him for post-op problems (primarily infection etc) and not feeling complacent.

Our losses and the time it has taken us to have our wee boy definitely mean that we do not take him for granted!

It Gets Worse

2011-07-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

I thought the fear of losing my baby during pregnancy was bad, but the idea of losing him now is terrifying. CM (husband) is also fighting fears - specifically that our son will suffer some kind of brain damage during the operation and no longer be "himself".

He goes in to hospital tomorrow to have an inguinal hernia repaired. I know that it's a relatively minor operation. I know that anaesthesia is a very specialised and skilled area these days. I know that he is going to be in one of the best children's hospitals in the country. But our years of miscarriages have taught me that statistics only apply to other people, not to ourselves, and that things do go wrong even when you look like you're heading for a slam dunk.

He is turning into the most amazing little person. He is on solids now - wolfing down various gloopy purees (mango is the hands-down favourite so far). He will go to sleep in his own cot within 10-15 minutes of being put down - as long as I'm lying on the bed next to it holding his hand through the bars (this is progress from at least an hour of holding, rocking, walking, shushing and false starts as he wakes just as his head touches the sheet!). He is much happier during the day while we're out - instead of holding a screaming baby as I try to stuff a sandwich down my throat and carry on half a conversation with friends, he now sits in his buggy or a high chair and plays with his Sophie or firefly or "chats" to me and I eat with both hands and manage to have at least three quarters of a conversation. He loves playing at home - he wriggles about in his gym, occasionally rolling onto his tummy and back again, today pushing himself backwards with his feet towards a toy . He enjoys books - chewing the cloth books we have and having a story at bedtime (he likes rhyming stories best and ones with brightly coloured illustrations). He adores singing - listening to me or CM or the radio or iT.unes (and sometimes joining in himself - very funny!). He is a little TV addict - he only gets to watch a bit of CB.eebies but particularly loves some of the characters on "In the Nig.ht Gar.den" (he goes mad when Up.syDai.sy comes on!).

In short, he is already a wee individual and one we love more than anyone or anything on this planet. Losing him or seeing him diminished would be the end of us, so if you're of the praying persuasion, say a little one for him tomorrow that our cursed odds don't extend to him.

6 Months

2011-07-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

Happy half-birthday, beautiful boy!
My world's a better place with you in it.

Love

2011-06-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

Lots of negative stuff to write about: contradictory feelings on motherhood, thoughts that come up about donor egg issues, changes in my body, sadness that we will probably have to let our frozen embryos go, guilt that I can't give my son a sibling, barriers that exist to being a working mum (& shock at how many of those barriers are put there by other working mums), pressure to be the first to move baby into its own room or the first to wean (while still breastfeeding, of course), feelings around miscarriage and infertility that linger, etc, etc.

But look at this smile - this smile makes it all float away.

The Other Side

2011-03-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

My son is two months old today (the photo is about a month out of date now). His birthday gave us a hat-trick of birthdays on the 6th of the first three months of the year. He is the 6th of January, I am the 6th of February and my dad - who is 75 years old today - is the 6th of March. These two months have been the longest of my life, I think.

I've heard the first few weeks with a newborn described as "ecstatic", "babymoon", "precious" and other similarly delightful terms. I can only describe our first few weeks as fairly hellish. Things are still fairly chaotic, but we're reaching a point where a certain amount of sanity has returned.

I'm not sure that I can give you my birth story at all clearly, as the whole thing is a bit of a blur, but I'll try.

We (me, my husband and my sister, who trained as a midwife) went in on Monday 3rd January at 5.30pm so that I could be induced. The hospital was so understaffed that I didn't get the pess.ary put in until 1.30am on Tuesday 4th (my due date). At that point, my husband and sister went home to get some sleep. I did NOT sleep - monitoring, nervousness and noise on the ward prevented it. The necessary 24 hours passed and nothing happened, so in the early hours of Wednesday 5th January they put some gel in and did more monitoring of the baby. Baby and I both came to hate the monitoring - tight belts round my belly, left for well over an hour at a time many times over the days I was in hospital. I know it was for our own good, but in the end it made things worse. I did not sleep on either the Monday/Tuesday night or the Tuesday/Wednesday night and, as it turned out, during the monitoring on the 2nd night, the huge movement I felt in my belly was the baby moving from the perfect "his spine down my left side" to the very much less than perfect back-t0-back position.

On the morning of Wednesday 5th, the midwife on the ward decided that I had dilated enough to be moved to the labour ward and have my waters broken. When I was examined by a doctor on arrival on the labour ward though, I was told this was not the case. Instead I had another, very painful sweep and was left to wait (sister and husband were back with me at this point). As I was high-risk and going to be having an epidural, I was on a more monitored part of the maternity unit. But again, they were understaffed, so instead of having a midwife with me all the time, I had to share one with the room next door, and got through 4 midwives in the 18 hours I was on the ward. Not great! Thankfully, I had my sister - had I not, I would have been terrified.

I had some contractions, tried gas and air, felt sick and dizzy and gave up in favour of some strong painkillers. As the painkillers took effect, the contractions stopped. In the middle of the afternoon, my nice consultant was passing and decided that she was going to break my waters. After that, the contractions came back, but not as effectively as they wanted. So they put a drip in and I asked for my early epidural. Four hours later, I got it! I did FOUR HOURS of strong back labour with no pain relief at all. My sister tells me I was amazing. Apparently, whenever a contraction came, I went very quiet, closed my eyes and breathed. I only swore once during the whole birth, when I was told (three hours after I'd asked for an epidural) that there was still no anaesthetist available. I have almost no memory of this part of the day at all.

Eventually, the anaesthetist arrived and put in the epidural. That part was OK, but it only worked down one side of my body and I continued to have terrible pain on the other side. The midwife and anaesthetist did some fancy manoevering over the next hour and managed to get it most of the way through the other side too. However, just when the pain stopped, the monitors started to show that the baby's heartrate wasn't great and I was threatened with a C-section. At this point, I didn't really care how they got the baby out, I just wanted him out and safe. Before they made a decision, they tried a scalp monitor and took a blood test from the babies scalp to see if he was in distress. The scalp monitor did not work well at all, and made it look like the baby's heartrate was dropping. I was terrified by this time. Thankfully, just as they were about to whisk me off to surgery, the results of the blood test came back showing that the baby was basically OK and we had more time. They put me back on the belly monitor and things settled a bit.

During all the investigating, they found that I was 9cm dilated and, once they'd established that the baby was OK, they gave me one hour to push before taking me into surgery for a C-section. The hour did almost nothing - they'd discovered that the baby was back-to-back with me by this time - but it did get things far enough on that they started talking about forceps rather than a C-section. How I wish I'd taken the C-section now!

The nice doctor who was looking after me by this time brought me a consent sheet to sign, whereupon I read her name - she was the parent of a child in the same year that I had been teaching at school, in the classroom next to mine. On the one hand, I shall probably not be able to look her in the eye again, on the other, I think she took extra care of the baby, who emerged without a mark upon him - quite unusual for a forceps delivery. They had to turn him manually first, then pull him out with the forceps. By this time, we'd had to leave my sister behind and it was my husband and me and a lot of medics - midwife, doctor, my consultant (who happened to be passing again), anaesthetist, paediatrician and several other folk who I never identified.

My epidural was topped up and then they began. I am honestly not sure how my son's head remained attached to his body. I felt no pain, but I felt the force of the pulling and it was quite something! I have since read of people seeing their midwife or ob/gyn putting a foot up on the end of the trolley to brace themselves to pull a baby out using forceps. It doesn't surprise me! And although the baby was left unscathed, I am going to be feeling the effects for some time. I had an episi.otomy, which came unstitched and got infected and I have prol.apses front and back and possibly in the middle too - waiting to see a consultant about that next week. Childbirth is the gift that keeps on giving here!

The baby was placed briefly on my chest, looking grey and bloody and not crying, and was then whisked away to be looked at by the paediatrician. I heard him start to cry as he was taken to the next room and my husband tells me that by the time the he saw him, the paediatrician said "perfect - nothing for me to do here". His APGAR score was 9, which is one off perfect actually, but it was good enough for me. I was stitched up and the bleeding (which was quite a lot) was stopped and then I was given the baby back in recovery and I fed him. My sister was brought back at this point and we were all taken up to the postnatal ward. My son was born at 4.07am on 6th January - Thursday's child, just like I had been 41 years and 11 months before him.

The postnatal ward was not a great experience - once again, understaffing was largely to blame. My medications were late, sometimes missed and I had to chase them up myself, and when I said I was having difficulty breast.feeding, I was given formula and a syringe!!! There were also good bits - a midwife who really did care, who took time to help me express my own milk and who was very thorough in briefing me before I was released, and a girl who was in the bed opposite me who was having a similarly tough time who I became friendly with and have continued to keep in touch with. We both agree that the first three weeks of motherhood were horrendous and we both thought "what on earth have I done?" once or twice most days during that time.

Getting home wasn't much better. I was out 2 days after giving birth after 5 nights of almost no sleep at all and was slightly mad and incredibly anxious and spent the next few days not eating and almost unable to sleep altogether. One of the visiting midwives, arriving after a particularly bad night, sent round a psychiatrist and acute psychiatric nurse, worried that I might have pue.rpural psyc.hosis - anyone who knows me well enough could have told her that my behaviour was fairly typical for me after two weeks of no more that 3 hours sleep a night and none during the day! Thankfully the psychiatrist and the nurse pronounced me to be utterly normal :-). That alongside yo-yoing blood pressure, the infected episiotomy, stitches coming out, wierd heart rhythms, a return stay in hospital with retained products and, worst of all, my poor baby coughing up blood (which turned out to be from feeding from me!) led to a horrendous first few weeks. And just as things began to settle, as my swelling went down, the prolapses became obvious, meaning that walking and standing are now uncomfortable. I am awaiting an echocardiogram and a 24 hour heart monitor, after some ectopic heartbeats and a really scary turn when it felt like my heart stopped for a couple of beats, I couldn't breathe and things started to cloud over before normality returned (ECG, bloods and chest x-ray afterwards came back clear but medics thought they could hear a heart murmur). And just yesterday, we discovered that the wee one has an ingu.inal her.nia and will need surgery at some point. My anxiety about my own health, always an issue for me, is even stronger now that I am spending time on my own with my baby - what if I pass out while carrying him, or die one morning leaving him on his own till my husband gets home at night and finds . . . what?!

On top of all this: we had to get the flat cleaned and decluttered ready to put on the market and we're now up for sale and showing people round the last four days out of six; my husband's hours at work have been cut just as my maternity pay comes to an end; we are now well in to the development of the property we bought with my parents and have a huge mortgage and cannot pull out without leaving my parents homeless. We are looking down the list of life's most stressful experiences and wondering which one is coming next.

But alongside all that anxiety and stress and sleeplessness (did I mention that the baby is colicky and doesn't sleep for more than 3 hours at a time?!) there are starting to be some amazing moments. When my baby smiles at me as I pick him up first thing in the morning, when he does something new like trying to get his thumb in his mouth today, when I see my husband with his longed-for son, when my father tells me that he thinks his grandson is incredibly clever and will be walking and talking in no time - then it's all worth it - every moment of pain and stress since the birth, all the worry and discomfort during the pregnancy and even all the sadness of the losses and the childlessness of the last eight years. I love my child so much! The fact that he is not genetically mine makes no difference to me at all. I will never know what it is like to have a genetically-related child, but I can't imagine for a moment that I could love such a child any more than I love my son - it's just not possible! And the wonderful thing is that it makes no difference at all to the rest of my family either: my mum and dad are clearly as besotted with him as they are with the other two grandchildren and my sister keeps threatening to steal him and has already begged me to make sure that she is the one we "leave him to" in our wills (if anything happens to her and her husband, my husband and I are to be guardians to their kids and she wants to do the same for us).

I want to leave this post with a message for those of you who are still trying to have a baby. If you are considering donor eggs or donor embryos and are worried about bonding with any resulting baby, I hope this gives you hope (and I have three friends who have also done donor eggs who are also delighted they took that decision). And for anyone who has reached the point where they have decided to live childless (or have accepted that that is what is inevitable): before this pregnancy, I had reached the point in my journey where I had accepted that childlessness was the most likely possibility and I had pretty much made peace with that - to the extent that there is a little bit of me mourning that life I had planned, with all the travel and freedom and possibilities of doing valuable things for people who really needed help. I love my son and I am very happy to be a mum now, but I can still see that place I had come to before this and it was still a good one. I hope I always remember the pain that our fight to have a child brought, but I hope that I also remember that I had realised that our lives were still important and valuable if we had never had a child. That is still very clear in my mind - I am not one of those women who has had a child and now believes that any other path in life is irrelevant. Had I had a child easily, I think I might have been, but that time of struggling and exploring alternatives has taught me a lot.

At Last

2011-01-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

He's here. Our beautiful baby boy was born at 4.07am on Thursday 6th January 2011, weighing 7lbs and 14.5oz. He is, without doubt, the best thing to happen to us, ever. I will post his birth story - rather long and rollercoaster-ish - once we're home and settled. It's only been 24 hours, but all the waiting and hoping was worth it!

Terrified!

2011-01-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

I had a sweep on Friday! And now I've had a show and an upset tummy. No contractions yet and my waters are still in place, but things do seem to be moving. If I haven't got started on my own beforehand, I go in to be induced tomorrow evening at 5.30pm.

I am terrified! I am terrified of labour, of what my blood pressure will do (it's been up quite a bit this last week, even with increased medication), of having to have an emergency c-section and mostly of me and my baby not being OK at the end of all this. We have waited so long for this to happen but we have been on the wrong side of the statistics too many times for me to have faith that everything will turn out fine. If you're the praying type, say one for us please!

The Right Words

2010-12-21T08:58:00.001-08:00

I went swimming with my mum this morning - a nice little Tuesday routine we've got into since I've been on maternity leave. On the way in, a woman said "hi" to me. At first, I didn't recognise her and looked behind me to see who she was really talking to, but there was noone there. So I turned back and she said "yes - I mean you".

It turned out that she was the mother of one of the children in the class of 6-year-olds I left in October. I hadn't taught them for long and I was meeting her out of context - and my brain has left work behind pretty thoroughly. I did remember her daughter, thankfully, and we chatted a bit about the class - they like their new teacher, but they like me more and she hopes they'll get me back when I return to work in the new school year (thank you!).

Talk turned to the pregnancy and the fact I'd stopped work so early. She had also stopped early when she was pregnant with her daughter - she was an older mother who had done IVF! "Me too", I said. She then went on to talk about her sister who had lost pregnancies and done IVF. "Me too", I said. We talked about how hard it is to keep trying when you've had so many disappointments and how easy it is to resent fertiles who appear to churn out kids with no effort or appreciation. She says she still feels that way sometimes, even though she has her little girl (no siblings - she decided to quit while she was ahead, a sentiment I understand very well).

I hadn't said anything about how I was feeling about imminent birth, but as we were about to go our separate ways she said, "Don't be scared. When I was getting close to birth, I was terrified the baby would die". I couldn't say anything at this point.

"But they want to live," she said. It's no guarantee - there are none of those in this business - but I needed to hear that.

A Different Sad

2010-12-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

For the last seven years, on the night of 4th December, I have gone to bed and lain for a bit thinking, "I should be clearing up from a 1st / 2nd / 3rd etc birthday party and where there is a room full of boxes there should be a baby's / toddler's / child's room". Most years I have cried bitterly, some years I have tried to shove the thoughts and feelings out of the way.

