For Pete’s Sake July 30, 2008

You know, the plan, to get the third clomid cycle underway, and so forth, involving provera, what with own body flailing about in hormonal limbo? Yes. Well, no, I haven’t taken the provera yet. And why have I not done this? Well, everytime I leap up to retrieve the little white box from the top of the fridge, Satsuma also leaps up and grabs my wrist, crying: ‘No no no, I can do this, I know I can do this. Look! EWCM! Extremely low temperatures! Migraine! I’m ovulating any minute now, I promise!’ And I, like the tomfool banana-brain I am, give her the benefit of the doubt. Hey, I even pee on an OPK (always, astoundingly, amazingly, negative) to humour her. And then I have to wait three days to see if she means it or the OPKs change their little white minds, and nada, obviously, and I leap up again shouting ‘That’s really it! I am totally taking the provera RIGHT NOW!’, rinse, repeat.

So, following the two hottest nights of the year, my BBT has managed to drop to 35.72 C. Seriously. It was pretty much that in the bedroom. An I were not typing this at you now, I’d assume I was a corpse cooling to room temperature.

And then, this morning, my temperature was considerably higher than it has been for ten days. So, either I ovulated (ah hah hah hah hah), or I am coming down with something (hah. And, again, HAH), or the heat of the weather has finally penetrated my carefully constructed insulating blanket of lard and will now take another ten days to percolate back out again. I begin to see why the NHS ACU will have no truck at all with fertility charting.

So we’re waiting for another three days. And THEN we’ll take the provera. And I will not be fooled

One thousand times you cared July 28, 2008

I announced there would be a 1000th commentator presentation, and then I, err, well, vanished. You see H and I went down to stay with the InLaws for the weekend, and I ran out of pre-train-catching blogging time. And at the InLaws there is no bloggy privacy (I’m sure they’d be perfectly happy for me to sprawl all over their broadband. I’m not perfectly happy for me to leave history trails in family browsers. You know, with phrases like ‘ovary’ and ‘cervical mucus’ and ‘I will actually hide in the bedroom when the mother-in-law does the washing-up, and surreptitiously rinse the mugs and inspect the cutlery again when she’s not looking‘). So I was shtum for a few days, and also lying under trees while admiring passing kestrels and eating tomato salad like a civilised human on holiday. And good Lord, but the countryside smells nice in the summer; I’d practically forgotten hot weather doesn’t have to smell of tarmac, petrol fumes, sweat and dog-shit.

Back to the Great Stink, and the sweaty everything. Luckily hot weather never lasts for more than a week in Blighty. And especially, back to our 1000th commentator!

The special person who landed the special place was…..

…drumroll….

….Robyn of Kore Chronicles! Robyn found her way here through the great NaComLeavMo Event, and has since been charm and kindness and wit itself in her comments. Her blog is a beautiful photographic record of daily life, in all its weirdness, elegance, humour and poignancy. Everyone who reads this, go over to Robyn’s place and have a look. It’s very much worth it. Here, Robyn, is your Gold Medal and bouquet of tulips (I happen to be partial to tulips at the moment) and a big hug. Sorry about the sweaty everything.

And everyone else who has commented on this blog, you may not get medals, but you too can have your choice of hugs (not recommended until the weather changes), hand-shakes (probably a safer bet), blown kisses (I do these very cutely) and offers to buy any of you a drink should you happen to be in my neck of the woods.

Hurrah for the Internets! I am all verklempt.

This hurts me more than it hurts you July 24, 2008

Umm. Look. Umm. I need to clarify something. It may be my own silly fault for being snarky about Ms Squeaky the Slightly Pregnant Over-Sharer in the last post. But still: -

I am very glad people like reading my blog, and very flattered, but, wishing miscarriages on people, even unbelievably shrill and over-excited skinny women who have been pregnant for, ohh, seventeen seconds? Not on. Sorry. I am sure you meant well and were empathising with me, but I’ve recently had a miscarriage myself and it (the miscarriage) was so fucking horrible and sad. Your comment, dear Megnath, was rather a jab in the solar plexus. I know you didn’t mean it to be. So I am very sorry to make your comment the start of a CLARIFICATION (and a librarian’s clarification is a Thing Not To Be Sneezed At (and yes, I do get like this at the dinner table too)).

