Taking a stand (very quietly, in the corner) November 29, 2009

So, yesterday. Yes. We were supposed to be going down to my mother’s place for a gigantic shindig, in our role of *cough* ‘willing’ slaves who will unfold folding tables for food.

I was not keen. I was even less keen after having been back at work for two (tiresome, tiring) weeks and having been In-Lawed the previous weekend. General preference not to speak to anyone anymore about anything, thank you, building to a strong desire to scream ‘Fuck off and leave me alone!’ by Friday afternoon.

And anyway, as I mentioned, the numb, ‘ah, feck it,’ stage of grief was wearing off, like lidocaine. I was horrifically aware of just how angry and miserable I was about the recent miscarriage, and, infuriatingly, about Pikaia’s miscarriage (what? Haven’t I got over that? Umm, apparantly not. Heigh ho). Had stopped sleeping, was whiling away the midnight hours by bickering with H or chewing my nails down to the quick again.

I was not at my most sane and collected.

By lunch-time, also known as leave-to-catch-train-time, I was having a meltdown (naked, in the shower, for added class). (The shower was on and there was shampoo in my hair. Does that help?).

By the time I had removed myself from the bathroom and put clothes on, I was a weeping hysterical mess, and had lost my glasses, and was about to throw furniture at H for mentioning the fact we had to go and catch the train.

By 2pm, I’d stopped sobbing, and we’d decided H would go to the shindig, as he’d been looking forward to it and because my mother had enrolled him as Court Photographer. I would stay at home all by myself and knit and read books and do my creative writing homework and blow my red-raw nose as many times as I felt the need to, and hey, maybe, even stop crying. We both agreed that me spending the shindig locked in the upstairs bathroom doing any of the above would… not be so good. As well as inevitable. So H went off to catch the later train (complete with the only tube of toothpaste in the house, oops), and I made myself yet another cup of tea and put Lord of the Rings in the DVD player.

Dear Readers, it was bliss. Sometimes, what a person really, really, needs, is, in fact, for everyone to fuck off and leave her alone for 24 hours.

I told H he may as well go for complete honesty, so he did, and reported back that everyone, at least, everyone whose opinion who I gave a stuff about, was fine about it, merely sending messages of love and condolence. No one made a big stupid deal of it, and no one said anything objectionable, at least, not in H’s hearing.

I shall have to show my teeth and not go to more family parties. It seems everyone actually does like me and respect me for it, even if they tend not to tell me that to my face.

Snarling noises off November 21, 2009

I am, sorry, but I am, in a fucking foul mood at the moment. I need not to be, as it is H’s birthday on Monday, and his parents are coming to stay for a couple of days, and I took time off work to (don’t tell H) (H, don’t read this bit) go shopping for him, which was niiiiiiice, and I’ve been to a couple of quite seriously good concerts and a dinner out, in the company of lovely people, and you’d've thought I’d be quite chirpy now.

I even got a really good mark for my Creative Writing assignment, which startled me (I thought it was pants), and which made H point and laugh, because, really, he always cheerleads me on, telling me I’m marvellous, and I always spend the entire essay/dissertation/story/poem/shopping list vapouring about my extreme rubbishness, and tah-dah! It was fine (again) and I was being silly (again) and H gets to point and laugh and so he should. Not that it’s a habit I can shake (You do know, don’t you, that you’re not really enjoying my blog at all, and it bores and irritates you in equal measure? That you’re not laughing at any of the jokes, in fact, you hadn’t realised there were jokes, and any minute now the clouds of delusion will lift and you will all realise this and briskly delete me from your feeds, turning to each other in embarrassment and saying you can’t believe I conned you all into sticking around for so long. Right? Anyone?).

Back on Planet Bitter McTwisted, Infertility Edition, I was jolted into rather an overshare at work on Thursday. Up until that point, all my colleagues were being rather sweet and discreet about my massive three-week absence. Probably gossiping like meerkats in my absence, but still, splendid lack of awkwardness. Until Thursday. Tech Guy (who is a sweetheart, really) came wandering in, and did the whole ‘hey, May, lovely to have you back! How are you! Better? Excellent!’ thing, which was gratefully received. Alas, on receiving this unwitting encouragement, he launched into a really quite intense ‘So! What happened to you then? We were all quite worried! Three weeks is a long time off sick, you know,’ (yes, I do know, thank you). ‘Was it swine flu? No? Normal flu? Not flu at all? It sounds serious! Tell me about it!’ (I wish I was shitting you, but I’m not) ‘Ohh, an accident, you say? What sort of accident? Did you have to go to hospital? Oh, you did? Why? Blood loss? You lost a lot of blood, you say? Ohh, dear. How did you…’ And at this point, thank arsing fuck, someone else popped their head round the door and said something had gone horribly wrong with the printer, and Tech Guy assured me he’d catch up with me later before sprinting off (shit).

