Interim (very random)

After a night of evil bastard cramps and soreness, thrashing about on the In-Laws’ remarkably uncomfortable sofa-bed, keeping H awake (guilt, guilt (but at least that meant he was available for heating-pad re-heating duty at 4 am, and that helped a lot)), we decided to decamp. We were supposed to be going to my mother’s for New Year’s Eve. Given yesterday’s events, however, we thought, on the whole, no. H had hired a car for the week, so it was simple matter to pile all our stuff back into it and go home ad libitum.

Hello, I’m at home.

I have a letter from the Deepest Countryside A&E to hand to whatever A&E we would be nearest to on New Year’s Day, begging them to do the repeat beta. (New Year’s Day, it’s A&E or nothing, because all gynaecology clinics, path labs, and GPs are shut. Very glad the Deepest Countryside A&E doctor thought of that). Being at home, we can go to the Mothership Hospital, who have all my notes anyway, and who have a decent Emergency Gynaecology unit. That is tomorrow’s plan.

Meanwhile, chez Cute Ute, after last night’s argh argh argh argh, I produced a few blood clots and then cheered up a bit. I’m still bleeding, but it’s not been as heavy as ‘usual’ (H thinks this may well be because it’s only two weeks since I last emptied out). However, it’s all making one extremely unhopeful of any last-minute reprises or nice surprises. Especially the clots. I’m afraid I lacked the moral courage/nerves of steel/balls of titanium to fish them back out of the lavatory bowl and examine them, so we have no hard evidence of anything at all, but still, I gather that bleeding clots is not normally compatible with viable embryos.

I still have the positive pee-stick in my hand-bag. It makes me furiously angry just to look at it, which is why it’s still in there. Can’t take it out without having an aneurysm.

Anyway, given that today has been dedicated to sitting about on our arses waiting for something dreadful to happen, I have been number-crunching. Here are the possibilities I’ve come up with so far:

• I ovulated on the 1st of December, got pregnant, did not realise it because a) my temperature dropped on dpo 13 and b) I started bleeding heavily on dpo 14, and I assumed (how irrational of me) that it was my period. Didn’t bother with a pregnancy test, because, seriously, I’d just started my period. On time. However, I was pregnant, it survived the onrushing crimson tide, I am now 6 weeks gone (by that absurd calculation that tacks two weeks on prior to ovulation on the assumption that everyone ovulates on day 14), but the poor bloody thing was not viable (see, beta of only 33) and Cute Ute has only just got around to noticing it’s still there and is busy finishing her tidying and scrubbing.
• I ovulated on the 1st of December etc. etc., but managed it twice or the egg divided, there were twins, one was a chemical that fell out as and when my period started, and the other clung on for another couple of weeks but wasn’t viable either etc. etc.
• I ovulated on the 1st of December etc. etc., it was ectopic, and survived the crimson tide by being wedged in my fallopian tube, and is now making its deeply unwelcome presence felt.
• Both the latter, only the clinging-on one was the one wedged in the fallopian tube.
• The ‘period’ I thought I was having on the 15th of December was a real proper period. Then, for some bizarre reason, I ovulated on, say, day 8 of the cycle (I had some [TMI warning] watery cervical fluid and ovarian twinging that day), or at any time after day 6. H and I had had *cough* an intimate moment *cough* on day 6, so it has to be then or thereafter. I instantly fell pregnant, pregnant enough to get two positive pee-tests (mine, the hospitals) and a positive beta by day 16 of the cycle, or only 7 or 8 days later. The cramps and bleeding are, given this scenario, bloody weird indeed. Implantation bleeding? A very early ectopic which hurt and bled because fallopian tubes object to ravening little blastocysts digging in? My uterus is now violently allergic to embryos? Midwich Cuckoos?

Anything I’ve missed? Because, to me, all the above scenarios look equally fucked-in-the-head ridiculous. But still, yesterday I was pregnant. And the only person more surprised than me was H. Poor H.

The year’s parting mind-fuck

Yesterday afternoon, I thought I might be ovulating. I was getting quite a sharp pain in my ovary region, and, golly, was this a touch of scarlet spotting I saw before me? Ovulating on day 15 of this cycle? Really? Unbelievable, I thought.

Last night I wondered if I might be having some kind of ruptured ovarian cyst problem. I was bleeding more and more, and feeling more and more pain in said ovary region. Arse, I thought. I knew it was too good to be true. Satsuma, stop kicking me, thank you.