December 4th was the only due date we ever had for any of our 6 lost pregnancies. It was the first. After that, I put serious effort into not finding our or working out any others. This last Saturday (or thereabouts, since so few babies arrive on their due date), our first child would have been seven years old. I did think about it this year, but it felt different. For a start, that room that was full of boxes is now transformed into our bedroom but mainly, in about a month, we will (please God) be sharing that room with our baby.

The new life does not cancel out the ones we lost - it will never be OK that we went through that - but it does take away a lot of the pain. Since our losses were so early, I do not mourn an individual child in the way those who have lost babies later in pregnancy do, I mourn the loss of potential and the loss of a life we could have led as a family - and a whole load of other more hidden things that IF/loss does a number on (intimacy, confidence, friends, financial stability etc, etc). Finally, that potential and that life look like they might actually become real.

I have poked and prodded myself to see if my inability to have a genetically related child pains me much, and it really doesn't. In fact, as time goes by I a) feel so much that this child is mine in every important sense and b) think that not passing on some of my seriously dodgy genes is probably a very good thing - I mean, genetic clotting conditions, high blood pressure and all the other possibly inherited health issues are not something any child's going to thank me for.

So this year, on the night of 4th December, I still thought of that first baby and felt sad, but it was a different sad - a gentle, regretful sad, not a raw, stinging one. Next year, I will still remember, still feel sad, but I hope (I pray) that next year will be even more different in an even better way.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

2010-12-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

Roccie has nudged me into putting in a post - thank you!

The title refers to a nice little article I read on my iPh.one as I tried to relax over an eggn.og lat.te and toasted frui.tbread (guess where I had elevenses today?!). As if losing multiple pregnancies is not upsetting and scary enough, this article in the BBC news online today suggests that those of us who have had more than 3 miscarriages are at a 500% increased risk of having a heart attack in middle-age or after. Although they pussy-foot around a bit about causation, I'll eat my hat if clotting is not the link here. It seems on the evidence of this pregnancy that my main problem was bad eggs and that having a donor fixed that problem. BUT who's to say that, if I had done a donor cycle without aspi.rin (125mg) and Cle.xane (40mg), I wouldn't have lost this pregnancy too - possibly at a later stage, since my clotting condition (Fact.or V Lei.den) tends to be a 2nd/3rd trimester issue. I know at least three people who have been diagnosed with Hug.hes Syn.drome (Anti-phos.pholipid An.tibodies) through testing for recurrent miscarriage and more who have, like me, an additional unidentified clotting issue which was identified through a TEG (throm.bo-elast.ogram). I'm now off my aspirin so that it doesn't affect the baby or bleeding during labour, but I intend to get back on a low dose ASAP afterwards - it helps to control my migraines and I can only hope it might help to protect me from future heart problems.

I am still here and still pregnant - 35 weeks now. I am still anxious too, but things seem to be going well. In a way, I wish I didn't know the stories of several bloggers who lost their babies at term, during labour, or my own friend's story of how she lost her two week old baby girl to Group B Strep. These were avoidable losses and reminders that, however far I get past the time of my own losses, I could still lose my precious baby for some totally unrelated reason. In another way, I feel thankful to these girls, who have used their blogs to educate and inform so that hopefully others might push hospitals to check things they might otherwise have ignored. I spoke to the senior registrar who was taking the high-risk clinic last Friday about my anxieties and pessimism and she was lovely. She said that of course nobody had a crystal ball and nobody could promise me that nothing would go wrong, but these things were rare (though she and I both acknowledged that they still happened more often that they should). She also didn't belittle my fears, saying that with my history it wasn't at all surprising that I was anxious. She is referring me to the hospital's consultant midwife to talk about my fears about giving birth.

My various health issues are conspiring to make labour and birth even more scary and complicated. I saw the anaesthetist on Friday and she is very keen for me to have an early epidural, as they have the convenient side-effect of reducing blood pressure - convenient for me at least, since high BP is one of my issues. My BP is also labile - it goes up even further when I am stressed or in pain, which are givens while in natural labour, so it would help with that too (protecting my blood vessels from BP surges). BUT - I can't have an epidural if I've had my Cle.xane in the previous 12 hours because of the risk of bleeding - nor could I have a spinal if I needed a C-section. So, if I go into labour within the 12 hours after my Cle.xane dose (7.30 in the morning), it's a natural labour or a C-section with a general anaesthetic for me. AND, because of my sleep apnoea - if I have a general, I would then be at risk of stopping breathing during recovery and I'd have to spend time in the ordinary high dependency unit, not the maternity one, because the maternity one isn't set up to deal with apnoea patients, and I'd be separated from my wee boy. I also would not be allowed any heavy-duty op.iate pain-killers because they affect the breathing centres in the brain.

To me, then, the obvious thing seemed to be to schedule a C-section or an induction. That way, I would know when not to take my Cle.xane and everything would be more straightforward (barring disasters or early labour). But no - they explained that a C-section is not ideal (major operation, increased risk of clotting for me, restricted movement after birth etc) and nor is early induction (if my body and baby weren't ready to go, it could lead to slow, unproductive labour, a distressed baby and an emergency C-section). They really would like me to go into labour naturally, as they feel that is my best chance of a good labour and birth. The consultant assured me that most women manage to get the Cle.xane timing right and that most first labours have a long, slow first stage so, even if I had taken the blood thinners, there would be time for them to work through my system before I needed an epidural. Well, I don't know if labour runs in families but my mother was in labour for 12 hours in total with me and when my sister gave birth to my niece, she went from twinges to birth in an hour and a half!! I can only hope that they have other ways of controlling my blood pressure, should I follow my mum and sister!

I really must get round to writing the second half of my "Why Donor Eggs?" post. All I can say just now is that I cannot imagine being any more bonded to a baby than I am to this one. I love him completely already and feel so protective of him, regardless of genetics.

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

2010-11-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

Not really. These gifts were given with the best of intentions, but my response was tears (thankfully not in front of the person who gave them).

I went to my hairdresser today - a wonderful woman who cured me of my hairdresser phobia - and had my hair cut a little too short, in case it's a while before I can have it done again. As I left, she gave me a package.

I opened it up when I got home and found a really cute outfit for age 6 months and a book in which to record important things about the baby's first year. And I cried, because all I could think was "what if I never get to use these?".

I'm really not doing well with the anxiety here.

Neither Here Nor There

2010-10-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

I read a couple of great blog posts this week that really got me thinking about the whole "them and us" thing around those still coping with infertility / pregnancy loss and those who are parents. Loribeth's post Facebook and the Great Parental Disconnect and the several linked items are both amusing and poignant and remind me of the times when various form of social networking have brought me to tears with unexpected photos, news etc. Over at Waiting for a Baby Bump, Separated from the Wolf Pack made me cry because it so completely reflected my feelings of being left out as more and more friends and relatives became parents while we continued to lose pregnancies and fail cycles.

The Facebook-related post also made me realise that I had posted my scan photo on the last post with no warning. I know that a) not many people are reading my blog anyway and b) many girls who are still in the trenches of IF/pregnancy loss will be avoiding it because it's too painful (I know, because I've been there myself). But still, I should have put a warning in the title for anyone who stumbled in while in a vulnerable place. It also made me wonder about the bump photo I put on Facebook the other week - although I did think quite hard before I put it on and decided that it was probably OK as ALL of my friends know what our path to this point has been and the one friend that I know has had issues with TTC has OKed such communications on FB - I checked first. But still, I have a lingering feeling of guilt about it - and then I feel sad about not being able to enjoy these little things in the way that the vast majority of my friends have done.

Anyhow, the main point of this post is to process some of the feelings that I have while in this limbo of pregnancy after loss and IF:

I am pregnant, but I do not feel like a parent - even though the woman that leads our NCT class calls us mums and dads. I had to laugh when she spoke about the intimacy of parents during the birth process in relation to the "inevitable" intimacy during conception - my husband and I weren't even in the same city when our wee one was conceived!
My pregnancy seems to be progressing healthily but I live in daily (hourly!) fear of something going wrong. The two-weekly visits to the high-risk clinic both help with this and serve to remind me that this is not a normal or average pregnancy.
Our flat is beginning to fill with baby items that I feel extremely ambivalent about - I hope we'll need them - and I even experienced brief feelings of pleasure when buying them / getting them from relatives and friends - but I'm aware we may never get to use them and I am very superstitious about having them before we have the baby.
I am now regularly meeting with other pregnant women and hearing about births and continue to feel jealous - their pregnancies (in general) came easily, are low-risk and they don't know the desperately sad stories that I do about what can go wrong in pregnancy and birth.
Friends who previously avoided talking to me about pregnancy (or avoided talking to me altogether at times!) now want to have in-depth conversations about topics ranging from nappies to pain-relief during childbirth to bre.astfeeding. Part of me wants to pick up all the tips I can, part of me is terrified to listen (after all, it might jinx my pregnancy!) and a very big part of me feels angry and upset that I am only included now because I'm part of "the club".

It's that last one that made the "Separated from the Wolf Pack" post feel so relevant. I am unbelievably grateful to be pregnant (and especially to be this pregnant - a stage I've never achieved before). And I know that these people mean well when they are giving me their advice and sharing their experiences. And honestly, I could write a book about how to get pregnant and about pregnancy loss, but I have no clue about being pregnant or having a newborn, so I should probably listen to them. And I have moments of happiness that I can have these conversations at last and feel part of something I never thought I would experience. Being able to talk to my mother and sister about pregnancy has been very special - they always supported me through the tough times. BUT . . . I do have moments where I want to ask some of these people why they couldn't be as chatty and supportive when my heart was breaking and I felt terribly alone. And I have moments of rather unpleasant clarity that my new-found position among my fertile friends depends entirely on a successful pregnancy and birth - if early losses can send people running as fast as mine did, I can only imagine what a very late one would do! Although, maybe I am being unfair. Maybe it is the "invisibility" of an early loss that makes it so hard for others to cope with - I don't know - that's a whole other post (or 20)!

The one place I have found true comradeship is among my friends - IRL and online - who have been through IF / pregnancy loss and are now pregnant or have kids through natural conception (does that really happen), IVF, donor eggs or adoption. They understand that very uncomfortable mixture of joy and terror that a post-IF/loss pregnancy or possible adoption brings. They were fantastically supportive while I was still trying and an absolute Godsend since this cycle worked.

Last week I went along to a "Pregnancy After Loss" support group in the same place I used to attend the miscarriage support group and then the infertility support group, where I met most of these lovely people I now call friends. There was only one other girl there and she had only found out that she was pregnant the day before the meeting. She had had one early loss and a late one at 21 weeks. I felt a bit of a fraud alongside her - while I've had a lot of losses and a lot of trouble getting pregnant, my body has been ruthlessly efficient at getting rid of pregnancies and that caused me a lot of pain but spared me a lot more. I tried to blink away tears as she described her birth story and the memorial for her little girl. It breaks my heart when I hear or read stories like hers.

There are a couple of bloggers I read who are living childless and who have lost pregnancies late on, and the further through my pregnancy I get, the more I admire them for just being able to breathe and get out of bed. I came to their blogs because I was coming to the point where I thought I was going to be living a childless life (and trust me, I am not making any assumptions that I won't still be!) and it was that aspect of their blogs that I focused on - I needed to know that not having children wasn't going to kill me (because, I admit that there were times when I really couldn't see the point of life without children). Time and reading blogs like theirs gave me perspective and, ironically, not long before we had the DE cycle, I came to a place where I thought that I might just be able to have a good life without offspring - I even found myself getting excited about things like travel and our new home. And had I not got pregnant on this cycle, or even if I'd had another early loss, I know I would have been OK. Now, I have gone back and read their pregnancy and loss stories and have a whole new perspective on their strength and tenacity. I cannot fathom how I would ever recover from losing this pregnancy now or sometime in the future or losing a child I had birthed.

So here I am. I am not comfortable in the world of fertiles - and I certainly don't consider myself one of them. I am feeling separated from my infertile friends who are still trying and missing them and wishing and wishing that something would work for them. I still have a few friends who get where I am right now because they're there too (or have been recently). But more than anything else, I have an ever-increasing respect for a group of women whose shoes I have not walked in, who have lost their babies at a point where they had seen a heartbeat on an ultrasound, felt them move, bought nursery furniture for them or had actually given birth to them, whether they were stillborn or died after birth. I have been invited to attend our local SANDS Christmas service and I hope to go and say a special thank you for the baby I am carrying now and a prayer for those who have lost theirs. And I never, ever forget how very fragile happiness can be.

Quite a Moment (WARNING - contains 3D scan photo)

2010-10-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we went to have a 3D / 4D scan done (photo at bottom - spaced down so you can avoid it if you want). It felt like a very indulgent, possibly slightly tacky thing to do (at least it certainly would have been if we'd gone for the cute captions on the DVD) and the frame we got was not something we would normally have chosen (I know - call me a snob!). But it's something I've wanted to do since I saw the one my sister had of my (now 8-year-old) niece - taken on what was then a very new kind of machine in the early pregnancy unit she worked in as a midwife. When we got home we picked our favourite picture and put it in the frame. So finally, after more than seven years of trying, sitting on our mantelpiece among the photos of all of our nephews and nieces there is a photo of OUR baby. We're not there yet - 29 weeks tomorrow - and I know there's still so much that can go wrong, but what a feeling it gives me to look up at that photo! I wish the same for all of you who are still trying.

Why Donor Eggs, Part I

2010-09-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to finish this post for two months, and not doing a great job of it. Turns out that being pregnant at 41 with health issues and working full time is not conducive to, well, anything else. So I'm going to put out what I've got so far and probably finish it off once I stop work, which should be in about 4 weeks according to the docs - just past 28 weeks.

We have been very honest about the fact that this pregnancy is thanks to donor eggs and that, of course, has raised the question of "why?". I don't have a simple answer to that question, but I want to talk about it here and I want a record of it to remind myself of the process.

Needless to say, there are two strands to the answer - the physical one and the emotional one. I may well repeat things that I have said in previous posts, but I don't remember clearly what I have and haven't said and I certainly don't think anyone reading it will, so I'm just going to stick in what's relevant.

We started trying to conceive more than seven years ago and our journey includes:
• 6 natural conceptions, all of which ended in an early loss
• 6 cycles of Clomid, all producing at least 2 follicles and all ending in BFN
• 1 IUI - BFN
• 1 straight IVF (16 eggs; 13 embryos; a grade 2, 3 cell and a grade 3, 4 cell embryo transferred on day 2; none for freezing) - BFN
• 1 ICSI with immune treatment and CGH array (5 eggs; 1 normal, resulting in a 4 cell embryo on day 3 (not sure of grade, but not great)) - BFN
• 1 IVF with donor eggs (5 eggs; 4 grade 1/2 embryos at 8-12 cells on day 3; 1 grade 1, 12 cell "perfect" embryo "on a mission" transferred on day 3; 3 frozen embryos) - BFP

And that would tell you the physical story right there! We could get pregnant on our own, at intervals of about 1 year, but it always ended around 5-7 weeks. We could NOT get pregnant on any kind of fertility treatment with my eggs - and the embryos we produced were rubbish! On the donor cycle, the embryos were great.

After loss number 6, a kind nurse in the pregnancy support unit asked if we'd considered donor eggs (not at that stage), so we spoke to our IVF consultant who agreed it might be worth a try, as did our recurrent miscarriage consultant. Everyone seemed to agree that it seemed likely that my eggs were an issue - physically, I knew that was a possibility but emotionally, I wasn't ready to consider that.

Right from the first pregnancy (the first month we tried - ha!) and loss, I had a feeling that something was not right. I had desperately wanted to get pregnant, but was not nearly as happy as I felt I should be when I found out that I was. I knew that something had gone wrong with the pregnancy, even thought the doctor assured me that losing symptoms for a while was very common. He took a blood test, I went on holiday, checked my messages at the end of day one to find an urgent message to call my GP. I phoned them and was told I should expect to miscarry at any time - it started the following morning, while we were on holiday abroad.