1. Pregnant women are the most beautiful things on God’s green earth. Yes, it is true that the sight of a pregnant woman will make me anything from mildly wistful to deeply morbid, depending on the weather, but, and this is important, pregnant women don’t make me miserable. They merely remind me that I am miserable, and that is hardly their fault.
2. Yes, I do wish people were more restrained, less public, more thoughtful about their reproductive habits, at least in coffee shops. And I worry, yes, really, worry, that the naive excitable ones will get smacked down (as well as the old stabby-stabby to the heart thing because I am not one of them). It’s worrying about them that makes the stabby-stabby so very stabby. Don’t they know? One in four? The risk? Saints protect the poor idiots, but where have they been living all their lives, under a rock?
3. But that naive excitement is so lovely. Just think, in a world where pregnancy is often a disaster, unplanned, unwanted, unloved, a happy one! And if I have to be smacked upside the head every day of my life till I die by happy excited squeaky and-we-weren’t-trying people, so be it. I’d rather that than ever wish my barrel of reproductive crap on anyone else.
4. So, please, by all means wish that Ms Squeaky and her infuriating ilk learns that parenting can be Rather Hard, and wish that she gets a clue and some perspective on other people’s lives, and also some manners, because there is never never any good reason to talk about your vajaja in your Outdoor Voice in a freaking coffee shop. And snark and bitching is the very air I breathe, or, at least, caffeine I thrive on. But no wishing actual disasters on others, please. Not on my blog. I don’t really like being made to cry before breakfast.

None of the above self-rightous trumpeting changes the fact that it can be very painful to have my poor face rubbed in other people’s pregnancies. Heigh ho.

1000th commentator, I will talk about you tomorrow. For I know who you are, and you are a 24-carat sweetheart, and you should have your own happy post.

Edited to add: You know, I was going to make this post a LOT longer, originally. But then I felt a migraine coming on (another one! WTF? And also, I really must go and see the GP about this) and had to go find my horse-pills and maybe drool and walk into things for a while. Horse-pills worked quite well this time, thank you, but inability to see much all across one side of field of vision fucking annoying. Anyway. Better now. And I’m eating chocolate ice-cream, which I’d highly recommend to all present as a most soothing activity.

Points I wish to add:

1. Firstly, everyone reading this go hug Megnath right now. OK? Big hugs. And I am so very very sorry.
2. I want to apologise to Megnath for taking her to task. I can cheerfully blame it on the incipient migraine, but that would be snivelly of me. I should have noticed that her original remark was made from a place of great sadness and bitterness, and instead I took it to heart and got wound up and thought about ME ME ME. ME! MEMEMEMEME! and how I felt. I am sorry. Please stay.
3. In my defense (I snivelled at last), I never said anyone was a bad person and I did acknowledge that people meant well etc. I really did. Look above -see? And I stand by that. This was about why I can’t cope very well with certain reactions, and not about any given person being bad.
4. To clarify the clarification, I was, inadvertantly, the annoying person ‘revealing’ in public, back in the month of May. I was less than six weeks pregnant. I was in a café, a very busy one, and I was with a friend, and I took a swig of coffee without thinking, and I promptly threw up in my mouth, with all the resultant choking and grimacing and trying to swallow it back again without gagging (not successful), and that got everyone’s attention, most of all my friend’s and he was deeply worried about me and so I had to explain I was, err, you know, p-word, only I had to shout a little because the café was noisy and he kept saying ‘what? Sorry? Didn’t catch that…’ And if an infertile and sad person had been anywhere in ear-shot (and they might well have been, because 1 in 10 couples etc.), I would have royally fucked them off. And then I started bleeding again, so.
5. In my family, experiencing Bad Sad Things does not make a person even so much as a smidgeon more compassionate. In fact, they tend to use their Bad Sad Thing as an ace in the giant eternal family game of One-Down-Man-Ship, and get really narked if you try to offer any insights along the ‘when that happened to me…’ line. So I am very deeply in the habit of not wishing a taste of crap on bloody annoying self-centred people, as I am pretty sure it makes them even more annoying and self-centred and now you’re not even allowed to slap them upside the head anymore. I’d rather they got no aces at all ever (and I keep all the slapping privileges). So I have a certain aversion to the idea of wishing my crap on others for, actually, selfish ME KEEP ACES, thank you, reasons.
6. But God, I wish there was a sure fire way of spreading compassion and thoughtfulness among the populace. I think the bitter desire to have someone go through the same crap as you is born out the agony of realising so very, very many people just don’t give a fuck. And that hurts. More than words can adequately express. It’s not about wanting them to suffer, so much as wanting them to damn well understand, and have some respect, and if the only way they’re going to get it is by going through it, well, we’re all human enough to think of it sometimes.

