As for physically… May 15, 2012

The problem with an infertility/RPL blog, in which no one is in active treatment, and all we’re doing is desultory timed sex followed by rage and ick as The Period turns up, also anxst and wailing, is that it’s not the most fascinating read in the universe. Where’s the narrative arc? Where are the engaging new characters at the doctor’s office, the dramatic tension, the crossed fingers, the do-or-die all-or-nothing flinging oneself at medications and surgical procedures, the did-it-work, the will-it-stick?

I feel I ought to apologise for just circling this stake at the end of my tether for, oh, months now. Since the surgery in November which was so amazingly pointless.

Me, I am losing weight very slowly – partly because I caught this dreary cold and I kept the (really quite startlingly painful) sore throat at bay by a steady diet of tea and ice-cream for several days, and partly because it’s the luteal phase and I ALWAYS gain up to five pounds during my luteal phase and I ALWAYS lose it again during the first three days of The Period (not least because I can’t eat a damn thing). However, I am losing weight. And hope to be able to call Miss Consultant and get myself on the NHS IVF waiting list again by the end of May. Fingers crossed. Positive endearing grin and thumbs-up gesture.

It helps if I remind myself I’m losing weight to meet silly arbitrary NHS rules, rather than because I need to be thin or I’m Not Worthy. I remind myself of this three or four times a day, at length, and then chant my favourite little mantra: ‘All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well’ several times.

This kinda gets blown out of the water when I read/hear/see anything about women noticeably larger than I am getting pregnant, especially if they have several children easily, or, equally, if they had no trouble getting reproductive medical assistance. Not because I grudge these women their children or their good doctors at all – like I said, weight is not and should not be a Human Worth Issue. But because, if they can, why can’t I? Why?

At least I have the moral satisfaction of knowing that endometriosis and adenomyosis are nothing whatsoever to do with one’s weight, and are just as likely in thin women. As are blood-clotting disorders and auto-immune issues. So there, to those who insist that all I need to do is lose this arbitrary smidgeon of weight. So. There.

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will bloody buggering be well, Goddamnit.

Anyway.

I’ve spent the past two days (four if you count the somewhat miserable weekend) at home, because this stupid cold came with a stupid low-grade fever and a stupid persistant cough and my boss is immuno-compromised and has a tendency to shriek and send people home again if they come anywhere NEAR her with a cold. It’s given me time to sit about doing absolutely nothing, and of course that gave me a chance to have a good panic about missing so much work again (The Period is due on Sunday, therefore I’ll probably miss the first two days of work next week as well, not least because I think my boss’s reaction to collapsing and vomit will be even less equanimous). And suddenly, mid-anxst, it occurred to me that I’d be actually not that bloody bothered if I lost my job. I mean, it’d be a pain, and difficult to find a new one, but really? I could finally sort out the books and the paperwork and work on my novel and finish my poetry project and keep the house a bit cleaner and cook more often and finish H’s winter pullover (the one on teeny needles, as H doesn’t like bulky sweaters) sometime before Christmas 2014. Gosh. Mellowness. On that subject at least.

Lesser knowledge May 6, 2012

Item – I’m letting H have the final (well. Final for the moment. Finalish. Non-final. Punctuational) word on the matter of feelings and expressing them and to whom and how and why and whether it’s any help at all to do so or not or what. It seems only fair. He says he’ll post tomorrow. At the moment he is emailing my mother about private IVF and has therefore earnt all the brownie points a man can earn in one evening.

Item – Meanwhile, we’ve both been busy and/or stressed and/or royally pissed off at work. H for good reasons involving tight deadlines and screwy budgets and peculiarly demanding but under-informed clients. Me for stupid reasons involving my giving too much of a crap about whether procedures are followed correctly, having to share an office with people arguing with each other about seniority, and my boss’s absolute, persistant, four-years-and-counting obsession with the fact that every now and then I am ten minutes late for work. I am working up the nerve to tell her I’m not paid enough to be responsible for the train company’s maintenance schedules on top of my own work. As it is, I have a fairly unpleasant panic attack every single morning that the trains fuck me about. My boss claims that my being ten minutes late ‘on such a regular basis’ (I think she means, every few weeks the trains fuck up for a week and I’m late maybe twice that week) makes me look like I ‘don’t care about work’. This is what bothers her. I should be glad it’s not my missing three days of work a month, I know, but I work late several times a week even on days I’m not late. I volunteer for extra training and responsibilities. I take on procedure-writing duties. I give talks on library skills. I am generally acknowledged to be the go-to expert of the team on four different subjects-areas. I can, and have, catalogued a seat-cushion. I ‘don’t care about my work’ indeed. I am so offended.

Item – But she’s right, you know, just a tiny bit. I do my job to the best of my ability because I’d feel scuzzy taking the money if I didn’t, and because I do care about my particular field of expertise, but yes, I’d dump the whole lot tomorrow and skip chortling into SAHM-land, waving my last pay-check like a jolly little flag, if only I could.

Item – Oh, and H has another bad cold. Another! He’s only just got over the one that arsed up our holiday at the end of March. I’m going to complain to the management, so I am.

Item – I, meanwhile, am not having bad colds. I am having desultory hay-fever (the one good thing about the utterly craptastical weather we’re having this Spring), so my eyes, nose, lips, and throat all itch all day long, and, err, that’s it. Oh, and I will now give myself horrible gas and diarrhoea if I eat wheat, it seems. I get a mild stomach-ache if I so much as eat the wrong brand of soy sauce. Oh, Universe, just why don’t you sod off.