After another 6 months of trying (and assurances that one loss was very common and that it was a very good sign that we had got pregnant so easily) there was no 2nd pregnancy and our GP started to investigate - my hormones were OK (slight signs of PCOS) and CM's sperm analysis was also OK (not stellar on the formation front, but not bad enough to cause problems). Try some more . . . referral to infertility specialist. Two months before that appointment, I got pregnant again and lost it again. Infertility specialist refused to do any testing/treatment as I have been pregnant in the last 6 months. Marvellous!

Thankfully, I found a great GP within my practice who was prepared to refer me to the local recurrent miscarriage clinic for testing, which showed up my Factor V Leiden, which I briefly thought might be the issue - a haematologist soon cleared that up for me: 2nd and 3rd trimester losses, but nothing as early as mine. This was when we approached a private consultant and started on the Clomid.

My sister had conceived on Clomid and, although she'd had a missed miscarriage (a blighted ovum), she had, very quickly afterwards, conceived my nephew on it. I thought it was a slam dunk and so did the consultant. It wasn't! Neither was the IVF we went on to. In the meantime, I was diagnosed with PCOS, insulin resistance, low thyroid and another, non-specific clotting issue in addition to the FVL, all of which were treated. Three more natural pregnancies, three more losses. More Clomid, in combination with Metformin, more BFNs.

So, that’s the physical. As you can tell, we'd never had an issue with using medical advances in our pursuit of parenthood. By this time though, we were starting to lose faith - I had also tried homeopathy, reflexology, chinese herbs, acupuncture, nutritional testing and supplements, hypnosis and anything else I thought might give me an edge.

In terms of the emotional side, during all this treatment and time my attitude to our attempts to become parents started to gel. It's best described as follows: if you wanted a doughnut (for example), the first place you would look would be in your kitchen; if you couldn't find one there, you would go to the corner shop; if they were out, you would go to your nearest supermarket; if they didn't have what you wanted, and you still really wanted it, you'd go further, try harder and consider possibilities you thought you'd never entertain when the need for a doughnut first came upon you.

Lost Blogger - Can Anyone Help?

2010-08-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

Just a very quick post to see if I have missed something. I have been trying to read Waiting for a Baby Bump since her last post, but keep getting the message that "The blog you were looking for was not found.". Has she gone private or is there a fault. I can see that there is a new post - I just can't read it!

Bleurgh!

2010-08-11T04:46:00.001-07:00

We interrupt this blog to bring you a moan and a whine! I am in the middle of writing a loooooong post on why we went with donor eggs, but have been waylayed by health issues.

Since coming back from holiday three weeks ago, I have had a horrible cough - tickly and coughing stuff up and, short of honey and lemon which does NOTHING, I can't take anything to make it better. I was given antibiotics (pregnancy-friendly ones), which I took, but the cough remains. On top of that, I have developed a lovely cold (or at least extensive nasal congestion) on top of the cough - just since last week. I literally cannot breathe through my nose - no air will pass through it at all! I have tried saline do.uches, steam, menthol sweets - no joy. I said to CM the other day, that I feel like this is how I'm going to be for the rest of my life. Normally, I get a cold and after a week, I'm better. This cough and the stopped-up nose will.not.go.away!

My blood pressure medication has been changed (about 6 weeks ago) and is no longer a be.ta-block.er and my resting heartrate is now around 95 - not enjoying that, and worrying that along with the BP it's something underlying that's going to end this pregnancy, if not me too.

And then there's the sleep ap.noea diagnosis I received two weeks ago. I went in last night to be fitted with a CP.AP mask and machine that should hopefully stop me from ceasing to breath 30 times an hour while I sleep, as I do now. However, I made a total arse of myself, had a panic attack when they put the mask on, only managed 45 minutes in it all told (none of them asleep) and cried on one of the nurses. It was probably optimistic to think that blowing air down my throat was going to be a fun thing while my nose doesn't work and my throat goes into spasms every 10 minutes even without such encouragement, but I am so terrified that these gaps in my breathing are going to affect the baby that I was determined to give it a shot. And I failed.

What made me cry was the thought of my poor baby struggling for oxygen, and the thought that I wasn't able to do the one thing that might make it better. I just want my baby to be alright. Needless to say, I have resorted to Dr Goo.gle who tells me that low birthweight/growth restriction might be a possibility - I try to comfort myself with the thought that the baby's measurements have all been bang on. I couldn't find anything telling me my baby might die as a result of my apn.oea, but I did find something linking it to pre-eclamp.sia (my pet worry). However, it seemed to be more that women with pre-eclamp.sia (whose babies can be growth restricted because of the PE) are more prone to sleep ap.noea rather than the other way round. I asked the sleep clinic nurse to get one of the consultants to give me a call to talk more. In the meantime, I am praying for a speedy recovery so I can make a big effort to get this mask to work.

Again, I'm left feeling ungrateful for not being happier during this pregnancy. I know how incredibly lucky I am, and this pregnancy - this baby - is the most important thing in my life. But because of this, I am also terrified. I have survived early losses (quite a few), but I don't think I would survive losing this one. One thing became incredibly clear to me last night - the fact that this pregnancy is not genetically mine makes not one, tiny difference to how much I love and want it. I knew this intellectually before, but last night it was visceral.

And . . . Relax (Mostly)

2010-07-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am on holiday and I have reached my second trimester: two very good reasons to be happy.

I have finally managed to comment on the blogs I follow, though it has taken me several days to do it. You see, we are in a rather hilly, remote part of the UK in a cottage with no internet connection. We brought mobile broadband dongles with us, but they only work if we point everything in the right direction, at certain times of the day, if we stand on one leg and chant an incantation as we do it. You get the picture! Most of the comments were written while balancing my laptop on a window ledge (the walls of the cottage are so thick that all internet and phone usage must be done at a window) with the dongle, on the end of its extension cable) wedged into a bit of the sash-and case window lock. For some obscure reason, I was unable to comment on 2 blogs - Last Chance IVF and Waiting for a Baby Bump. The little pull-down menus that allow you to choose an identity weren't functional and it wouldn't let me submit without the identity. However, I am now on a train with wi-fi access and have managed to resolve that.

The holiday is very welcome - as you might be able to tell from the last post. After telling me I didn’t need to move rooms, my boss then changed her mind. And my co-teacher had a load of interviews and meetings, so I was rather overloaded in the last week or so of term! So far, we haven't done a lot. We have visited a couple of stately home, mainly to wander their grounds and admire the wildlife. We've also had a couple of days of doing very little of anything. I finally got hold of the complete remastered Twin Peaks and we're working our way through that in the evenings or when the weather's a bit wild. I don't usually watch anything more than once, but Twin Peaks is my big exception. I think this may be the 15th time I've watched it and I'm still noticing new things - the remastering helps with that!

The reason I am on a train is that I have just returned my lovely niece (aged 8) to her home city after a stay of a couple of days. Her older brother came to the cottage when we were last here two years ago and she's been keen to have her turn. We took her to an amazing castle that's a cross between a stately home and a theme park. We hope she enjoyed it as much as we did. She was also excited at the prospect of staying up late to watch the wildlife on CCTV. No, we are not at a well-known country park, family resort-type-thing (cen.ter.pa.rcs - my idea of hell as an infertile and I can't see my view changing even if this pregnancy works out with a baby at the end!). We are in a small cottage on a working farm and they did the CCTV thing very early on. We can watch foxes and badgers come to feed in a barn and a barn owl and her mate who have, we think, 11 eggs at present. I was saying it would be amazing if they hatched while my niece was here, but CM reckons if she goes home with a story like that, my nephew will be on the next train here to fight the one-upmanship! As it turned out, one egg did hatch and she saw some badgers, which she loved, but I think the staying up late was as much of an attraction in itself.

While she was staying with us, I got a little taste of what life may be like if this pregnancy works out. My niece would come into our room and I would get up and make her breakfast and see that she was OK and make sure she got dressed and brushed her teeth. Then I would deal with my own morning routine. Meanwhile, CM would continue to lie in bed, then have a shower and then come down once he was dressed and ready. Hmmmm. He did cook in the evenings, I’ll give him that. But I ended up tired and going to bed at the same time as my niece, then getting up with her, and so having no “grownup” time and no time to myself. I already have issues with this, as my job is such a people-heavy one - I am never, ever on my own at work - and CM is almost always at home when I get back and then I go to bed before he does. I tend to go out a LOT more than he does, and go away for weekends to see my sister etc. So he gets quite a lot of “me” time and never needs to ask for it. I, on the other hand, have to ask and then get a very grumpy response about “why should he have to remove himself for my convenience” etc. I sympathise with the idea that he doesn’t want to go out just because I want him to. On the other hand, I love him dearly, but if I don’t get some time and space to myself occasionally, I am NOT a happy person. I can see this being even more of an issue later on. Something to discuss, methinks!

As I said when I commented on one of the blogs I read, I have been mulling over a post on why we went for donor eggs in the end (or, more accurately, why I did - I can’t really speak for CM). I think that will be what comes next here.

Too Busy!!!

2010-06-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

I am far, far too busy for someone "in my condition".

This post is by way of an excuse for a) not posting in a while and b) not being very good at commenting on other folks' blogs just now.

We are in the worst time of year at school:
1. We have just finished carrying out and marking assessments.
2. We are trying desperately to finish all the work we put in our forward plans.
3. My class and the other 2 P1 classes are being split up and recombined to form 3 equally sized classes, which involves an awful lot of paperwork and meetings etc.
4. We have to totally strip all the walls in the classroom.
5. I have to pack up all my belongings and those of the children, ready to move to a new classroom.

And we're trying to do all this in a heat of 30 degrees centigrade as the "Hut" that I teach in must originally have been designed as an industrial sized oven. All day we try and coax the children through the remaining work, until the room gets too hot and we have to decant to the playground. Once the children go home, it's time to mark, organise, meet and pack. I'm rarely leaving work before 6pm and have to stay later when I can.

On top of this, we have multiple appointments relating to the pregnancy and my parents are moving house this Friday and we're due to go on holiday this Saturday.

I am exhausted and cannot wait for it all to stop - school finishes this Thursday and then I hope to get back on here (if I can get a signal from where I'm escaping to) and blog and comment again. In the meantime, I am reading blogs whenever I can to keep up to date and am thinking of you all.

Still Here

2010-06-13T08:12:00.001-07:00

Nearly 11 weeks and I still appear to be pregnant - and am still scared, excited, disbelieving and a whole lot of other mixed emotions.

I have had two more scans. One fantastic one at 9 weeks, with a lovely sonographer who showed us something that looked like a baby and was moving! That was incredible! The last one, at 10 weeks, was less amazing and involved an argument with a sonographer who wanted to work out my due date, even though I'd already told her it was the 3rd of January. Despite the fact that I'd already told her it was a donor egg, she asked when my last period was, and when I reminded her that this was a bit different and that I knew what the conception date was, she asked what date the transfer was on. She was going to work back 2 weeks from transfer to my "period" - at that point (still no ultrasound going on and worried whether there might be a baby in there still) I got a bit snippy and said that I knew when conception was, I had been given a due date and could I please have an ultrasound. We both warmed up a bit as the scan got going, but it was quicker and less reassuring than the last. However, there was a baby with a heartbeat that was measuring correctly and did at least one wee wave for us.

The next scan is the 12 week one - or two. We're having one at the local hospital for official purposes and one at a private clinic for more detail and with a blood test - we want to be prepared.

We have also had our first high-risk appointments. Wow - that was fun! NOT! I showed up with protein in my wee at a level that was pretty high. Too early for pre-eclamp.sia, but since I have high blood pressure and take a range of drugs that could affect my kidneys, I was still worried. We waited for about 4 hours - one appointment was 3 hours late because I don't have the right paperwork yet. I had to change my blood pressure medication to one that is not working so well and move my anti-clotting medication by two hours every couple of days to get it to the morning rather than the evening (this means taking it to work and trying to find a private place in school that is bright enough so that I can avoid my previous bruises when I inject). Various scary discussions about all the risks I'm under - particularly pre-eclamp.sia - were also had. Not my most favourite bit of the pregnancy stuff so far. We're back there again next week for a similar length of visit and some feedback on the follow-up tests on the wee!

On a brighter note, my boss has been lovely. I have been given a class for next year that should minimise my stress and she's arranged for me not to have to move room - that'll be brilliant, not to have to pack everything up and beg other people to carry it all. She has also been incredibly accommodating of all the appointments (mind you, I have done my very best to minimise any time out) and very nice to me as a person. She told me the other day that the baby has to be my priority, not work! I am extremely grateful to have one potential source of stress removed.

My work-mates have also been incredibly kind. One colleague/friend, who struggle for a while to have her one child, even offered to help me move and set up my new room if I had to shift. Folk are always asking me if I'm OK and telling me how happy they are that it's all still going. I still feel a bit of a fraud and I still feel like I'm living on borrowed time with this pregnancy and I find myself trying to brush off any "future" questions - when will I take maternity leave, how long will I take off, what kind of birth am I planning.

One bullet I'm going to have to bite soon is the issue of clothes. Since about 6 weeks, my br.as have been on the tight side and I have put off buying any new ones. Now my trousers are getting too tight as well. My wee sister is coming up for a weekend in two weeks time and has promised to come shopping with me. By that time, I'll be past 12 weeks - hopefully - and might feel a bit more able to acknowledge all this.

My sister is coming up to say goodbye to our childhood home, where my parents have lived since I was 6 months old. They are moving out in 3 weeks time, into what my mother calls a "two-story caravan" - a modern rented house. Saying goodbye to the house that is still "home" to me - even though I haven't lived there for 23 years - is going to be really tough. I have been listening to Mir.anda Lam.bert's The House That Built Me and sobbing at the lyrics, which could have been written for me - especially the line about the back room where she did her homework and learned to play the guitar and another about her favourite dog being burried in the backyard. I'm not usually a country music fan, but I heard that song just around the time we bought the new place and it really affected me.

One funny moment from our first midwife appointment - we went through all the losses, treatments and medical issues I'd had/have and when we finally got to the end, the midwife leaned towards me and said, "Now . . . you don't have any silly ideas about a home birth, do you?". I laughed and assured her that if I was indeed going to give birth, I intended it to be in hospital with all the medical staff, equipment and drugs I could get hold of. "Oh good!" she said.

Another Bit of Teacher Blogging

2010-05-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Another in my (very) occasional series of observations on the kids I teach - with names changed to protect the innocent (that would mostly be me!). The kids I teach are all aged 5 & 6.

I was reminded of this one by a round robin email I was sent today called "Why Teachers Drink". It was a series of exam questions with what purports to be the real answers kids gave. One of them was as follows:
Q - Explain why phosphorous trichloride (PCI3) is polar.
A - God made it that way.

I'm inclined to believe that one really is a real answer, because I got almost the same one from a child the other week. We were reading a book - part of a reading scheme that those in the UK will recognise if I mention the names Bi.ff, Ch.ip and Kip.per. I'm disguising the names because . . . well imagine a kid doing a search on his or her favourite characters and ending up HERE!

Anyhow, it was all about the central characters going back in time to Victorian London. On the front cover we see the protagonists and a London city scene, complete with a good 'ol pea-souper behind them. We had talked about the whole no-electricity thing, about real fires and gas lamps.

So I asked the group, "Why is the sky a funny colour? Why is it not the same colour as the sky we see outside just now?". To which I got the answer, "Because it was Victorian times and God made the sky a different colour then?". When I told my teaching partner, it led to a rather silly discussion on whether God might have colour-coded the centuries and if we were to hop in a time-machine we might be able to chart our course by the changing hues of the sky.