Right. And now, we shall all be friends. Group hug. I insist.

A thousand thank yous and/or complications July 23, 2008

As I was peregrinating blogland, as I do from time to time, I noticed a thing. I have my own blog dashboard – no, really! – and it is telling me that I shall very shortly, unless you all decide you can’t bear me, be receiving my 1000th comment. Cool, huh? I will be looking out for the 1000th commentator very carefully, and I am wondering what on earth I could do to them to celebrate. Cry on them, knowing me, she added cheerfully.

Meanwhile, the madness becomes infectious – H (yes, I know, a husband!) is now hypnotised by my Cycle of Mysteries and has taken to encouraging me to pee on OPKs. All of which are coming back resoundingly negative, nay, buggeroffish even, thank you for asking. But the confused delay in taking provera is not bothering me overmuch – it occurred to me and my handy little desk-top calendar at work that if I leave the provera until next week, I wouldn’t have to worry about testing for, you know, resulty results, until after I hand the dissertation in, and that might just about save my marriage, if not my degree.

Incidentally, very behind on the dissertation, because of the Month Off For Doom-Laden Purposes. Curses.

If I ever start flicking wistfully through a university post-graduate prospectus again, please, someone, snatch it off me and beat some sense into me with it.

P. S. Found myself in a coffee shop queue at lunch-time behind two remarkably skinny young women, one of which was squealing to the other at the top of her remarkably shrill voice that she hadn’t even been trying yet and her husband was so thrilled and they’d always wanted a large family and her parents were going to buy them a push-chair and they hadn’t even been really trying and it was amazing and she’d better not have any coffee of course and she didn’t even feel sick yet and it was amazing. And I stood there thinking, how very un-British of her to tell the entire coffee-shop, and also, she was clearly gestating a bat and training it to echo-locate in utero because really, the squealing. And then I went back to the office and was hugely unproductive all afternoon.

Doesn’t work like that July 22, 2008

I meant to say some things. I meant to say lots of things. But I seem to have broken the special net on a long pole I use for trawling dead leaves out of my subconscious, so let’s go with some things.

Item: HFF Wifey (hello!) asked me about Vallombrosa. I’m sorry to puncture any Bhuna-fuelled bubbles, but growing up in vine country is not all it’s cracked up to be. That sunshine thing? A little effing much when it has been 37 degrees Centigrade every damn day for a month, the well has dried up, you haven’t been able to wash your hair for ten days, and you and your sister are walking to the spring twice a day with bottles just to fetch drinking water for five people. And then you still have to do all the boring tedious farming things involving stupid uncooperative live-stock and manure and being bent over double in the kitchen garden thinking your brains will be cooked to tablet but you have to pick the tomatoes right now as the grocer’s van will be here at six… Then it’s Autumn, and it rains and rains and rains and the mud is ungodly and the sheep escape. You’re picking potatoes and walnuts and apples and you fall out of a tree and your mother puts the garden fork through her foot. And then it snows, and you have to pick olives in the frost, 2000 trees, by hand, before it thaws and the rain comes back and rots the crop. And then it’s spring, and it rains again, and the sheep all go and give birth in it and the kitchen is full of half-drowned lambs. And then the heat comes back…. So no. I wouldn’t advise moving to Italian vineyards unless you are HORRIFICALLY wealthy and can afford staff and a pool and air-conditioning and mains water. I am very jaundiced and also very firm about this. Not idyllic. Britain nicer. Really. I swear. Even if there is no such thing as an edible tomato in the entire island.