Item – Given that my immune system has spent the past five years becoming thoroughly unreasonable, H and I are investigating various private providers of IVF who also do immune testing for RPL.

Item – And I showed H how to access my cycle charts online – you know, my ovulation/menstruation charts, which I keep religiously because I am one of the few people I know for whom charting really works in that I actually need to know when to expect my period so I can barricade the doors etc. and charting gives me at least ten days’ warning which is so freakin’ cool also unpunctuates me utterly – where was I? Yes. I showed H the charts, and he had a good look, and worked out what he was looking at (all the little green squares and cross-hairs), and then he drew my attention to a couple of cycles in the past year that looked worryingly like chemical pregnancies. Yes, I know. I worried myself sick those two months. But I didn’t get a positive pregnancy test for either of them, therefore I have not drunk and seen the spider*, and therefore they don’t count. I refuse, I categorically refuse, to up my count to nine. I won’t. They didn’t happen.

Item – H is getting over his mental block about IVF. He even said, today, that he was coming to terms with the fact we probably weren’t going to get pregnant naturally again. General feeling that we are sidling onto the same page again, though alas, poor H, what a thing to have to come to terms with.

*…How blest am I
In my just censure! in my true opinion!
Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accurs’d
In being so blest! There may be in the cup
A spider steep’d, and one may drink; depart,
And yet partake no venom (for his knowledge
Is not infected), but if one present
Th’ abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. A Winter’s Tale, II.i.

Mother****ing Sunday March 18, 2012

It’s not the best day of the year for the childless infertile woman, Mother’s Day. In Britain, we hold it on the fourth Sunday of Lent (i.e. today), and its roots are all entangled with Mothering Sunday, which was originally the day in Christian Europe when people who had moved away returned to their ‘mother’ church – the church where they were baptised – for a thanksgiving service in honour of the Virgin Mary. Of course, most people didn’t leave their village or town for generations, so not many people needed to do this. Later, in Britain at least, it became the Sunday servants were allowed to go home to their families for a little holiday, and that’s when it got inextricably linked to the idea of going to see one’s mother and celebrate her. When the celebration was revived during the First World War, it became explicitely about celebrating motherhood, and the original celebration of one’s first church and congregation got completely swamped.

Other countries hold the whole schemozzle in May. As the USA does this, and wherever America goes, Britain follows bleating like a lamb, we now seem to have two Mother’s Days. This one, where British mothers get their glitter-and-pasta-shape cards, breakfast in bed, and if they have sufficiently guilted prepared their partners, flowers and gifts, and the ‘internet’ one, where every fertile woman in Blighty joins in the FuckBonk memery and ‘copy and post this if you’ve ever…’ nauseating shite, for the sole purpose, as far as I can tell, of making all their childless and/or motherless acquaintances feel like a bucket of fermenting shit for the day.

So hello! Welcome to Bitter McTwisted’s Angry Festival!

(I’ve sent my mother a card. I am getting her a gift. I am grateful I have a mother I can send cards to. Look at me not letting Bitter McTwisted piss on anyone else’s day. I’m so good).

Every few weeks, H and I go out for brunch on a Sunday morning. We’re lucky – we live in walking distance of five good places to get splendid brunches, and given that I have totally, unconditionally, utterly banned H from getting his iPhone out at these meals, we actually get to chat and argue about Art and Politics and make each other laugh. This morning, H suggested we go out, as is out want, and just as I was scrambling out of bed it occurred to me: we live in Young Families Central. The last time we went out for a meal on Mothering Sunday it was like being dragged naked and screaming over a red hot microplane grater made of other people’s families (also, we got the shitty table in the corner with no flowers. Hell, yes, I’m bitter). So… we stayed in. You could say, in fact, that we skulked.

H spent the morning setting up his (technically, our, but All Shiny Thing Belong H, because though we eschew gender stereotypes chez nous with every fibre of our left-wing woolly-liberal hippy granola beings, well, I knit, and H likes fiddling with electronics) brand new can-talk-to-the-internet (it’s magic!) stereo. This caused a cascade of Things That Need To Be Updated And/Or Reset. This caused quite a lot of internet outages and non-workingness. This caused a bit of a row about the iTunes thingy H updated the permissions for on my lap-top weeks ago after I complained that it didn’t work for months, which of course still didn’t work because, remember, I switched lap-tops a few weeks ago, and the new lap-top also needed the permissions updated. Umm. Anyway, I lost my bloody mind and burst into tears, because it’s Mothering Sunday (bear with me (no, of course it’s not ‘bare with me’. Do I want us all naked together? Emphatically I do not. It’s bear, as in endure, put up with, have patience with. This is your grammarian public service announcement from blogland)).

I have an, eh, issue, shall we say, with people who allegedly know their shit telling me that whateveritis I am vapouring about isn’t a problem, or is already fixed already!, or dealt with in whatever way, while I stand there whimpering ‘but it doesn’t actually work! It really doesn’t!’. H, bless his Fix All The Things! little mind, has a bit of a record in this department when it comes to things electronic, because he really does know his shit and I really don’t. However, I do know when something’s not working, on account of not being an eejit who can’t tell the off-switch from the contrast button.