Before dawn, I was still awake, lying in a huddle on the In-Law’s sofa bed, in pain and making various chemist-raiding plans (I had no sanitary protection, I had no pain-killers. There was no way in crikey I was going to need either. Day 15, see?), when a little, calm, ironical voice in the back of my head said, ‘oh, and a pregnancy test.’

‘What would I need one of those for? It’s day 15.’

‘Humour me,’ said the little voice.

When H woke up, I asked him if he’d pleasepleaseplease go to the chemist and get me some tampons and, oh, a pregnancy test. H looked at me as if I was delusional, and quite rightly. ‘Just… humour me. Worst case scenario paranoia,’ I said. He duly came back with a box of tests.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

And then my Father-in-Law drove us the 20 miles to the nearest A&E, and that’s where I spent the afternoon. Pregnant. Bleeding. In pain. With a suspected ectopic. In a hospital gown, with a drip needle in my hand. Waiting for my blood test results while other denizens of the Deepest Country-side wept and bellowed and giggled and gossiped in cubicles all around me.

Beta came back at 33, which makes no sense at all. Did I mention this was day 16 of this cycle? And that my last period was quite as heavy and clotty (ie, very) as usual? (Oh, why so I did.) They sent me home with instructions to come back for another Beta in 48 hours (umm, whoops, on New Years’ Day, that’d be), or if I collapse or haemorrhage or explode or whatever.

So, you know, re-write of Halloween. What is it with me and festivals? What on earth shall I manage for Easter?

Dear 2009, please fuck off, you absolute puddle of arse-gravy of a year.

You’ve had your fun

H and I, exactly as planned, spent Christmas day in our pyjamas. Mine were a rather fetching hot pink satin pair that had been rather too tight for me last Christmas and were splendidly comfortably appropriately slightly loose this Christmas, which cheered me up rather for the three pounds in the wrong direction these past two months have gifted me with. H was wearing nothing but a large and fluffy white bathrobe and looking very festive in a licentious sort of way. This degenerated into looking positively debauched mid-afternoon, when he picked his wine-glass up in a manner alas a little too dégagé and tipped the contents down his snowy frontage. Bother it, he thought, who cares, and spent the rest of the day in the same bathrobe, leaving me to enjoy feeling smugly sleek and neat (apart from the birds-nest hair).

The cooking frenzy paid off. The red cabbage thing, which H particularly wanted as it is a family tradition of his, and which I can take or leave by-and-large, was excellent (smug mode). The roast beef was tender, the red wine and mushroom sauce yummy. I am ashamed – we ate all the roast potatoes and parsnips. All of them. We’ve had smoked salmon on rye with mascarpone, pepper and lemon juice for three mornings in a row. The winter trifle, well, the custard didn’t set quite as firm as I would have liked, but it was still custard, not eggy soup, and it was still very nice to eat.

And there was television! We watched Doctor Who (squeeeeeeee! And again I say, squeeeeeeee!). We watched Hamlet (Patrick Stewart! David Tennant! Fight! Fight! Fight!) and were all moved and shaken and in need of a glass of wine afterwards. We watched The Gruffalo, and Victoria Wood’s Christmas Special, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Poirot, and nobody at all not once interrupted to demand that we play Charades, or Scrabble, or Fairy-Pirates versus the Dinosaur, or could we just do the washing up or peel 57 carrots or, infuriatingly, could we explain who that was, and who that other man was, and why was that woman crying, and was he her husband after all? Though the Poirot was, sadly, very rubbish indeed, and I wouldn’t’ve minded the odd carrot-peeling dinosaur distraction at that one point.

Today, we are dragging our unwilling bottoms to the shops, for all the presents we still haven’t managed to get (we have a list. We have a plan. Um. We plan on panicking). Tomorrow, we have friends staying for the night. On Tuesday, we are going to the In-Laws for a couple of nights, and on New Year’s Eve we are nobly braving my Maternal Family Unit, with added aunts and old family friends. This will be incredibly fucking annoying. My family are truly getting on my tits these days – had anyone noticed? The added aunt is the greatest exponent of ridiculous assvice known to human-kind, and she comes from a line who could give assvice for Olympic Gold. I love her dearly, and she was a favourite auntie when I was a kid, but she has, shall we say, boundary issues? I am a grown-up, it is my duty to not overreact. I can do this. Yes I can. Now, can I not overreact to Trouble overreacting when the assvice spotlight pins her down re: child-rearing? And breathe.