My colleague S, who sits at the next desk, had been getting an unavoidable earful of this, and could see that I was flustered. She asked if I was OK. I nodded. She (quietly, not at the top of her healthy young lungs, colleagues take note), then told me she hadn’t asked me many questions because she didn’t think it was really her business, but she did want me to know that she did care and had been worried too. Never be kind to a flustered person. I sort of blurt-whispered ‘It’s just that, you know, I had a miscarriage, and it’s not that I mind people knowing, but I find it really hard to talk about it, especially in front of the whole office.’ And S said instantly that she was so, so sorry. And, did I have to go to hospital like I said. I said yes, that bit was perfectly true, as was the blood loss bit, and she looked quite miserable for me. And she asked how H was doing, which in my book earns her a Small Gold Star Certificate for Having Empathy And Intelligence.

Anyway. After a few minutes, people started coming back into the office, so we both coughed and stared casually out of the window or back at our computer screens and probably looked exactly like teenagers caught passing notes in assembly.

It’s true, though. I don’t mind people knowing one little bit. I just don’t want to be the one doing the telling. I most certainly don’t want to be the one answering questions or explaining next steps or trying to enlighten the unenlightened as to karyotyping or factor V Leiden, and also why, under the circumstances, it’s quite important that I absolutely don’t relax and go on vayyyycayyyyytion. Relaxing and vacationing might just work (hey, they sort of did in Switzerland, as I conceived about a week after we got back) and that’d be a great blog fodder anecdote. Hello! I nearly bled to death in a bus station in the Algarve! Also, I don’t speak Spanish!

My, I’m all unicorn ballet and rainbows today.

Anyway, part of the glumness is because on Sunday H and his dad are going out to do Manly Father-Son Bonding and I will be doing Girly Night In with my MiL. Now, she tried quite desperately to talk to me ‘about it all’ when I lost Pikaia, and I equally as desperately DID NOT WANT and became very good at changing the subject and/or if necessary volunteering to do the washing up. It was easy, because the rest of the family were milling about on most visits and MiL was clearly not prepared to broach things in front of *gasp* men. Not even my FiL or my husband. (I, personally, find protecting the Squeamish Sex from the realities of the massive and sometimes horrible sacrifices women make to keep the human race going, offensive both to their intelligence and our experience, but still…). A whole evening in, just the two of us, and a fresh new disaster to discuss? Oy vey.

I absolutely know in my heart her motives are the best and most pure. She is sad and sorry and wants to sympathise. She had a miscarriage herself, between H and his brother. It’s not like she’s going to say or think anything too clueless and irritate me that way. And this is her family, continuance of. And she has wanted to be a grandmother since H and I moved in together last century, and she has had the decency to more or less shut up about it. On points, she wins a total victory over my own female relations, who never shut up about anything at all ever.

But. But but but. You knew there was at least one but, didn’t you? The but is, as I said, that I just do not want to talk about it with people who need things explaining to them. And the other but is, MiL is a sort of emotional sponge. We all know people like this, don’t we? Unlike emotional vampires, who suck you dry, or emotional shit-stirrers, who like creating high drama for their own warped amusement, emotional sponges can’t hear a tale of woe without it becoming their tale of woe. They feel everything so intensely, they can’t separate out their own distress from the distress of the person concerned. MiL is prone to anxiety and sadness anyway, and is always taking the weight of the world on her shoulders, even about situations which she can’t possibly have any real responsibility for or interest in. My case is definitely meaningful for her and close to her heart. I feel awful because I know she already feels awful. I feel awful because she gets upset about the very idea of hospital visits and tests (I can’t cope with that. As far as I’m concerned, the up-coming visits and tests and hopefully answers are the only thing keeping me from booking a hysterectomy). I feel awful because it awakes bad memories for her. I feel awful because I’m part of a series of shitty things that have happened to H’s side of the family these past few years, and I feel I am adding to her burdens (regardless of whether it’s sensible of her to take on these emotional burdens or not, she does, and I’m hardly going to be able to magically change that for her with three well-chosen pieces of assvice).

