The unbloggable April 28, 2013

H and I have been going through a Bad Patch, relationship-wise.

I, even I, May, the Greatly Articulate, do not have the words to be fair, to be reasonable, and to be accurate about it all.

Disclaimer! There has been no adultery, violence, addiction, crime, financial misdemeanor, lies about Really Important Stuff, or any other Irrevocable Deal Breaker. You may continue serenely in your opinion that May and/or H is and/or are sweetness and rectitude personified who chiefly need a cuddle.

We just fundamentally came adrift on the matter of infertility, miscarriage, treatment, progress, lack of progress, what to do next, etc.

Since the chemical ‘pregnancy’ of Valentines’ Day 2011, I have been considerably more gung-ho about pursuing treatment than H. H has dealt with it all by simply pretending none of it existed, not infertility, not adenomyosis, not PCOS, not endometriosis, and absolutely not the nasty little biological fact that his wife was getting older.

And older.

I will be 38 in less than a month.

I have dealt with it by wasting appalling amounts of time and energy in trying to get H and I onto the same page about treatment-or-not. OK, same chapter. Same book? Same section of the library?

I had – still have, frankly – a neurotic ungovernable horror of the idea of trying to have a child without my spouse’s full cooperation and consent. I know many partners have been reluctant and uninterested right up until the child arrives, and then become doting parents of the bestest sort. This is not how it works in my family, though. In my family, a partner is reluctant and uninterested until the baby is an undeniable and looming reality, and then said partner will cycle through furious, trapped, raging, hateful, abandoning, depressed, shitty uninvolved parent of epic sexism, and divorced. So. As far as I was concerned, for my increasingly brittle sense of mental equilibrium and inner strength/peace/not-flaking-outness, I needed H to understand what was involved, what was at stake, and to be prepared to ring clinics, make appointments, nag mildly dense and disorganised secretaries etc. while I got on with the Epic Physical Suffering and Angst (this deal still seems absolutely fair enough to me. If H would like to take custody of the uterus while I make the phone-calls, I would be delighted). And H did not get it. At all. Especially not the bit about May getting older and iller and LESS ALMIGHTY FUCKING FERTILE with each passing month.

That, Gentle Readers, was very difficult for me to deal with – his utter indifference to the fact his stalling was directly prolonging my suffering and reducing our chances. Not that he was stalling per se, mind you. If he’d asked for a time out so he could have a good old stall I could’ve gone on the pill or what have you and Not Suffered Epically while he carefully eased his head out of his bum. I wouldn’t've been pleased, but I would’ve understood. And we could’ve negotiated time limits and rules – six months No Talking About It and then we talk about it again, nine months then final decision, sort of thing.

This refusal to talk about talking about it (very meta) also meant that he was never saying he wouldn’t pursue treatment/consider quitting/have sex with me this month. So I would wait for an answer, or hope for a timely shag, or whatever, and it wouldn’t happen, and I’d be angry, and H would explain he had a headache/tummy-ache/bad day/bad leg/bridge was blown up by squirrels, and this only applied to THIS month and NEXT month would be different, and I would shout ‘oh for FUCK’S SAKE, that’s what you said LAST MONTH,’ and H would look bewildered and say, ‘no, last month it was raining/business trip/man-flu/attack of the were-rabbit,’ and I would say ‘DON’T YOU SEE THE PATTERN HERE?’ and H would look even more bewildered and say ‘errr… no?’ and I would throw a cup at him.

No, I’m not saying I dealt with it particularly well either. Constant physical pain will do that even to someone as God-like in her understanding and general loveliness as me.

And then the possible chemical pregnancy this February. On the anniversary of the last one.

I… I shall draw a veil, I think. I don’t want to revisit the past few months in detail. It was all very very angry, and very unhappy, and I still feel betrayed by H, and not as forgiving as I would like to feel.

I believe it only just these past few weeks that it actually dawned on H for the first time ever that the adeno/endo/PCOS/age thing was not actually in stasis at all, and he may have disastrously fucked things up by spending so long on that peaceful river cruise in Egypt.

(I know that when he turned to me the other night and asked, in tones of dawning wonder, if I’d ever considered the fact that my stiff and distorted uterus might actually be a problem, I very nearly jammed my wedding ring up his fundament and walked out on him. Because I have ‘only’ been worrying myself sick about the same fact since I was first diagnosed three or four years ago, which is why I asked every single medical professional we ever did see about it, and why my conversation since has been littered with such terms as miscarriage, bleeding during pregnancy, restricted intra-uterine growth, premature labour, obstructed labour, placenta accreta and post-partum haemorrhage).