But the best ever response during a reading session was from one child in response to another. We were reading a very short encyclopedia of dinosaurs, with the names phonetically spelled to help the children sound them out. One child was struggling over ankylosaurus - "an - ki . . . ", "ank - ilo . . ." and then gave out a mighty sneeze, "ATISHOO!". To which the wee girl opposite, quick as a flash, came back, "Well, that's a funny name for a dinosaur!". It took me a while to recover my composure.

I really do love my job!

Breathing Again

2010-05-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

We had our scan tonight and it was fantastic!

The consultant was absolutely lovely. I have graduated to scans from the outside - no more dil.do-cam - whoopee! We started off on a scanning machine from the dark ages and I could see NOTHING! Terrifying! She saw a heartbeat though, at which point I started to breathe again. Then she gave up and took us to a better machine and I saw what she was talking about. Though it was less clear that the internal scan, it's amazing what a difference a week makes for the embryo. The yolk sac is now quite separate and I could see the beginning of legs and a umbilical cord.

The baby is now measuring 1 day ahead of my 8 weeks 2 days - though the measurement last week that put us two days behind was probably inaccurate. This measurement was taken much more carefully and several times.

She now wants me to be scanned roughly once a week till the 12 week scan - and I wasn't going to argue with her!

Sometimes I Hate to be Right

2010-05-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

It turns out some of my worries are justifiable.

The recurrent miscarriage consultant wants to see me for a scan tomorrow evening (she's going to fit us in between delivering high-risk babies!). She feels that the discharge coming out with the Cri.none gel and the absence of significant symptoms merits it.

I have my first midwife appointment tomorrow morning and it's going to be really hard to talk about birth plans and breastfeeding when I don't even know if there's a baby still in there!

Someone I know on my message board has just discovered that her baby stopped growing over a week ago, at 9 weeks. I feel awful for her and scared for myself.

Oh Worry, Worry, Worry

2010-05-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

As a good Scot, Billy Connolly is one of my favourite comedians - one of the few that makes me laugh till I hurt. One of my favourite quotes from his routines is one where he's talking about his own anxieties, especially in the middle of the night. He shakes his head and his longish grey curly hair from side to side, pretending he's tossing and turning on his pillow, and says "Oh worry, worry, worry! How does the man who drives the snowplough get to his work in the morning?!".

Well, right now, that's me. I spend every waking minute (and quite a few of my sleeping ones, if my dreams are any indication) worrying about stuff. Mainly the pregnancy of course. Was that a twinge? Why am I not feeling more nauseous? Why would this one work when all the others didn't? What on earth is that grey/black/brown stuff that's coming out with the remains of my Cri.none Gel? That last one combines well with "Why am I not more nauseous?" into "I'm sure that my symptoms are waning, I'm bleeding and this pregnancy is all over".

And if I'm not worrying about the pregnancy, I'm worrying about the house. Will my parents sell their's? Will the mortgage we're taking on mean we will have to live on cold beans for the rest of our lives? How on earth are we going to get this flat ready to sell when I'm either sleeping or working and CM is spending every waking minute on dealing with the new place?

And if it's not the house, it's work. Why did I leave my reports to the last minute? How am I going to cope with teaching alongside two different people when my friend returns from maternity leave next week? What is the end of term going to be like when we have to divide up the classes for the next year?

The real humdingers, though, are where these various worries combine. How on earth are we going to afford to look after a baby with a mortgage the size we're taking on? Am I going to have to go back to work sooner than I thought for money reasons? Will the temperature in my classroom (which can reach 38 degrees Celcius during the summer) be detrimental to my blood pressure and the pregnancy? What if I get given a tricky class or stage next term and I get stressed, which will affect the pregnancy, and don't have time to spend on getting the flat in order?

Ugh!

And, naturally, this is the time I have chosen to start reducing the anti-anxiety meds I'm on! Some studies have linked them to heart problems and increased risk of early birth etc. The high-risk doc I saw last year was happy for me to stay on them during pregnancy - the main reason I'm on them is to stop my BP from spiking and she reckoned the risks were low compared to the benefits. But when I spoke to the BP consultant last week, he seemed to think that an increase in the BP meds could take care of that, so I'm at least going to lessen my dose. I won't come off it before I have my high-risk appointment in a fortnight - I'll see what they say.

I have a couple of friends who have also just had BFPs - one just ahead of me, one who got her's yesterday. Both of them have had losses, one has had exactly the same number as me, and they're feeling just the same as me - so I'm as normal as them, at least. I said to one of them that I don't really feel like I'm pregnant - I feel like I'm waiting to miscarry.

On the bright side, our lovely recurrent miscarriage consultant is going to arrange for me to have another scan before the 12 week one. That really is some comfort.

Surreal

2010-05-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

We had our first scan today. We saw a heartbeat.

The woman scanning me asked me how I could manage not to cry, given our history. But it's because of our history that I was dry-eyed. It just didn't seem real! The baby measured at 6 weeks 6 days - I'm 7 weeks 1 day today (though the nurse insisted I was 7 weeks - since this was IVF, I think I can be pretty sure on this). The woman scanning said that the measurements can be + or - 5 days and my sister, the ex-midwife, reassured me that at such a tiny size, all it would take would be an odd angle, or a click just inside the line instead of on it, and you could be a week out.

We are delighted - of course - but my happiness is muted by the fact that a) I am still aware of all that could go wrong for us and b) I am also aware of what is going wrong for others. Rebecca, over at Which Way to Baby is having a horrible time just now - having the kind of experience I remember very well myself, and it stinks! And I heard today from a long-term IF pal who has also just done her first donor egg cycle, after many straight IVFs and a loss, and it didn't work. Another friend tests on Friday, but is not feeling optimistic - I hope she is wrong.

The whole thing seems like such a lottery and it really shouldn't be. If you could earn babies, these women would have had theirs a long time ago.

More Good Numbers

2010-05-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Today's beta was 21,071 - which, from last week's 3515 gives a doubling time of about 63 hours. Since it's supposed to slow down to 72-96 hours by this point, that seems pretty good to me!

My dilemma now is whether to try and get a scan at our local Pregnancy Support clinic. Basically, because our losses have been early and my body seems to be ruthlessly efficient at getting rid of embryos, the only scans we've ever had have shown some fluid but nothing else to suggest I was ever pregnant. Even if this pregnancy still goes wrong - and I know it could well do that - after six failed attempts, I'd love to have the experience (and even a photo) of a scan that showed an embryo.

I actually tried to call them after I got the HCG level, but kept getting punted back to the receptionist at the hospital so gave up. Might try again tomorrow. I know I could claim to have bleeding and cramping and get in there, but I don't want to lie to them - and I know there are so many people who desperately need them (I've been one!). I would just be totally honest and see if they could do it. If they say no, I'd just have to wait.

I have been telling some people that I am "the P word". I have been incredibly touched by the responses. I've a feeling that pretty much everyone at work will know soon, because I quietly told a friend the other day and she grabbed me and hugged me. Somebody did ask me if I should be telling people this early. Good question! I'm only telling the people who know that we've had losses and IVF etc - the ones who have been kind and sympathetic, who I would need if this all went wrong tomorrow. I don't think of myself as a popular person - I'm not deep in a group of friends - I have a couple of very close friends and lots of acquaintances, I thought - but some people's reactions have been quite emotional.

The thing that has touched me most though, has been the reaction of several friends who are still in the IF trenches. They have been incredibly generous and supportive in their responses - as have commenters lastchanceivf and Rebecca from Which Way to Baby? (who may just have a little good news herself!) - and that means more than anything. These are the people I would hate to hurt - they are me at a different time. I've read it before in other long-term IF when they have a pregnancy - this inability to move camps - and I totally get it. I'm barely on my message board these days, because I can't bring myself to join a pregnant thread - that would just be too much presumption! But I know I can't hang out on my ttc board because I don't want my presence to upset anyone.

I am in limbo! But that's OK for now.

Wouldn't you just know it!

2010-05-11T12:03:00.001-07:00

Well - this pregnancy had bl**dy well better work out now!

My parent's house, which is right next door to the one we've bought and will hopefully move into in about a year, has been on the market for almost a week now and they've had two very interested families visiting (one of them twice). And both of the women are pregnant! Of course they are!

Ever get the feeling you're being followed - by an entire subset of the population?!

Times Ten

2010-05-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

I had another beta done this Thursday (six days after the last) and the level was 3515! More than 10 times what it was at the previous one.

I had a moment of elation and then realised that it meant that the HCG had not continued to double as fast as it had done between 15 and 17dpo. Panic - it's all going wrong, the beginning of the end . . . and then something tickled the back of my brain - doesn't the doubling start to slow down at some point? Thanks to Dr Google, I discovered that it does slow down around 1200. Some semblance of calm was resumed.

It didn't last long though. I am plagued by a lack of symptoms - or an inconsistency in symptoms - or both. I have had occasional mild nausea, but have had days with none. Sometimes I run to the loo with frightening regularity, sometimes hardly at all. I have bad heartburn (I have reflux anyway) but isn't that supposed to come much later?

I have tended to have nausea very early on in my pregnancies (as early as about 8 dpo) and the waning of symptoms has always signaled the end for the pregnancy. So, like most folk who've had a shaky time reproductively, I would LOVE some real morning sickness. My sister, the ex-midwife and mother-of-two, tells me to be grateful and wait for how bad it gets later, but I have no faith in a "later".

We got the house we were bidding on with my parents. Now there's another scary venture fraught with the possibilities of wonderful happiness or utter disaster. Because my parents now have to sell their house to fund the buying of the new one. It's been on the market for three days and there's been one viewer. We're all panicking!

While I'm using the house as a distraction from the pregnancy, my mother is doing the reverse. She really wants to talk pregnancy with me. She is so optimistic that she's going to get another grandchild and I feel so mean when I tell her I can't talk about a baby's room or maternity clothes. I feel like I'm depriving her of an experience that she's waited for so long. My sister is a lot more private than I am, so I'm guessing that she didn't overshare with my mum when she was pregnant, so this might be my mother's big chance. And I just keep pouring cold water on the whole thing. I was so determined to enjoy what I could of this pregnancy, but so far it seems like that lasts for about 2 minutes after the news of a good beta.

Talking of which, I am going back for another beta this Thursday - seven days after the last. By my reckoning, it should have double twice plus a little more by then. Or stopped altogether!

Double, Double, Toil & Trouble

2010-04-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

. . . To quote the Scottish play.

Today's HCG was 340, so it has more than doubled. I was very pleased about that! Then I saw that someone had posted on my message board that she had a positive today that was "well over 250" at 14dpo with a 3 day transfer. So her 1st level was twice as high as my 1st one with one day less cooking. And now I feel worried again! Hence the toil & trouble, She did have two embryos put back, so maybe it's twins, but why can I not be happy with what I know was a perfectly good starting level and a fantastic increase over 48 hrs?!

Because I have to worry about something! Ugh! I feel like an ungrateful female canine!

And now I am at my mother-in-law's for the weekend, surrounded by family, so I shall shut up and concentrate on enjoying myself and appreciate the time that I have with this pregnancy.

New Territory

2010-04-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

My HCG level today, at the equivalent of 15dpo, is 120. According to Dr Google, average for this point is about 60, so that would be a good positive.

I've just posted on the IF message board I've been on for the last five years and I feel like a total fraud - why would I be posting a "BFP" - that's just like setting myself up for the biggest fall ever. My magical, superstitious thinking has had me denying any possibility of success (or happiness) since the bombshell of my first loss. I heard I was going to miscarry while on the first day of a romantic holiday in Bil.bao, I started miscarrying on the second day. Up till that point, I had seen no reason why a positive pee stick wouldn't lead to a baby. How different my world was after that! With hindsight, the doctor's test on my pee on the first day of my missed period came back as "equivocal", which didn't worry me at the time, but should have. And I took a pack of sanit.ary tow.els with me in my suitcase - totally subconscious but a godsend, as it turns out.

Seven years, five more losses, many rounds of fertility treatment later and I have learned to take nothing for granted. For example, there's a bit of me thinking that a good HCG level at this point is brand new - we've had blood levels on 14 dpo for four pregnancies - 28, 6, 17 and one where it had already gone back to less than 5 between the pee test on the Sunday and the blood test on the Monday. BUT although the pee test on the first pregnancy was equivocal, the level at 5 weeks 5 days was over 120, and that was not long before I lost the pregnancy so it was probably on its way down from a higher level - and maybe I'd miscalculated my dates and ov.ulated later than I thought.

What I'm trying to say is that, although the title of this post is "New Territory", I know it might not be - it's possible that we might just have a repeat run of the first pregnancy.

I'm going back for a repeat test on Friday to look for doubling and I have a scan booked on 21st May. That is really weird - the only scans I've ever had have been as part of a treatment cycle or to check that my losses have been complete. I've never even gotten to the stage of booking a pregnancy scan, never mind having one.

I am also painfully aware of how much my success to this point will hurt some of my friends in the IF world - and that I may lose my small readership here just as it started to take off a little. As I said on the message board, I still feel like one of you and I am still convinced this is not going to work out. But, as my wee sister (who had her own struggles having her kids) has said, being miserable will not change the outcome and, if this is the last experience I ever have of being pregnant, I should enjoy it. I remember reading the blog of someone who had lost a baby at around 20 weeks and being incredibly moved by the fact that she spoke of having enjoyed her pregnancy. Her loss seemed unbearable to me - much worse than anything I had been through - yet despite the awful pain and loss she had suffered, she had held on to those incredibly precious memories and treasured them. An amazing example!

So even if I only have a good positive for tonight, I am going to try and enjoy it at least a little.

Yikes!

2010-04-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

Mr Clear.blue Dig.ital tells me I am pregnant. Furthermore, he tells me it has been 1-2 weeks since conception. Indeed it has - the embryo was conceived not last Tuesday but the one before!

BUT - this is pregnancy number 7, and the others didn't go so well, so I am very, very anxious. I sent my poor husband out to find an old-style Clear.blue so I could see how blue the line comes up. In the past, the lines have been visible only, to quote another blogger I can't remember the name of right now, "by the light of a million suns". The line did take a moment or two to come up and it started quite faint but it's definitely there. It's been about 4 years since the last time I saw a positive test, so obviously the comparison is tricky, but CM says he thinks it's the clearest one of ours he's seen - which isn't saying much :-/ .

Apart from the cramping, which continues on and off and is worrying me now I know I'm pregnant (even though I know that implantation cramping is normal [sigh]), I'm not really having much in the way of symptoms. I've been a tiny bit nauseous, but then I was really nauseous before the embryo went in and I think the Pro.gynova was to blame. I am also worrying about immune symptoms (sore throat and a bit of a headache today) as I've been told I have immune issues, but I'm not sure if I believe in all that anymore after the cycle from hell a couple of years ago.

The beta is on Wednesday morning with results after 4pm - that'll be a fun day! I'll be asking for another on Friday to see what the levels are doing. I am very tempted to go and try and get a beta at the early pregnancy unit tomorrow, but I don't want to muddy the waters and I think waiting till Wednesday is the sensible thing to do.

Kind of wishing I hadn't tested now and just waited for the bloods. I'd had forgotten how terrifying this is!

Nothing Much Happening Round Here

2010-04-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

But a heck of a lot could be happening next week. Just checking in to say I have no idea whether this cycle has worked or not.

The urge to pee on a stick came upon me on Thursday - almost a whole week after the transfer, which is some kind of record for me (I tested daily from the HCG shot last IVF - yeah, before the embryo even went back in!). And I resisted it - yay for me! I have a two-pack of the most expensive pee tests I've ever bought - the Clear.blue digital ones that, as well as telling you whether you are pregnant, tell you how pregnant you are (or, in my case, probably how pregnant I'm not). I will collect some early morning pee tomorrow, but won't test till I've been to my friend's son's Christening - an event I wouldn't contemplate attending if I were to pee on a stick and get a negative.