I also have an issue, of the huge, never-to-be-resolved, variety, with many doctors who, since I was fourteen, have told me my problems with very irregular periods, severe menstrual pain, and that awful lump I was sure I could feel in my lower abdomen, were variously, normal, all in my head, caused by constipation, and nothing to pester a doctor with. And so I lost my left ovary to a dermoid cyst or teratoma the size of a motherfucking grapefruit, that twisted, ripped my ovary in half, and gave me septicemia. Since then, I have had doctors who dismissed my increasingly-painful-even-on-the-pill periods as ‘not possible’, doctors who dismissed my weight-gain, acne and hairy upper lip as caused by my being lazy and over-eating, doctors who dismissed the fact I didn’t menstruate for nearly a year after coming off the pill as ‘one of those things’, doctors who kept telling me the reason I couldn’t get pregnant was because I was fat (and nothing to do with, say, anovulation and a collection of polyps all bleeding away like Iguazu), the reason I couldn’t stay pregnant was because I was fat (and nothing to do with, say, a blood-clotting disorder), and who when Clomid made me anovulatory said ‘huh’ and made me try Clomid again, even though it made me anovulatory, and doctors who didn’t bother to check my FSH/oestrogen balance on the right day of my cycle until I’d been in treatment for six motherfucking years (which proved my ‘fatness’ wasn’t, actually, fucking up my ovulation at all), doctors who insisted visit after visit that IVF would not help me get or stay pregnant, and all the while, time ran on, time ran out, I am 37 in May, and if, oh, if only someone had paid me, actual me who lives in this body and who has always been saying ‘this isn’t right’, some respectful attention, do you think I’d be nearly 37 with no children and seven dead ones and one ovary and a pelvis full of scar tissue and a womb agonisedly bloated with cysts and scars and misplaced endometrium? Not one of which issues had a motherfucking thing to do with the size of my arse?

So, yes, I lost my mind, I screamed at H, I cried. Mothering Sunday is a triggery bitch.

Acceptability March 15, 2012

Item – I didn’t go to work today either. I got up twice in the night to rearrange my sanitary arrangements (seriously, the hell, Cute Ute? Turn it off). I am still pale and in pain (FUCK).

Item – I did, however, drag myself to the Hospital Out In The Countryside to get my Day 3 (day 2 to 4 will do nicely, thank you, according to Miss Consultant) FSH and oestrogen blood-tests. I discovered that if you go late morning, rather than early morning, you don’t have to sit among a regiment of pregnant women waiting for scans and passing the time by bitching to their mothers about how their boyfriend (who isn’t there) only has to look at them yada yada. Phlebotomy shares a waiting room with Maternity, you see, as ACU shares a waiting room with ear-nose-and-throat and, no doubt, leprosy shares with mental health and the artificial limb clinic shares with the renal unit. The place was deserted, anyway, and I was seen and punctured at once by my favourite vampire (he makes the vampire jokes), who is very, very gentle and quick and never leaves bruises. As I left, I told him he was the gentlest phlebotomist I’d ever had, and he said, twinkling ‘oh, dear, do I need to do it again?’

Item – And when I got home I lay down on the bed to rest for five minutes and woke up two hours later. Oh well.

Item – Anyway, I’m going to work tomorrow even if I end up passing out in the middle of the stacks. If no other reason than to remind my superiors that I really am sick as a proverbial.

Item – I have not allowed so much as a crumb of wheat (or gluten) to pass my lips for three-and-a-half months and are my periods ‘better’? Are they buggery. The last two have, in fact, been spectacularly, pointedly, worse. Nor am I happy miraculous pregnant. Nor is my skin any better. Any point continuing with gluten-avoidence, think you, oh wise Internets?

Item – As a macabre little plus, four days of nausea and eating maybe two rice-cakes and a little chicken broth every 48 hours has led to me reaching the elusive BMI of Under 30. I give it until I have an actual meal and promptly pop back up to Obese, but still. Nearly time to call Miss Consultant and get the Mills of NHS grinding on Project IVF.

Item – Oh, hey, do you think I’ll be allowed to call myself a proper infertile then? Because, you know, I’ve found several blogs over the years that all set out to tell the world one can’t possibly be a proper infertile until one has had IVF.

A daimen icker February 16, 2012

Item – Hello. Life goes on. Aten’t dead. Tralala.

Item – Valentine’s Day was nice. H and I gave each other chocolate from the same fancy chocolate store (that was amusing, swapping identical gift-bags). We took the afternoon off and went to an exhibition, happily geeking out together. H gave me a sweet card. I wrote him a poem. (BTW, writing poems will get you laid on Valentine’s Day. Word). We are probably making you feel a little ill. Sorry about that.

Item – I didn’t go and get my oestrogen/FSH test on day 3 of my cycle, because a) it was still snowing (making public transport Officially Tiresome), and b) I still felt like shit. Next time, eh?

Item – My mother and I were invited to dinner by an old friend of hers (that, is, an old friend of my mother’s), ostensibly to see her daughter (I was friends with her at school but hadn’t seen her for about ten years (she moved to another hemisphere and got married, you see)) who was back in the country for a couple of weeks. My school-friend has a very beautiful toddler, who, despite the fact her body-clock was completely cockaleekie with jetlag, behaved adorably for the entire refusing-to-go-to-bed evening. And the scenario was, friend and I would talk incessantly with hand-gestures about all our old mutual friends and acquaintances, also our respective spouses and no doubt about the beautiful toddler, while our mothers talked about their respective mutual friends and acquaintances incessantly with hand-gestures also amiable grandmothering anecdotage. Good plan, eh? I was mostly uneasy at having to fend off the ‘where are your beautiful toddlers?’ queries while being stuck in a room with My Mother The Overshare Queen. Actually, in the end, what ganged agley was my friend’s mother, who talked so very much, so very dominantly, that the rest of us got not a word in edgeways. Not. A. Word. It was a bravura talkathon. I think she must have been breathing through her ears. And she talked exclusively about Fascinating Things She Did In Her Younger Days. Don’t get me wrong, they were fascinating things and she is quite the adventuress, but, I swear, the rest of us said nada. And I have no idea what my old friend is doing for a living, or how any of our mutual acquaintance are, or if she likes Doctor Who or anything and what’s more, she hasn’t a clue what my husband’s name is yet. I wish now I’d turned to her and said ‘I saw a pub just round the corner. Quick, let’s run!’ Eheu.

