Headin' Wesht

We seem to be constantly on the road these days attending family birthday celebrations. It was Dublin two weeks ago, Cork last weekend and this weekend we are heading to Mayo for my nephew's 21st party. My parents' and my brother's house are already booked out with visitors/party goers, so I decided to treat ourselves and book into the new hotel in the town where the party is being held.

It just so happens that I will probably be ovulating within the next 24-36 hours. So if I do get preggers this month (which I seriously doubt, but sure you never know your luck), and we were to take a leaf out of the Beckhams' book and name our first born after the place s/he was conceived, then we would to saying hello to little baby Kiltimagh in nine months time. Nice ring to it, don't you think?

As it so happens, Kiltimagh's most famous son is music mogul and X Factor judge Louis Walsh. My nephew (the birthday boy) plays in a band with his nephews. These guys are in no way your usual musical fodder of the Louis Walsh stable. No crooning poof boy band stuff for these dudes. It's more Dad Rock for them, Led Zep, Hendrix, Doors, with a bit of Arctic Monkeys and Talking Heads thrown in. I'm rather proud of them really. So let's hope when they're headlining in Slane in ten years' time, they remember all their ould Aunties and Uncles.

Hello 2010

It's official, our last chance for a 2009 baby has left the building, as the painters entered it this afternoon. This coming month also marks the start of our fourth year of trying to conceive (including the medically enforced year off to get my hormones up to scratch).

I can't believe it's three years since we started all this. It was April 2006, we had just moved into our new house, John turned 40 and was made permanent in his job, and we knew it was now or never time. Little did we think that we would still have an empty house three years on.

I really had a good feeling about this month. We gave it our all. Took a weeks holidays to relax and dedicate ourselves to the cause. To put it bluntly, we went at it like rabbits. I had all the symptoms. I was so sure. As soon as I saw the temp drop yesterday morning I knew. I tested anyway last night, just in case, since I wasn't feeling at all crampy and my boobs were killing me. BFN. Temperature was down again this morning. Cramps started around 11am.

So we're looking at 2010 at the earliest, if we are lucky. I think the worst thing about this right now is not knowing when it's going to end. I just want a normal life where I am not stuffing my gob with supplements and vitamins and fertility drugs all the time. Where we don't have to figure out how to pack and transport my hcg shots, which have to be kept refrigerated, every time we want to go on a weekend away or a holiday. Where I'm not constantly knicker watching and counting cycle days. Where we are normal people with a normal family life and not the childless freaks whom everyone feels sorry for.

Back to the grind

We had a lovely break in Merry Englande last week. Flew out on Monday and came back on Saturday. The weather was just fantastic for March. We even managed to barbeque on St Patrick's Day! Much relaxing, eating, drinking nice wine and baby making.

The day we arrived, my sister in law had a journalist and photographer around from House Beautiful doing a photo shoot in her gaff. She and her husband bought a (I think) two hundred year old stone cottage in the Cotswolds last year. When they bought it, it was very dark with lots of little adjoining rooms. They got an architect and builders in, completely gutted the place and modernised it inside. The result is nothing short of stunning. It's the kind of house I would dream about buying if I ever won the lotto. So it's great to have use of it as a base whenever the mood takes our fancy. This was the second trip we have taken over there in six months. It's just as beautiful there in Spring as it is in Autumn. We took a trip up to Hampton Court Palace while we were there. I have always had a fascination with Henry VIII and his wives, so it's somewhere I had wanted to visit for a long time. It was well worth the four hour round trip, particularly when the weather was so good.

Anyway I ovulated on the Monday, day one of our holiday. We had roughly been following the SMEP since I think day ten. We missed out on day 12, went for it on day 14, got a smiley face on day 15, so went for it again. The smiley face was still there on Monday morning, day 16, before we flew out. We hadn't time to do the necessary as our flight was quiet early in the morning, but managed a quicky that evening. So quick that if we conceived that day it'll be called Speedy Gonzalez. Or Sauvignon Blanc, as I was quite inebriated at the time. As I said before I don't usually go in for drunken shagging, but needs must and all that. (Apologies to my brother if he's reading this, for way TMI). We went for a bonus round on day 17, and after that we were officially all shagged out. Mind you Ireland's historic rugby victory on Saturday did prompt us to run upstairs and celebrate in a patriotic manner (i.e. a manner which might result in producing a future Irish tax payer). So we are both walking like John Wayne at this stage.

