It’s ‘Point And Laugh’ Tuesday November 24, 2009

It’s been a great week for May Making an Absolute Tit of Herself. Seriously. Pop me in a blue beret and call me Beakie. Let’s all point and laugh at May! Yes! She can take it!

For starters, after the last post’s Great Big Attack of the Vapours, MiL was (narrative imperative dictates that this be so) lovely. H and his dad went off at about six on Sunday evening, both in ironed shirts. We girls had tea, we had a cheerful natter, we had G&Ts, I made dinner, MiL washed up, we got out the wine, put a film in the DVD player and shared some chocolate, and ended up watching several episodes of Duckula (H found the box set on sale last week) and laughing like inebriated hyenas (Hoomite and Yubi!). Either I was emitting ‘First Rule of Miscarriage Club’ vibes at a strength and frequency sufficient to boil water, or MiL was, you know, in a fairly mellow mood and wanted to keep it that way, but who cares! Result! And also, a salutary lesson that while MiL’s issues are MiL’s issues, umm, May’s issues are May’s issues, and May needs to stop projecting so much.

And on to the slap-stick section of this week’s programming.

I was in a café, as one is, eating a toasted sandwich. A row of tables ran along the back wall, and I was sitting at one of them. And when I had finished my sandwich, I scooted along the bench to reach the section that had no table in front of it, so as to facilitate the standing-up part of leaving the establishment. Alas, I only noticed that the bench was not, after all, continuous, and was, in fact, four benches, one for each table, when I fell off the end of mine. And onto my neighbours’ shopping. I bounced upright carolling: ‘Sorry! Oops! I’m fine! More embarrassed than anything else! Glad your shoes are OK! Splendid! Bye now!’ and ran for the door.

Ow. My poor bottom. Has stiletto-shaped dent.

And then we were all having tea and birthday patisserie (did I mention it was H’s birthday yesterday?), and it was all marvellous, until I picked up my mug and watched it slide out of my grip like a buttered anchor. I basically poured an entire mug of hot Earl Gray directly onto H’s iPhone. Eeep. Oh, and onto the table, up my sleeve, down my trousers, all over the carpet, and between my thighs onto the chair beneath, but seriously? The iPhone? I nearly died of horror right on the spot.

It’s OK. The iPhone is fine. H thinks the iSock I knitted for it in pure (purple!) wool saved it from drowning.

Carpet is not fine, but carpet is hateful shade of anaemic beige anyway (also, who in freaking heck puts anaemic beige carpet in the kitchen?).

And at work today, a colleague distracted me while I was sticking labels onto books. I looked up, idly scratched my forehead and pushed my glasses up my nose while answering her, and yes, dear friends, I really did sellotape my glasses to my eyebrow.

And then I threw a veritable turret of books down the stairs at the exact moment I said to a junior colleague: ‘Abbie, don’t carry that many at once, you’ll drop them!’

For, verily, I am a class act.

And we shan’t at all in any way discuss the *ahem* very adult birthday treat I was giving H when someone let someone else know, in a very *ahem* pointed fashion that someone’s fingernails were insufficiently trimmed and someone else threw a leeeeeetle tantrum and vowed that that was the end, the end, you hear me! of adult treats for that evening, because surely a grown man person can keep his their blasted fingernails under control and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth and all participants announced they were really very very tired now anyway and totally going to sleep and twenty minutes later matters had resumed in a decidedly heated fashion. What was I saying about having mislaid my libido, oh doom, oh gloom? Well, I’ve found it again, and it appears to be made of cast-iron.

Dashed bad form, I know.

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!

Notes on recovery November 9, 2009

I’ve even left the house a few times.

I know, big hairy deal.

Except, actually, it is a bit of a big deal. The one thing I can’t shake is this endless sense of exhaustion. I stopped spotting altogether a week ago, so it’s not continuous bleeding. I finished the whole course of antibiotics on Thursday, so my bowel function (sorry, but antibiotics play hob with said function) is returning to normal, and I am eating sensible healthy meals and taking my vitamins and iron supplements. I’m even sleeping quite well. What more can I do? I have been signed off work until next week, so this is in no way a vital or pressing question. I am just. So. Fucking. Tired. So I am very proud that I went out, walked about, and came back. Especially so as I got to meet Womb for Improvement for hot chocolate (squeeeeeee!)