Item – Oh, wait, apart from the bit, a couple of drinks in, when my mother and her mother discussed all the adopted children (now grown up) they know of who have massive psychological problems. I have no idea how they got onto the subject (I had gone to the loo) and I had no idea how to get them off the subject, and, seriously? the issues? were nothing to do with being adopted, poor kids, and pretty much everything to do with having been adopted by jackasses. Point surprisingly hard to make, considering that my hostess was friends with a good handful of said jackasses. So I discussed Sesame Street with the beautiful toddler instead, and we agreed that Big Bird is really big, also yellow, and this is very funny.

Item – H and I are going to my mother’s for the weekend. Where we will do a dance workshop (the fuck? when did I sign up to that?), and also meet new baby cousins. As I am grouchy emotional Lord of the Dorks at the moment, I predict this will end in Awkward.

Item – I have nothing to say about IVF at the moment, not because I have no opinion, but because I have about 27 flatly contradictory opinions and 56 caveats to boot. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Phase change February 9, 2012

On Tuesday we, H and I, went back to see Miss Consultant for my post-surgery now-what appointment.

I’d've written about it sooner, but my period turned up a day early and proceeded to trample me into the dust of the carpets (literally (as in, yes, really. Also, we should hoover more often)). I don’t know if it was a spectacularly bad one anyway, or because it turned up early I didn’t transition from mefenamic acid to diclofenac quickly enough (I normally take mefenamic acid the day before I start, and then switch to the diclofenac when I bleed, but it was early, so I was taking only the mefenamic acid when the bleeding ramped up, and ohhh, God Almighty), but I ended up lying face down on the floor, unable to stand up because the muscles in my left thigh had gone absolutely rigid with cramp, groaning, sobbing, speechless, and vomiting. H in the end tucked hot-water-bottles round me and a blanket over me and sat on the floor next to me for a while, stroking my back. Eventually the drugs kicked in and I went to bed. I didn’t sleep much. The pain had abated to not-vomiting, but it was still bad enough to keep me awake, counting the hours until I could take another dose of diclofenac and more tramadol.

Today I feel a lot better. I even ate half a mug of chicken soup with rice, and drank several cups of tea, and I haven’t been sick again. I feel like I’ve been beaten with baseball bats and I am so tired I keep dozing off, but so much better.

So that put rather a crimp in everything.

(I am very annoyed it hurt so much. I am also very annoyed I can’t really tell if it actually was Really Bad, or because I screwed up the medication plan which Must Not Be Screwed Up. Honestly, I’ve learnt that the hard way before. *Head-desk*. Whereas if it was Really Bad, then what the hell have I been ignoring wheat for for over two months? Gah).

Anyhoodle. Miss Consultant’s post-surgical what-next consultation. For which I was not late, despite the best efforts of public transport. Huzzah!

First, Miss Consultant was pleased I’d lost a little more weight since she’d last seen me. I didn’t tell her it’d've been more but for the January ricepotatosugar-athon. I just smiled demurely.

We then admired my insides – well, Miss Consultant and I admired my insides. I think H was admiring the ceiling tiles. We went over the details again – normal healthy-looking ovary with no cysts (that’s what regular(ish) cycles will do for a gonad), nice clear fallopian tube, inside of uterus very good with no polyps or damaged areas of lining or fibroid intrusions. On the other hand, said uterus is ‘globular’ and was too big and in-the-way for Miss Consultant to get her instruments in under it, and there was a leetle patch of endometriosis or two in there. You’ll be relieved-and-bewildered (I know I was) to hear the patch is really quite tiny. The nasty squashed strawberry photo I saw right after surgery was an extreme close-up. So Miss Consultant was of the opinion it wasn’t interfering with anything at all, and that the significant cause of my extremely painful periods was actually Cute Ute and her giant bloater adenomyosis problem. Or, possibly, the small patch of endometriosis has found a main nerve to colonise, given the FORTHELOVEOFGODKILLME level of pain a trapped fart can cause at the wrong time of the month.

We then discussed the fact I haven’t been pregnant for an entire year despite regular cycles and regular sex (I may have only hinted at the regular sex. H was sitting right next to me). And, well, how did we feel about IVF?

We feel we are fresh out of other options, to be honest.

So we discussed what we needed to do to get back on that bandwagon. Miss Consultant’s clinic can’t do IVF for me, because of my geographical location, so she will have to refer me to another clinic absolutely fucking miles away. I was referred to them before, years ago, before I started getting pregnant all by myself and the NHS took IVF back off the table, and was ‘discharged’ for being too fat. So Miss Consultant worked out exactly how many more pounds I had to lose to suit their criteria, and as soon as I’ve lost them, she’ll refer me. She also decided to check my oestrogen/FSH balance, and see if my ovary is still in reasonable nick.