I've been having some cramping for the last couple of days - just a little. I'm bemused by it though, as it's not like the cramping I've had in early pregnancy before (which felt like someone poking me from the inside) but as my pro.stap shot still has almost a week's life in it and I'm still taking the pro.gynova and the crin.one gel, my period should not be starting either. I have never bled while taking any kind of progesterone. Possibly psychosomatic then . . .

Ah well, tomorrow will tell. If it's a negative, then I can be 99.9% sure that the cycle is a bust. I have always had a positive pee test by that point in a pregnancy, even when the bHCG numbers turned out to be very low indeed. As Carrie over at Precious Little texted me today "Sometimes the not knowing is easier to deal with than the knowing".

I don't think I've mentioned before now that, since January, we have been making plans to buy a house with my parents and subdivide it - we would live on the first floor and they would have ground-floor-only living for their anticipated old age. The house is right next door to the one they live in now - the one they have lived in since I was 6 months old. CM is an architect and has drawn up detailed plans and got it through the first stages (no guarantees) of planning. Only thing is that the house isn't ours and there is another party interested. To say we have a lot invested in this would be an understatement. It would give my parents a sensible place to live for as long as they could cope on their own, and longer since we'd be upstairs to help out. It would allow them to stay in the neighbourhood they've lived in for 41 years and with the neighbours they've had for much of that time. It would give us a much quieter and nicer place to live and let us stay in an area we love and would mean that when my parents need help, I wouldn't need to trek for miles to give it to them. We've also invested a fair amount financially too, in terms of legal advice etc.

It all seems to be coming to a head now, so by this time next week we could have a pregnancy and a house project on our hands, or one and not the other. I dread the idea that we could end next week with neither.

2010-04-19T07:40:00.001-07:00

Testing, testing. First attempt to blog by email!

A Little Bit More Hope

2010-04-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

So, as of yesterday, I have a day three, 12 cell (!) "perfect" (no fragmentation at all, all cells perfectly even) embryo on board and in the freezer we have two 9 cells and an 8 cell, all also "perfect" (apparently they have a tiny, tiny bit of fragmentation, but they think it's just a by-product of the division that will disappear, not a result of the cells themselves breaking down). One embryo stopped developing properly, sadly.

After another chat with our friendly embryologist, who had held my hand through the IVF or ICSI decision (we chose IVF and got 100% ferlisation), we decided not to wait till day five and risk losing the chance of a future frozen embryo transfer. You see, despite having been pregnant six times naturally, I have not ever, not once, even slightly got pregnant on any kind of medicated cycle. Six rounds of Clo.mid, one IUI, one IVF and one ICSI and not even a biochemical pregnancy. I know several other girls with a similar history, one of whom has only ever had a positive on a natural FET. I just wonder if the drugs don't agree with me. So, if we'd got to day five and only had one embryo to put back (or even one to put back and one to freeze - since the defrosting process is risky) and then this cycle hadn't worked, I'd always be wondering whether the drugs were the reason.

Plus, I have to say, if this round is a bust, then knowing it's not the end and that we don't have to go on a long list or try abroad will be a comfort. I think the clinic agreed with our decision as they kept talking about us having made "best use" of the embryos and saying that we were in a "fantastic" position. One of the nurses said that they can never seek to influence us, only give us the facts, but it's always a relief when the patient makes a sensible decision.

We decided to go for a single embryo transfer even before we knew how good the one that went back was. As I said in a previous post, any pregnancy I might have would be high-risk because of my age and underlying health conditions and there was no way I wanted to add twins to the cocktail of risk factors. If it had been my own eggs, I would have asked them to chuck in at least two - possibly the lot! But, we're in a new place here. The embryologist has said that, while noone can give us a completely conclusive theory, it does seem from the way that these embryos have behaved, as compared to the one from my own eggs, that my eggs may have been our issue all along. It's kind of a relief to have as near to an answer as I think we're going to get for just now. Of course, if I get pregnant and then have another early loss, then it's all up for grabs again!

The embryo went back in on my Godson's birthday and my official test date is Wednesday 28th April, two days after what would have been my much-loved maternal grandmother's 100th birthday. My superstitious, magical thinking side says these are good omens. I will pee on a stick before the 28th though, but not until after I've been to the Christening of a good friend's baby next weekend. She's been through miscarriage too, and has been very sweet to me and I really want to go to the ceremony. But if I've just found out I'm not pregnant, it would be too hard to go. So I shall remain in ignorance, and maybe even have a couple of flights of fancy during the service and smile wistfully, and then come back down to earth after I've done my duty.

I really like the embryologist! Not only has he been very patient and helpful at each stage of the process, but he's also funny and friendly. We finally met him yesterday and he shook our hands warmly and said how lovely it was to meet us both at last. Then he told us about our embryos and what good decisions we'd made. He was so enthusiastic about the quality of the embryo that was going back that I had to laugh a little. Maybe everyone gets the same speech, but he said it was the best embryo he could remember seeing for a long, long time. He called it "an embryo on a mission" and said "it knew where it was going". I said to CM afterwards that if it really knew where it was going and what my uterus did to embryos, it would have upped and run in the opposite direction.

But still, there's that hope again, dammit!

A Little Hope is a Dangerous Thing!

2010-04-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

So - we're in the middle of a donor egg cycle.

We got a call about two months ago to tell us that the clinic had a egg-share donor for us. We'd promised ourselves that, having twice said no to donors because it was the wrong time (I know, I know - it seems mad, but I'm glad we did it), we would say yes to the next one regardless of what they said about her (eg job, eye-colour etc). So I was a bit nervous, to say the least.

I haven't really talked much about our donor egg process on here. It was after the 6th miscarriage that a lovely nurse who saw me in the early pregnancy unit asked me if we had considered donor eggs. We had, in theory, but had thought that - hoped that - it wouldn't come to that. Several friends offered to give me their eggs - how lucky am I! - but they were all the same age as me (or older) and had all had issues of their own with getting or staying pregnant, so they weren't suitable. Plus, I really wasn't sure I could put them through the regime, never mind the issues surrounding their existing kids. And that's before all the concerns about whether I could cope with the idea of the child not being genetically mine. Still, we found a brand new clinic at a city near home that was doing egg-share and we put our names on the list.

A year later, we heard from them and that bit I have blogged about. The first donor came at a time when I had a temporary promoted post and the second just as we heard about the array CGH cycle possibility. So it all went on hold. Then there was the hypertension diagnosis and the concern that all thoughts of pregnancy might be over for good. But we got the go ahead to try, had a little bit of "normal life" and a nice holiday in Chicago and then told the clinic we were ready to go for it. In the meantime, I came to terms (as much as anyone can, I think) with the thought of giving up on the idea of my own genetic child.

However, I was worried. Our clinic has been at great pains to tell me all about the physical features of our possible donors - height, hair colour, eye colour. But, really, I really couldn't care less about that - our family has ranged in height from 6'2" down to 4'11"; we have blue, grey, brown and green eyes in our range; my grandmother was a redhead, my sister is mostly blond, my mum is mousey-brown, I am dark brown and my dad has black hair; my paternal grandfather had tight, tight curls while my mother's hair is as straight as anything; My skin is, as Billy Connolly joked, a typically Scots "blue - it takes me a week in the sun to go white" (actually, I burn in seconds and am covered in freckles) while my sister goes golden-brown after an hour. Short of a totally different skin colour (which, frankly, only bothers me in terms of the prejudice the child might face from the ignorant of the world), you could give us any combination of physical features and we could track it back to a close relative. Plus, since we're planning on being totally up-front about the fact that any child that might result from this is a donor child, we don't really see the point of making sure that their features match mine faithfully.

Call me an intellectual snob, but intelligence was important though. Not book-learning, mind, or social class, just common-sense smarts. My mother's side of the family is upper-middle class and I'm the fourth generation of women on that side to go to university. My dad's family is very working class and my sister and I are still the only women on that side of the family to have gone to university. BUT - both sides of the family are smart people - my dad's mum would have loved to have continued her education beyond the age of fourteen (and would have been well able to), but she had to go out to work to support her family and only her brothers got to stay on at school. Opportunity is everything, so I know very well that your level of education and your social class indicate nothing about your IQ. How on earth do you work that one out from the very limited info you get about a donor?!

Well, we hit extremely luck with ours. While it sounds like she probably hasn't been to uni, she goes to night classes and her main interests are the same as mine and CM's - art and music. That's all I needed to know - she is interested in learning and she values some of the same bits of life. That's more than good enough for me! I said yes without even consulting CM. He was as delighted as me.

We're now at the stage where I've downregulated (prostap injection, then another 3.5 weeks later when it became clear that my donor was a wee bit further behind than me) and been taking progynova for two weeks. I'm feeling a bit nauseous and lethargic, which I think is down to the progynova. The donor has had egg-collection and we got five eggs - I felt a little disappointed, but cheered up when I heard that all five had fertilised and that, if we manage to get four good embryos, we might go to blastocyst.

Just hearing that all five eggs had fertilised catapulted me into an optimism I really didn't want to feel. That optimism seems to come with every cycle - first time it was getting 16 eggs and then 13 embryos (all of which were slow growing and relatively poor quality and led to a BFN), second time it was hearing that one of my own five eggs was genetically normal and had turned into an embryo (but that was slow growing and also led to a BFN). A bit of me would love to dive deeper into that optimism and enjoy it while it lasts, but a bit of me is terrified that it will end in the same way as the cycles with my own eggs (and the IUI and the six cycles with Clomid and the countless totally natural attempts that ended in BFNs or miscarriages). Superstition, white magic and bargains with God are all under consideration at this point!

Head and Heart

2010-01-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

Almost exactly a year ago, my favourite musician died.

John Martyn was 60 when he died - a miraculously grand age for someone who lived the life that he did, but it was far too young for those of us who loved his music (and, of course, for his family and friends). His music plays pretty much every day in my house, my car, where I work, on my iPod when I'm walking and often in my head, and has done for more than 20 years. His music featured heavily in my courtship with my now-husband. His music played at my wedding and I want it played at my funeral. If we ever manage to have a child, his music will play at their naming ceremony.

I saw him in concert four times - I wish it had been more. When I was very, very low and extremely anxious after my sixth miscarriage, my father's cancer and two serious health scares of my own and was off work and housebound with fear and misery, one of his concerts was the only thing that managed to get me out - not only out of the house but out of the city - and got my life moving again. I saw him in concert again, just after my last spectacular IVF failure that left me on blood pressure medication. Both of these times, I was taken out of my infertility orbit and managed to spend a bit of time just being me and being happy.

I was supposed to see him play again, in March last year, in a tiny, intimate venue, but on January 29th he died. I can honestly say that I have never mourned so much for a person I hadn't actually met - except for the babies that never were. For about a month, I was under a big, dark cloud, broken only briefly by the light of my 40th birthday celebration, which came a week after his death.

Maybe it's because it's January and the darkest, most depressing time of the year; maybe it's because the last member of the oldest generation of our extended "family", my honorary grandmother, is dying; maybe it's because, once again, I am surrounded by people succeeding where I have failed in the reproduction department; maybe it's because I'm waiting to start a donor egg cycle (if my sm*ear results come in OK, which I'm worried about, because I bled when they took it and because, well, I worry); maybe it's because it's nearly the first anniversary of John Martyn's death; maybe it's all of these things, but I am feeling desperately in need of an experience like the ones I had at those concerts of his.

I need to be reminded that I can enjoy life, even with the big hole in it where my children should be. I can, can't I?

High Risk . . .

2009-07-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

. . . is what any pregnancy of mine would be, apparently. Not that this is a big surprise - after all, since I've had 6 losses, I'm under no illusions that a pregnancy would be anything other than high risk for the embryo/baby. But now, it would also be high risk for me too.

Walking home from work through the snow one day in February, just before my 40th birthday, I had a revelation: getting pregnant might not be a good idea. I am insulin resistant, have low thyroid, one diagnosed clotting condition and at least one un-determined one, I have migraines with aura and now high blood pressure. The high blood pressure is also labile - it can have some big spikes, even on beta blockers. After a bit of reading around labile BP, I asked to go on some anti-anxiety medication which, in conjunction with the beta-blockers has brought the blood pressure down to a really good level, but even so . . .

All of these conditions are ones that can get worse during pregnancy, causing risk to me and the baby. I am on five different medications for these various conditions, which carry minimal risks for the baby, but risks nonetheless. After more than 6 years of trying to get pregnant and stay that way, I realised that I might have to stop trying.

This brought a strange mix of emotions. My first thought was: how unfair - after everything else that's gone wrong, now this! My second thought was: this is a way out! At the beginning of this journey, I was NEVER going to give up. I was going to keep going until the menopause. A friend, who is also a counsellor, described her internal image of me as wielding a sword into battle, which is a fair description of my state of mind. I was going to fight anything and anyone to have a baby. But that fight takes its toll - on our finances, on our relationship with each other, on our friendships with others, on my health, on my career, on the rest of our lives - and although admitting defeat would be terribly painful, it would also be a relief of sorts. And having the decision to stop taken out of our hands would be an even bigger relief.

I have second-guessed every decision we have made along the way, wondering if a different one would have brought us the prize, blaming myself, my husband, the medics each time a decision did not lead to the desired end: a baby. I have wanted a reason for our failures - preferrably one that could be fixed, but at least one that would explain the subfertility and the losses. Although there is a large part of me that wants the trying, testing and treatment to stop, it would be so hard to make and stick to that decision independently, without the outside help of some kind of reason or sign. So, in a bizarre way, I almost wanted to hear that we should give up for the sake of my health. My GP, when I spoke to her about it, said that she thought that giving up might be the right thing to do but that she was not an expert and in the end it was up to us - which is true, but I wanted more information/opinion before trying to make that decision.

On a routine visit to the Family Planning Clinic, I mentioned my concerns about continuing to try to get pregnant and the doctor was absolutely lovely. It had never occurred to me before to use the FPC in this way, and I doubt it happens to them very often - a woman comes in who is desperate to be pregnant, looking for advice about stopping trying, when what they must be most used to is streams of young women desperate not to be pregnant and looking for contraception. Of course, ironically, that was me once upon a time! The doctor referred me to a high-risk obstetrician at our local maternity unit. We live in a big city with a huge teaching hospital, so the experts tend to be very expert and I knew I would be in good, experienced hands. All I had to do was wait for an appointment - and waiting is something I am an expert in!

In the meantime, I had another appointment with the blood pressure specialist - a large, pin-stripe-suited, serious and straight-forward man in his fifties (I think), who I like. Turns out, he and his wife have no children - they married late and tried, had treatment, but failed. I told him about my doubts about continuing to ttc and he said he thought that deciding to give up now "might be premature". Hmmm. He had referred me back to the haematologist I had seen when I was first diagnosed with Factor V Leiden, to talk about how my blood pressure diagnosis might fit with that and the rest of my isues in terms of my general health. So I had my appointment with her, and it turns out that she works closely with the high-risk obstetrician in managing pregnancies with clotting issues. She couldn't swear to it, but she thought it was unlikely that the high-risk obs would tell us to stop trying. She was reassuring about my health - noticed that I had lost weight since she had last seen me four years ago and said I looked better and healthier now, at 40 years old, than I did at 36. Needless to say, that made me feel great!!