Anyway. You can judge either or both of us if you like, but I’d rather not hear it.

I mean it. I will go on a comment-deleting spree if you make me cry and feel ashamed.

The net result of all this Weltschmerz is that I am thoroughly under the weather. 2013 has been The Year Of The Unwellness. I began February with norovirus. Then I had the possible chemical pregnancy that shattered me. Then I had the flu – proper, six days of fever, laryngitis, cough that lingered for weeks, oh-God-I-feel-awful flu. Then I got my period again and that was again shockingly and lingeringly painful. And then, right in the middle of that cycle, out of nowhere, I got thrush. I spent a week with my favourite lady-parts a fiery itchy hell-circle of No Sleep For YOU! (Canesten sorted it out. Canesten and I are kissing in a tree). Then I got my period again last Tuesday and I was horribly sick. I haven’t vomited that much that hard for nearly two years. My entire intestinal tract, from mouth to… well… anyway, none of it is speaking to me, and Cute Ute the Destroyer is still rampaging about bleeding everywhere and generally acting like a baited wolverine chained to a stake. And I’ve had two migraines already. And violent cramp in my leg, almost certainly due to dehydration, so now I can’t walk normally. And hayfever, now that bloody Spring is bloody here at bloody last and all the bloody trees are bloody flowering.

Fuck my life.

What went down April 1, 2013

Heya, Best Beloveds. I’m sorry I’ve worried you by going into a month-long sulk of advanced and extreme sulkiness. Nothing massively exciting or new has happened, and I was having something of a crisis. Let me make itemised lists at you, given that it’s my ‘thing’:

Item – H and I have not been very pleased with each other. I mean, I still love the man dearly, but for a while there I didn’t like him very much. Remember the Possible-Chemical I had for Valentine’s Day this year? It upset me badly, and also upset H badly, and H had an ‘oh, that reminds me, I am actually very sad about all the previous miscarriages’ mind-fuck moment, and ran off into the Cul-de-Sac of Solipsism – actually, he’s been spending quite a lot of time in the Cul-de-Sac of Solipsism since he began counselling – and I had an ‘I have been completely abandoned by the entire Universe and frankly, this is not a good moment to be abandoned by the entire Universe’ shriekathon and yes, it was oodles of fun. So, the past month, we have mostly been having very un-amusing fights.

Item – One of the Big Things We Fight About is the fact H has been dragging his feet and digging his heels in and in extreme cases wiping the whole saga from his memory when it comes to Moving Forward In A Forward And Purposeful Direction when it comes to actually treating the causes of our infertility and recurrent miscarriages. It’s not that H doesn’t want kids – he does, very much. But he very much does not want to be the infertile tragic couple who need to do all this medical shit with no guarantee it will work, so he tries to pretend it isn’t happening, which may be good for his psyche but it is very bad for his marriage, as, fuck it, we are the infertile tragic couple who need to do medical shit. Especially as my uterus is something of a destroyed wasteland, and my immune system is a silly, silly bitch who can’t tell an embryo from a tumour. We had the ‘I am 38 in May and you have destroyed my only chance to have a child with your foot-dragging nonsense’ talk. Yes, I went there. Which was very un-amusing.

Item – H is now playing a ridiculous game of phone-and-email-tag with Doctor Fourth Opinion’s distressingly ditzy secretary, to set up LIT and intralipid schedule and work out who, when, and how he will have an HIV test and so on. We’ve been given a provisional date for LIT of ‘April’. Oh, for the sake of fuck. But at least H is On It, and no longer on his prolonged river cruise in Egypt.

Item – Then I got flu. I spent a week with a fever. I haven’t been so unwell from a mere germ for years. I missed several days of work because I was so ill. I’m still hoarse, three weeks later. OH GOD I WAS SO VERY VERY ILL.

Item – And then I got my period. Ow. It’s day 14 of this cycle and I still haven’t had a day I could get through without at least one dose of painkillers.

Item – This makes me rather poor company, and I apologise to the friends I visited last week in a state of disgruntled mutism. Hi! It was all totally me! You were lovely and delightful and charming and made gluten-free cheesecake you absolute STAR!