Last time I miscarried, I was very emotional. Devastated. Heart-broken. Raging and inconsolable. This time I feel, chiefly, tired and bitter. So far at any rate. We shall see what spectacular outbreaks I come up with as time goes by. Because, oh, yes, H and I got into a deeply, deeply pointless fight last night, based on the sort of infinitesimal misunderstanding we’d normally clear up in seventeen placid seconds. It then occurred to me that we went through this sort of stupid blow-up and resultant disproportionate fury from last time. It’s like misery-induced paranoia, as if there was no possible way anything could be meant in all innocence. The universe is, after all, a heap of shite, right?

I personally attribute the lack of immediate devastation to:

• a) Denial. It’ll smack me upside the head at some point. Heigh ho.
• b) I’ve already lost my miscarriage virginity. The first time, I knew intellectually that shit happens, but, in my innocence, thought getting pregnant was the hard part, and that I had, therefore, paid my ‘hard part’ dues. This time? Feh. I am comfortably tucked into the box marked ’shit happens’.
• c) By the time I knew I was pregnant, I had already been cramping and spotting. I knew it was doomed. I had no chance whatsoever of getting attached, or invested, or whatever. Actually, I suspect that this will be the part of this loss that will come back to haunt me most. Me, watching the second pink line coming up on the pee-stick, and thinking not: ‘hurrah, I’m pregnant!’ but ‘oh God. This isn’t a wonky period. This is a miscarriage. Oh, please, no. Not again.’

H also seems more resigned. He is also more communicative (yay for counselling!), and we both seem to find the fact that we’re being taken very seriously and sent off to specialists reassuring. Last time, we were adrift on a vast ocean of confusion and loss, and nobody in the least bit interested in hauling us in to shore. Contrary to popular (medical) belief, there is nothing in the least bit reassuring or comforting about the diagnosis ‘It’s just bad luck, it almost certainly won’t happen again.’ Statistics may say this is so. We, the couple sitting before you, are not statistics. Statistically, any given couple should get happily, innocently pregnant in one year of banging away. We have already flicked the V at statistics. We can’t possibly feel that statistics apply to us any more. The unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘bad luck’ is also the unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘there’s fuck all we can/will do for you. Now bugger off.’

*Momentary pause while I feel some sympathy for doctors saddled with having to give the diagnosis ‘bad luck’, and the powerlessness they get to ‘enjoy’ too.*

And now all is onwards and upwards. Take more blood. Do more tests. Test both of us. Find a cause. Treat it. We may turn out to be in a shitty-bad place, but at least we won’t be lost in the dark anymore.

At least, I hope so.

Things we can’t say in front of Mothers-in-Law November 8, 2009

We have been dealing with this miscarriage inappropriately.

While we were waiting for the scan to confirm whether I had an ectopic or not I stated calmly: ‘Last time round I made the mistake of only asking to get pregnant. This time, I remembered to ask for a genetically normal embryo, but stupidly forgot to mention in the uterus.’

Once we’d discovered it wasn’t ectopic: ‘Ah, see what I did there? I forgot to ask for viable. I need to make a list.’

While we were walking home from the hospital the first time round, after blood tests and a thorough wanding (during which the technician left the room to find the consultant and H ended up holding the ultrasound wand in place inside me until she came back (um, yeah, that was so very very not erotic) I told H he’d need to give the RM clinic blood and semen samples. He flailed his arms wildly and staggered across the pavement clutching his brow, wailing ‘It’s so intrusive! It’s so invasive! I don’t how I could possibly cope! It’s just too much to endure!’ and I leant against the wall and nearly peed myself laughing.

‘We didn’t have time to think of a cute nick-name for this one,’ I said. ‘Flash-in-the-pan,’ said H.

After it was all over, and H and I were having a sorrowful embrace, I tenderly said: ‘The thing about Pikaia was, we were given the time to fall in love with her, or, at least, with the idea of her. [Pause] Of course, this one was a pain in the arse from the moment of conception.’

As I lay on the hospital bed, H took my hand and said ‘Life really is a sexually transmitted, fatal disease, isn’t it?’