Finally, we got the appointment with the high-risk obs. She was fab - warm but no-nonsense sort of person. She pulled no punches about our chances - low chance of conception and high chance of miscarriage. But, if we do get an ongoing pregnancy, although it would be high-risk, and we would be in and out of her office like yo-yos for tests, scans etc, she thinks that with the right observation and management, I could come out with my own health and a healthy baby. My GP had warned me that these high-risk chappies can be a bit gung-ho - after all, they are used to being presented with women who are three months pregnant and have just found out they have cancer and my problems could seem pretty minor in comparison - so I was a bit concerned that her advice was on that basis. I asked her straight out if that was the case. She laughed little, and then said quite solemnly that if she really thought that my life or a baby's life was at serious risk, she would not hesistate to tell me to stop trying. I believe her!

She referred me on to have a hysteroscopy, which is scheduled for next month, and I'll have an endometrial biopsy which will be analysed by the big miscarriage clinic in London. Then, if all is well, we will have a round of donor eggs. This will be our last go, frozen embryos excepting.

Of course, now there is sw.ine fl.u, and the advice from the NCT to consider delaying conception till it's all over. Since there is the possibility that this pa.ndemic could be with us for 3-4 years, delaying for that long is not an option for us - we've waited long enough! But, considering my profession and how generous 5 year-olds are with their germs, I think I ought to delay until either I've had the virus or the vaccination, whichever comes first (and if neither kills me!). I'll be making an appointment to see my GP to ask about getting in early with the jab, but I go back to school in mid-August and I don't like my chances of dodging the bug for very long once I'm with the new intake. Watch this space!!

Still Here . . .

2009-01-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

I'm just about human these days, with the help of a support group and a bit of time. I had a good chat with the consultant at our more local clinic, who helped me to feel that our original post-mega-cycle plan (the one we were going to follow if it turned out all my eggs were duff, like I thought they would be) is still reasonable. So we're back to the idea of having a hysteroscopy and an endometrial biopsy followed (depending on the outcomes) by a cycle with donor eggs.

Before I can have the hysteroscopy though, I need a 24 hour heart monitor to make sure the palpitations (which I'm still having occasionally) are nothing sinister (oh please G*d, let them not be!) and for my blood pressure to stay normal for a while. The beta blockers didn't seem to be helping a lot, until I realised that my GP had me on a starting dose - which you're meant to work up from. I'm still not quite up to the minimum maintenance dose now, and the BP is definitely lower.

Bizarrely, having upped the dose just before Christmas, my BP went down to a great level for about three days over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day - normally a relatively stressful time. Then it started to go back up again, until, by the end of the holiday, it was nearly back at borderline/high. And then the very wierdest thing happened: I went back to work and it started to go down again. I'm fairly sure most medics wouldn't recommend spending 6 hours a day, 5 days a week with 25 five and six year olds as a way of lowering your blood pressure, but for some strange reason, it seems to help mine - I suspect it's the constant exercise and the lack of opportunity to eat, as it can't be the lack of stress!!

So, we have a plan - one that isn't age dependent for a change, which is just as well because I turn forty in about three weeks. Ugh! Not a good age in this IF/mc business! Still, I'm taking deep breaths and I've been practising being forty for a wee while - anytime it's come up in the last six months, I've said I'm forty (as long as it isn't anything official, you understand - that would be silly!). I'm hoping it'll ease me in and I'll avoid the nasty shock my husband got when he turned forty - he was just about getting over it as he turned forty-one.

I'm celebrating by heading to one of my favourite cities with my husband and Mum and Dad, and meeting us there will be my wee sister and her husband and kids and my best friend and her husband and kids. The grown-up girls have a spa afternoon planned and we have meal booked at a hotel near the B&B we're ALL staying in. I'm a bit worried about all the family stuff - nothing like having your nearest and dearest turning up with their kids to throw in to contrast your lack thereof - but I love them, and the weekend wouldn't be the same without them. The really major fly in the ointment might the arrival at the meal of a good friend and his wife. They live nearby, and it'll be lovely to see them, but I'm really worried they may have "baby news" and that would wreck my night. We'll see - it's too late to uninvite them. I'll just have to be a grown-up - since I'm forty!

Never.Ever.Again!

2008-11-18T13:57:00.000-08:00

The "fling everything at it" cycle was a spectacular failure. We got one good egg out of five, but the resulting embryo was slow-growing (did they manage to ICSI it with a duff sperm?) and we got a BFN. Oh . . . and high blood pressure and palpitations. So now I'm on beta blockers and freaked out about my health, as well as utterly miserable about the failed cycle. Plus, my theory that all this loss and subfertility was down to having bad eggs is now questionable - 1 in 5 normal eggs is the average for someone who's 40 - which is what I'll be in early February. So our fallback of donor eggs is now also questionable.

And tomorrow I return to work, where my closest work-friend just announced last week that she's pregnant. Joy abounds!

More details on the cycle from hell when I can bring myself to relive them . . .

And so it begins . . .

2008-10-19T16:04:00.001-07:00

We've started! I am now on day 3 of stims. Downregulation took a little longer than expected, but nothing excessive. Main problems so far have been trying to arrange accommodation near the clinic (for it is a long way from home) while not knowing when we need to be there and my total inability to make a decision on IVIG.

Oddly, it seems I am happy to inject myself with a range of hormones and anti-coagulants and to pop steroids and to have a large needle shoved up my hoo-ha to remove my eggs while under a sedation that leaves me conscious but in a state of forgetfulness, but I am wavering on the 3-4 hour infusion of a blood product that carries the risk of anaphylaxis, heart and lung problems and infection with everything from Hep A to vCJD.

Even more oddly, it's the vCJD that freaks me out the most. Apparently, the stuff will have been filtered, heat-treated and assaulted with detergents and alcohol so the chances of bacteria or viruses remaining are small, to say the least. But prions are more slippery customers and there is still a "theoretical" risk that they could get through. Plus, to date, prions cannot be tested for in blood. For this reason, the donors used come only from countries with no reported cases of vCJD in their native population and folk who have lived in countries that do have a history of cases (that would be mainly the UK) are not allowed to donate, and no IVIG is produced at all in the UK - it all comes from elsewhere (the US in the case of the stuff I'd be getting, I think).

It was my wee sister that pointed out that, since we live in the UK and our staple diet in the 80s/90s (when mad cow disease was rife) was mince and sausages, I've probably been exposed to all the prions I'm ever likely to need to give me vCJD if that's my fate. Frankly, it seems mad (ha ha) to worry about this extra, theoretical exposure - but I am.

Confession time - I am a hypochondriac. Not the type who secretly likes to be ill and visit the doctor, but the type who is terrified of illness to the point of it being an anxiety disorder. So I am also worrying about all the other risks from IVIG - and all the other risks from the various drugs I'm taking, many of which seems to carry contraindications relating to other drugs I'm taking, or to other conditions I have. Geez - I must really want a baby!

Next step is the Day 5 stims scan - to see how the follicles are coming along. Am totally open-minded on this one. My past experience would suggest there'll be lots, but my AMH level suggests that might be hopeful. It's a fine line for this treatment - my last IVF was nearly cancelled before egg collection due to over-reponse and I surely don't want that again, but too few would probably mean that the CGH test might not be feasible. We'll see . . .

Here Goes Nothing!

2008-09-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

Wow - I really haven't been on here since July?!

Well, not a lot has been happening - or rather, it has, but none of it has been very interesting until now. I have a new class at school - taking a while to bond with them, partly, I think, because I liked the last lot so much. And we're about to do a BIG IVF - with bells and whistles.

We're in the early stages (haven't even started downregging yet) of a cycle that will involve immune treatment and experimental testing of the chromosomes in my eggs. I'm terrified! And so pessimistic that I'm not even confident that the cycle will go ahead.

I am certain that this cycle will not result in a baby - I'm way past that kind of optimism. At best, I'm hoping for some answers as to why I've had such a hard time getting and staying pregnant. This might give me some clues. If we actually get to the stage of getting eggs (my last and only cycle was almost cancelled due to over-response, as were all of my Clomid cycles but then again, my AMH levels are now only just the right side of normal), then we might find out that they're all duff - that would explain a lot. On the other hand, if there's a couple of normal ones in there, and they make it to the point of going back in and I still don't get pregnant, or I miscarry again - that suggests that I'm not providing the right environment somehow. Not a lot I can do about that - though a cheery report on the BBC today linking obesity and recurrent miscarriage has me wondering - not that I've actually been obese at any of the times I had miscarriages, but I am definitely overweight and carrying it round the middle. Hey, one more thing to add to the list of "reasons I have f*ck*d up my own reproductive life" - 'cos it's not like I was casting around for reasons to feel guilty and self-blaming here.

On the other hand, the cycle might not bring any answers at all - just large hole in the bank balance and a sense that we really should have done something else instead. We can but try! And at the moment, I'm trying to remind myself of the reason I chose the name of this blog - my motto: "hope for the best, prepare for the worst and expect the unexpected". I'm doing really well at the last two, but not really getting to grips with the first. Watch this space . . .

On Judgements

2008-07-03T11:32:00.000-07:00

I was watching "Grumpy Old Women" the other night and one of my pet peeves came up. Firstly, so much of the program was about kids - "Grumpy Old Men" seemed to be about the world in general, whereas this seemed to be about family. This reminded me that we are a couple, not a family - to be a family requires children. My second issue (and the pet peeve) was the whole "how can she know anything about children when she doesn't have any?" thing.

This came up in relation to "Supernanny", who doesn't have children of her own but appears on TV telling other folk how to bring theirs up - and a very good job she does of it too, in my opinion, but clearly not in the opinions of some. She and I have a couple of things in common - neither of us have kids and we've dealt with more children in a few years than most people will encounter in a lifetime.

I sat down and worked it out. In the 12 years I've been teaching, I have taught around 250 children. Apart from the first class, who I only had for 6 months because I was covering long-term sick leave, I've taught each of these children for at least a year - about 110 of them, I taught for 2 years. That's a long time to spend 6 hours a day, 4.5 days a week with someone. I think I've got to know a lot of them very well. And since I've taught in the same school for 8 of the 12 years, mostly at the Primary 1/2 level, even though they leave my class I continue to see and chat to them till they leave the school.

Do I know each individual child better than their parents know them? No - absolutely not! Do I know children in general better than many individual parents knows children in general? Hell, yes! I've had 250 examples of childhood behaviour and 250 opportunities to see what works. So I get really upset when people (especially people who know me) imply that I can't know about children because I don't have any. Interestingly, none of the parents of the children I've taught have made this implication - on the contrary, they sometimes ask me for advice on how to handle things that aren't even school-related! And when that happens, I feel deeply honoured.

On the baby front, I have friends who, before they gave birth to their own child, hadn't even held a baby - never mind changed a nappy. I supplemented my pocket money from my early teens by babysitting. From the age of 16 till when I left home for Uni (and occasionally while back during the holidays) I babysat for a family with three wee girls. I changed nappies, gave night-time feeds, soothed crying babies. I have helped out with nephews and nieces and friends' babies since then. But again, I've had that same "you can't possibly know" thing - ironically, mostly from the same folk who hadn't had anything to do with babies till they had one themselves.

Of course I don't know what it's like to be a parent - though I have probably spent more time imagining it (good and bad) than most. But I DO know about children. I think this is one of the things that makes me particularly sad that we have failed (so far) to have any. A couple of dear friends have commented on how unfair it is that I haven't been able to become a mum, because I want it so much and because they think I'd be a good one. I hope I would. I think I'd have as many hang-ups as the next person and I know I would make mistakes, but I think I would be a good enough mum - and CM would make a great dad too. And it does feel very unfair that we're not getting the chance.

Don't get me wrong - I am not anti-parent at all (if I was, why would I want to be one so much?) - but I am anti the kind of parent that thinks that simply by producing a child they have been endowed with some kind of instant wisdom and omniscience. There is a story in Jewish mythology that Adam had a wife before Eve. She was created in the same way as Adam - out of the earth - and her name was Lilith. One version of the myth is that on giving birth to a child, she believed that she had created life all by herself and demanded that she be worshipped for it. Remind you of anyone?

This has been a very whiney post, I think. But if you can't whine on your own blog, where can you? Plus, I think this problem goes much further than me. I'm privileged to know a few women who are in the same situation - who have been trying and failing in the mum stakes for quite a while. What strikes me about them is that they have thought more about what it means to be a parent, how to be a good one and how they would parent if they got the chance than many actual parents I know. And they would make amazing mums. It's the one thing that gets me through the "maybe this is a judgement on me" worries about infertility and loss. I only have to look at these other women to know that if anyone's making judgements here, they're making the wrong ones!!

Interestingly, research seems to support this. The BBC reported that a study on surrogacy presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in 2002 found that "mothers who had relied on another woman to carry their child tended to show more warmth towards their babies than mothers whose child was conceived naturally". No wonder - they'd probably tried just about everything to get there and had years to contemplate the role of a mother. Nothing would be taken for granted!

The Weather Is Sunny But I Am NOT!

2008-05-31T09:58:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted. Lots has been happening and nothing has been happening. The IUI failed (surprise!), we got an offer of donor eggs and had to turn it down and I discovered that one of the clinics we've visited in the past is now offering a world first in genetic screening of embryos.

Having been so sure that not getting pregnant on the IUI was only going to be a blip on my radar after all that has gone before, I was actually pretty upset about it. And call me stupid but, for the first time in our more-than-5-year-marathon of trying to conceive, it occurred to me that finding out that you're not pregnant when you get your period and your hormones are making you feel miserable anyway is a little inconvenient. So I spent about a week in a seriously bad mood, swinging between wanting to cry and wanting to snap someone's head off. A fun time for all! And the move back into "trying to conceive" after about a year and a half of enforced time out has brought back a lot of my sadness and jealousies about my inability to join my friends in the Mum Club.

After the negative result, I'd called the clinic to see where we were at with the donor situation and heard that things had "dried up" a bit on that front. In an attempt not to spend too much time wallowing in the failure and the lack of anything to follow it up with, I threw myself into work and committed myself to even more than I had already. Keeping busy and being around people are my best defences against depression and anxiety - and there's nowhere better for keeping busy and being around people than a school - and sometimes nowhere worse ;-). I've put my career on hold for more than 5 years - not that I'm hugely ambitious, but progress of some kind is good. I'm not after serious promotion, but there's a couple of things I'd like to try and I kept putting them off because it would be too hard to do them while pregnant (ha!) or having treatment. The extra responsibilities I've had this term have helped me to make some decisions about my future in teaching and have made me feel a bit more useful about the place.

So it was ironic that I then got a call from the clinic telling me that they had a donor and that, if we went for it, everything would be happening at exactly the busiest and most inconvenient time of the term. After a bit of discussion and soul-searching with CM, I had to say no. I can imagine there are people who would think I'm nuts for deciding that way, but what it came down to was this: saying no to the donor just means we don't get this donor - another one will come along and we will get our chance - but taking time off work and having to offload my responsibilities onto others, just when they are also at their busiest, would guarantee that I'd blown that chance and it wouldn't come again.

So much of what I have tried has failed over the last few years. This term's responsibilities aren't necessarily what I want for the rest of my life and I haven't necessarily shone in everything I've done - but if I make it to the end of this term then I won't have failed in them. And that is so important to my self-image right now. As I've said before, I could do every treatment under the sun and still not have a baby and at the end of all of this, regardless of baby or no baby, there will still be me. Whether I become a mother or not, my state of mind is everything to how I deal with what comes next.

The day after I said no to the donor cycle, a friend told me that a new genetic screening method had just become available at a clinic I'd had contact with in the past. It's a treatment that would give us answers, which is something I want almost as much as a baby. If our embryos didn't make it to testing or all tested abnormal, then we'd know that this was our problem. If we got a normal one or two, we'd shove them back and if it didn't work, we could draw some conclusions about my ability to create a proper environment for successful pregnancy and decide whether surrogacy might be a good idea. Oh, I know that normal embryos don't always implant even in "normal" women, but we'd still know that we could create normal embryos. If we got a normal one and I got and stayed pregnant - well, we'd thank our lucky stars and probably never go near a fertility clinic ever again. So we have an appointment with them at the beginning of July.