Item: My Friend Who Knows Who She Is deserves an honourable mention, for calling me the day I posted the Post of Gloom (ooh, over a week ago now. I am evil-bad scatty these days) just to, you know, talk to me. Because I sounded in need of a talk. Which was perfectly correct, and is perfectly adorable of her. You know who you are – thank you.

Item: H’s toe is so much better now. It’s, get this, it’s the same size as the other one. Not all the bruising has faded yet, and it still aches at the end of a day, but he did actually break it so this is normal. And better than normal. Hurrah!

Item: I woke up on Sunday and realised I felt better. Part of this must have been finishing the bloody case study, admittedly. But I definitely felt… better. Less angry. Less miserable. Less hopeless. Before we go mad and start firing rainbows out of our arses here, I fully admit I am still pretty pissed off I had a miscarriage, I still look away from pregnant bellies because they fill me with wistful yearning – and that can thoroughly interfere with crossing the street in safety and comfort – and I still feel narked and painfully left out during out-breaks of baby-talk. But my horrid little damp cave of bat-droppings is not really me any more. I think I might go and park myself somewhere up an alp, and look superior, serene, and unreachable. Also – Aphra – Duchy Originals, obviously…

Item: And therefore Satsuma and the Cute Ute (heart-shaped! The dinkiness!) are ganging up on me. I started spotting a couple of days ago, and feeling the dull herald of cramp. Ah, I said to myself, the mere mention of the word ‘provera’ has set things in motion, I see, and I will soon get my period, and probably have to take clomid at the InLaws, and accidentally become an avatar of Beelzebub at the tea-table. Whereapon, Cute Ute took it back, and has gone off to visit my diaghram again. Satsuma is either practicing cross-stitch, or sniggering herself silly, for what, oh what, was that all about then? Was the cramp ovulation pain? No? Why not? Why spot? Why not spot now? And my temperature dropped very very sharply. It normally only does that during Arctic winters or just before I ovulate. Or, occasionally, for fun. This of course will initiate a few days of frenzied temperature-taking, cervix-checking, and second-guessing. And at the end of that, no doubt, I will be popping the provera as, really, it has been seven weeks and while I know Satsuma has once or twice gone twelve or thirteen weeks before surprise! Eggs!, I can’t be arsed with this.

Item: Aha! But there is another hand to be on! Do I really want any kind of two week wait to coincide with finishing my dissertation? Do I? Because that’s what I seem to be asking for. And just because driving myself to the brink with deadline pile-ups worked last time, doesn’t mean I care to try that again. And I seem to have found yet another hand – I don’t really want to go too much longer without a period. I still think Cute Ute needs a good scrub-down, whatever contrariwise thoughts she may have on the matter.

Ummm, is that it? For the moment. Until I’ve brought a length of metaphorical bamboo (grows nicely in mixed plantings! Never needs watering!) and sorted the special net out.

Edited to add July 19, 2008

Ah ha! Ah bloody HAH! I have finished the Case Study! I can hand it in on Monday! It is Officially No Longer My Problem!

It will, however, be my tutor’s problem, because I hacked and I hacked and I re-wrote and I swore, and the sodding thing is still 732 words over the agreed limit.

Heh heh heh. At least he can’t accuse me of not doing enough work on it.

Tonight we drink Whisky&Ginger and watch things on the telly. Tomorrow we cook things in bulk for the freezer, watch all those DVDs littering the living-room as thick as the Autumnal leaves strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, and snog the husband (incidentally, when I was growing up, I could see Vallombrosa from the bathroom window. Though this has nothing to do with snogging my husband).

Tuesday, back to the grind-stone. Dissertation to do. Of which we will cease immediately to think, as it interferes with the whisky and crap telly.

Brief interlude? No can do. July 18, 2008

I have nearly killed the Case Study Beast. Really. It’s so extremely late that my tutor is going to look at it and at my eager desperate grin, and sigh, and hand it back to me, and close his study door very firmly and very finally in my face.