Note I haven’t said much about the In-Laws. This is because I don’t need to. They do not do assvice. Occasional tactlessness and a tendency to over-emote (FiL and BiL cover the first and MiL the second, and Grandmother does both as and when) are as nothing, nothing I tell you, to the cheese-grater-over-raw-nerves effect of being pinioned between a mother and an aunt in sisterly competition as to who is in charge of the assvice, a sister similarly pinioned at painful close-quarters with one and thrashing about, and everyone trying not to sound irritable because there are guests in the house.

It’ll probably be fine, as Narrative Imperative dictates that the more you fuss, the more embarrassed you’ll feel about having made a fuss. Therefore I must add, help help it’ll be simply awful I don’t wanna go waaaaaaahh. There. That should cover it.

How many festive potatoes can two adults eat anyway?

It’s Christmas Eve. I’m sitting in front of the television watching the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College, and I am drinking a large G&T, and I must confess my shirt is daintily splattered with food stains, having spent bloody hours cooking like a woman demented, muttering to myself as I did so ‘there’s only two of us. Two. We could spend the day in our pants eating crisps and chocolate and swigging ginger wine straight from the bottle. In fact, that was the plan, wasn’t it? Why am I marinating this cabbage?‘ .

You see, Christmas Spirit reared up out of nowhere at all and bit me on the arse yesterday. Inconvenient, as I was sitting at my desk pretending to concentrate at the time. The only thing to do was make a list. I made two lists. I made a list of things to buy and a list of things to do. And I planned menus.

Therefore, this morning, I dragged H out of the house before dawn to get to the supermarket the very second it opened, so I could actually buy the things on the list before the crazy-mad hoardes came thundering through as if shopping for the apocalypse. It was a good plan. We scored the last jar of goose-fat in the entire shop, and that by spotting it lurking in the vegetable aisle where someone had clearly dumped it after a bickerment with the spouse about healthy eating. Ha ha! H took the heavy things home and then went on to work, and I finished buying all the random fancy crap infesting my list like glitter in a pile carpet, and then I went home and put the radio on (I particularly like ghost stories at Christmas, but H hates them, so, you know, Derek Jacobi reading MR James, May happy now) and found the big saucepan and the rubber spatula.

Food is going something like this:

Tonight, courtesy of H, who is nobly following my vague instructions (‘how much garlic, May?’ ‘Oh, some.’), we are having the traditional Italian Christmas dish of Cotechino with lentils. Only, there’s only two of us, so we’re using fennel-scented sausages instead. (In Italy, we used Zampone, which is basically a cotechino sausage stuffed into the boned trotter of a healthy young pig. It was traditional. It was festive. It was greasy).

Tomorrow morning we will be having panettone and Bucks Fizz, and I will be individually toasting, with best and most pertinent wishes each time, all my bloggy and internetty friends. So I could be quite drunk by midday.

For Christmas Lunch/High Tea/Dinner/Midnight Feast, depending on how drunk I mean by drunk, we are having smoked salmon on Russian rye-bread. I nearly made blinis, but lost the will to live when I re-checked the recipe. Then we are having roast fillet of beef, with roast potatoes and parsnips, and red cabbage braised in a vague approximation of the way H’s father makes it (this needs making at least 24 hours in advance and involves apples, two kinds of bacon, red wine, and pretty much every spice I could find in the cupboard. It’ll either be fabulous or completely meh). For pudding, either a winter trifle (figs and prunes stewed (soused? Does soused sound better?) in red wine with star anise and cinnamon, covered in a thick custard/creme anglais flavoured with ginger wine, lemon and cinnamon) or, if the universe is feeling snitty, stewed fruit floating about in a kind of sweet egg soup.

I try to consider the matter of Christmas Day suppers and bits of my brain explode. But there’s always cheese on toast.

Boxing Day I am making fresh egg pasta from scratch, and serving it with a sauce of creme fraiche, roquefort and fresh herbs. You know, lying food. Appears to be nice and light and dainty after the starch extravaganza of the day before, is actually about nine-hundred calories a mouthful. Heh heh.

And after that, I’ll have to think of something to do with all the leftover potatoes, as we appear to have bought enough to feed a clan gathering of sixteen. Mashed? Fried? Mashed then fried? With red wine and cinnamon, like everything else we’ll’ve eaten so far?