It's now day 23 and I'm going for my blood test this evening. Last month's results were still excellent, so I hope all the boozing of last week hasn't knocked me out of kilter hormone wise. As for 2ww symptoms, my boobs do feel a little bit sore today. But I'm paying it no attention, those fake symptoms I get from the HCG injections have fooled me too many times before. The crimson tide is due on April 2nd, which is ten days away. Any ideas for distractions for the next ten days?

Back to the task in hand...

Since I got the news of redundancy last Friday, my blogging mojo has been flagging somewhat. I'm trying to keep as positive as I can about my situation, but something tells me I might be starting an enforced career break in June. Hopefully it won't last all that long.

Anyway, on a more positive note, my good buddy Xbox has a beautifully written article in today's Irish Times. Well done X, for flying the flag for us infertiles. I have posted a link on a ttc board I frequent and the praise was very high indeed.

As for us, I have decided that we are going to try the Sperm meets Egg plan this month. That means starting action on CD8 (or later depending on when you ovulate), doing the deed every second day until you get a positive on an OPK, and then going at it three days in a row, break for one night and then one last go for the road. So the spare bed in my sister in law's house is going to see some action next week. I think we will be in need of a holiday after our holiday.

A change is as good as a rest

Or so they say. On that basis we decided at the weekend that we would take the week of St Patrick's Day off and take ourselves off to sis in law's place in the Cotswolds for a few days. As my cycle started on March 1st this month, and I normally ovulate sometime around cd16-cd18, it's highly likely that St Patrick's Day (March 17th) will be more to do with lovin' than drinking this year. John and I are very compatible in many ways, but one of them is that neither of us are very good at drunken sex. We've attempted it a couple of times, but invariably neither of us are up to it (if you'll pardon the pun!) and we end up snoring.

So we'll put this "just relax" malarkey to the test this month and see what happens. We fly out on Monday 16th, with no other plan than to lounge around a very nice cottage in the country, have lots of lie-ins, possibly a few country walks and maybe a bit of shopping and wining and dining.

If we hit target this month I would be 12 weeks gone on my 40th birthday. I'm already dreaming about how I could announce it at my birthday party. Somebody shoot me now.

Same shit, different month

15 DPO today. I have been checking my temps every morning for the past week or so. It was constant at 36.8+, it dropped to 36.58 this morning, signalling that the end is nigh for this cycle. Even though I held out little hope after ovulation that this would be our month, due to my knackered back and John's cold putting a bit of a brake on the baby making, there was still this "hmmmmm...maybe" glimmer at the back of my mind.

I blame the hcg injections myself. They are the instigators of fake symptoms which trick me every time. Two injections into the cycle and I am piddling like a puppy (well not all over the kitchen floor, but the same regularity), feeling a bit on the tired side, with mildly aching boobs. I try and ignore it all for the first week of the two week wait. Then on the second week, the "maybe" thoughts start creeping in. It only took us one go in the past..... But then by the end of the second week (around about now) the hcg has worked it's way out of my system, and the symptoms have disappeared, along with my optimism.

Sometimes I wonder are we mad to keep going at our age. I will be 40 at the end of May and John is three years older than me. In saying that, I think we are quite young in our appearance and in our ways for a couple our age. But my eggs don't know that I have young looking skin and that I like to shop in Oasis, they're still 40 year old eggs. And by the time our kids would be in their teens, we would be in our mid 50's. That's provided it happens for us soon.

The other thing that saddens me is that this has taken over three out of the first four years of our married life together. Early married life should be more fun than this. It shouldn't be about fertility drugs, mood swings, injections, timetable sex, disappointment, worry and anxiety. It just feels like we are on this non stop treadmill and we daren't press the stop button. It feels more and more difficult to keep going, but the consequences of stopping are just too hard to contemplate.