And I feel awful because she has tried to say ‘I know how you feel’. And I can’t really sit there and say: ‘no, you don’t. You had a kid. You had one miscarriage. You had another kid. As for the grandkids thing, H has a brother, I’m not your only freakin’ chance. What you felt/ feel is in no way ‘less’ or ‘better’ than how I feel, but it is different. Because you never, not for a minute in your entire life, had to sit and face the possibility of never becoming a mother. And I have been doing that for the past four years. You probably had a far more realistic view of parenthood and what, exactly, you had lost when you miscarried H’s little sibling. You knew that loss, that grief, in a way I never could. I wouldn’t dream of telling a woman who had living children but lost the next pregnancy that I knew how she felt. I don’t. My beautifully idealised picture of my children is just that, an idealised picture. The weight that reality, practical understanding, can give to grief, I don’t feel. But similarly, a woman with at least one living child before her first loss cannot feel the bitter hopelessness of nothing but losses. She may understand, or empathise, but she cannot feel it.’

But I can’t say that. It’s not kind. And my MiL deserves kindness as much as I do.

Here’s to courage, and a stiff upper lip, and to iron bands around the heart. One day I’ll be able to take them off and go into hysterics. But, please, not this weekend.

I don’t know, what? November 15, 2009

I had an odd, inconclusive visit to the GP on Friday afternoon. Doc Tashless was not available, so I took whoever was available, and ended up speaking to an extremely nice, sunny woman who, get this, had actually read my notes before I came into the room, and one of the first things she said to me was ‘oh, you have had a rough time, haven’t you?’. Wow. And I smiled demurely and just about managed not leap to my feet, punching the air and shouting ‘YEESSSSSSS!’ (Incidentally, why the hell did I smile demurely? That’s so… British).

Anyway, I had gone to get my blood test results. And I got a result. Singular. I thought Doc Tashless had asked for tests on antiphospholipid antibodies, cardiolipin antibodies and Lupus antibodies, but all I got back was my Anti-cardiolipin antibody level. Apparently it’s under 10 iu/mL, and apparently that’s good. Which is good. But seriously, what the hell happened to everything else? Are they all the same test? Were there supposed to be three different tests? Sunny GP said that that was all they had in the results file. The original paperwork, of course, went off to the lab along with the sample, so we can’t find out, no, wait, I can’t prove, that Doc Tashless wanted all three things.

It was a bit of an impasse, to be honest. I was a leeeetle peeved about the missing results, and Sunny GP was reassuring me over and over again that the RM Clinic would do all the tests very carefully, including all the clotting and bleeding disorder ones, and not miss any out, which was sweet of her, but was not answering my actual question, and my asking of the actual question was somewhat bollixed because I couldn’t remember the word ‘antiphospholipid’. Agh. In the end I politely caved and dropped the subject in favour of one very dear to my heart.

Painkillers! Yes! For the periods from hell! I have proven to my own satisfaction that mefenamic acid is about as much use as a fart in a punctured space-suit. I pointed this out, less colourfully, to Sunny GP, and she said she was very sorry but as I wanted to get pregnant all they could offer me was pain-relief. I said I was aware of this. She said, in that case, would I like a prescription of co-codamol? And I said, with possibly unseemly enthusiasm, ooohh, yes please! Because they gave me that stuff for surgery and when I was miscarrying, and it really helps and also, whooooooooooooo I is stoned, giggle giggle. It really helps, by the way, because it is a freakin’ opiate. Opiates! Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge used to take to get his freak on and write Kubla Kahn! Oh, yes, and it also contains paracetamol. There’s nothing glamorous about paracetamol.

(NSAIDs and I are clearly having a bit of a hate-hate relationship these days, as I’ve worked my way up from aspirin to ibuprofen to naproxen to mefenamic acid and however effective ibuprofen is for a nasty headache, my uterus sneers at them all. (Except possibly diclofenac but that makes me feel even more stoned than the co-codamol and also gives me stomach ache, and anyway, diclofenac hard to come by unless you’ve spent a night on a surgical ward)).

So. I still have no idea what is wrong with me, but at least now medical professionals are a) taking it all very seriously and b) giving me opiates. Score.

Roll on 7th of December.

Tomorrow I go back to work, for the first time in nearly three weeks. I feel very shy and nervous about this. I mean, c’mon, I was away for three weeks. People will want to know. I have rehearsed my answers over and over again (‘No, I wasn’t on holiday, I was ill. Yes, I’m much better, thank you. It’s kind of you to be concerned, but I’d prefer not to talk about it, thank you.’). Last time I was completely blind-sided by one chirpy colleague gushing ‘Ooh, May, you’ve lost weight!’, and had to spend 20 minutes sitting in the loo with my head in my hands. God knows what it’ll be this time.

Tomorrow I also have another acupuncture appointment. Shit, but it sucks telling people all about it face-to-face. And last time I saw her, it was only a few hours before I got that poor, doomed little second pink line. And I told her my period was late but I hadn’t had a positive test and I didn’t know what was going on at all at all at all, so she for once did not set fire to me, and did very gentle acupuncture instead, just in case. Arse. Damn. Etc..