My last oestrogen/FSH day three blood test was taken a year ago. It was perfectly fine. My oestrogen was not too high and my FSH was 5… somethings, which is very well behaved of it. The women in my family tend not to go into menopause until their mid-to-late fifties, and several had spontaneous babies in their mid-forties. So hopefully, it will still be reasonable now. Hopefully? I’m hoping now? What is this, optimism? I must be high. If it stops bloody snowing, I shall go to the clinic tomorrow and get the test done right away.

(Yep, it’s snowing again. We’re actually having a winter! Imagine!)

H and I discussed it on the way home. Do we do this via the NHS? Do we see if we can get referred to Miss Consultant’s clinic rather than this stupid effin’ miles away clinic? How long is the waiting list these days? Do we at least look at going private? Is OHSS really a big worry (H is terrified of it)? Do we really want to do this? Do we really want to reach our forties and think ‘well, we didn’t try everything…’.

Miss Consultant was very sweet as we were leaving. She mentioned we’d known each other a long time now, and she’d like us to stay in touch whatever we choose to do. Made my leathery pinched heart swell.

Right. Diet and exercise. Just as soon as I can stand up without trembling.

Tick Tock December 4, 2011

So, some of you noticed the new ticker. Yes, it’s just down there, on the right. Yes, I have totally put my current BMI on it. Oh, come on, you all knew I was fat. I’ve been whining about being fat since I started the blog. And all I’ve managed to do about it is scramble from Really Fat down to Quite Fat, with the odd back-track and sit-down-for-a-rest.

Admittedly, Satsuma appreciated the lifting of just that tad of lard from her work-space, and has set-to with a will now she has the elbow-room.

But, yes. I want to be Not Fat At All. BMI Absolutely Normal So Shut Up Doctor.

And why? Well, because my ovary and fallopian tube are not blocked, or otherwise embuggerated, and because Cute Ute, despite being a monstrous bloated excrescence, has a nice interior (just like the Royal Festival Hall in London (which also contains the Saison Poetry Library, which is one of my favourite places on Earth)). Therefore the causes of the infertility/miscarriages are either a) the PCOS, b) the endometriosis, c) my age, or d) unholy trifecta. (Not forgetting the bonus-ball clotting disorder).

Let me elaborate. You like it, really:

PCOS – as we know, causes hormonal and blood-sugar imbalances, which makes ovulating that much harder, and implantation that much trickier, and the delayed ovulation means higher levels of FSH and oestrogen, which can damage the DNA of the maturing egg, which also leads to fertilization problems, implantation problems, and miscarriages. However, as I now tend to ovulate less than a week later than ‘normal’ (ie day 14), the lateness of the ovulation is probably not a huge factor any more. And my hormones can’t be that deeply enfucked, if we’re all getting together to do the egg-tossing-dance on time on first try every month. A tad enfucked, as evinced by my shortish luteal phase (which is allegedly ‘not short enough to be an issue’ but I don’t trust it), yet not utterly enfucked. At this point in time, all I can do about the PCOS and any remaining hormone/blood-sugar problems, is go back on the low-carb diet that works for me (well, it works for me because it lets me eat cheese, and because I lose weight on it when I don’t cheat, and also it facilitates going gluten free (but see below)), and get my weight down to Normal, Thank You. Hence, ticker.

Endometriosis and probably adenomyosis as well because OK, adeno may be the red-headed step-child as far as research and support goes, but it’s basically endometrium in the wrong sodding place too – Well, the first thing I did on getting my attention-span together was google treatments for endometriosis that didn’t involve Mirena coils, lupron, hysterectomy, going on the Pill, etc. I.e., treatments that would keep me fertile (hahahahahah fertile, oh, May, you card). Oh, yes, I could get pregnant. Apparently pregnancy and breastfeeding are in no way a cure, but they do give you a year off, as it were, which is nice, and some women have fewer symptoms afterwards. Some women. Only some. Anyway.

The other thing that kept bobbing to the top of the Ocean of Woo was gluten avoidance. Coeliac sufferers are well known to be more prone to miscarriages, a tendency that ameliorates considerably when they avoid gluten. More recent research shows that full-blown Coeliac Disease is not the only form of gluten intolerance, and there seems to be a connection between gluten intolerance and endometriosis. They are, after all, both variations on the theme of inflammatory auto-immune disease, it does not startle me that there is a link. And my entire family are cursed with auto-immune disorders (Crohns disease, asthma, eczema, arthritis, ankylosing spondilitis, cancer, type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, psoriasis, sarcoidosis, Sjögren’s syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and, oooh, oooh, I know this one! Endometriosis!), so the fact I too have (another, I have eczema (also more common in women with endo (did you know men can get endo? Usually after hormone treatments. So bollocks (haha) to the ‘retrograde menstruation’ theory))) auto-immune disease makes me go ‘Huh. Figures’.

As to the effect endometriosis is or is not having on my fertility, all the reading I did came up with two main schools of thought. School A thinks that endometriosis is only an issue if it’s actually covering the ovary and tube, directly interfering with ovulation and blocking fertilization and making ectopic pregnancies more likely. After all, women with endo get pregnant all the time. In which case, my Voyage to Woo is about my (increasingly parlous) quality of life. School B, however, thinks that endometriosis, being an inflamed and inflamatory condition, creates a sort of puddle of toxins around the reproductive organs even when it’s nowhere near the ovaries and as the poor egg floats from ovary to fallopian tube it effectively gets poisoned, leading to an increase in failed conceptions and miscarriages.

Oh fuck.

So I am giving up gluten. It might help. If it doesn’t help, I will be Very Cross.

Oh, and some people with gluten intolerance find it makes it very hard to lose weight, and suddenly lose pounds and pounds when they go gluten free (though, honestly, this may be due to the non-consumption of Cake and Biscuits and Pasta and Bread rather than the metabolic regulation of avoiding a toxin). Hence ticker.