Item – Oh, and I visited family. Conversation with my aunts ensued, and The Menopause was the subject du jour. I said, wryly, that I must be the only woman I knew desperately hoping for an early menopause, and alas the ladies in my family keep going until their late 50s. So one Aunt wanted to know why (are you kidding me? Haven’t we discussed this?). I explained (again) that I had adenomyosis and endometriosis. ‘Endometriosis?’ said Aunt, ‘Oh, I had a friend at yoga with that. She had a little operation and now she’s fine. Why haven’t you tried that?’ I blinked. I stared at her. I blinked again. I said, eventually, ‘but I’ve had several operations, Aunt. And they haven’t worked. We’ve discussed this. You gave me all those herbal remedy tips about how to recover from the anaesthetic.’ Aunt, then, shamelessly, started telling me all about Curing All Known Diseases By Yoga. I don’t even.

Item – I am generally getting the impression from a great many friends and family that they’re very much over May being chronically unwell and infertile and the dead embryo thing, ugh. So most people now ignore it all. They ignore it all so well they keep forgetting that being chronically ill means that once a month (32 day cycle. Like FUCKING UNWELCOME CLOCKWORK) I am too ill to do anything, and for three weeks out of five I am in near constant pain and consequently exhausted. I mean, who the hell is chronically ill for years on end, anyway? Oh, right, CHRONICALLY ILL PEOPLE.

Item – Why, yes, I am depressed, thank you for noticing. Why on earth shouldn’t I be?

Mice and men February 25, 2013

The Plan:

• Step one: Find a private clinic who do hysterosalpingograms of some sort, and check that the interior of the blasted wasteland of my uterus is respectable, and the one-and-only fallopian tube is unblocked and lacking in endometriosis-induced peculiarities (you know the patch of endo in my Pouch of Douglas? I can feel it for over a week after my period finishes, like a sort of bruise).
• Step two, gentle version: If Cute Ute and her tube are still functional, we do LIT, and then spend three or four months shagging like bunnies in the hope of impregnating me. We may or may not do intralipids at the same time; we will discuss this with Doctor Fourth Opinion when we go for LIT.
• Step two, fuck it version: If the tube is blocked or damaged, we go straight to IVF. With LIT and intralipids.
• Step two, scorched earth version: If tube is blocked and Cute Ute is fried, we insert a Mirena coil and then blow the savings on a holiday to Canada/USA/New Zealand/Patagonia/The Ends of the Motherfucking Earth.
• Step three: if step two gentle version does not work, move to step two fuck it version.
• Step four: if step two, fuck it version doesn’t work, move to step two, scorched earth version, only possibly with a reduced itinerary, because we’ll have made a sizeable dent in the savings.

So H called any number of private clinics until he found one that would do a ‘hycosy’, as they cutely refer to it, without me needing to be their IVF patient or having an NHS doctor’s referral. It’s a well-known clinic, and conveniently near to work, and doesn’t cost a terrifying amount of money, and they share their results with you immediately (which makes a lovely change from the NHS).

And I am going there tomorrow. By tomorrow evening, I will know. We will know. Hurrah.

I am going by myself, as H has a very, very important meeting he can’t get out of. I’ve had HSGs before, and not suffered vastly, so I am electing to be optimistic, take an ibuprofen, and carry cheerfully on. If this backfires, I will thoroughly and happily enjoy the resultant melodrama. Especially if it gets me off work for a few days.

I am still in rather a state of angry grief about the way the last cycle ended, you see.

Whoa Nellie February 3, 2013

Item – Excuse long absence from blog. Had migraine. It sucked.

Item – This weekend, just to shake things up a little, I have Norovirus. Hello. Every single muscle, layer of skin, bone, joint, nail and inch of gut aches, I am freezing cold despite the fact H is wandering about the house shirtless, I have consumed exactly three cups of cold tea since yesterday evening, and this morning saw me taking a plastic washing-up basin to the privy for a half-hour I’d give my eye-tooth not to have to endure ever again.

Item – So, last post’s comment-related kerfuffle. 1) I want to make it perfectly clear Sheila is a dear and valued Gentle Reader of some duration, and who has dealt with some of the same doctors I have, and therefore I take her comment as coming from a place of friendly interest, affectionate concern, and natural curiosity. And I’ll get to answering it all when I feel less like the entire French Rugby team ran me down and sat on me. 2) That said, I also see where The Comment That Broke The Camel’s Back is coming from, I think. I myself have found it amazingly fucking irritating when people have popped up on my blog for seemingly the sole purpose of telling me I’m Doing It Wrong, and that my doctors are Doing It Wrong, especially if it devolves into people playing the ‘The NHS sucks and socialised medicine sucks and no wonder you Europeans are dying in ditches in droves’ card (especially because of the awkward fact that, actually, Europeans aren’t dying in ditches in droves and for MOST purposes the NHS is one of the best health services in the entire world and May is also a socialist herself so BACK THE FUCK OFF*). 4) So, my rule of thumb is, a long-term reader and commentator who has so far been a total darling, and very supportive, and who has had similar history, can be allowed questions and phrasings that could possibly come across as aggressive and self-righteous from a relative newcomer to the blog who has an axe to grind/bone to pick/kerfuffle to get off on. So, Sheila, please carry on. Comment That Broke The Camel’s Back, I appreciate you going to bat for me very much, but I think you batted the wrong person this time. 5) I am a little unclear who is calling whom a concern troll. But let’s just go with, no one is a concern troll today. Just, people are concerned, bless them. And leave it at that.