Meanwhile, Satsuma had had enough of being ignored, and over the past few days has staggered back into action. No idea if any of this action is conclusive yet, or if she’s just messing about because she’s bored. I can feel her aching and fussing, and *ahem* fertile signs are occurring *ahem*. H and I had a sad little discussion about sex, performance of, sans or avec rain-coats, and I got a little unreasonable at the very idea of missing a possible chance (nope, can’t shake the ‘anovulatory’ label. Still believe it’s true, despite hay-stacks of evidence to the contrary). But I’ve also rather gone off sex (yes, I know! Me! Off sex! I’d've been less startled if they’d told me Richard Dawkins was an Episcopalian). So in the end, I decided if we felt like it, we’d do it totally nekkid, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t do it at all, and therefore let the tenor of our desires dictate just how ready to try again we were. Since when, we’ve done it, but I’ve been rather depressingly unenthusiastic and participating in a spirit of ‘just in case’. Which is not quite what I meant. Damn and blast and damn all over again. What do I mean, anyway? What, for that matter, do I want?

In that case, I shall have a whinge. So there. November 12, 2009

I can’t touch a bloody thing without it breaking at the moment. First my lap-top blue-screen-of-deathed me *sob*, then the oven went into a frenzy when I turned the grill on and blew every circuit in the house, and now, the blown fuse-box/ power surge from the oven’s demise has done something drastic to the main house hard-drive (why yes, we back up. H is a computer type. We totally have an external hard-drive) and this is messing with the brains of H’s computer (which he is kindly letting me use until I can sort the effing, blinding lap-top out). I am now absolutely convinced I am carrying a dark static cloud of electronic death about with me. I’m nervous even writing this in case something else goes kablooey. Perhaps I’ll delete the entire internet when I press ‘post’. That’ll be fun.

I’m very close to my extended-due-to-life-being-shit deadline on my first creative writing assignment and I am doing very badly. I was writing a jolly little short story about swimming lessons. Eh. H asked me yesterday how it was all going.

‘I wrote a poem,’ I said.

‘Excellent!’ he said, ‘That’s really encouraging! What’s it about?’

‘Dead babies.’

For some reason, this struck us both as hilarious and we laughed like owls for minutes on end.

Anyway, the jolly short story is rubbish, and I know it rubbish, and I shall have to submit it anyway, and I have never felt so like covering each page in footnotes and footnotes of excuses before in my life.

For I do have my footnotes, pace Pain Olympian Gold Medallists. They’re only footnotes. I’m not trying to claim them as the main thesis of my existance. Anyway, I’ll share them with you. Chiefly because they are going round and round and round in my head and this is interfering with the creative writing. And slightly because I may only be a bronze medallist, but hey! Bronze is shiny too!

You see, whenever I am trying to, in the old-fashioned phrase, ‘improve myself’ educationally or careerishly (lost cause, that last one), something always goes spectacularly shit-tastic in my personal/family life. To whit:

• Just before my GCSE’s (exams of national importance taken at 16, for non-British and puzzled readers), I broke my arm, and had to take half my exams with a cast on.
• During my A-levels (extremely important exams that university attendance is decided on, taken at 18), I started fainting on a regular, weekly basis. I was also in agony a lot of the time, and rather under-weight. It was all blamed on my periods, which were going to be just fine after I’d had a kid or two (such a sensible thing to say to a 17-year-old). I actually had a) glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis/ Epstein-Barr), b) a nicely developing eating disorder (in that, I didn’t) and c) a gigantic teratoma that eventually ripped my left ovary in half. I collapsed and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I always talk about my ovaries and fallopian tubes in the singular.
• During the third year of my BA, my sister Trouble had a turn at being extremely ill. So ill that at one point she weighed less than 6 stone (80 lbs). Eventually she was diagnosed and got surgery and is now a skinny but reasonable 8 stone, so all was well, but at the time, we were all scared to death.
• At the end of my MA, when H and I were living together for the first time, H lost his job, because of some rather disgusting office politics, and we were both forced to go and live with my mother until we could find new jobs. Yes, my MA suffered (I went from Golden Girl guaranteed a distinction to Slight Embarrassment lucky to pass at all).
• During my PhD (which, thanks to the MA erk, my tutors were now a bit iffy about), my mother developed breast cancer. I took a year off to nurse her. My mother (thank God) recovered. My PhD didn’t.
• During my second MA, I lost my first pregnancy. Did quite well in my dissertation. On reflection, would have preferred it the other way round.
• Now I am doing a creative writing course. Jesus Christ, Universe, I was only doing it for fun.

