The best I can do right now May 11, 2009

Item – And this is where I was this time last year.

Damn, eh?

Which is pretty much what I said to C the counsellor this evening.

Item – It’s been a strange day. H had a job interview for the job he’s been doing pro tem while they interviewed for a new member of staff to do the job that H is, like I said, doing already thank you. They told him later they couldn’t give any feedback on his interview, because it was absolutely perfect. Oh, and would he like the job? So hurrah! We are happy! Go H! And so on!

Item – And then we went for our counselling session and it was all ‘ohh, we’re happy – ohh, we’re destroyificated with anxst and gloom – hurrah, we’re going on holiday – gah, I want to bang my head on the wall for a bit – sob sob, dead baby dreams – wahey, progress from H on sharing feelings – bah, my boss is driving me nuts – arse, but everything is driving me nuts – sob giggle yay!’

Item – I’m knackered. You try being anxst-ridden and grief-stricken and delighted and ever-so-proud of your husband not only on the same day but in the same sentence.

Item – I think a lot of the anxst and bad dreams are to do with sheer, naked, self-widdling terror that I will never get pregnant again (don’t try to talk me out of it. I won’t be talked). It’s reached the point where I flinch when people mention adoption, fostering, surrogacy, donor eggs, and leaving all one’s money to one’s nieces. (By ‘flinch’, keep in mind I am normally ‘flinching’ out of the office, down the stairs, across the street and into the coffee shop. I’m going to get caffeine poisoning).

Item – On Saturday, we met up with some friends for a Nice Day Out. Which it was, I hasten to add, before The Bitching, Oy Vey It Commenceth. I had a fabulous day. My friends are a very special bunch of very kind, sweet, funny, loving people, and I would (and did) pay good money just to sit in the sun with them and talk drivel for hours. And I’m not just saying that because a couple of them read this (hi!). And now I can bitch. Well, whine self-pityingly, really. One of the group’s second child was born only a couple of weeks before Pikaia’s unfulfilled due date. My God, I could have had a baby strapped to my front too. I really could have. I should have. That size. Well, maybe not that size, as she seems to be breeding prop forwards, but still. And I have (privately, silently) had issues about her tendency to go on about how she doesn’t feel like a ‘Real Woman’ ™ because she had a caesarian for the first and some minor issues breastfeeding. Constant refrain in own head: ‘What does that make me then? A fucking replicant? Also, I’ve been cut open twice already, like I’d give a fuck if they did it again in exchange for a healthy baby.’ Why I have such issues (privately, silently) with someone I actually like, and in any case don’t meet face-to-face very often at all, is beyond me. I think it’s probably unfortunate that her pregnancies coincided with a) me realising I was as sterile as a bleached petri-dish and also bleeding to death (or at least, to very, very, very, very pale indeed) and b) Pikaia, or, what should have been Pikaia. I think I am projecting, or possibly doing transference, or both. Can you do both?

Item – Anyway. I have started on the Provera. Clomid cycle 5, the One With The Added Ovary And Still No Dice, is over. Thank fuck.

Well, nothing, really. May 3, 2009

Item: When did I last post? Dear God, it was only Tuesday? I feel like it was at least ninety-seven days ago.

Item: Busy-swamped at work – did I mention that? – and also I am applying for the second half of my own job, so flustered at work, must impress Alpha Boss.

Item: And then, and then, on Wednesday, we went out to a concert in the evening, and during the concert the day’s vague feeling of grouchy nausea became somewhat of a belly-ache, and I was becoming rather nervous on the train home, and because the gods decided I needed a teeny weeny break they did in fact let me get all the way home before unleashing the Dire Rear. Which led to a deeply unpleasant and boring evening trapped in the bathroom, and several emergency leapings-out-of-bed in the small hours, and Thursday spent curled up in a ball, too terrified to fart, and eventually very tentatively ingesting white rice and chicken soup (well, I am a bit Jewish, and if I believe in anything, I believe in Chicken Soup). To my horror, Thursday morning H was getting ready for work when whatever-the-damn-bug-was had a go at him too, so he spent Thursday quietly sat in the loo with his iPhone.

Item: *sigh*

Item: Went back to work on Friday, despite feeling somewhat… drained… and was terribly efficient all day. Also, have lost three pounds this week. Damn and blast, but gastroenteritis is effective.

Item: Saturday, out with friends. This was very nice indeed, also, see? I do to have friends.