Shortly after that, the sweet doctor came in to tell us that my Beta levels had dropped below 5, and I wasn’t in the least bit pregnant any more. I distinctly heard H mutter, ‘Well, that was a bloody waste of time.’ I cracked up.

Whatever shall we do? November 6, 2009

To book an appointment with a specialist clinic, one has to tell one’s GP (or, possibly, one’s GP tells one instead) that one wishes to do so. The GP writes out a slip of paper, and one takes that to the receptionist, who takes it to the secretary, who allegedly will come right out and book you an appointment there and then, or (as has happened every time I’ve used the system) will not come out, and the receptionist will return and tell one to go home and wait for a phone-call, as the secretary is ‘a little busy right now.’

It took four days for the secretary to get back to my this time, one weekend short of my ‘this is the fucking limit‘ rule and subsequent seige of the GP’s offices until results, em, result. And, bless her heart, having established that I was me, said ‘I’m so sorry you need this clinic.’ Me too, sugar.

Anyway, I have an appointment to see the Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic at Mothership Hospital on the 7th of December.

Now I was all, whoo! It’s only a month wait! Whoooo! H was more, wtf? A whole month? Bloody NHS. I insist on being pleased. The NHS is perfectly prepared to let people wait for ninety million weeks to have an actually painful and disruptive condition checked. Technically, I’m fine hanging about for a month unless (wahey) I get pregnant this cycle, which brings me to the next big freak-out:

Should I even be trying to get pregnant this cycle? Keeping in mind I always know exactly when I ovulate, so the whole ‘but then we won’t know the dates!’ is bull-pucky. At least, it is for me. And I didn’t have surgery, so I don’t have to worry my pretty head about healing. And I was less than five weeks pregnant, so I doubt my uterus was feeling much strain. I can’t think of a physical reason why I should carefully lay a naked blade down the length of the bed between us.

Emotional reasons? Well. Should I be risking another bleedathon right after this one? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to know what is wrong and why and what can be done about it before offering up more hostages to fortune? And will I snap like a dry twig if it happens again?

Also, I am 34 and beginning to feel the breeze from the onrushing juggernaut of Advanced Maternal Age. Also, I go completely nutzoid at Christmahanukwanzaa (what? Don’t all infertile people?).

Also also, despite the recent sudden realisation that I am quite good at getting pregnant as long as I actually ovulate, I still can’t help but feel that the chances of getting pregnant in any given cycle are somewhere between ‘ah hah hah hah hah hah’ and ’snowball in hell’.

I never said I was rational about any of this.

Status report November 3, 2009

First, a quick State-of-May report:

• Uterus – has shut up. Is merely spotting. This is good.
• Bladder – has also shut up, most of the time, but still thinks making me need to pee every seventeen minutes is funny.
• Stomach – being walloped by the antibiotics (the antibiotics are for the UTI). Seriously, I get to feel sick for an hour or so every morning. Yes. I miscarried last week and I get to feel sick every morning this week. Because, you know, the universe has a very strange sense of humour.
• Pallor – much improved, thank you. I just look tired and sulky now.
• Emotional state – numb. Or furious. Mostly numb. Realised last night that we actually got pregnant all by ourselves, and all my fears and vapourings about never getting pregnant again after Pikaia were completely unfounded, and laughed the sort of laugh that is shortly followed by a thunderstorm, mysterious groans and lurchings about in the cellar, and fifty-odd villagers with pitch-forks turning up at the front door.

And now for the State-of-Play report:

H and I went to the GP yesterday, to get the referral to the Recurrent Miscarriage clinic, and to get a sick note, so I can stay at home and sulk for a bit. I took H along in case I got flustered and incoherent. We saw Doc Tashless, because I asked to, because it’s boring explaining all the past history over and over again and he has seen me often enough to have a vague grip on it all. Upshot:

• When I mentioned perhaps taking the rest of the week off work, he promptly signed me off for two weeks. H mentioned that last time round I’d probably gone back to work a little too soon, and Doc Tashless promptly decided I’d need to see him again on the last day of my sick leave so he could be sure I didn’t need even more time off. Oy vey, but that’s being taken seriously.
• I asked him to be perfectly open and put ‘miscarriage’ on the sick leave form. You see, sick leave taken for reasons of pregnancy or maternity cannot be added to your sick-leave total and used against you in disciplinary procedures, and I am off sick every sodding month as it is, so I thought, and H thought, my ass, covered, please. Not that I think anyone at work will make a fuss, but HR has an automatic sick-leave tracking system and gets your line manager to have words with you if you take more than a certain amount of time off in a year, and my line manager has already had to do this once. She was lovely about it, but nerves? Racked.
• We discussed the recurrent nature of the situation, and I (hesitantly, feeling like a dork) mentioned the possible chemical in July, and he took that seriously too, which made me feel flustered and like a dork because, you know, no proof beyond a ‘funny feeling’ (incidentally, a funny feeling I had this time round, and Pikaia time round, eeeeeeek eeeek eeeeek eeeek, but I digress). I hunted down their website this morning and found out that the RM clinic takes referrals from couples who’ve had only two consecutive miscarriages, so I could’ve left the possible chemical buried in decent obscurity and not endorkified myself.
• Doc Tashless decided we may as well get the ball rolling, as the referral could take a couple of months, and sent me directly to the phlebotomy nurse to collect what little remains of my blood for examination of my Antiphospholipid Antibodies, Cardiolipin Antibodies, and I think the paperwork said something about Lupus as well. In the event the needle-jockey only took one vial, so either they don’t need much for each test or they’re all the same test or the needle-jockey can’t read Doc Tashless’s handwriting.
• It made me quite sad and cross that I recognise the above terms, and have heard of Hughes syndrome, without Doc Tashless having to explain a word of it. But, hey, if that is it, it is treatable.
• I’m always impressed when someone, anyone, remembers to ask how H is doing as well. Because, yes, I may be the one leaking tears and snot into this wad of blue paper ripped hurridly off the roll normally used for protecting the examination couch, but H also lost a baby. And had to deal with a sobbing, vomiting, haemorrhaging emergency wife. Which was no picnic. I’d've hated it and freaked the fuck out when it was all over, had the roles been reversed.

Conclusion – I now am, and for some time shall be, sitting about at home, ‘resting’, and being kindly distracted by friendly visits, emails, and phone-calls. H went back to work this morning, so hopefully was keeping busy there. We are waiting for a date from the RM clinic. We are waiting for the results of Doc Tashless’s blood tests.

I still feel mostly numb.

Up. Down. November 2, 2009

Item – well, we went to the sushi and movie extravaganza. It was fun-fun-fun.

Item – Minx and her bestest friend had a running squabble and had to be forcibly separated on multiple occasions. This was tiresome. This made me think uncharitable thoughts about Trouble’s parenting skills.

Item – My sister had told bestest friend’s mother I was a super-special snow-flake on the basis that said woman is a midwife and might have some advice. I’ve never needed a sodding midwife. What the hey, Trouble? As it was, said woman was embarrassed as I was and we politely Spoke Not Of That.

Item – At one point I lost my tiny mind and found myself carrying a sleepy Minx back to the car-park. Now Minx may be a small, slender, fine-boned six-year-old but she is still a six-year-old and after a few steps the Voice of Reason tapped me urgently on the shoulder and spake thusly: ‘May, you’re going to pass out. Put the kid down before you both crack your skulls open on the pavement.’ So I offloaded Minx onto H and staggered around a bit until what was left of my blood got back to my brain. And was very subdued for the rest of the evening.

Item – Up was, well. It was good. It was enjoyable. It was funny, and scary, and moving. The famous opening sequence was much briefer and more subtle than I’d expected (I was almost disappointed by this), but it was well-observed and felt sadly familiar. The house and balloons turned into the most beautiful and elegant metaphor for the burden of grief I have seen in a movie. It wasn’t one of Pixar’s best, and seemed to consist of two plot-lines violently bashed together until they stuck, which did the two main themes something of a disservice. It was very, very beautiful to look at. So, you know. Why not go? Unless large dogs scare you anyway (at one point of maximum tension, I heard Minx, several seats away, bellowing: ‘Bad doggies! Bad!’).

Item – Because of how the seats were booked in advance, H ended up taking the lone seat a little way away from the rest of us. I still can’t work out if he did this out of politeness or out of a strong desire to actually not sit next to any restless children or infuriating in-laws.