There. I whinged. And now I shall stop whinging and go find some blessings to count.

If you are reading this, then I did not kill the Internet. Hurray!

PTSD October 12, 2009

OK. Let’s talk about this.

Since the miscarriage, I have had about nine? ten? periods/provera-induced bleeds/whateverthehells. (The ones on provera were not nearly as vile as the ovulatory ‘proper’ periods, but yes, they were vile too. Vile is not binary). Anyway, as they have come, stamped up and down on my belly in spiked rugby boots, and gone, I began to notice H was being a little… off. Not quite H-ish.

You see, H’s normal reaction to an unwell May is to tuck her up in bed and bring her tea and stroke her hair, while May bats him crossly away and demands to be left in peace for God’s sake. But during a period (I hate the word ‘period’. I really do. Not as much as I hate ‘Aunt Flo’ or ‘The Painters’ or ‘That Time of the Month’, admittedly, but still), H would, in fact, leave May alone. He would bring tea and refill hot-water-bottles, but having delivered them he would scarper. Admittedly, I’m not a good conversationalist at these times and about as easy to cuddle as a brass elbow. It was quite a big deal for both of us when, on one particularly shitty night in a hotel in Zurich, H sat up at about 2 am and massaged my feet in a kindly attempt to distract me from the cramps in my thighs, back, belly, buttocks and jaw (from teeth-clenching). It was such a big deal, in fact, that it made me think about the fact that the normally very huggy cuddlefest that is H on a compassion bender, doesn’t touch me when I have my (ugh) period.

Oh, hey, part of me is saying. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t touch me either. Also, usually, when I am not well, I don’t actually like being touched or asked how I am in a worrity little voice. Just keep the tea coming and pass me the TV remote.

The miscarriage has changed everything, though. The whole I’m-all-disappointed-and-hejeebuz-but-this-hurts-too-much thing? Now I want to be stroked and cuddled. It doesn’t have to be all cuddle all the time, you know. Tea is good, too. And I am aware that while sleep becomes that Vanished Good of Golden Yore for me, at least until the Cute Ute shuts the fuck up, other humans will be and deserve to be blissfully unconscious between 11 pm and 7 am. But, some cuddle? A little cuddle? Mini-cuddle? Cuddle if you ever want a blow-job ever again?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, in my best wifely, concerned, caring way, I got H in a headlock and threatened to tear his ears off if he didn’t talk right now this minute as to WTF was up with the distant no-touchy thing during the Visitation of the Red Menace. Eventually I had to let go of him as his replies were rather muffled, but when he repeated it all, I gathered that, basically, my periods are so fucking awful that they remind him of my post-miscarriage collapse. And that scares and upsets him, as it was a (yes, really!) scary and upsetting experience, and he deals with it in the way he usually deals with horrible shit, i.e. he puts it a box, tapes the lid on with gaffer tape, puts the box in a locked filing cabinet, and then buries the lot under a deserted cross-roads at midnight. In other words, avoidance tactics. In practice, this means he pretends I don’t really exist until about day 4 of said period, when I am clearly feeling a lot better and have become a cushiony armful of yumminess again.

H did not realise this would be in any way a problem because I am usually so keen on being left alone (only, bring the tea) when not well.

I agree it might have helped if I had said, look, yes, normally, but when I am menstruating, I need cuddles, OK? Only, and this is a stinger, this is pretty much exactly what I did say several months ago. Hence, you see, the need for head-locks. What? I’m not normally violent.

H admits I did say that. It’s just, when faced with me rocking back and forth in foetal position, communicating in grunts through clenched teeth, with the sweaty complexion of a good stilton, he panics. Any intelligent memories of a (pink, comfortable, upright and voluble) wife saying, ‘remember, a back rub would be nice at this point,’ are swamped by fear and grief, and therefore, you know, the whole ‘box, gaffer-tape, spade, if anyone asks, I’ll be down at the old cross-roads’ routine kicks in.

Self-defence. And for exactly the same reason I want the cuddle. It’s all too like the miscarriage, and the aftermath of the miscarriage, and we are both upset and disappointed and dealing with crappy memories, and it really, really is a bit fucking much that I have to do a live-action re-enactment of the whole sodding thing just to prove that I’m still not pregnant, and I want to deal with it by hugging and being treated like a super-special snowflake, and H wants to deal with it by, well, not dealing with it.

We both promised to do better at the communication lark. Well, no, I actually promised I would be promising to do better if I hadn’t already done better, thank you. H promised to, well, get over himself and rub feet.