It gets worse. Despite the Writer’s Block (Extreme Version – Platinum Edition) and the desolate weeping and the lack of proper references and the gnashing of teeth and the *ahem* depression thing, and despite staying up til 4am last night to try and finish it, and despite the shocking migraine that that dumbass plan gave me and despite spending this morning clutching my forehead and walking into door-frames, I somehow wrote 4009 words where I needed to write 3000. There is a word for this kind of ineptitude on a majestic scale, but I can’t think of it off-hand, and anyway, must sharpen my shears and hack a big enough hole in it all to fit in the vital last paragraph in which I try to explain that I do have a clue, no really. And I don’t think I even wrote it in English. In fact, am I writing this in English? And is gin good when editing? Yes?

Anyway. In the midst of this morning’s lop-sided puffiness and staggering-in-circles while the horse pills kicked in, kicked out again, kicked in, fell over, the ACU got back to me.

Ah, yes, because, weren’t we trying to get pregnant? Didn’t I leave messages about this some time long long ago before the Case Study caught me in its bull-dog jaws and shook me like a rat?

Anyway. I explained to the nurse, who, incidentally, had my notes during this conversation and therefore did not ask tomfool questions, that I wanted to leap back into the saddle, but Satsuma wasn’t cooperating, and I knew this because I chart my temperature and Other Fertility Signs RELIGIOUSLY, and was it OK to take the provera I still had from, oooh, February, I think, when I was prescribed it in case I failed to get a period all by myself before Clomid 1, the which information Satsuma took as a personal challenge? I don’t think I phrased it quite like that to the nurse. Anyway. She was gearing up for an answer when suddenly she asked me to hold on, and proceeded to hold a discussion about me with a passing consultant, which I could half-hear (so irritating, as I am very nosy, and am I really ‘one of the clomid girls’?), and then picked up the phone again to confirm that yes, I could go ahead, take the provera, take the clomid. I didn’t need a scan because I responded so text-book well last time. But she’d book me in for a further consultation in any case, err, the earliest date for that would be end of September, and I could get a further prescription for Clomid then if I needed it.

If? Ah hah hah hah.

‘Umm, so I don’t need a scan or bloodwork through this cycle?’

‘Nope. Just call us when your period starts, so we can mark the cycle down in your notes.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yep.’

Ummm….

‘Oh, and be sure to take a pregnancy test before you start the provera.’

……

……

Bwahahahahahahahah.

Is it me, or does the NHS have no idea what fertility charting is or how it works? No? Thought so.

And then I went and peed on an OPK and a pregnancy test, and lo and behold, each was negative and lily-pure. As expected.

When H came home to his headache-raddled, slightly over-caffeinated and manic wife, who still has to somehow – did I mention? – remove 500 words from her work while at the same time ever so carefully inserting another 200 or so that make sense, we had a sensible discussion about timing. Oh, and H had brought me flowers, because I’d had a hard week. Not just any old flowers either, no, he’d picked out ones I particularly LIKE and got the florist to make up a bouquet for me from scratch. Literally, as it had sea-holly in it.

No, you can’t have him. He agreed to marry me, the fool, and I’m not letting him out of my clutches.

Where was I? Oh, yes, discussing timing. Upshot, no, I do not start 5 days of provera at once, because I might end up getting my period next weekend and next weekend we are staying with the In-Laws, and I might quite like to enjoy the weekend, a sensation incompatible with my uterus’ guerilla emptying technique. No. I start taking the provera in the middle of next week (and yes, H did look vaguely troubled and asked me if provera was one of the drugs that made me psycho, because me + psycho + in-laws = hideous social embarrassment as he tries to pry my teeth out of the table-leg and all he did was ask me if I wanted more tea). Which means I rather wasted today’s pee-sticks, but we brought another eighty bazillion cheapies  off the internets the other day as OPKs in proper pharmacies are so expensive they may as well be gold-plated, so ha ha! I can pee on things for fun now! And guess what google searches that last sentence will bring me!

So. You know. Back to it in, say, two weeks time. Clomid Take 3 – Once More With Feeling.

Oy.