Because endometriosis makes, might make, getting pregnant so much harder, and staying pregnant so much harder, IVF is back on the table.

After all those doctors telling me, visit after visit, month after month, that IVF was pointless in my case and would be of no use to me.

Yes, I know. It’s a fucker, especially after all the times I went to bat for my doctors and claimed that they must know what they are doing, when they say IVF is pointless for the likes of me, in the face of many commenters here who kept telling me it was The Only Way, but there it is. We didn’t have all the facts. Now we do. IVF is back on the table. First person to say ‘I told you so’ will make me cry, second person to say it will make me hurl furniture about.

So, I need to lose weight to do IVF, should it come to that. Hence ticker.

Also, I am 36, and though I technically was granted an NHS-funded IVF cycle a couple of years ago, back-burnered for when I lost the weight etc., the NHS, like all publicly run institutions in Britain at the moment, is being bent over a barrel and done viciously in the rear by the current government, who seem to think that if you can’t afford to pay for it you’re sub-human anyway. My funding may well have evaporated, and now I am 36, and over the ‘official’ age the NHS funds IVF up until. The least I can do is not be overweight as well as fucking geriatric.

You peeps do know I was 29 when I started trying to get pregnant, don’t you? 29. That’s not old for a first baby. That’s sensible. Damn it all to hell.

Anyway. There’s the ticker. Just in case knowing the internet is watching helps with the ol’ willpower. Especially as it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

(I hate Christmas. I’ve managed two miscarriages around Christmas in the past couple of years and this year we’re Doing Family).

Current thinking July 3, 2011

H is actually wondering whether being made redundant isn’t really one of those ‘blessings in disguise’, in that it’ll bounce him into making some fairly major career/life-style/ambition changes. And bounce me too. Especially given that I am Not Entirely Enamoured with my current job and concomittant life.

You see, the plan was, when I hit 40, to Stop. By 40 we’ll either a) have a kid, or b) have reached the absolute end of biological kid road.

[Yes, I know many women can and do get pregnant and give birth safely in their 40s. But I a) will have already given ten years to Project Genesis by then, and seriously, enough already, there's more to me than refreshing my gene-pool, and b) probably won't hit menopause until I'm in my 50s, like my dear mama, and I can't won't shan't spend my 40s in increasing total fucking agony and incapacity. Like I said, there's more to me than reproduction, and it'd be nice to focus on that instead. And c) I'm a 'habitual' miscarrier now. With even staler eggs, in perimenopause? I'd be an obsessive compulsive miscarrier. No. Just, NO.]

Where was I? Oh, yes. The reason H and I are doing these our current jobs, living this life, saving money, yada yada, is because we were planning on having kids in our 30s, and wanted the security of incomes, and paid parental leave, and ability to choose (for me) whether to parent full-time or work part-time (which I could do at current place of employment) when said kids had the grace to show up. When we hit 40, either we’d have the kid(s), in which case all bets are off, because crap knows how parenting and work and finances would work out (how can we know? We’ve never tried it). Or we’d have no kids, and I would be putting a stop to any chance of having any via my reproductive tract (Mirena. Hysterectomy. That sort of thing (I can’t fucking live like this for another 15 years. I can’t. I bloody won’t)). And in that case, we both were planning to re-evaluate our lives anyway, and turn our attentions to our other loves, passions, and ambitions, which may or may, crucially, not, include working seven or eight or nine hours a day, every day, with huge commutes, on and on, for ever and ever, in jobs that aren’t especially creative or challenging (in my case) or are endlessly bogged down in bureaucratic faff and pointy-haired bossishness despite the interesting nature of the actual work itself once you’re allowed out of the endless cycle of stupid pointless meetings to do any (in H’s case).

So, rethinking may well have merely popped up four years early.

*Thinks furiously*

Like I said, we both have quite a lot of money saved, and if H is pushed overboard, it’ll be with a little life-raft and a cask of water.

*Chews nails off*

Ow.

So H and I are making lists (lists are good. All the illusion of control and organisation, with none of the fuss of actual exertion. Bonus, you might actually do something that’s on the list, and then you get to feel smug and really organised).

This all makes IVF even more of a moot point. I know I have come across as quite pissily anti-IVF sometimes (for me. I’m not pissily anti-IVF for you. I know that IVF is a brilliant, clever, and wonderful thing, and for a lot of us infertiles, a hope, a chance, the best thing to do, and a Godsend, all in one ball). The idea of spending all that money (I no longer qualify for NHS assistance) for the exact same chance of getting pregnant and a statistically identical chance of miscarrying again? According to an internationally renowned expert as well as according to my NHS gynaecologist? (No, we don’t have REs in Britain. Well, we do, but we don’t CALL them REs, so please, no more kindly-meant emails about getting myself referred to an RE. Thank you).

But I’ve always been aware that I might stop getting pregnant on my own. I might stop ovulating again. One of my doctors may well sigh, and say that actually, diagnostic IVF might be a good idea after all (I’d freak at this point. I’m thirty-fucking-six. NOW it’s a good idea again? After having been a bad idea for FOUR FUCKING YEARS? But I digress). In which case, we had savings, we could do said bloody buggering arseing what-the-fuck what-the-hell IVF.

However, if H is made redundant and we Change Our Ways, we’ll need the savings to live on, so IVF utterly is off the table forever.

Hmmm.