The thing that really annoys me, however, is that from the very day I lost Pikaia, yea even while lying in my hospital bed feeling like road-kill, I was worried about how H would deal with it all. And H spent quite a few months denying that it had any kind of permanent or traumatic effect on him at all, why should it have, I mean, he was sad, obviously, but, it’s all over now, onwards and upwards. Hah, I say. Hah.

You remember we went to a counsellor about my (our! It was supposed to be our!) inability to get over it and cheer the fuck up. We did do lots of useful work on communication and acknowledgement of each other’s feelings and more communication and that it’s normal to feel crushed to pulp by years of embarrassing medical shit topped off with infertility and a dollop of miscarriage. But I am actually quite annoyed, then and now, that the one thing we never discussed at length was H’s feelings, because H was always denying he even had any. Yeah. He does have a remarkably elaborate burial ritual going for these feelings he doesn’t actually have, doesn’t he? And denial is in Egypt.

PS I am well aware you are all staring at me in disgust because H is obviously an angel in chinos. Tea, hot-water-bottles, and now I want foot-rubs? Just how special is this super-snowflake?

I loved long and long September 15, 2009

Xbox (hi, Xbox!) posted this back at the end of July. In particular he says, of the child he and his wife are at last expecting :

We’ll know it as the kid that has kept us going for two years….

So no, I’m not nervous, I’m excited at the thought of finally getting to meet in the flesh, someone who has already done so much for us. Someone we’re already familiar with after years of ups and downs.

Someone we’ve already known for a long, long time.

A brand new old friend.

I think I cried when I first read it (sorry, Xbox!). Mostly because it’s exactly true. I was teetering on the verge of writing about it too. And then a couple of weeks later Mel of Stirrup Queens posted some thoughts along the same lines, and I got a little overwrought in my whole-hearted, nay, whole-bodied agreement and shelved the whole subject until it felt safe. Because, for me, it’s not a beautiful, heart-filling, piercingly sweet thought any more.

When I lost Pikaia (and I always think of her as female, even though we never knew if she was), I didn’t just lose a few weeks-worth of pointless pregnancy. I didn’t lose a mere blob of genetic material, a non-person. I lost that child who had already been in my heart for the whole two-and-a-half years we’d been trying. We’d been trying for her, after all. Through the polyps and anovulation and bleeding and surgery and drugs, the hope of her, the reality of her, was the one Pole-Star that kept us going. It was for her we did it. It was for her we clung on.

When I lost Pikaia, it was all that that died.

It took a year, at least a year, for me to get to a place where my heart wasn’t crying to have her back again. Oh, yes, I wanted to get pregnant again, of course I did. But in the night, when I wept, I wept oh come back to me, come back to me.

Finally, my heart managed to bury her.

Today I am able to hope and wish for a baby without instantly being hijacked by yearning for her.

Some people talk an awful lot of bumfluff about the influence psychology has on physiology. I have been told that, for example, painful periods are a result of my disappointment at not being pregnant (what, when I was fourteen?). That you must ‘make room in your heart’ for a pregnancy. That you have to be ready. And that, dear friends, is exactly why I have not talked about this before. Certainly not while I was still yearning for my first pregnancy to somehow miraculously come back. Some platitudinous twerp, I felt sure, would bounce out of the woodwork and tell me to free my soul or what-have-you, and I’d have to go round to their house and spit in their eye, which comes expensive if they live across the oceans. Every blog, message board, personal account I ever read or heard confirmed that getting pregnant again is a great healer and helps a person move on. I have yet to hear that wallowing in grief is a natural sterilizer. God, and if it were, all war-torn countries would have a birth-rate of precisely fuck-all (and they notoriously don’t). (And it kinda rankles that we had to get over Pikaia’s loss all by ourselves).

But still, it’s a, well, not a relief at all, really, but it’s something to be able to long for a baby, and not that baby anymore.

Not that either of us can forget her. H (to my (possibly unworthy) surprise) began to talk about Pikaia last night, and then he lit her candle for a while, and we spent the rest of the evening in its glow. See?

And so we go on, knowing only that it will go on for ever, and, perversely, the only life Pikaia has is in our desire, as she was made of our longing before she existed, and is made of our longing now she has ceased to exist.

Not that I over-think these things August 23, 2009

Since I lost Pikaia, 15 months ago, I’ve had only five ovulatory cycles. Of which only two seemed to have anything to do with Clomid, and one of those was definitely more of an ‘I’m not budging until this damned chemical shit is totally out of my system’ point-proving exercise than a drug-induced ovulation.