At the time of hearing about the genetic thing, I thought it was fate - I'd get a chance to see if we could produce our own genetic child before trying donor eggs. However, after a bit of time, I realise that it doesn't matter which opportunity comes up first - I'd go for either of them. Basically, I want to be someone's mum and I want CM to be a dad. And after all this time and loss and failure, I find that I'm not too fussy over how that happens. So hopefully we'll be doing something soon. There's the small matter of an ankle that needs an MRI and a bowel that needs checking for IBD, but both consultants have given me the green light to plough on with fertility treatment regardless and I'm not going to argue with them!

But I still feel flat and old insecurities are creeping back in. I find myself again: watching for signs that friends are pregnant; worrying about social gatherings and whether there'll be kids, or an announcement or whether all anyone will be talking about is their kids; being sensitive about comments made by my nearest and dearest about their kids; feeling resentful about what others have that I don't; wondering if people are leaving me out of things; wondering if friends are bored of / embarrassed about / irritated by our ongoing sadness; etc, etc, etc. And to top it all, I'm planning my 40th birthday. OK, it's not till February next year, but when I started out on all this it was "babies before 35" (and had number 1 worked, I'd have managed that), then it was "babies before 38", and then "babies before 40". Well, I'd have to get pregnant NOW to do that, and since I'm on day 3, that won't be happening.

So the sun may be shining outside, but it ain't doing it for me.

Where Do I Fit?

2008-04-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

We've just come back from friends' wedding reception - a very relaxed do in their flat and its garden (the wedding was last weekend and we missed it, sadly). The party's going on all day and I think we arrived in a lull, so there were just our friends and two other couples. All three couples had kids under three. There was much talk of working part-time, nurseries, nappies etc, etc. Our friends were talking about how their day was likely to progress. It sounds like the evening will be full of the voluntary childless folk - out for a good time, bit of dancing, a small drink etc, etc.

As we left, I was painfully aware that we don't "fit". It was lovely to see my friends (and one half of one of the other couples, who is someone I like enormously and hadn't seen since she'd had her wee boy) and I care about them very much. I'm genuinely interested in how their life is going and what their wee one is up to. But, naturally, their life revolves around their child.

Then there's the evening crowd. That used to be me! I used to like a good party - meeting people, getting a bit merry, listening to some good music (not so big on the dancing), staying out late, chatting with friends. And, apart from work, that used to be my life. But now, I have to stay sober and I'm getting a little elderly for the late nights and the loud music - and I just don't want that life all the time anymore.

Now . . . I know where I want to fit, where I would fit, where I would be happy to fit. But the problem is, you need a passport to get there, and I don't have that small, pink, loud, lovely passport. It's not like applying for a job or passing an exam - it doesn't matter how much you want it and how hard you work for it. If fate has decided against you - you can't have it! You can go through all the treatments under the sun, eat brazil nuts till you puke, treat your body like a temple, hang upside down from the lightshade after inter.course (if you're still having any!), bankrupt yourself and lose all your friends due to your obsession . . . but you still won't necessarily get that baby.

And please - "just adopt"? Anyone who thinks there are perfect little babies piled up somewhere waiting just to be handed out to the next deserving couple that comes along and asks politely shouldn't be reading a blog like this. The adoption process makes the IVF process, with all the hormones and needles up the hooha and the shocking success rates and vast amounts of money, look like a walk in the park. We consider adoption roughly once a week, but there's only so many times a couple can pull themselves together and be strong again before they have to consider the damage they're doing to themselves and those around them. But I feel that's another post.

The only place I feel I do fit is with other infertiles/miscarriers. The relief of spending some time with another person who is going through the same kind of stuff as me is enormous. I have laughed and cried with girls I wouldn't have known under other circumstances. But it's transient - so many of these people will have their babies - so many of them have and that is as it should be - and then . . .

. . . where do I fit?

A Bit of Teacher Blogging

2008-04-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

The scene - In church for the school Easter service. Sitting with my class at the front of the church waiting for the service to begin.

Small Boy: Why is there a cross on the lightshade?

Me: Well, that's kind of why we're here today. Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross at Easter, so it's a special sign to remember Jesus.

SB: Why did Jesus die on the cross?

Me: [starting to wonder where this is going and whether my theology is up to it] The rulers of the land where Jesus lived were worried that he was getting more powerful than them and they were jealous, so they put him on the cross to die.

SB: [thoughtfully] Hmmm. I suppose they didn't know about the other Jesus then.

Me: [silence and frantic thought, followed by] Um . . . the other Jesus?

SB: [in slightly exasperated tones] Yes - you know! The baby Jesus that came at Christmas.

Think we need a timeline lesson. And I'm getting worried about the upcoming stuff on birth ceremonies - we'll maybe stick to the girls' naming ceremony for Judaism.

Oh - and a good one today -

Another small boy: [on spotting me as he comes out of after-school art club] Hi Mrs S.

Me: Hi there. What are you doing in art club today?

ASB: Art.

I had to ask!

So - Bad luck Only Comes In Threes, Does It?

2008-04-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

Our IUI cycle is progressing.

Our luck during the cycle has been appalling - we've been stuck in several two hour + long traffic jams getting to and from the clinic, turning a journey that should take just under an hour into a three or four hour marathon (and that's without the appointment and the other end of the journey).

I've had a horrible time at work - far, far too much of it and a child who has decided to choose now to spend half the morning screaming (every day!).

I managed to break the saline ampule for my first HCG jab and ended up at the local hospital at half past midnight on a Sunday night to get more.

I think my single enormous follicle decided to pop early so we had a mad rush to the clinic a day early just in case.

And when we tried to get away for a nice weekend with relatives (and with the second lot of HCG on a cold block in my bag), we missed our flight because the airline we were meant to fly with won't give you the option of checking in online if you're carrying sharps but then they have no method for allowing folk on earlier flights priority over those on later ones if you have to check in at the airport and then the folk in front of us in security had decided to pack their bags full of liquids and not declare them (including a tin of SOUP - I ask you!). So we got our car back from the long-stay car park and drove there, praying that the drugs would last out (think they were OK).

The weekend was a change rather than a rest, and on the way back CM took a wrong turn and then, in trying to get back, we suddenly found the road ahead of us closed (with no warning at all ten miles back when we turned on to the road). I think we'll be staying off the roads for a bit - which is just as well, since there may soon be a petrol shortage here in Scotland.

SO I'm on to the second week of the 2ww - except, with the second HCG I think it might be closer to a 3ww. Must call clinic. Not feeling optimistic. Friends have said that I'm using up all my bad luck with the other stuff so that, come the decisive pee-stick, all the good luck will have been saved up for a BFP.

Well, my IVF cycle (now almost 3 years ago) went similarly. I overstimulated and nearly got cancelled - got that happy news on the Friday just before my parents' 4oth wedding anniversary celebrations. Had to wait till the Monday to hear that we could go ahead. Then the family dog was knocked down on the day of egg collection (she survived, thank goodness). I was wheeled into the surgery fretting about the poor dog, oblivious to the fact that they were about to stick a huge needle up my hoo-ha!

On the day of embryo transfer we discovered that CM had left the car in the wrong place and it had been towed and we had to run (ouch!) to my folks house to catch a lift to the hospital (nurses greeting us with enquiries after the health of the dog). We discovered that, despite having 13 embryos, on day 2 we only had one grade 2 (and it was a 2 cell) and one grade 3, 4 cell to transfer - and none to freeze.

In my 2ww, I got caught outside all day in major heat without enough water and my car broke down at a friends flat and I had to climb the 5 flights of stairs 6 times between the car and the phone. Since this is an IF/miscarriage blog and not a TTC no 2 blog, you'll be able to work out how the IVF cycle ended. Since I've had 3 more miscarriages since then, am three years older and IUI only has a 10-15% chance at the best of times, I'm not holding my breath.

BUT - that's OK with me. I'd rather have this pessimism (realism?) than the optimism I had 3 years ago that led to real misery when there was no BFP at the end. Our hopes (such as they are) rest with donor eggs.

On a final note: 3 comments on my last post - a record for me! That cheered me up no end :-). I've got myself onto the Stirrup Queens etc list and I'm going to get out there and read more blogs and make more comments. Thanks girls!

What Might Have Been

2008-04-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

As part of some additional responsibilities I've acquired in my job this term, I went up to visit our school's nursery to talk about their pre-school year kids' transition to Primary 1 in August. What a mixture they are - some looking WAY too young to be coming to "big school" next year and some that would fit right in with my Primary 1 class already. When I arrived, they were having their story to settle them before home time. When it finished, the nursery nurse said "Shall we let the mummies in?" and the children started smiling and shouting "yes!". The mums came in and children rushed forward to greet them. The nursery teacher introduced a couple of them to me and they asked me some questions about how things would be for their wee ones when they start school. Once they were all gone, we had our meeting.

All the way through the meeting, and on the drive back to school, and now and again since then, I was fighting tears. Because, in the words of Jessica (who I blogged about before), "It should have been me, it should have been me". Five years ago we lost a baby who would have been starting school this year. It was the first of the 6 losses and the only one for which we had a due date - the 4th of December . That baby would be four and a half now and would be starting school in August. Instead of progressing my career and visiting nurseries to talk about other people's children, I would have been enrolling my own child at our local school - the same one I went to myself. I would have been looking at the children I teach in Primary 1 this year and wondering how my own baby would deal with "big school" - if I was working - if I wasn't on maternity leave or a career break with another baby - one of the five "what if's" that followed the first one. But instead, I'm doing an IUI, waiting for donor eggs and filling up my life with ambitions that aren't really me.

You see, I wasn't meant to be the career girl that I seem to be turning into. All I ever wanted was to be someone's mummy.

Back in the Saddle

2008-03-31T05:49:00.001-07:00

Firstly, I was really sad to hear about Carrie's cycle. She and I have a lot in common on the IF/miscarriage front (among other things), and it would do my heart good to see success for her - for her sake, and to give me some hope it might work for me too.

We are unexpectedly back to treatment again. We were waiting for news on our donor cycle - we're near the top of the list but there's been a bit of a lull in donors/egg-sharers. So we decided to revert to the plan we had before we knew we were near the top of the DE list and go for an IUI cycle.

Having looked at the IUI thread on my favourite IF message board, I feel like this may be insanity. Those girls are mostly just starting out on their IF journey and I couldn't see a miscarriage listed in their sigs at all. It makes sense for them because IUI is what you do when you're in the early stages. But for someone with five years of trying, six months of Clomid, a failed IVF, endless IF/miscarriage testing and 6 early losses behind them . . .

However, we've established (due to the 6 pregnancies, no matter how short they were) that we can conceive without IVF. My AMH levels (hormone that indicates ovarian reserve) suggests that there's still some eggs in there. CM has some sperm issues, so the wash and scrub-up they'll get before their journey might do some good. Plus, the lovely clinic will let me have clexane with the IUI cycle to take account of my clotting issues and will also give me an HCG booster a week after insemination, which MIGHT help. Given my HCG levels have been abysmally low on the 3 pregnancies for which I had a blood test, it's possible that I have corpus luteum problems. Maybe, might, possibly - you can tell I'm not letting myself get too hopeful.

That, and my hypochondriac nature is giving me panic attacks that the baseline scan (my first proper one in more than a year - apart from a quickie for the AMH level when they couldn't find my left ovary!!!) will show something nasty in there like endometrial or ovarian cancer. Oh, and the consultant I spoke to on the phone wondered who had told us to do a donor egg cycle as my losses were unlikely to be genetic and more likely to be "me". Yikes! Once I was able to talk again, I pointed out I was doing the DE cycle at HIS clinic and that all the losses were around 6 weeks AND I'd had every conventional miscarriage test and then some and, apart from some controversial immune issues that they wouldn't treat anyway, there's nothing amiss that some aspirin and clexane shouldn't fix. He then said that such early losses were pretty much a mystery to the medics and that just about anything I did from hereon in should be considered "suck it and see" thing. I felt miserable after this, but actually - he's right! I knew all this already - it's just hard to hear it from someone else.

But, if anyone out there is reading this and knows anything at all about early pregnancy loss and donor eggs - is he right on that? Because 3 other IF/miscarriage folk have told me it was "the next thing to try" and everything I've read about very early losses suggests that genetic issues are the main cause. Hmmm!

Five by Five

2008-03-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

Oh dear goodness - it's been 2 months since my last post. To be honest, when I started this blog, all baby-matters were on hold because of other health issues and so it felt a bit odd to have a blog about our attempts to become parents when there was no "attempting" going on, so I've felt a bit of a fraud. However, things have taken a significant turn in the last few weeks. The tummy consultant gave me the go-ahead to start fertility treatment again and, in the same week, just as we were wondering whether to try a round of IUI while deciding what to do next, our clinic called to say we were nearly at the top of the donor egg list and could we come in for an "implications" counselling session and to sign consents. Apparently, we could be matched and in a DE cycle within 2-3 months! Eek! And more of that to come in another post, I imagine.

This post, though, is inspired by the wonderful Carrie, over on Precious Little, who has tagged me and given me a big dig in the ribs to get on and post something . . . anything! Apparently, I need to come up with a list of hot men - what a trial ;-). There doesn't seem to be a limit on numbers, but five seemed a sensible number - couldn't possibly put in fewer and if I went on longer I might not stop! So, in no particular order, I give you:

George Clooney

I know that finding George Clooney attractive is a terrible cliche but, in my defence, it took me a while to see the hotness. I was more into Anthony Edwards in the early ER days, and it was only once I'd seen a couple of interviews with George that I started to get it. He is witty, self-depracating and seems to have genuine principles. So I love him for his mind - honest.

Steve McQueen

I know I said "in no particular order", but I reckon that if I had to put them in order, Steve would come first. Mostly because he was the first famous person I really fancied (apart from a couple of seriously dodgy crushes on 80s pop stars - I'm not even going to tell you - far too embarrassing). In my mid to late teens I used to babysit for a couple who liked staying out really late and so I ended up watching odd things on telly in the early hours (this was the 80s remember - Channel 4 was brand new and cable was something they had in America). One of the first things Steve McQueen starred in was a TV western called Wanted: Dead or Alive, which was shown at about 1am on a Friday or Saturday night on ITV (I think). Now, I generally avoid Westerns like the plague, but with Steve in it I found that one unmissable. A troubled character in real life, a bad boy in many ways, and not at all the kind of guy I would go for in real life, but I still adore him. I have a bit of a thing for Daniel Craig simply because he reminds me of Steve.

Joe Duttine

I have no idea what I first saw this guy in - it may have been a fairly mediocre comedy called Holding the Baby - and I couldn't really tell you what it is I find hot about him. He has a northern accent, which I rather like, and he has brown eyes - I'm a sucker for brown eyes. I don't know - it's a mystery! Also, I feel I really need to include a Brit, since all the others are from the US.

Gary Dourdan

This man is just beautiful! Those eyes - [sigh]. CSI is one of my favourite shows - the original being the best. I like CSI: NY too - see the next hottie - but I cannot watch CSI: Miami because David Caruso makes me want to shout at the telly. He took Jimmy Smits' (another gorgeous man!) place in NYPD Blue and I can't forgive him for it. And as for all the dramatic poses, his mannered handling of his sunglasses and oddly phrased speech - SO irritating. But back to Gary - yum!