*P.S. – Being a socialist in Europe is normal, healthy, intelligent, and reasonable, and there are lots of us. We think the (I, of course, generalise) American hysterical reaction to the word ‘socialist’ is fucking hilarious.

P.P.S. – Socialists! Socialists! Socialists! “Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We’ll keep the red flag flying here!” Tee hee hee. Sorry. I am light-headed through fever and lack of nourishment.

Trauma January 21, 2013

No, I’m not dead, nor on holiday, nor did the infrastructure of the known world collapse, taking the internets down with it. I was just… sulking.

Shark week, it has been, and a good brutal one too. It’s day seven now, and I’m still bleeding like a stuck pig, which you’ll agree is not optimal. Cute Ute the Despoiler has decided she rather likes the trick of easing up on the bleeding, waiting until I am lulled into a false sense of security also mere ‘super’ tampons (as opposed to double-plus super extra ultra tampons, which can double as marital aids, frankly), and then yanking out the bathplug and laughing hysterically (ho ho ho) as I leap to my feet with a tiny shriek and flee to the bathroom, blood running briskly down my leg. I am very tired.

On Sunday night, a week ago now, as full of cramps and anxst as can be, I decided to check my medication supply to see if I needed to renew any prescriptions any time soon. There was no urgency. There was a whole box of diclofenac suppositories right there, see? I don’t remember leaving a half-empty box back on the shelf, so it must be a full box… you see where this is headed, right? Because you don’t have the IQ of a house-plant, unlike me. So on Monday morning, in quite heady amounts of pain and starting to spot, I took my slightly-out-of-date repeat prescription form to the GP, to see if they’d renew it urgently, as, obviously, to my mind at least, anyone on this kind of painkiller really rather means it when they say they need it urgently, nu?

I am, personally, absolutely freaked out and humiliated by what happened next.

The receptionist was adamant that they did not renew prescriptions the same day, it would take 48 hours. That there new policy was that GPs were not to be disturbed for anything short of an emergency. That renewing a prescription was NOT an emergency. That they couldn’t renew it anyway, as it was out of date. That I’d need to make an appointment to see a GP. That there were no GP appointments left for that day. That coming in that evening for the emergency appointments first-come-first-served slots was not an option because they were for emergencies, which this was not. At this point, in tears, I asked if it would be considered an emergency if I threw up or fainted while waiting, and the receptionist told me that wasn’t very nice. She actually thought I meant it as some kind of passive-aggressive twatweaselry. I actually meant the question seriously, because I was in pain and freaking out and what the hell else was I supposed to do?

I was crying too hard to speak at this point, and I was in a waiting room full of people, and so I fled home again. H, thank fuck, was still at home himself, and promptly grabbed his coat in one hand, me in the other, and dragged both back to the surgery, where he, very calmly but sternly explained to the receptionist that this was not about some idiot trying to game the system, this was about a person in serious pain, and that he’d seen how the pain affected me, and that I did, actually, need this drug with some urgency, thank you, and after a few minutes bluster she caved completely and arranged for my prescription to be renewed and waiting for me by lunch-time. So in the end all was well.

And I cried all morning, because I had been so very scared I’d have to do Shark Week with inadequate pain-relief, and because the whole thing was so humiliating. I’m thirty-seven. I’m a nice respectable middle-class over-educated lady with a cut-glass accent. I can, if necessary, out-posh the Queen. How was I reduced to weeping hysteria in a GP waiting-room, being treated like a moronic teenager having a tantrum by a GP’s receptionist?

I don’t think I can do this for very much longer – menstruate, that is. It’s giving me shell-shock. Every cycle, also, is doing more damage to my uterus. When I lie on my back and rest my hand on my belly, now, I can feel it even through my ample padding, a great heavy bruised fist buried in my guts, an obscene parody of early pregnancy.