Item – My brother-in-law is a Fucktard. As is my younger sister’s boyfriend. Oh, they said nothing to me. They just are boring, self-centred wimps who find it perfectly acceptable to leach off their partners and their partners’ family. Am I the only one of the whole damn clan with any taste at all in men?

Item – This naturally leads to the extremely bitter thought ‘why can they have children while I can’t…’ and we shall stop that right there, as it gives me indigestion and makes me unreasonable towards inanimate objects.

Item – I think it was because there were children present (and acting like cocaine-fiends) and we were in public places and I was very quiet anyway, as I felt very tired, but Trouble did absolutely no hand-holding or bawling at all. But did do an infuriating ‘I know something special about you that the others don’t know’ act, asking me if I was really really OK, after, you know… in front of the others right after I had answered their questions with, ‘I’m fine, really.’

Item – OK, it was probably dumb-arse to say that, as I was, according to H, both ashen and waxen. Don’t panic, I look better today.

Item – Pffft. Bit of an anti-climax all round.

Does this sound lunatic to you? October 31, 2009

So, a few days before I knew I was pregnant (hah! Pregnant, indeed), I called my sister Trouble about my niece Minx’s upcoming 6th birthday. Was there a party? Was there a plan? And Trouble thought it would be nice for us all (i.e. Minx, her daddy Formerly-Known-As-Fucktard-With-An-Option-On-The-Nickname-Being-Reinstated-If-He-Doesn’t-Grow-A-Pair-Sharpish, Trouble, Diva, my brother-who-doesn’t-have-a-stupid-nickname-because-he’s-too-nice, my Mum, my step-father, Minx’s bestest friend, bestest friend’s parent, H and I) to all go to a sushi bar and then to see ‘Up‘.

(Yes, I did say Minx was turning six, but seriously, the little eccentric adores sushi with the same fervent passion her mother and aunts do).

I thought it was a lovely idea. H and I both wanted to see the film, family outings with raw fish emporia in them are good (we always behave better in public. Like most toddlers, really). And, secretly, I was hoping that the famous opening sequence, which is about infertility (infertility! Dealt with sensitively and In a kids’ cartoon! I know! I was so pleased!) would perhaps assist some of the more relentlessly clueless family members to, umm, get a clue. Or possibly not, but it’s harder for them to argue I am making a fuss if the almighty Pixar thinks I most certainly am not.

And then… And then. Yes. Arse.

I was all prepared to pull out, because a) I am tired and sore and still a little feverish, b) there is a good chance I will bawl hysterically during the movie, c) the six-year-old’s birthday treat is, um, not a good place for bawling aunties and d), well. Family. Duh.

Anyway, I did some pre-emptive ground-laying by calling my mother and just right-out telling her what had happened (novel tactics!). To her credit, or, possibly, to my credit, I did not feel the violent urge to reach down the phone and rip her a new one. We’ve both learned. She has learned not to be such a colossally insensitive runaway juggernaut of Stupid Things To Say. I have learned that I won’t get much support and understanding from her. Love, concern, generosity, gifts, hugs, and mothering, yes. But she had three easy, easily-come-by pregnancies, three full-term easy labours. She does not get it. And, I suppose, never will. (My MIL, on the other hand, burst into tears when H told her the news. But then, she lost a baby between H and his younger brother, so. Poor MIL).

Mum’s one stupid remark of the conversation, just to prove she hadn’t completely lost the knack: ‘I know it’s hard for you, but it’s actually quite exciting that you can get pregnant!’

Err. No. Not if they keep dying.

But at least she acknowledged it was hard for me.

Anyway, there I was, all braced to back out, when Trouble called to finalise plans. And I realised Mum had not shared the news with her at all (WTF? My family normally elevate gossip to a vocation). So I did. And, to my shock, my absolute shock, Trouble said all the right things. She said she was sorry. She said that it sucked. She said that she understood if I couldn’t face family and movie. She asked anxiously if I was OK now, and recovering. She asked how H was doing. She sympathised about all the rushing in and out of hospital. She laughed at my jokes, especially the one about having mastered getting pregnant, so, now, how did staying pregnant go? And we talked about my mother’s relentless jollity in the face of disaster, with daughterly wry amusement.

So, you know, I thought I might go after all. Especially when Trouble said we could hold hands and bawl at the first part of the movie together.