2ww - take 3

Well it was a case of effort in the face of adversity this month. John got struck down by a dose of the man flu, and my lower back pain flared up again for the first time in a while. I've suffered with back pain on and off since I was eighteen years old, so twenty one years. When it strikes it is nothing short of debilitating. So I don't know how we managed it, but we did make a couple of attempts at project Hump and Hope (copyright Xbox). If we're successful this month it will be as Miranda said of the conception of her son on Sex and the City, "the special Olympics of conception".

I found out the other day that my next door neighbours had recently become proud parents of a beautiful baby girl. So I did the neighbourly thing and popped in with a gift for the little one and a quick chat. As my neighbour said, they have seen a lot of life changes in the past year. They got married last Spring, and now they are parents. My untold story felt like the elephant in the room. We have lived next door to each other for three years now, we were already married when we moved in, so where are the babies? I don't know them well enough to tell them about our "journey" and they thankfully have the tact not to ask, but I left the house feeling they must be wondering what's the story on our side of the fence.

So I'm once more onto the pregnyl injection week of my cycle. We've been doing these injections four times a month now since last March, so we've nearly completed a year of them. At the start it was very daunting fiddling around with needles and syringes in our own house, but luckily one of my best friends is a nurse so she helped us out for the first two times. Now it seems easy, if a little bit tiresome that I'm still injecting myself with hcg hormones derived from the urine of pregnant women. Nice thought, huh?

So another two week wait begins, due to end on March 1st. Watch this space.

Conversations with the clueless

Some conversations I have been party to in the past year or more.

Over lunch, talking amoung a group of people who don't know anything about my situation. Conversation got around to a couple, who after many years of marriage, had two children in close succession. One woman, who has a young family herself, pipes up "Yes, it's funny that, some people wait years and years to have kids and then they have one after the other!". Yes, it's a funny one alright, not so funny for the couple who are more than like not waiting by choice, but who are trying and trying for years in vain, before finally having their family by the assisted conception route. Not that I threw in this tuppence worth into the conversation.

Talking to a colleague, who I would consider a close enough friend. She knows about all my losses. I was taking the following day off for my first appointment with the fertility clinic we are attending. Told her this. She looks at me like I am a moron, and says very slowly "you do know fertility treatment is for people who can't conceive in the first place, don't you?". Oh shit, I never thought of that, I did no research whatsoever and just picked a random name out of the phone book. Better get on to them and cancel the appointment, because my friend, who has never tried to conceive, never mind had any children, but thinks she knows everything there is to know about fertility, pregnancy and childbirth because her sisters have kids, told me to. Thanks for putting me right on that one.

Same friend, in the later side of her mid thirties, always saying she would love to have children, but in absolutely no hurry to have them all the same. Again may I reiterate that she knows that at this stage we had been trying approx two and a half years, had suffered 4 pregnancy losses and that I was dosing myself to the gills with fertility drugs which were giving me severe depression and mood swings. Says to me one day "If I ever have kids, I hope I'll be able to pop them out like my sister. She's really lucky, not a bit of morning sickness. Flew through all her pregnancies. I hope I'll be like her. It must be horrible to cope with morning sickness". Well love, if you're thinking of starting trying to conceive in your late 30's, morning sickness most likely will be the least of your worries.

Head, meet wall.

Auntie Flo is a bitch from hell

Why do periods have to be so goddam painful? It's enough that they show up when you least want them, taunting you "na-na-nee-na-naaaaaa, you're not pregnant", but they back that up with crippling back pain, belly ache and general all over shitty feeling. I just want to curl up into a corner and cry today.

I know, it's only two months since we got the go ahead to try again, and I shouldn't be expecting it to happen for us straight away, but in April it will be three fucking years since we started trying to conceive. Three years. There's a couple I know expecting their second baby who hadn't even gotten together when we started ttc. And we are still stuck in this shitty never ending rut. And I'm going to be 40 in just over 4 months time. It's not fair. This was supposed to be our happy ending. Why is it so easy for some people and so very hard for others?