Pissiness January 8, 2013

I don’t know why, but I’m feeling angry and sad at the moment.

Maybe it’s because we’re going to get a fourth opinion, things are moving forward, we might be about to do something big and, err, doey, about the infertility/RPL Suck Permanence that is my life. It’s frightening. Suck Permanence may be deeply unpleasant and soul-destroying, but it tends not to put your soul on the line and then jump up and down on it in hobnailed boots.

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling a tad lonely these days. Hello, Gentle Readers. How many of you are five, six, seven, more, years into trying to have a child, and yet still childless? Do you also, just sometimes, feel a bit left-in-a-ditch? Not that anyone wants to leave us in a ditch, of course not. But here is the ditch of years-and-years-and-nothing, and we are in it, and quite a lot of our best and most beloved cheerleaders aren’t, and there are moments when we just feel… slightly… a tad… well, left-in-a-ditch. I must give myself a hearty slap and shake before I start wailing ‘nobody understands meeeeeeeeeeee’. So jejune.

And I’ve not done myself any favours by falling out of the blogging-and-commenting loop the past few months (aha! Favourite punctuation of the day, the hyphen!). Woe is me, self-inflicted woe is me too. Woe!

And then there’s my uterus. My period is due next Monday, possibly Tuesday. I would like a pint of strong coffee and a very large bottle of wine now please. Remind me to tell you about the actual state of said uterus at some point when we’re all either slightly drunk or feeling very strong-stomached. *shudder*

Anyway! And another thing that made me angry today! -

I was in a coffee shop this lunch-time, buying soup, when I overheard two women at the table behind me. One was saying: ‘No, I don’t have kids.’ The other replied, in tones of excitable jollity: ‘Oh, but you should! Kids are great!’

Oh, for the sake of fuck.

I took my soup and my tea and slunk sloshily away. I don’t even know how the first woman reacted. But on behalf of all childless people everywhere, I’d like to say:

Never say ‘You should have kids!’ to a childless person.

Two reasons:

One: They really don’t want kids. They know they don’t want kids, can’t afford kids financially or psychologically or physically, don’t like kids perhaps, and did I mention? Do not want kids. Telling them they should have kids regardless? Anyone who has the intelligence and insight to know they can’t do parenting and then take steps to prevent themselves becoming a parent should be celebrated. I can think of few acts more morally awkward than bringing an unwanted, unloved child into this world. I know many oops! pregnancies have turned out for the best, and the parent has found new reserves of love and strength and dealt with it with grace and courage, even if that includes the courage to let the child go to another family. But then, so many more (in my own family, even, and by the dozen) have turned out, if not actually horrifically, then into low-grade, dreary, resentful misery which sets up a whole new generation of neurotic and damaged people to be unwilling and shitty parents. It’s just not fair to do that. It’s not fair to wish parenting on people who bloody well know it’s not something they can handle. Think of the children! A person who does not want kids, and therefore does not have them, should have their hand shaken, and that is the end of that.

Two: They really do want kids. Best case scenario, they have only recently started trying for a baby, and will have one very soon, and your thoughtless squeaky remark is merely utterly pointless and bossy. They’re already on that! FFS! More likely, they want kids, but can’t have them. They are still single, perhaps, so just rub that the fuck in why don’t you? Or they’ve been trying for a while. You know you’ve just basically slapped them in the face? Or maybe they’ve been trying for years, or had a miscarriage? Well, now, would you go up to a car-crash victim in a wheelchair and burble: ‘Legs! They’re great! You should try having some!’? Would you skip past a homeless man shrieking: ‘Houses are fabulous, dude! I love my house!’? Would you prance up to a widow or widower and chortle: ‘Isn’t marriage great? Why aren’t you married? Try being married!’? No? But you just did the moral equivalent, you turnip-head.

Excuse me; I am going to fume picturesquely in the middle distance.

Christmas makes everything twice as sad* December 13, 2012

I am spending a second day at home in front of the telly, because I feel very sick and Cute Ute the Despoiler is making a horrible fuss (Stupid uterus. I dislike her intensely. The feeling is clearly mutual). Shark Week began today, so I hope (but by no means expect, damn it) that therefore I’ll be feeling less-than-dead by Saturday and will be able to sit upright on my pew at this blazin’ wedding.

I’ve done two loads of laundry and cleaned a lavatory. It’s not all been Criminal Minds marathons and hot-water-bottles. Alas.