I thought this would make me hysterically anxious (hysterically! Get it? Yes? Oh, never mind). Oddly, it makes me feel relieved. Fewer choices. Less pressure. We’re doing our best and that is, after all, enough.

And when we’re 40, and have finally evicted the Infertility Elephant from our lives, we might, then, possibly, let in the Adoption Elephant. When we’re 40. When we know if rewiring our lives from scratch has worked or not. When we know we can consider it wholeheartedly.

ABC of all about me May 25, 2011

I’ve seen this meme on many blogs recently, and rather liked it. Also, it’s a good way of gathering the threads for any newer readers (I am guessing I have them, because my stats keep slowly rising. Hello, newer readers! Thank you for reading!). Also also, I am feeling lazy but talkative.

A. Age when you started TTC: 30. H was 31.

B. Baby Dancing or Sex: Sex. FFS. The one night that H referred to it as ‘baby-dancing’, we were both smitten with such intense nausea and snark that we couldn’t.

C. Children wanted: I’d always wanted two. Now, one would be a miracle.

D. Dogs/Cats/Fill in Children: We work long hours, also rent and our landlord doesn’t allow pets, or I’d have a dozen cats by now.

E. Essential Oils/Vitamins/Snake Oils: Prenatal multi-vitamins and fish-oil (carefully choosing the non-vitamin-A brands) for me, and a ‘pre-conception for men’ multi-vitamin for H. Mostly because he takes a multi-vitamin anyway and this one comes on sale in double-packs along with my prenatal vitamins. I have also tried: herbal medicines (did nothing at all for anything), acupuncture (seemed to regulate my cycles, did nothing for the menstrual fucking agony despite the practitioner’s promises, or the miscarriages), essential oil massages (well, I smelled nice).

F. Fertility Meds I’ve taken: Clomid – worked for three cycles, then made me anovulatory despite ever-increasing doses for the next three cycles. Provera, to bring periods on, and also, at first, to get them to bloody stop. After that, I started ovulating all by my self anyway. Last summer, I was told to take low-dose aspirin next time I got pregnant, as I have a clotting disorder (but not one of the usual ones). However, the two pregnancies after that were ‘chemical’ (ie caused by defective embryos, as my sticky blood didn’t get a chance to interfere before I lost them, and anyway, I was taking the sodding aspirin), so we’re still waiting to find out how well that will work. Hmm. After two years of trying I morphed from Infertile Girl to Habitual Aborter, so fertility medications aren’t really an issue for me. Before anyone mentions metformin, read next letter.

G. Gain: I was really quite chubby when we started TTC. I put on a fair bit of weight after miscarrying for the first time, because I tend to eat my feelings, and good golly, but I had a lot of feelings to eat. I now weigh about a stone less than I did when we started TTC, but am still overweight/borderline obese. My doctors think metformin can cause more problems than it solves, and prefer me to carry on using will-power and common sense. Seeing as that when I apply them, I DO lose weight, I think they may have a point. People with PCOS and severe insulin resistance may find will-power and common sense really don’t help and they will need medical assistance, I agree, but just because you’ve heard of metformin or tried it and found it helpful doesn’t mean it’s right for me so kindly don’t tell me I should be on it (but see pet peeves).

H. HSG (Hystosalpingogram): Three. The first, after bleeding for four months straight, showed polyps and a possible hydrosalpinx. The second, under general anaesthetic while removing the polyps and a mass of adhesions caused by previous surgery, was fine. The third, after my first miscarriage left me with a severe infection, was possible mild hydrosalpinx according to the radiographer, and absolutely perfect according to the gynaecologist. I’ve been pregnant several times since, so…

I. Infertile Pet Peeves: Nobody dares say ‘just relax’ to me any more. However, I have a list of these as long as your arm: 1) Being told what medication/treatment/eating regime I should be following. Especially by people who don’t know the whole story. It’s one thing to say ‘I tried X and it worked for me, have you considered it?’, and quite a fucking ‘nother to say ‘you should try X!’ or, worse ‘Why the hell hasn’t your doctor prescribed X?’, especially when they go on to imply my doctor is being ignorant or tight-fisted, or blame the NHS for the lack of provision of X. (Don’t make me come over there and tell you exactly what I think of American health provision. I have friends in America who have to choose between the medication that is keeping them upright and functional and feeding their kids. That simply does not happen in Britain). It never seems to occur to said people that I am not taking X because it’s not a good idea for me to take X. End of. 2) “At least you can get pregnant” (Not even vaguely consoling the first time. By the seventh time? An arsehole thing to say if there ever was one). 3) “There must have been something wrong with it” (Yes. It implanted in my shitty uterus). 4) “Lots of people have really early miscarriages and don’t even know they’re having them!” (Yes, but I did know. So fuck off). 5) Anyone trying to make out that having a newborn is harder and worse than having a miscarriage. 6) “Wasn’t there anything you could have done to prevent the miscarriage?” (Oh, yes, dozens of things, I just couldn’t be arsed. What do you think? Did you even think? Bitch).

J. Job title: Book hamster. Information professional. Will catalogue your ass.

K. Kid’s names you’re afraid will be taken by the time you can use them: One of my many brothers already took ‘Beatrice’, which had been THE girl’s name for me since I was 21. So H and I have made a much longer list. Surely they can’t all be nabbed in the next four years?

L. Length of time TTC: Five and a half years, more or less.

M. Miscarriages: Seven.

N. Number of times you’ve switched OB/GYNS, REs, FSs: I don’t switch, I accumulate. I have seen/am still seeing 2 gynaecologists specialising in infertility, 1 gynaecologist specialising in IVF (we don’t call them REs in Britain) one NHS miscarriage specialist, one private miscarriage specialist (The Professor, world-famous, hopefully correct in her diagnosis).