Item: Sunday, was supposed to be out with friends, woke up with SODDING headache, spent most of day in bed again, fiddling about with my job application and generally feeling perfectly bloody. So we watched 300. Moral gained, if in doubt, push an elephant off a cliff. (Also, about the elephant thing, David Wenham is in 300, and he was also in Lord of the Rings. He could have told the Persians that war elephants just don’t bloody work. Honestly).

Item: I have my provera and all my extra clomid, and I’m all set to end this pointless cycle of pointlessness, but H and I did sums, and if I take the provera now we may well be on holiday the other end of the country when I shall need to be scanned (and on a double dose of clomid, why, yes, I would like to be scanned, thank you). If I wait until next weekend to start the provera, then I probably won’t be at the other end of the country when I need to be scanned. After much logic, calm discussion of pros and cons, and a great deal of counting on one’s fingers, I agreed it was probably best to leave the provera until next weekend.

Item: This is now pissing me off. One more week of waiting seems like a freaking eternity. Oh God, how badly I wanted to be pregnant again before the anniversary of the miscarriage. And now there’s no, absolutely none, no, chance at all of that. Fuck my life.

Will have been going to get back to you about that… April 28, 2009

I need to tell you about the party at Everyday Stranger‘s. You’ll have to put up with the information that We Seriously Partied. And I love everyone.

I also need to tell you about that insubordinate trollop Satsuma and her side-kick Kumquat pulling the old ‘we ovulated! No we didn’t! I can’t believe you fell for that!’ trick again.

And Monday night H and I went to see the Counsellor again and I spent the whole hour and more than the hour crying and trying not to shout at H, while H sunk lower and lower into his chair and got increasingly monosyllabic. That was fun.

Also, I am being buried alive in a pyramid of books and cardboard boxes at work. One day my colleagues will return from their holidays and dig me out. Or perhaps they already have, but I can’t tell because I am buried in my pyramid, and they will leave me in there forever because it keeps me quiet.

I’ll try this blogging thing again as soon as I can. Send a St Bernard with coffee.

Happy happy joy joy April 24, 2009

Item – We all now have to bow down and apologise to the Smug Bloke at the ACU. He may be a smug bloke, but he a) tracked Miss Consultant down and got a straight answer out of her, b) sorted out a prescription of extra Clomid and Provera for me, so I can pick the meds up from the hospital pharmacy in one fell swoop on Monday, and c) got back to me exactly when he said he would, to tell me all this. So, all hail the Smug Bloke, who actually does have something to be smug about.

Item – Upshot being, SB and Miss Consultant agree this is silly, and I should have a 100mg of Clomid a day cycle next, and, get this, be monitored again. Hands up who saw that coming! Well done!

Item – And this is the kicker. My charting software site has now decided I ovulated on Monday the 20th. What. The. Fuck?

Item – I don’t really think I have ovulated, you know. My temps have been up, yes, but I was ill, and OK, Satsuma hasn’t hurt a bit since Monday, and up until Monday was carrying on a kind of colicky vendetta against the entire Universe, and OK, so my cervix is now lowfirmclosed, and OK, the CM dried up, but it only dried up a bit, and is still being a bit, you know, slutty (as opposed to its usual permanently very slutty) (This is now way into TMI territory, isn’t it? And I shall have to look some of the people who read this in the face tomorrow (but see below)) where was I? Oh, yes. So, I don’t trust the chart. I don’t trust my own body. I however will not take the provera until Sunday May 3rd at the earliest, which will be the day I get my period anyway if I did ovulate, which I probably didn’t.

Item – Yes, H and I did It in the days leading up to the improbable ovulation. Hence ridiculous caution and waiting until 3rd of May.

Item – Ah yes. Exciting stuff, dear readers. I am going to dinner, to a proper, grown-up dinner-party, no less, at Everyday Stranger’s. With HFF and Bee Cee and HUSBANDS and we will chase them away Knights Who Say Uterus style. Only, we shall demand wine instead of shrubberies. Because we have common sense. And taste.