Meanwhile, on with the boozing. May you all be reading this with something comforting and scrumptious in a wine-glass/tumbler/mug [delete as appropriate] by your hand, and at least one loved one in snuggling reach.

I am my own fairy-light

Item – OK, so, much advice on medicating my light-weight junkie-slut uterus into stunned and giggly compliance. I feel I should sort my remaining drugs into alphabetical order, experiment and report back. I think I have some Lemsip somewhere as well. Pseudoephedrine’s banned in athletics, so it must be good, yes? *cough* Seriously, thank you all for the advice. Together, we will triumph over the massed forces of pharmacology and recalcitrant useless lumps of hormone-ravaged smooth muscle! Hurrah! I love the internets!

Item – The weather forecast this morning was for cold drizzle. I dressed accordingly. It snowed. The snow settled (in London! I know!). Public transport went into melt-down. I fought my way across town and back, either skidding about in the snow and slush or standing about in wet socks while all the buses that I could possibly need or want bypassed my location entirely. Wet socks are not in the least bit nice, and very chilly.

Item – I cleverly combined an acupuncture appointment (by golly, I’m having a lot of those) with a little light Christmas shopping. Which harshed my post-puncture mellow rather, but needs must as the Baby Jesus drives. Anyway, acupuncture started quite well, despite the fact I shed about fourteen pounds of new-laid snow all over the clinic carpet and left damp patches from my trouser cuffs on the couch. My pulses are doing very nicely, thank you. While doing bits of my back Nice Earrings dropped a pinch of moxa down my trousers, oh, the dignity – I found it later and discovered that moxa doesn’t flush, oops – and some of my acupuncture points uncooperatively refused to produce any distinct or interesting tugging or tingling sensations on first stab and had to be re-stabbed, sometimes re-re-stabbed, but nevertheless I was, I think I mentioned, feeling very mellow.

Item – The mellowness took rather a wallop at the end of the session, when Nice Earrings got muddled up as to when my last miscarriage was (look, she has many fertility patients. I didn’t mind that in the least). I explained, no, I’ve had more than one, and the last one was at the end of October, and she, I think, got flustered, because, I swear, she gave me a prolonged version of the ‘Nature’s Way of Dealing With Mistakes’ speech, complete with an unfortunate metaphor involving frog-spawn and a side-track into ‘So Many Pregnancies Are Lost Before People Even Know They Are There, It’s Only That You Are Paying So Much Attention To It All’. I forbore to mention that mine involved ambulances and hospitals and worried medical practitioners, because I knew it would come out ugly and hostile and this is the woman who stabs me and sets fire to me (never enter and arse-kicking contest with a centipede, as the immortal Terry Pratchett once said) and she is quite sweet, really. No, really. I promise. Quite quite sweet. I think in all honesty she was horribly embarrassed that she’d forgotten my details and sometimes when even the best person is in a pit, they can’t stop digging despite the little inner voice shrieking ‘shut up! Shut up now!’ at them. But it made a bit of a dent in my festive spirit (which has so many dings, dents and orange patches now it looks like a 1970’s Lancia Beta). And I still think it was an odd lapse for her. *sigh*

Item – For maximum oddness, as I was shuffling along the pavements with the crowd, up to my insteps in salty grey slush (or, urban snow, as more wishful thinkers term it), fretting that this was doing nothing whatsoever for my boots (I was right about this. They now have better tide-marks than a bleedin’ estuary. Arse) a man came rushing up to me shouting ‘excuse me!’ in the earnest beaming manner of one who is either trying to sell me to Jesus or give me back a dropped glove. I stopped in case it was the glove, and he said, I kid not thee, ‘I’m sorry, I know this is going to sound completely weird, especially coming from a complete stranger, but I just had to tell you, you have the most beautiful aura. I can tell because I do yoga and stuff, but I’m an accountant really,’ he added, as I gaped at him (well, wouldn’t you?). He proceeded undaunted: ‘I can tell you’ve had a really hard time, really suffered, but your aura is amazing. It’s like a child’s, full of openness and wonder. That’s really special, very few adults keep that. You’re a special person. Do try to stay that way,’ and as I said thank you, feeling really very WTF indeed, he added ‘God bless you,’ about-turned, and made off back the way he’d come. Seriously. An accountant in a nice suit and overcoat chased me down Oxford Street in Christmas rush-hour to tell me my aura was amazing and beautiful.

Item – And then I bought some lip-balm, and waited for the bloody bus for 20 minutes.