I have two strong and recurrent feelings about this, depending on whether you catch me having had, or not had, my mid-morning coffee-break:

1. Well, you know, in a normal woman, who ovulates maybe twelve or thirteen times a year, no one would bat an eyelid if she still wasn’t up the duff after five cycles. Not one single eyelid. It’s within statistical ordinariness. It’s not something anyone would panic about. Keep trying. It’s fine. Deep breaths now. Remember, you shouldn’t expect yourself to be pregnant already, you’ve only had five goes since you were last pregnant. Now breathe, finish your coffee, and stop staring at the carrot-cake, you can’t have any.

Or,

2. In fifteen months, fifteen, I only get five cycles? Is this fair? Is this cricket? How the hell am I supposed to get pregnant if I only get a go once every three fecking months? Huh? On average? Huh? Do you have any idea how crushing it is to get a period when you get so very few chances and you haven’t a fecking clue when or if you’ll get another chance? Crushing, I tell you! This is me, being crushed! Also, you’re between me and the coffee stand and I am taking no prisoners. Mmmm. Cake.

It’s exhausting. (Also, what’s with all the pre-coffee fecking? My inner Irish half (yes, both grandmothers were Irish) seems to suppressed by caffeine. How odd).

So, what exactly, do you suppose, are the chances of Satsuma stepping up to the crease a third time in a row? (Americans’d say ‘plate’. But we play cricket here in Blighty, so we step up to the crease, and anyway we’re just won the Ashes, so crease! Crease! Crease!). She definitely seems to be hinting that she’s over the Clomid and on with her life, doesn’t she? Do we trust Madame Satsuma The Lying Ovary of Lies’ hints? Do we look stupid?

However, H is optimistic. After all, I ovulated on day 20 last time, flying solo – I hadn’t even been acupunctuated yet. H cannot shake off his hippy conditioning, and has rather more faith in the Snazzy Clinic than I do, and is assuming they’ll make things even better. Me, I am cynical and now possibly even sneery. It’s a consequence of being punctured in special lady-organs improvement points for improving the condition of the uterus, and then going on to have a period the sheer suckitude of which actually sent me off to snivel in the GP’s waiting-room, surrounded by Things in Pushchairs Pushed by Great Big Bellies (my God, it was like farrowing season in there. All of you who know farms, know what I mean).

My next visit to the Snazzy Clinic is Wednesday. Words will be said. Pray God I say them in a calm and reasonable voice and don’t drag in Ben Goldacre, Richard Dawkins, or anything sweary.

Anyway, in any case, must crack on with the weight-loss thing, which has stalled again, and I am thanking my lucky stars it didn’t go backwards, considering my appalling laziness recently. And I ate an extraordinarily large portion of extraordinarily good lasagne tonight, which I doubt helped. In fact, I know it didn’t help. I made it. I saw exactly how much butter and olive-oil and cheese went into it. I’d be a nine-stone twiglet if only I was a shit cook.

Slough of despond, now with improved wallow August 10, 2009

I want to apologise to my fellow infertility bloggers who are currently pregnant, and on whose blogs I haven’t left a single measly comment for ages.

I’m sorry.

It’s not that I’m not happy for you. I am, I really am, so very, very happy. And I still check up on you regularly, and come away smiling from cute, hopeful, joyful posts. I smile all day. I tell H, So-and-So had ultrasound pictures! Such-and-such had a funny story about morning sickness! Isn’t it great?

I just can’t talk to you. Well, yes, obviously a part of it is being sea-green with jealousy and wishing I could happily join in with my own anecdotes and blurred, shadowy, unintelligible and perfectly beautiful pictures. The jealousy is something I can get past, however. I have been known to. I am quite grown-up sometimes.

It’s that there’s nothing for me to relate to in your posts any more. I mean, I was sick too, I even have a cute story about nearly hurling on a friend, and therefore having to tell him I was pregnant to stop him flinging me into a taxi and rushing me home while scrubbing himself down with disinfectant hand-gel. And the cute anecdote ends with an ultrasound image too, but of a dead, deflating gestational sac surrounding no heart-beat. I know this story has no place in your comments. It’s a horrible cross between a piece doom-mongering bitchery and emotional blackmail. But I have no other story to tell yet.

I could just limit myself to saying ‘lovely! Excellent! Good luck!’ and running away again. That would be the mature, kind, thing to do. Do you want to see that week after week? Would that work? It’d stop me feeling like a wart, at least.