H and I are trying to be festive. We bought a very (very very) small Christmas tree. We put up some decorations – snow-flakes, a wreath, a couple of reindeer. My dear friend korechronicles sent me a Christmas ornament a couple of years ago, which we hung on the bookshelf. I have some handpainted wooden stars as well I need to find a place for – we can’t hang anything on the tree, because you see, my tree is tiny, and so wee, that I sometimes think the pixies gave it to me**, and it would topple over. I received my first Christmas present – you know who you are, you and your classy classy gift-giving – so I opened it for Hanukkah, and am thrilled to absolute bits.

This year, we are going to H’s family for Christmas, because we feel they need us the most (My family is going skiing. Again. They keep asking us to come, but neither H nor I can ski, and the idea of being stuck with my sisters for a week in a country where I don’t speak the language and can’t just run screaming into the mountains in my nightie for fear of Death-By-Snowdrift, does not appeal). At least I won’t have my period (see last year. That was fun).

However to make up for my NOT having my period over Christmas at the ‘rents or in-laws, the In-Laws are coming to us. Tomorrow. So I can still have my period at them. HAH.

And I keep bursting into tears. I wanted to be pregnant. I haven’t been pregnant for so, so long, I am absolutely terrified that All Is Wrong in there and I can’t ever get pregnant again. I’ve had my lot, and they were all duds, and that is that.

Oh, and there’s the tiny question of Christmas, Season of Doom, in that I’ve had two miscarriages over the festive season, and it sucks. The media are doing wall-to-wall baby stories and family stories and babies and families stories and mothers and more babies and every radio is blaring out songs about the wonderful birth of a special baby and people send you cards with pictures of tiny shiny babies on them and Christmas is all about the kiddies, innit? And you don’t know the meaning of love or family until you’ve given birth, allegedly. Why not flay me and roll me in rimming salt while you’re at it?

Pikaia, my first poor little doomed embryo, would be nearly four this Christmas, if she’d actually grown a spine as her nickname suggested she should and lived. Have you seen a nearly-four-year-old in the run-up to Christmas? She’d be so excited you could power a small cathedral city off her for a week. And now she is nearly four, I have so many, many ideas for beloved books and adorable toys for her. I do, I really do, find myself looking at toys shop windows and thinking ‘Would Pikaia have liked that? I hope she would’ve liked that. It’s very cool.’ Or I look at books and think about reading it to Pikaia. And then I have to stop that right now and go and look at a book on astrophysics or baking, because grown women weeping over Dr Seuss are frankly unnerving.

Poor Pikaia. Of all our losses, she’s the one who really haunts me. She’s the only one I ever imagined (however briefly) as a living child, you see (too scarred/scared to do anything of the sort after her). She follows me about like a little ghost, slowly growing up as I grow older. I can see me in my late 50s being haunted by a red-haired university student who keeps forgetting to call home. But for the moment, she’s nearly four. She has fiery copper hair. She loves books and making things and drawing and music. She has a doll or teddy she adores beyond words. She has unusually small hands and feet, because her parents do, and is tall for her age, because her parents were. She is precocious and worryingly articulate, like me, and a little song-bird, like H. I don’t know if she’d be prone to brief but terrifying ferocious outbreaks of temper followed by tears like me, or pouting and sulking like H. I wish I did know. I miss her so much.

And I know I’m not the only one to have a ghost-child. Melissa wrote movingly about hers here (and it touched me particularly because I know that city so well, and can picture it). And then everyone chimed in in the comments, and I thought, see? I’m not mad. We’re not mad. Not mad at all.

* Douglas Copeland.
** Waitrose, actually.

Diamonds and rust September 19, 2012

Hello, and welcome to all you interesting and lovely people who did me the honour of reading the last post, the ranty one, showering me with compliments, and are now hanging about to see what I’m going to do next. I have no idea what I’m going to do next. I now feel a tad fraudulent – you do know this blog is mostly me whining about doctor’s appointments and just how horribly bad I am at menstruating, right? Sorry. *gnaws nails*

Or freaking out. There’s always me freaking out.

H and I took a few days off work. I won’t use the phrase ‘staycation’, because ‘staycation’ sounds like Day Camp for vampire slayers. But that. The problem with being at home with nothing to do except relax and enjoy yourselves leads to such behaviour as Visiting Ikea And Buying Storage Bins, which leads to Sorting Out The Knitting Stash, which leads to H laughing at me as I shriek: ‘How do I have this much yarn? I don’t even remember buying this? What is this? I have 45 litres of SOCK YARN! How am I ever going to knit all this? What was I thinking?’