Because everyone finds my uterus fascinating

There were some wonderful practically-essays of advice in the comments for my last post. Essays, you guys. My word, but you do seem quite fond of me and my ridiculous innards, and extremely patient with my vapourings. Thank you. And hugs. And all your wonderful words of care and advice, I think, deserve a proper response.

I thought I’d start by discussing my periods (foul little word. Periods. Pfft. Because they happen ‘periodically’ (hah hah) and take a determined period to happen in (ah hah hah hah) and, you know, are a punctuation-sized dot in a woman’s life (AH HAH HAH HAH oy, I split my corsets)). Incidentally, I had to come home from work early today, because at lunch-time someone, or something, left the tap on chez Cute Ute. She wasn’t cramping much, just a tad sore and bruised, really, but all of a sudden she must’ve hit a gusher, because I went through a super-plus-extra tampon in 45 minutes. And another. And another. I went home, not because I was in agony, but because I was running out of san-pro (though I had gone, I am told, rather pale and grey about the mouth and under-eyes, so They thought it was agony, and I kept my uterine incontinence to myself). By the time I got home, she’d stopped. Silly organ.

Anyway. Drugs I am CURRENTLY taking to deal with Cute Ute and her roughly (roughly! So funny!) monthly antics.

1. Tranexamic acid – Yes, Geohde, I do take it. It does help. I forgot to take it with me to work today, so missed my lunch-time dose, which would explain the ridiculous bleeding episode. On it, I still bleed quite a lot, and very clottily, but I no longer lose a pint a cycle (which was getting a bit much).
2. Cocodamol – This is a mixture of 500mg paracetamol (which, Dr Google informs me, is called Panadol and/or acetaminophen on other continents) and 30mg codeine per pill. It worked on my miscarriages, which were really really quite painful, so I took this as a Good Sign and asked the GP for it (and she said yes!) When the period *spit* pain is bad, I take two pills at a time, four times a day (no more than eight pills in 24 hours) I therefore can’t add more acetaminophen/panadol/paracetamol, because my liver will combust. My GP assures me that pure codeine is not available on prescription to anyone who isn’t dying of cancer. Fair enough, I suppose. (Also, did you know paracetamol is made out of coal tar? Like mauve? Cool, huh?). I know I had a brief whinge that the cocodamol wears off before I can take another dose, but I ought to be spanked for that whinge, because, really, the relief this drug gives me. The relief. And the wearing-off leaves me thinking ‘ow, actually, I feel very sore and crampy and I don’t like it’, rather than, as previously, drugged or undrugged, ‘oh God oh God oh God it hurts please God make it stop I can’t think oh please God make it stop.’
3. Iron supplements – I take these from day one until day 14 of my cycle. You know, because I don’t care to have very diluted Ribena for blood. Hopefully the tranexamic acid will make this less necessary, as the hard-core iron supplements the GP prescribed make me a) constipated and b) give me the most poisonously bad-smelling wind (what? I’m serious. It’s embarrassing. And uncomfortable).

And this is the list of drugs I have taken to supress Cute Ute’s wildest excesses, and which didn’t really work, only worked a bit, or FAILED EPICALLY to work:

1. The contraceptive pill – I was on this for years, once I found a brand that didn’t make me fatten like a Christmas goose or become hysterically depressed. On it, my ‘periods’ were very very regular (natch), and heavy and crampy – by heavy, I mean I used super-plus tampons, changed every three or four hours on the worst day, ohhh, poor little innocent that I was – and by crampy, I mean nothing that two ibuprofen and a hot-water-bottle wouldn’t sort out. For extremely obvious reasons, the pill is a no-go solution at the moment. *sigh*
2. Ibuprofen – was drug of choice for years. Still works pretty well on migraines (BTW, haven’t had a migraine for months. Interesting). On period pains, they have as much effect as a man armed with a pea-shooter and a bowl of squashy peas against a Centurion Tank. The tank doesn’t even notice when it runs the man over.
3. Aspirin – nope. Nothing. Hopeless. The soluble kind is a good gargle for sore throats.
4. Naproxen – works quite well on non-ovulatory cycles. Has sad little pea-shooter effect outlined above on ovulatory cycles. This would indicate my bastard bastard bastard hormones are playing a role in the agony.
5. Diclofenac – Doesn’t work either. WTF? I thought diclofenac was strong stuff.
6. Mefenamic acid – Fucking doesn’t fucking work either. At all. The cycles I was taking mefenamic acid, I would spend three nights in a row awake at 3 am weeping and rocking in pain and wishing I was dead. This is the GP’s Drug of Choice for treating dysmenorrhea, so I assume it works for a lot of women. Which makes me feel like a freak. Even more of a freak.
7. Paracetamol by itself – may as well be eating rice krispies out of the packet with a spoon and no milk. Vaguely amusing, has little effect Cute Ute, who spasms on regardless.