Right. Where’s my garden shears.

Deadlines make for bad blogging July 17, 2008

I must finish my case study.

I cannot think of a single sentence I want to write in my case study.

I nevertheless must finish my case study.

I’m sure you’d all rather I was talking about my cervix, my inability to get the ACU to call me back this week, the total no-show from Satsuma, and all and any other freaked out feelings regarding ponying up for Clomid 3 – Once More With Feeling. Hell, I’d rather be talking about it. But I must finish my case study. So please excuse me for another few days while I wail and scream and generally act like a three-year-old being hauled past the sweetie display in M&S.

(What in fucking fuck possessed me to start working full-time before I’d finished studying full-time? And, more to the point, why did I go back to work so soon? Answers on a comment form please).

(Also, please pray for my benighted husband. He has to actually live with me at present).

Organum Infelix, or, why I am such very bad company now July 13, 2008

I’m trying to finish a long-overdue case-study. I got a polite email from my tutor the other day, wondering if, well, frankly if I had died or something, what with there being still no case-study in his in-tray.

Oops.

I’m not dead, exactly, but I do seem to have broken a vital component. That bit of May which makes her a) want to write and study and do well and solve all the problems of the universe and cure the common cold and run up Ben Nevis every day before breakfast, and b) give a toss.

Unfortunately, I have not broken the component that makes May sit about eating chocolate.

*sigh*

I am sleeping a bit better, thank you for asking, mostly due to the tender ministrations of booze (absinthe, even! Inner Goth is in heaven!) at the weekends. But it does occur to me that I am a leeeeeeeettle depressed. Yes, really, it occurs to me! Did it occur to you too?

We don’t do depressed chez May though. No. We don’t. We were depressed before and didn’t like it one bit and now we fight! fight! fight! and will not be depressed and the insomnia and apathy are symptoms of Modern Urban Living or, possibly, chocolate poisoning. Or so says the Positive Thinking Fairy. Meanwhile, Bitter McTwisted says that she jolly well is depressed and wants to go and live in a cave, prefereably one that she can be sealed into by a sudden rock-fall, complete with bats, and lick damp lichen for sustenance.

Positive Thinking Fairy: But you have nothing to be depressed about! Nothing at all! Everything’s lovely! You have a promotion! You have a nice husband! The family party was fine!

Bitter McTwisted: *points wordlessly at everything that happened between mid-May and mid-June*

PTF: But that was a month ago! And you’re physically all better!

BMcT: Physically better? Physically BETTER? PHYSICALLY? *argh foam thrash flail*

PTF: Well, I know Satsuma is not feeling cooperative these days, but these things take time, and she’s almost certainly doing her best, and it would help if you laid off the refined carbohydrates and did some more exercise, you know…

BMcT: It’s raining. I exercise by walking, and it’s raining. It has rained here in Blighty every bloody day for over a week. Or do you want me to catch double pneumonia, chafe my wet feet raw, and dissolve the contents of my satchel into a fizzy puddle of print and Rennies? (Oh, yes, and the heartburn and indigestion is playing up again).

PTF: There’s that lovely elliptical trainer right there in your living-room! You could even watch telly while you exercise! You just have to take all the clean laundry off it!

BMcT: *vigorous hand-gestures*

PTF: Well, if you’re going to be like that about it, then we shan’t discuss exercise any more.

*Pause*

PTF: Well, why don’t you have a nice chat with your friends? That should cheer you up!

BMcT: I don’t have any friends… *foam thrash flail whimper snivel*

PTF: Oh come now, what nonsense. What about E? And V? And S? And the Internet Weirdo Clan? And the Nice Bloggy People?

BMcT: Oh, alright, I do have a few friends.

PTF: Lots of friends!

BMcT: But I can’t talk to them.

PTF: Whyever not? They’re your friends! They want you to talk to them! They want to be there for you!