And then you find the half-finished and abandoned knitting projects. I knew it would be in there somewhere, along with the scarf that came out too small, and the sock-I-can’t-be-arsed-to-knit-a-friend-for, and the half-a-pullover I’ve been havering about the neckline for.

It is most of a Shetland lace baby shawl, in very fine white wool, knitted on tiny needles. The sort of lace cloud a new-born is wrapped in for the home-from-hospital pictures, or for a Christening. It’s patterned with diamonds and trees-of-life and rose-buds, all chosen for their charming symbolism. I remember casting it on way back when H and I were still merely infertile, and, indeed, when I was still under the impression that as soon as we’d removed my uterine polyps and convinced Satsuma to just let an egg go once in a bloody while, I’d get pregnant. And, of course, carry the baby to term. Why shouldn’t I? I come from a Revoltingly Fertile Family. Carrying babies to term, through Hell or high water, is what we do. Or, what they do. I didn’t yet know I wasn’t one of them.

Of course, just about when I had nearly finished the body of the shawl and was trying to work out the maths (I am proper discalculic. Ask H. So this part was taking weeks) for the edging, I did get pregnant. And miscarried. And I didn’t have the heart to keep knitting. I told myself I’d get it out and finish it for the next baby. OK, for the one after that. Maybe for the third one. Damn it, not the third one. And since then I haven’t been able to face even looking at it. I think I have since once angrily announced I’d finish it if I ever got past the 12th week. And then I could use it as a fucking shroud, if necessary, because then there’d be something to bury.

Because you, oh Gentle Readers, are wise, and because all the above might have given you a clue that Not All Is Well chez the Psyche of May, you will be considerably less surprised than I was to discover that when I did unearth the shawl as I entirely expected to do this afternoon, still on the needles, still unfinished, I burst into tears. I flung myself into H’s arms and sobbed and sobbed.

‘What is it, darling?’ he asked, concerned, ‘A lace shawl? Oh, sweetheart, have the moths got it? No? What is it?’

‘It’s so beautiful,’ I choked out, ‘and it was for our first baby…’ and then I got snot on his shoulder (‘Dignity’ is my middle name. My first is ‘Lack of’).

Gentle Readers, this thing is beautiful. And so nearly finished. It breaks my heart.

H thinks I should just finish it. Partly because he’s feeling vaguely hopeful again these days, bless the dear eejit, and partly, well, because, did I mention it’s beautiful?

I could always auction it for a suitable charity, I suppose. If I can convince anyone to pay hundreds of pounds for it. I couldn’t let it go for less than hundreds of pounds, not even for the most excellent of causes. It has, after all, already cost me an infinity of grief.

Things I am completely unable to deal with August 21, 2012

Item – I finally spoke to my mother and Trouble is OK. She’ll be out in a week. It was absolutely Trouble’s choice to go to this clinic and I am so proud of her for admitting she needed help and going and accepting that help I could burst.

Item – My mother on the other hand is being a tad crazy-making (hah!) with the ‘think positive’ attitude. I don’t want to think bloody positive. I’m 37, I’m in pain three weeks out of five, I’ve been trying to get pregnant for seven years, I’ve had seven miscarriages that I know of, I’ve had surgery twice, and endless ultrasounds and HSGs and blood-tests and positive is just not in my repertoire. The best I can do you is bloody-minded. Because, to quote Macbeth, I am in blood Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Item – HR at work are sending me to interview with an Occupational Health Agency, whatever the fuck that is, because I have exceeded my ‘allowable’ allowance of sick leave this year, thanks to Cute Ute the Despoiler and her Monthly Rampage. As far as I can tell, I now have to convince a random stranger who may or may not have a medical qualification that I can be a productive member of the work-force, that I am not skiving, that a wrist support for my computer and a fancy work-light aren’t going to cut it, and that they really can’t recommend I be fired, please. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Item – The interview of fuckfuckfuckfuck is on a day I am fairly sure I will be entrenched in the glory days of Shark Week. I am trying to see if I can get it moved, or rerouted, or even cancelled altogether and never referred to again. My boss (who knows about Shark Week), said, unhelpfully, ‘but you’re not usually off on a Monday, are you?’ I have no idea what to say to that.

Item – The list of things to talk to my GP about tomorrow morning therefore grows exponentially. Occu-health third degree forms, prescriptions for private treatment (tricky!), the weeks of pain thing, metformin (again), possibly a waily fit about not being able to cope, my emmin-effin thyroid, what else? What else? Anyone? Beuller?