I think from this we can safely conclude that NSAIDs and Cute Ute aren’t really on speaking terms. She likes opiates, the little junky slut, and I say, thank God she likes something.

Incidentally, as far as we can tell, I do not have fibroids, endometriosis, adenomyosis, or polyps (any more. They could’ve come back, I suppose. Should I have that checked?). The medical profession, having ruled all the above out, has nothing more to say to me about my uterus. I can’t help but feel that such bloody horrible periods are a sign that Something is Wrong, and I can’t help but wonder if that Something has a role to play in the miscarriages.

As for all the other stuff my dear good Readers mentioned in the comments on the last post, well. You have given me all furiously to think. I will get back to you on that.

Bewildered and whimpering.

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

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

Where was I? Oh, yes. Introspecting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn’t hoping. There was no need to kick me.

The Crimson Menace/ Red Brigade has turned up in gigantic hobnailed boots and is clattering up and down on my belly as we speak.

Ow.

Co-codamol is quite good at taking the edge off. This is wonderful beyond description.

I spent the whole day at work Managing and Supervising, on half-doses of said wonderful co-codamol, because I needed my brain, so while not rolling on the floor whimpering and pea-green in the face, I was not the world’s happiest little management hamster either. God, I hate menstruating.

Eventually, I told work, very firmly, that they’d had their share of blood, sweat and tears (tee hee! me so funny) out of me for the week and if they were exceedingly lucky, they’d see me on Thursday, but I doubted they’d be exceedingly lucky, and I sincerely hoped that the chaos would all be over by the time I returned on Friday, as I was done. And done in. And double HAH to the lot of them.

As I was staggering home, H texted me to warn me that the new neighbours (the house next door to us has been empty for a few months) have arrived. They have push-chairs. And sand-pits. And a potted palm.

I texted H back: ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

‘I must confess I thought something similar,’ he answered.

‘Bitter McTwisted rides again.’

Not our finest moment.

I’m not sure what my point is either

Item – Did I mention I had acupuncture on Wednesday? I had acupuncture on Wednesday. Between you and me, I don’t shave my underarms quite so often in winter, because I have very sensitive, rash-prone skin, and because the only other person who is going to see them was raised by bears (or hippies. One or the other) and only really notices superfluous hair on women when their mustache is rivalling Friedrich Nietzsche’s. On Wednesday, I was running late, so decided, eh, you know, Nice Earrings the Acupuncturist never ever does points anywhere near my underarms, or in any way that requires me to raise my arms, so I’ll get away with it. I’ve washed. I’m wearing deodorant. There are no escaping tufts… You’ve guessed the rest. Needle in each pit. Because, you see, I had a blockage in my spleen meridian, and that’s where the spleen meridian is. Obviously. The shame. The fuzziness. (She didn’t say a word. Bless her).

Item – We spent the weekend at my Mother’s, Doing Family. Partly because of the ‘no Christmas’ thing. We may as well show Token Willing before we climb into our pyjama bunker.

Item – The main reason why I’d rather *cough* everyone *cough* (hi, Mum!) was honest and just said ‘well, poor May had another miscarriage, and that is why she was unwell and I went to visit her,’ is that then people don’t turn to me in the middle of dinner, half-way through much jolly conversation, and ask me if I’m better now and what was it? Swine flu? No? What then? What was wrong with me? Ordinary flu? What? I resisted the temptation to say ‘Leprosy’. I’m not sure why I bothered.

Item – I shall mention this many times, no doubt, as the years roll on, but I don’t think my sister and her ex-twerp are really getting the whole ‘don’t take your stupid pissy little adolescent issues out on the kid’ thing. Poor Minx.

Item – Minx can read. I sat on the floor with her and she read me a story about dinosaurs. I nearly died of pride. Also, she wants to learn to knit. Guess what Minx is getting for Christmas? Apart from an Auntie with a severe case of the kvells.

Item – Meanwhile, inside Planet May, the temperature is dropping, the vague, dull ache in the uterus is ramping up. Crimson Menace due any time between, oh, right now this minute and tomorrow lunch-time.