BMcT: And all I want to talk about is how much I miss Pikaia, and how badly I want to be pregnant again, and how scared I am of being pregnant again, and how scared I am of never being pregnant again. And YOU were the one who said it’s been well over a month and I should be over it and feeling better by now, and I’m not feeling better at all, and talking to me will be not just a downer but the very pothole of downer and then, and I hate myself for this bit, but still, then, they will change the subject, or tell me to cheer up and look on the bright side, or try to tell me of course I’ll get pregnant again and last time was a fluke and next time will be fine, and some of them will be embarrassed, and some will simply not see why it’s such a big huge fucking deal in the first place, and some will simply not know what to say and will be so sad for me, and I will want my little dark cave and my lichen and my pet bat. After I have beaten the more chirpy ones to bloody pulp, of course.

PTF: But I tell you to cheer up all the time! And you haven’t beaten me to a pulp!

BMcT: Solely because it’s very hard to beat a figment of ones’ imagination to pulp, especially when one is also a figment.

PTF: ….

BMcT: And anyway, there are pregnant ladies out there. I feel like Banquo’s Ghost, shaking my gory locks. If I join in pregnancy/ baby talk but say nothing about Pikaia, I hate myself for acting like it never happened. If I mention Pikaia, I feel like such a fucking gloomy whining downer.

PTF: Then talk about something else! Join in with the other conversations!

BMcT: But I want to talk about Pikaia. I feel like I’m losing her (I always thought of Pikaia as ‘her’) to oblivion. I don’t care that she never really existed. She was there for me, and most of my experience of pregnancy has been loss and sorrow, and it’s all vanishing and becoming increasingly unreal, and I may never be pregnant again, and even if I am, Pikaia was due on the 16th of January 2009, and no other baby I can have ever will be, and the longer this goes on, the more it becomes my personal private delusion and the less existance Pikaia ever had, and I can’t bear it. I can’t.

PTF: Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re not the only woman to lose a baby. And in the grand scheme of things, one early miscarriage, even with complications, is no big deal. There are so many people out there who’ve borne far worse far more bravely. So cheer the fuck up.

BMcT: See? See? I’ve even broken the Positive Thinking Fairy! I can never go into society ever again! Cave! Lichen! Chocolate! Now!

From the back of May’s To-Do list July 8, 2008

Dear Colleagues,

I am fine. So shush. Just, shush. Especially you with the bad back that flares up when and only when I’m loading boxes onto trolleys. I believe you. I don’t care if I don’t believe you. I am built like a Manningtree ox. I can manage the damn boxes.

Also, Dear Line Manager, please don’t make me email you every single bloody morning to prove to you what time I got into work. I know I am still ‘on probation’ for the new job, but I’ve been working here for two and a half years and if my time-keeping needed slapping about a bit, someone would have noticed by now. Can we stick to probating me on relevant things, like talking about football, self-restraint, and ability to spot stray semi-colons at fifteen feet.

Best wishes, your very very fine, no really, fine, dammit, colleague May.

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Dear Satsuma,

I am sure you are doing your very very best to ovulate, at some point. In fact, you’re probably getting into your track-suit and doing push-ups and stretching exercises and so on right this very minute. I’m sure you are. Indeedy. Nevertheless, please let me have a distinct update on the situation by this time next week, or I shall call the ACU and together we shall cosh you into oblivion with provera and start again. OK? OK. Great.

Your very grateful, no, really, host body.

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Dear Inside of May’s Head,

Please let me go to sleep. Please. I can’t be answerable for the resulting mayhem if I don’t get a full night’s sleep soon. I haven’t slept through the night since the end of May. I am tired and stupid and headachey and black under the eyes and everyone at work thinks I’m in the final stages of galloping consumption. One more dawn from the wrong side and I will rip someone’s arm off and beat them to death with the soggy end. No, I don’t know who. Anyone.

Best wishes, the rest of May.

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Dear H,

I am happy to cook and wash up and everything. Even when I’m tired and flustered and developing heart-burn. Really. Let me cook. And let me get the plates from last night. And sit down. I can manage. All I want is to be told I’m marvellous for managing. You’re making me feel guilty, shuffling about the kitchen trying to help. I said sit down.

See? Now you’ve stubbed your broken toe. Owie owie owie. Quite.

With all my very deep and loving love, your adoring wife.

P.S. And kindly take note of the bit about sleep deprivation, side-effects of, above.