Item – And I’m not quite sure if I have ovulated yet (it may have been Saturday. It may have been the third blue moon in November), and I’m supposed to be calling the Expensive Clinic when I’m sure so they can fit me in for a quick uterine lining biopsy during my luteal phase, to see if it’s swarming with psychotic Natural Killer Cells, or if it’s more like London during the Olympics, a haven of functional public transport and very happy people ever so pleased to be there.

Item – Long straightened version of Dr Expensive’s Better Living By Chemistry Plan still in the works, I haven’t forgotten. I’m just being outnumbered by AAAAAAAAUGH at the moment.

Item – Apropos of which, H is more pro LIT than I am, especially as Dr Expensive said he was a good donor candidate. Given that he’s the one who’s donating the pints of blood and all I’m doing is the itchy bit, I’m inclined to let him have this one even though I read the science behind LIT and think ‘Where the feckin’ Lady Elspeth is the double-blind randomized control trial? Eh? EH?’

I KNEW I had a blog somewhere round here… August 17, 2012

I think I was using the Olympics as an opiate. H and I watched as much of it as our respective work-schedules allowed, on television, on the BBC’s iPlayer when the particular events we liked were not being shown or had happened during the working day or the other of us didn’t care for it (archery, synchronised swimming (don’t laugh!), horse dancing (I like horses (H doesn’t)), diving heats (I like strapping young men in tight speedos (H doesn’t (but he did care who won the finals)), beach volleyball (don’t ask)). We leapt to our feet and screamed right there in our living room when Mo Farah won the 10’000 and the 5’000. We would’ve leapt to our feet and screamed when Bolt Did His Thing, but we didn’t have time to. We cheered Wiggins and Ennis and Grainger and Watkins and Pendleton and the Brownlees. We cheered Felix and Rudisha and Lysenko and Gelana. I wept with every athlete who wept on the podium. I bawled over the triumph-over-tragedy stories of Daley and Gibbons. And when someone fell, or false-started, or pulled a muscle and couldn’t run/jump/swim/dive, or got up anyway and tried to carry on, or just had the crappest luck, I also cried. I cried over Asafa Powell, FFS. When H and I went to see the marathon live on Sunday (which was just! So! Exciting! that I literally (as in really, yes I did, and I’m not exaggerating) skipped most of the way home)), I welled up at the sight of the last runner in the field limping bloody-mindedly along just in front of the sweeper van. And then when we watched it again on telly, I welled up for Stephen Kiprotich and his unique Ugandan gold medal.

And then it was all over, and we all feel completely deflated, also all alone with our anxieties and problems and their horrible little teeth. Oh dear.

H, for example, has been having kittens about our baby-making options. All these tests we’ve had – whatever the verdict is, it seems so very, well, huge, and possibly final, and descending with a clang, like a portcullis, also expensive and complicated (expensive portcullis!). And he wants a child. Which would all be quite enough to be getting on with thank you, but his job is not being any more easy to deal with, and nor is his wife. He comes home every night and tears his hair out, and then I complain that I have a pain in my sawdust, that’s what’s the matter with me, and he tears his hair out, and we talk about money and how many cycles we’re prepared to do with what medications and he tears his hair out, and then he goes back to work and finds Another Fine Mess to sweep up and tears his hair out and when he is finally spear-bald, to whom do we present the bill, oh Universe?

In which fine state of mind H – oh, and I – went back to Dr Expensive on Thursday to Hear The Verdict. And The Verdict made our heads ache. The short-and-curly version (I promise you a long-and-straightened version in the near future. You may nag me about it. You’re welcome) is, Dr Expensive wants me on Metformin, steroids, progesterone support, Clexane and intralipids; he wants H on multi-vitamins and anti-oxidants; he wants both of us on a ten-day course of Augmentin; he wants to do a uterine biopsy, this cycle if possible (EEK! And again I say, EEK!) ; and he wants us to do LIT. On the other hand, he doesn’t see why we need IVF. At all. Timed bonking will be fine.

Do pass that dustpan, there’s a lamb. Just writing it down made my head explode again.

But fear not! We have tickets for the Paralympics! In less than two weeks, it all starts up again, with even more added and extra poignancy and heroism, and I fully expect to jump up and down and skip and weep and scream encouragement and just generally let myself be completely blown away by it all all over again while pretending that my uterus doesn’t even exist for as long as she’ll let me get away with it. We don’t do Olympian cynicism chez May. Which is unexpected, but welcome.