Don’t read this, it’s whiny. April 21, 2009

I am smack-bang in the middle of a fit of ‘I hate my life’ right now. And how do I hate it? Let me count the ways:

1. I am never never not ever going to get pregnant again. This one may or may not be true, but it is somewhat dominating the thought-processes at the moment.
2. Good Christ, but all the phoning and waiting and phoning and waiting and fossicking about and chewing one’s nails off and running about and phoning some more that one has to go through when all one really wants is five days-worth of Provera and enough Clomid to move up to 100mg a day for the remaining four cycles.
3. Also, if this is the ACU’s idea of close monitoring, they can etcetera etcetera with their own ultrasound machines – in fact, they probably are etceteraing with said machines. It’s not like they are using them on their patients.
4. I wish I had got to speak to Nice Lady Wand-Monkey instead of Smug Bloke. She may well have said exactly the same things, but she has never patronised me rigid yet, and iss very good at appropriating all the embarrassing parts of a conversation to herself, to spare me the need to say ‘ovulation’ and ‘OPK’ and ‘period’ out loud during office hours. Unlike certain other ACU employees.
5. A chance has come up to drop Old Part-Time Job and do Dream Job full time instead. However, I am having to apply, in full, with endless forms detailing all relevant experience and referees and everything, for, basically, my own job, that I have been doing for 10 months already, and have galloped through probation for with flying colours. Because, apparantly, it would contravene Equal Opportunity legislation for The-Powers-That-Be to simply extend my hours. So we must all waste a great deal of time and money putting out job advertisments and answering them and interviewing and shit, and seeing as, barring Acts of God and/or Idiocy, I’ll get the job, how freaking equal is it to enveigle unsuspecting members of the public into applying for something so very pointless? Unless The-Powers-That-Be are trying, politely, to tell me I am A Giant Heap Of Shit.
6. I went to work yesterday and today, in that irritating ‘I feel ill but not quite ill enough‘ state. We are very short-staffed and over-worked and I have been getting home almost crying with tiredness and aching all over. Do you suppose this could have something to do with my state of mind? I do hope so. Otherwise it’s back to the Giant Heap Of Shit hypothesis.

Oh, for fu… April 18, 2009

Hey! I have flu! Yes I do! What a lovely Easter gift! My head is splitting! So I can’t quite tell you all about the Fucking Infuriating Conversation I had with Some Smug Patronising Bloke from the ACU! But basically, no scan for me! No! My notes will be ‘put before’ Miss Consultant when she gets back from holiday! It’s all gone ‘Do nothing until you hear from us’! Me no likey! Ow my bloody head!

And back again April 15, 2009

Highlights, lowlights, and sidelights of the In-Law Easter Double Birthday Extravaganza, in no particular order:

- Sleeping on a fold-out sofa-bed in the living-room of your in-laws’ small house is… challenging to the shy and retiring. As, you see, there is nowhere to retire to. And there were people from three different countries and three different generations cantering about.

- Given that, it is not surprising that on being presented with an unexpected two hours all alone in the house with all other resident persons dispersed on assorted errands about the county, H and I found ourselves dans un position tres compromising on the living-room floor. Much as we had done when we were both eighteen, on the very same floor. Ah, memories.

- Said (wooden, uncarpeted) floor is a lot less forgiving on the knees when one is 33, though.

- I am sorry to have to report that by the time the resident persons reconvened, H and I both had our trousers back on and were sitting side-by-side, H demurely reading to me as I demurely wound yarn. I know this dreary lack of anecdotage is very disappointing, and we will try to do better next time.

- It takes nerves of steel to even so much as read emails and blog-lines, let alone blog oneself, when one’s Mother-In-Law has the unnerving habit of materialising stealthily behind one’s chair and chirruping ‘ooh, what are you reading then?’ in one’s ear. She has an uncanny habit of doing this when the thing being read contains the words ‘infertile’, ‘pregnant’, ‘fuck’, ‘my mother-in-law is driving me mad’, etc.

- Nevertheless, the dinners, teas, Easter-Egg hunts, and enforced conversations with relations who have grown two feet and quite a lot of chest hair since one last saw them, all went quite well.

- Dear God, but the fold-out sofa-bed is uncomfortable. I have a bruise – a bruise, people! – on my leg from just lying on the savagely uncompromising springs for four nights.  Why do you think we were doing it on the floor?

- No, I didn’t ovulate. I am very calmly, very peacefully, very reasonably, chewing my nails to the bone.

Into the dark April 10, 2009

Tomorrow is the 11th of April. On the 11th of April, 2008, I extremely grouchily began the stressed-the-fuck-out, I’m-doing-too-many-essays, like-hell-this’ll-work cycle that ended with the conception of poor little Pikaia.

And I haven’t ovulated yet this cycle. And I haven’t had a positive OPK. This is not a good time for Satsuma to go on strike; this is not a good time for my body to mess with my head.