Oh, the self-pity I am wallowing in tonight. Revolting, isn’t it? *Pulls self together, and goes off to brush teeth*

A little sweetness June 30, 2009

Did you know about Organic Meltdown? I’m not supposed to be going anywhere near chocolate at the moment (damn you, diet! You had better work!), but once apon a time *ahem* I ate some *ahem ahem ahem* (what? One bar, I swear) of their chocolate. And so did H. H quite likes chocolate too, you see. And it is totally guilt-free middle-class hippy suitable-for-eco-worriers chocolate. And extremely tasty. (Which helps). Every bar sold allows the charity to save one tree in the Amazonian rain-forest – how cool is that? It was, in fact, my duty to eat that chocolate. I am utterly slacking by avoiding it. (Oh, my, this is an ethically complicated situation).

This evening I got a little email from them. H had kept the wrapper from said chocolate bar (Organic Dark Chocolate with Indian Spice, I recall). There’s an extra little thing you can do, you see. Register the wrapper online, and they’ll pick a tree from their tropical cloud forest in Ecuador for you and show you where it is on google maps (on a ridge above the confluence of two rivers). That chocolate? Meant they could afford to protect that tree. It won’t be felled for agriculture, or to make way for cocoa plantations (which are, you see, one of the main reasons the cloud forests in South America are being cut down. Like I said, this is eco-worrier chocolate).

H had dedicated that tree to Pikaia.

Several cuts of the whip June 19, 2009

It has been a less than fabulous week.

It ought to have been a fabulous week. There were theatre visits, and a weekend, and my husband bought star-gazer lilies, and I saw friends, and a last birthday present turned up in the post, hurray!

But I was in a foul mood anyway, about the Clomid Doesn’t Love Me Anymore thing, so I was attracting anxst. As you do when your mood is foul.

On Wednesday, the evening of the day in which I had learnt this cycle was another Epic Fail (I am so good at those now), H and I joined my good friend E, and some friends of his, to go to the theatre (that bit was great, we saw Waiting for Godot, and it was AMAZING. A. MA. ZING). Anyway, E’s friend hasn’t seen me for a couple of years, but we always ask after each other, so, as we were walking along, she asked, ’so, how’s the kid?’

Awful pause.

‘The… the what?’ I stammered.

‘Your kid? You’ve got a baby, haven’t you?’

‘No,’ I said, evenly (yes, evenly! I was impressed too!).

‘Oh, I thought you had,’ she said, looking confusedly at E, who having missed the exchange, smiled back.

Arse. E was one of the first people I told when I was pregnant, mostly because I nearly puked on him. Oh, don’t be angry with E, both his friend and I know he tells the other all about each, and I know eye-watering stuff about her, so it’s only fair. Only, he seems to have missed out the vital point that I did not, in fact, have the baby.

I didn’t elaborate. I couldn’t face it. No doubt she interrogated him at length later.

Then, at work, a few days later, a colleague, let’s call them P for Parent, having told me all about the lovely things they’d done with their small children over the weekend, asked me what I’d been up to. I mentioned the theatre trips (I’ve been on several). ‘Oh,’ said P, ‘That’s the problem with having kids. You don’t get to have so many evenings out. You’re so lucky. I wish I could go to the theatre as often as you.’

‘To be honest, I’d rather have the kids,’ I said, stung, and not very evenly at all.

There was a horribly awkward pause. A LONG, horribly awkward pause.

‘No, you wouldn’t. They’re such hard work, they take over your life,’ P began, and then, thank GOD, the meeting started, and P had to shut up. This being the same P, remember, whose children are the light of their life, and whose weekend was one great ocean of family cuteness, three minutes previously. As P is quite a nice person, I can only assume this was a cack-handed attempt at comfort.

Because, really, I’ll totally take the cute kids over the theatre visits and lie-ins. And I’m willing to bet P wouldn’t take the years of fertility treatment, surgery, failure, and the silent bitter weeping of their beloved partner over the loss of their child, even with all the Godot versus the Space Wizards theatrical triumphs in the world thrown in.

Yesterday I was hauling my pathetic arse out of the incommunicado funk everything had hurled me into, when I got a migraine. It was a two-stage migraine. I ran home with one eye completely blood-shot, half-blind, nauseous, dizzy, collapsed, and the actual agonizing headache failed to materialise. I had a headache, but not as bad as that headache, and despite infuriating photophobia, was quite chirpy by evening. Aha, it was merely biding its time, and I woke up at dawn feeling like a rugby prop forward was standing on my head. Most of day spent in bed with head under duvet, as blinds utterly unable to keep a sufficient quantity of that bastard light out of the room.

A fine end to a pisser of a week. I think I shall have a drinkie.

P. S. The oven just broke, blowing every fuse in the house. When I have got over my joy that the modem survived, I shall swear a great deal and have ANOTHER drinkie.