O. Ovarian quality: Only one ovary, afflicted with PCOS. Does put out fairly regularly, after a very lazy start. My weight is probably affecting my egg-quality. Also, I’m 36 now (damnitalltohell). However, AMH and FSH both good.

P. POAS or wait for period: Obsessive POAS.

Q. Quote from an obnoxious fertile: This.

T. Time you tried naturally: Before Clomid, 2 years or so, with interruptions for surgery. After Clomid, 2 years, with interruption for proper diagnosis.

U. Uterus quality: Utterly shit, according to me (adenomyosis, fibroids, periods that hurt like a nail-bomb going off in my pelvis, is arcuate or heart-shaped). Just fine, according to the medical profession, in that my lining is beautiful and none of the issues that make my life hell make said uterus inhospitable.

V. Vagina: Just lovely, thank you.

W. What baby stuff do you already have?: A baby-name book (I claim it’s an aid for fiction-writing). A lace shawl I am making, and can’t bring myself to finish until I get past the first trimester (and then, I tell myself gloomily, I may as well finish it as it’d make a shroud if necessary. This is what RPL does to the soul).

X. X-tra X-tra Hear all about it! How many people know the ins and outs of our crazy TTC journey? Me. My husband. The internets. My family? Not so much. They don’t want to know. It means I win the one-down-man-ship contests and that really fucks with the status quo.

Y. Yearly Exam. Do you still go in even though someone sees your lady parts most months?: The past few years, very time I get the invitation from the GP to go for a smear, I’ve been having a miscarriage and can’t. I should do something proactive about this. I really don’t want anyone else up by precious. Gah.

Z. Zits. I have PCOS. So, yes. Luckily only one or two at a time.

ETA at 4:30 pm: I was missing the S! WfI pointed this out in the comments below, and I thought, what is she talking about? Since when is there an S? Oh. Ah. Sheesh. The absence of the R, however, is universal and inexplicable. S. Sperm. Lots. H’s SAs keep comng back lavishly normal. I’m the main attraction round here, folks.

Bewildered and whimpering. December 17, 2009

Spending the entire day and evening all by myself leads to excess introspection (I’m grounded by the misbehaviour of my uterus. H is going to a work Christmas ‘do’ and won’t be back until midnight).

[OK, brief unpleasant interlude in which I realised I was leaking through my enormous sanitary towel and pyjamas onto the chair. Chair cushion had to be thoroughly sponged. Knickers and PJs rinsed in cold water and awaiting laundry. I am not happy about this. Really, I am not. Seriously, uterus, WTF?]

Where was I? Oh, yes. Introspecting.

See, I don’t know where I fit, anymore. (Apart from in the menstrual overachiever’s club). I used to be this PCOS girl with one ovary and anovulation. Given that Clomid not only stopped working but stopped my ovary from working, I thought I had a one-way ticket to IVF via the slow-route of weight-loss. I was told, I was told by medical professionals, that IVF was really my only hope. So, you know, anovulatory. Needs IVF. Has fat arse.

[Also, the cocodamol keeps wearing off an hour before I can take another dose. I am either off my face on opiates or in immense discomfort. Therefore I am not functioning brilliantly. This morning I carefully put a hot mug of tea in the fridge and took the milk carton back to bed with me. I only worked out this was a big hairy FAIL when I went to take a sip.]

And now, it appears, that I am not anovulatory. Erratically perhaps, but I do ovulate. My fallopian tube works beautifully, as all (yes, well, all is a big word for the count so far, I know) my pregnancies have landed, briefly, in the Cute Ute as per regulations. I can get pregnant, doing that old-fashioned sex thing they told us about in Biology lessons. I do get pregnant.

Do I still count as PCOS girl with anovulation? Is the PCOS irrelevant now that the only signs of it seem to be the size of my thighs, my upper-lip fuzz and Satsuma’s general inability to get it together before day 18 (though that may be within ‘normal’. Who knows? Who can be arsed to tell me?). Am I actually a habitual aborter now? (Charming phrase, eh? Bless the medical establishment and its boundless tact). Or is this a statistical glitch and I’m going right back to being a PCOS girl in a minute?

More pressingly, where does IVF fit in in all this? It it something I should still be doing? Can I rely on Satsuma to keep this rate of production up, and therefore will IVF be unnecessary? Will the NHS even do IVF on someone who can get pregnant on her own? Will they do it on someone who might keep on miscarrying?

I don’t know what the rules are any more. Or what I should be doing now, what my best chance of a healthy viable pregnancy would be, would involve. I know, I am supposed to ask Miss Consultant about that when I next see her, and she will have my blood-test results, and a medical professional will tell me what I should be doing next. Yeah, that really worked with her bright ideas about Clomid and (startling lack of) monitoring and communication last Spring. I harrumph in her general direction.

And you, Gentle Readers. Where do I fit with you-all? Stirrup Queens (hi, Mel!) has me filed in her super-wonderful list of blogs as PCOS, which is exactly right as that is what I exactly have. How do you file bad luck, anyway? Because, as Senior Doctor said, there rarely is an actual cause for miscarriages. My only actual diagnosis is PCOS, and chances are that is what it will remain.

It’s just, having miscarriages feels so different from PCOS and anovulation. I daren’t say it is worse. God knows how I’d feel if I’d never got pregnant at all in these four years of trying. But it feels worse right now.