Tomorrow we also pack up our favourite socks and go stay with the In-Laws for four days. I do not know if I’ll be blogging from the In-Laws, I mean, they have the innernets and all (and running water and gin, working gravity and an indoor toilet). Technology is not the issue. Manners are, as in, it’s not good manners to sit brooding darkly over the lap-top in the dining-room when everyone else is sitting in the sitting-room (natch) having delightful conversations and wondering why the fu-hey I don’t want to talk to them. So I may have to get through the whole ‘it’s been a FUCKING YEAR since I was pregnant and I am so angry and sad about that and about my body’s total inability to give me a break since then’ all on my own.

I’m so glad they have gin.

Take your time, why don’t you April 9, 2009

Day 23 of this cycle. Six days since I was told I had a 13 mm lead follicle, and it would ‘go’ in a couple of days. Ah ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Hah.

No, of course I haven’t had a positive OPK yet.

It’s very annoying to be right all the time. I did say it’d take a week, based on previous experience. So, you know, I should’ve got a positive OPK today, and I went to Ikea, where all the pregnant people live, and I survived and I have four washing-up brushes, five pairs of rubber gloves, four pillow-slips, two mattress-protectors, a canteen of reasonable cutlery and a 30-piece crockery set, also, low blood-sugar and mild dehydration, oh, and some towels, and I held H’s hand as we sprinted through the cots-cribs-and-cuddly-toys section, and I still haven’t got a positive OPK, and if I don’t get one tomorrow I will scream and throw things.

You just keep me hanging on April 6, 2009

Item: No, I have not ovulated yet. I told you ‘in the next 48 hours’ was optimistic. It once took a 19 mm follicle a further three days to pop. I ripen slowly, and this one was only 13 mm on Friday, so it could take, oh, I don’t know, a week?

Item: But H and I are at it like knives practically daily. Aren’t we good.

Item: We are making some progress on the counselling thing. We had a good session today, and felt all Achieve! Yes we can! And C got H to admit he was in denial, oh so very much so, Swimming With Crocodiles style, which I am sorry to say made me laugh and laugh (but quietly, to myself, heh heh heh, not BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!, because I was properly brought up). And we discussed just how nuts H’s side of the family is (very. Lots. Very very). It makes a nice change, not to be labelled the starkers bananas one in the relationship. It’s also good to understand H is a bit weird about his things what he is weird about because he and his family are starkers bananas, and not because H is on an I Shall Not Get It bender just to wind me up.

Item: Nevertheless, I am the Anxiety Queen at the moment. I am not sleeping. I am chewing my nails to the bleedening. I am screwing things up at work. Fun, huh? I was musing, today, for the prospect of seeing C makes me muse, on the anxiety thing, which has haunted me since I was a kid. It took me years and years to realise what I was feeling was, in fact, common or garden anxiety. When I feel it, it manifests itself as a kind of free-floating sense of shame and self-disgust, and it hunts about for something to attach itself to – ah yes! I buggered something up at work! Urgh. Shudder. The fact I spotted the embuggerment and gave up part of my lunch-hour to debugger it doesn’t get a foothold. It’s… wrong. I am wrong. I am wrongness personified. I spent from age about 8 to 28 feeling like this. Wrong. Sick. Bad. And do you know? It’s anxiety. It’s purely triggered by anxiety. I am not wrong, sick, bad. Not really. I’m actually quite cute. But as soon as something worries me, I assume the Mea Culpa Mantle with heart-breaking rapidity. Whyever the fuck do I do that? What the hell did my parents do to me? Why can’t I pinpoint it exactly?

Item: Anyway, this post has become very intense and gloomy all of a sudden. Shall we cheer the fuck up? Yes, let’s.

Item: Easter is to be spent in the bosom of the In-Laws. I’m not sure that is cheering me the fuck up. Four nights at the In-Laws, on the World’s Most Uncomfortable And Rickety Bed. Please God Satsuma will have popped by then. The idea of doing the Conception Shagathon on that bloody spare bed in the living-room with H’s parents right overhead is, oh well of course, making me anxious.

Item: Oh, yes, H said he could quite clearly see a definite surge in my anxiety levels just before ovulation. He thinks it’s hormonal, therefore. He has, however, carefully explained that that doesn’t mean the things I am anxious about don’t exist, or that my anxiety is somehow not valid. Just that the hormones aggravate it. I find this slightly embarrassing.

Item: I thought we’d agreed to cheer the fuck up?

Item: Cherry blossom. We shall think about cherry blossom. The trees in the local park are pink, and the one in the park near work is white. They are astonishingly lovely. There. That’s better.