Gary Sinise

Another Gary, another CSI guy. I liked him long before CSI though. I think it may have been in Apollo 13 that I first saw him. Again, a bit like Joe Duttine, I'm not sure what it is I go for in him. He's a musician as well as an actor and strikes me as a decent bloke in real life. I was really happy when he was announced as the lead in the new CSI franchise and he's doing a great job of it.

Do you know, I'm rather enjoying looking for nice-looking guys on the web. I'm beginning to regret restricting myself to five. But I'll stick to my word. Being new to this blog thing and not knowing any other bloggers well enough to tag (or hardly at all, actually), I'll open this one up to anyone who wants to spend a happy hour or so trawling Google images for pics of men they fancy - it beats reading up on infertility as a pick-me-up!!

Birds of a Feather

2008-01-04T16:37:00.001-08:00

My sister and my best friend both had miscarriages before me. It's kind of a "third time unlucky" situation for me. My sister also had two years of infertility before her miscarriage. Since both of them now have two children each (a boy followed by a girl in both cases), I did try to draw some hope from this. But as I went past 2 years of trying and 2 losses, I felt less and less reassured by their successes. That said, I am so very pleased that it did work out for them, as it means I have my wonderful niece and nephew and my godson and his sister. I love all four of them, and if I never manage to have kids of my own then I can at least be the best indulgent aunty/godmother I can be!

My sister (I'll call her B - not her initial, but it means something to me) is three years younger than me. It was a bit of a shock to me when she came along, but I blamed my parents more than her - which, with hindsight, was very perceptive of my three-year-old self. We are close and have many opinions in common, but we are also very different - to her advantage, I suspect. I was reasonably academic growing up, always had a few friends, started dating in my early teens and generally life was relatively easy for me (tho' it never felt like it as a hormonal teen, of course). She was much less academic, stuck to a couple of friends and was a late starter on the dating front. But boy has she made up for it since! She is the most determined person I know and puts everything into getting things done. As a result, she has overtaken me on every count. She got married, had kids, a proper house and a proper job before I managed to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I'd love to tell our primary school teachers that although I managed not too badly in tertiary education, it's my wee sister who is currently studying for her PhD while simultaneously holding down a job, raising two kids and renovating a decrepit house. Yeah, yeah, yeah - I'm jealous at times (would I be human if I wasn't?) - but mainly I'm incredibly proud of her and wish I had the tenacity and will-power she has.

I'm ashamed to say that when she had her miscarriage, I only found out after the long-drawn-out event and didn't have a clue what to say to her. I occasionally remind myself of this when someone avoids me, or says something stupid after one of my losses. Once upon a time, I was them. She and her husband had been trying for two years, had a go at clomid, got pregnant straight away and then found out at the 7 week scan that all was not well. Not wanting to believe the worst, she and her husband decided not to opt for a D&C but waited a further few weeks before finally accepting defeat. I wish I had known all this at the time and I wish that, if I had, I could have found a way to say the right things. Happily, she got pregnant again on the very next cycle and, although she had some very worrying early bleeding, this pregnancy resulted in my nephew (now a very spirited seven-year-old). My niece came along without the same drama two years later. Needless to say, all this means that she has a pretty good idea of how tough things are for CM and me.

I met my best friend at university. I had arrived a couple of days early at the halls of residence and had spent my evenings in the company of the Chr*st*an Un*on. They were a lovely bunch of people, and I continued to be friends with them for the rest of my time in halls. I have dabbled with religion in my time - I'm fairly sure there's something bigger than me out there - but I have an unruly side and when I imagined my time at uni I imagined more beer than prayer. So I was quite pleased to bump into KS - I'll call her this, because we quickly recognised and acknowledged that we were kindred spirits. KS lived in the room above mine and when we wanted to chat, she would bang her hairbrush on the floor or I'd bang mine on the ceiling.In Freshers' Week, we both dumped our boyfriends from home (not proud of that one - but mine really did deserve it) and took up with two guys who also became and remain best friends with each other. The romances with the blokes only lasted into our 2nd year, but the friendships are still in tact and all four of us will gather this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our meeting. Not bad, I reckon!

Since we left uni, we have almost always lived at opposite ends of the UK, but our lives have mapped each other ever since then. We have changed jobs, flats and boyfriends within months of each other for most of our twenties, met our husbands in the same month and she married hers five months after I married mine. So it wasn't a big surprise that we both had a bad time starting our families. She "anticipated" her wedding, as a polite relative once described getting pregnant before married, by a few months and was actually pregnant and going through her first miscarriage as she performed her bridesmaid duties for me. I didn't know it till I got back from honeymoon - she hadn't wanted to spoil the wedding, bless her. She had another loss but then, about a year after I got married and six months after my first loss, she conceived my godson. Like my sister, she had some bleeding in the early stages and had been told not to be too optimistic. She told me pretty quickly - I think shortly after she told her husband - and I felt such a mixture of happiness and jealousy. In between her 2nd loss and the successful pregnancy, I had had my first loss and I imagine she had similar feelings when I told her about that pregnancy.

Obviously, our lives have taken different forks now - she is working part-time, living in a little house in a little village as a mum of two. I am still full-time, city flat-dwelling and childless. This started to form a small wedge in the closeness of our friendship - I couldn't empathise with the new motherhood experience in the way she empathised with my losses. She was careful not to overdo the "nappy-head" mother talk, and particularly careful not to complain about the downsides of motherhood. On the one hand, I was extremely grateful but on the other I was aware that I was not hearing some important stuff!

It kind of reached a climax when I did my IVF cycle and she was pregnant for the second time. She was so sure that the cycle would work that she held off telling me, imagining the joyous moment when I told her I was pregnant and she would say "me too!" and we'd share our pregnancies in the way we'd shared so many other bits of our lives. When the cycle was a bust, I think she just couldn't bring herself to give me her news. Time passed, and it was only when I asked her if she'd thought any more about baby number two that she told me she was more than 16 weeks pregnant. It was such a contrast with the previous pregnancy - this time I was the last to know. I was very hurt at the time and I'm embarrassed to say that I started crying as we spoke on the phone. Again, she had had some bleeding with this pregnancy and had been in and out of the early pregnancy unit having checks. She had been in touch 2-3 times a week throughout my cycle and had been so supportive, but had mentioned none of this. I was as much upset that I hadn't been there for her as I was because I felt shut out. Really, I was the one that was responsible for the wedge in our friendship - her reticence was an attempt to protect me, not to shut me out. I had not long discovered blogs at this point and that night, in some intervention by the universe (or whatever thing that is bigger than me that is out there - see above re religion) in catching up with archived posts on a blog I had just discovered, I found some words which possibly saved our friendship.

I had followed a link to a blog called "Cancer, Baby" written by an incredible woman who had been experiencing infertility and then discovered that she had ovarian cancer. Her blog has gone now, and so has she - I have never cried so much over the death of someone I didn't know, but then, by the time she died I - and all the others who followed her blog - felt like I did know her. Although I contacted her husband after her death to express my condolences and my admiration for her, as an inveterate lurker (this will have to change now!) I only left one comment while she was still blogging - to let her know how much that one particular post had helped me. She replied with a lovely email, thanking me and saying how much it meant to her to help others - like I said, an incredible woman. The post was called "The Girlfriend's Unguide to Cancer and Infertility". It followed one on how, when meeting a friend with new baby, she felt huge joy for her, but found the phrase "it should have been me, it should have been me" running through her head. The "Girlfriend's Unguide" post was on how help is given to us and how we receive it - how we have to meet our friends part-way in our attempts to have them understand and help us. These two posts rang so true for me and helped me to sort through my feelings and find a way to put them into words. I then emailed my thoughts to my friend (including a link to Cancer Baby's post). KS mailed back and quickly our friendship was as good as, if not better than, before.

B and KS have been through some of what I have and have been unbelievably supportive to me - without them to talk to, I seriously doubt I'd have remained sane through all this. The fact that even they have said things that have hurt me, when I know they would never in a million years say anything they knew would cause me pain, demonstrates how miscarriage and infertility can affect the perceptions of those of us who've been chipped away at by disappointment. When Jessica, the author of "Cancer, Baby" died, her husband and parents allowed her readers to print one copy of her archives before her blog was taken down and I treasure mine. Her writing was wonderful - witty, clever, compassionate and honest - and she helped a lot of people through her blog.

***edited to say: I had included a quote from Jessica's post here, but today I read an old post from another blog that said that her folks weren't keen on cross-posting, so I've taken it down.***

So It Makes Me Very Happy To Introduce To You . . .

2008-01-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

Points for anyone who gets the reference for the title! You have to imagine it sung by a frog - big clue ;-).

My second post and already I'm a lazy blogger (sorry Carrie!). I have to plead Christmas and the lurgy (two lurgies, in fact). Being a teacher - and especially an infant teacher - the end of the winter term gets a bit mad. There's the intensive artwork to make cards and presents for parents, practising carols for the end of term service, the party practices (yes, with 90 primary 1s in the hall at one go, practising games is necessary) . . . and, of course, the Nativity play. This year's Nativity went very well, thank you. One day, I'll tell you the story of the Nativity that led to me uttering the sentence "I dont have all day to go round tying shepherds' dressing gowns!" through gritted teeth - shades of Joyce Grenfell, and I'm sure any other teachers out there will have similar moments.

We went to stay with my husband's mum for Christmas. My brother- and sister-in-law were there with their 4-year-old and 8-month-old. The heating had broken down, my BIL and nephew (the 8-month-old) both had nasty bugs and I had come down with the school cold on the last day of term. I can only hope that my BIL went away with the school cold, because the day we got home I started suffering from his throat infection. Can't blame the baby - although I spent quite a lot of time helping look after him - more in another post on that joy. I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself, with the sore throat, tickly cough and bunged-up ears and sinuses and resulting dizziness and headache.

Well, that covers my excuses for the lengthy pause between posts. Now I'd best get on with the introductions promised in post number 1.

I suppose my husband deserves to go first, since he's my unwilling fellow traveller. I'm really not sure how to refer to him here. DH, like on the infertility/miscarriage boards I frequent? Mr H (as in Hope for the Best)? Curmudgeon Man, since that's what I call him when he goes into one of his "the worlds done me wrong" riffs? Actually, CM sounds good and pretty much sums up his attitude to the situation in which we find ourselves - hey, who can blame him?!

We met almost 7 years ago, in our early/mid thirties (me early, him mid). The story of how we met deserves a post on its own, so I won't tell it now. A big anniversary is coming - not CM's and mine, but a sad one that led to our meeting - and I'll tell the story then. Anyway - we got married a year and a half after we met and started trying to conceive 6 months after that and that's what led me here. He's about 2 years behind me on the whole baby thing. Right now, he's dealing with the losses and the anger and sadness that brings. I've been through that, on to the "what if it NEVER works" and the "life isn't worth living without a baby" and have reached the outskirts of acceptance . . . I think . . . tho' I have a feeling there are probably some backwards trips to make as we contemplate a donor cycle and the possible real end to our hopes [actually, I've just let CM read this, and he informs me he has recently arrived at "what if it NEVER works" - good to hear he's making progress]. I expect a lot - if not most - women who find their attempts to become mothers thwarted by infertility and/or loss find their partners deal with it all very differently from themselves. I have friends I've made along the way whose partners are very similar to mine - would love to have kids but right now would be just as happy to call the whole thing done and get on with being childless if it meant a quieter life with less doctors involved :-). They're basically supportive but dont quite "get" what we're experiencing. As CM pointed out, since we've never even made it to a scan that showed anything other than empty, all he saw for each pregnancy was a couple of lines on a stick and it was hard to get emotional about it. My mum made me feel better when she told me that she reckons that when she was expecting me, my dad didn't really believe she had a baby in there till I came out! What I'm trying to say is that, we love each other, we'd both really like to have a baby but I'm the one doing the driving here.

Since I've already mentioned them, Mum and Dad had better come next. They shall be known, for the purposes of this blog, as "Mum" and "Dad" . . . but without the quotes. I'm very lucky with my parents, and I know it and appreciate it more than I can let you (or them) know. They are 66 and 71 respectively, still married after 42 years and Mum is in good health and Dad has recently gone into remission from cancer. I have a good relationship with both of them. Mum and I have words now and again, like most mothers and daughters, but mostly we're just fine and she's still the person I go to when things go wrong; Dad and I bonded when I was very wee - he was studying as a mature student when I was born and when my sister was born he was my main carer for a while, so we're close. I have my mum's sense of social responsibility and love of art and my dad's sense of humour and love of gadgets. I'm not telling which bad bits I got, for their sake and mine. Since CM lost his dad in his early twenties and many of my friends' parents have split and/or died and others have troubled relationships with their folks, I know how lucky I am and, especially after our losses and Dad's illness, I appreciate every minute of the time I have with them. This all sounds a bit mushy and twee, but since I know how much it hurts me when people with children complain about them and only talk about the bad things that come with parenthood, I've become more aware of how important it is to those around us, who might not be as lucky as we are in a particular area of life, that we express the good bits. That will not stop me moaning about them on occasions, so please refer back to this post at these times (and if the bitching gets really bad, then please remind ME of this post).

I'm not really sure what Dad thinks about the whole baby situation, except that I know he wants me to be happy and that he'd be a really fab grandfather (as long as we didn't have a child that loved football - then he'd probably disown them). Mum has been lovely throughout - except if she thinks I'm indulging in self-pity, when she'll give me a boot up the backside. Sometimes, I think it's OK to wallow a bit, so sometimes she gets a boot back. This is where the tension? . . . irony? . . . in the situation occurs. Mum and I have a lot in common, mentally and physically, but here, where the most basic function of being female comes up, our experiences are totally different. She produced 2 children with the minimum of fuss and in a timely fashion and I can't manage one. And on some level, this means she can't get it. But she does try and I know that she wants us to succeed more than anything. I honestly think that if she were the right age, she would have a baby for me somehow.

The lurgy has come over me again - I need p*rac*tamol and a lie down. In the next instalment: my sister and my best friend. They deserve a post to themselves because, sadly for them, they DO get it.

Getting the Show on the Road

2007-12-14T16:54:00.000-08:00

So . . . my first post. After years of reading other people's blogs and thinking "Darn, I ought to get myself one of those things," I'm finally there. However, it's nearly 1am on a Friday night and, since I'm almost 39 years old and since I teach very small (and very active) children and since it's the week before the Christmas break, I am exhausted and totally beyond writing a proper introduction to my story. So I think all I'll post this time is an explanation for the name of the blog.

When we first started trying to become parents, I thought it would be simple and so I told a few close friends what we were up to (with the minimum of details). When I got pregnant on our first month of trying I told the same friends as soon as the (very faint) line appeared on the stick. Oh, how we laugh about it now! Schools are not the most private of places - open classrooms; nowhere to make personal calls (unless you lock yourself in the disabled loo ;-) - which is up a flight of steps!?); when you're absent your name appears on a board for all to see so that folk know you won't be going to specialist lessons etc. And our staff is a wonderful, lovely, caring bunch of people who know each other really well, look out for each other and are incredibly perceptive about when something is up with someone - and that is genuinely meant, without a hint of sarcasm. So after 6 losses and so many appointments at the hospital that we've payed enough parking money to buy one of the car parks, people know that we have issues. I'm pretty open about it, but it gets to the point where (a) people actually don't want that much detail, and (b) it's too depressing to repeat the pathetic story. So now, when one of my friends or colleagues who are in the know ask what our baby plans are, they get a vague sentence about still trying followed by the line: "You know, we just have to hope for the best".

Of course, there are exceptions. There are a few very special people who get to hear it all (whether they want to or not, on some occasions). If it wasn't for them, I think I'd just be a crumpled little heap in a corner somewhere. So I think my next post will be to introduce them (with names changed to protect the innocent - natch!).