Item – This is awkward, because a big horrible tiresome and very very urgent project is going on at work and I am supposed to be supervising part of it. And quite a lot of key colleagues are already off sick or on leave. I wonder/hope/wonder if I’m going to make it through the whole day tomorrow before gently curling up like a dying leaf. I wonder what will happen if I don’t make it through. I wonder what effect co-codamol will have on my ability to supervise my own limbs, let alone a whole project. With a spreadsheet and very carefully numbered crates and seven other people, three of whom don’t speak English.

Item – I am still rather discombobulated by a dream I had last night, in which I, still in my coat and hat, was sitting on the floor of a deserted hospital corridor. There was no one else there, and nothing was happening, but the whole scene had an almost nauseatingly intense feeling of misery and humiliation about it. I didn’t really get back to sleep after that.

Item – I spent today pretty much mentally defective with tiredness. I can’t think in a straight line, I have the attention-span of a goldfish on uppers. Can’t you tell?

Getting out of the festive spirit

[This would have been my Cross-Pollination post, if it had been alright on the night (sorry Geohde)]

I’m trying to finish writing my Christmas cards tonight. Um. Yeah. That’s going so well. Hi, bloggy world! You are so not my Christmas cards!

One old family friend from Abroad wrote us a ‘that was the year that was’ letter with her card, so I felt compelled to write her a ‘what we have done in 2009’ letter back. That cheered me up no end, as you can imagine. Hospitals! People peering up my lady-parts in hospitals! Crying in hospitals! But let’s not dwell on the bad bits! Naturally, I am finding it extremely hard to dwell on and even remember all the good bits. It can’t have been unmitigated shit from January to December, surely. Surely? Jobs! Promotions! Switzerland! Theatre-visits! See? But lack of joie de vivre is probably spilling forth into my very hand-writing. A Not-To-Gloomy Merry Christmas and May 2010 Not Suck Quite So Bloody Much a Happy New Year!

Anyway, I think my husband and I are staying here in our grubby little flat for Christmas. Just us. In our pyjamas, eating stollen by the hunk. I can’t work out if this is very very wonderful and perfect, or a little sad. Or both! Hey, I can work with both!

The husband has to go into the office between Christmas and New Year (boo!) which was making travelling-to-parents logistics really annoying and stupid (errr…) and anyway, his parents are not really having a big Christmas, or even, so far as I can tell, a small Christmas (and my parents are either Abroad or The Other End Of The Island). Hence logistics-based reasons for staying here (yay!). And it’s also quite important that I am allowed to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special in perfect, reverential silence, with no heckling from persons who think I should be taking the dogs for a walk or entertaining the niece or peeling sprouts. Nevertheless, it feels like cheating, because we spent last Christmas in a hotel, just us two, snogging and bickering and pretending our respective sets of relations lived in Antartica. Replay! Yay! Guilt! Yay!

The world and all its nosy aunts and neighbours promptly cry, you can’t spend Christmas alone! You have to make the effort! Christmas is for families!

Precisely.

We’re disqualified.

And Christmas, from adverts to the special holiday stamps in the post office, from supermarket queues to relentlessly chirpy work-colleagues recounting Little Junior’s First Mince Pie, has a really, really bad habit of rubbing this in.

The thing is, if the Universe had been a tad less of a stone-hearted bitch, we too would be feeding our own Bonny Junior his/her first taste of mince-meat, or, more likely, as my husband hates mince-pies, panettone. We’d be moving heaven and earth and British Rail to take our baby to all her/his grandparents and great-grandparents for an all-in doting festival. I’d be photographed holding my child and looking as beautifully serene as any number of Pre-Raphaelite Madonnas. My husband would be photographed holding his child and just the thought of the pride and love in his face makes me cry. And at dinner, over the candles and crackers, we’d be able to announce the Summer 2010 arrival of a sibling, and there would be such joy and congratulations and everyone would want to know how we’d cope and we’d be asking ourselves the same question and the unavoidable, stark, bloody answer is, better than we are now, without either of them.

There comes a point, where, as an adult, you have to stand up, pull your socks up, tighten your belt, stiffen your resolve, adjust your suspenders, throw your cloak over your shoulder with a majestic swirl, and announce that, actually, you’re going to do as you damn well please from here on in. Stollen in pyjamas infront of the Tardis it is. And this is the right decision.