That old familiar crampy feeling

Yuck. The unwanted visitor is on its way, bang on time on 17dpo. I'm nothing if not consistant. We're looking at round eight of clomid. Is it my imagination, or do these pills taste more and more bitter as the months pass?

I think I'm going to have a date with a hot water bottle, a shed load of chocolate and a trashy mag or two tonight.

Getting to Croke Park

The non Irish readers among you will have no idea what the title of this post is. Croke Park is the premier gaelic games stadium in Ireland, where all Ireland finals and semi finals are fought out in Gaelic football and hurling. I'm originally from a predominantly footballing county, even though I now live in a county where hurling is like a religion. By hurling I mean a very fast sport played with a heavy stick and a ball, and nothing that involves projectile vomiting.

Anyway, I digress. My own native county, Mayo, have not won an all Ireland Final since the early 1950's. To put it in perspective, my parents celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary last October, and they weren't even dating when Mayo last brought the Sam Maguire cup home. That's not to say that we haven't got to the final much in recent times. Oh no, we get there every few years. The championship runs over the summer months. With each victory, the excitement builds, the hopes of a county are raised. There are murmers from Belmullet to Kiltimagh that this could be our year, we could pull it off at last. The forwards are strong, we have a striker with a sweet right boot, that sort of thing. Tickets for the final are like gold dust. Half of Mayo converge on Croke Park, many of them (usually like me!) going there ticketless on spec, in the hopes of picking up a terrace ticket before the match. Then our guys meet the opposition, usually from Kerry. And Kerry royally wipe the floor with us. The fans stay to the end but exit the grounds dejected, defeated gutted. Hopes and dreams of victory lie in tatters. My Dad is 77 years old and he has always said that he thinks we will never win an all Ireland in his lifetime. I would love if he were proven wrong.

Our baby making attempts are like the reproductive equivalent of the Mayo football championship campaign. We don't have a huge amount of difficulty getting past the first obstacle, ie getting knocked up. When it happens the excitement is uncontainable. Those two lines carry so many hopes and dreams. Maybe this one is going to be a keeper. This will be our year. Keep thinking positively. But then another voice in my head says "don't get your hopes up, just in case...". So we wait and wait, hearts in our mouths, for that scan date that will tell us if our baby is alive or not. And so far our hopes have been dashed, our dreams left in tatters. But every time we get back past that first hurdle we try and put the past behind us and convince ourselves that it will be different this time.

If we ever do get there, it will be like winning the biggest prize imaginable. I just hope that we do get to see that day, and preferably in our parents' lifetime. Only five more days before we see if we've made it to the reproductive equivalent of Croke Park. Anyone want to open a book on this one?

Good bloods again

It looks like we have cracked the hormone issue for the third month running, despite me breaking my non dairy diet and gorging myself on chocolate all Christmas.

Progesterone - 129.2 (slightly high, but not bad)
Oestradiol - 693

I'm on CD27, but I can't test for another week. So I'm more than halfway through the 2WW. No major symptoms to report this month. John and I have been put on antibiotics for three weeks by our fertility doctor, just in case I might have a low grade uterine infection. A friend of mine was on them a few years back and told me they can make you quite quesy. I took my first two on Friday night and my second two Saturday morning. I feel really rough after the second dose, and ended up staying in my PJs all day.

So seven days to go. So far January has seemed to have flown. What's the bets this week will feel like an eternity?

The alternative to just relaxing

The Irish Catholic alternative that is, for the over 70s - religion! Again, why didn't I think of that? Here's a sample of older generations' comments and advice -

"You should get your house blessed. I did that and a year later we had our first child". So if I give in and do this, and we do have a baby, it'll be all down to the ould shake of holy water that Father Pat threw around the gaff, not the year of fertility drugs and the hammer and tongs shagging.

"How about a trip to Lourdes? Lots of women conceive after dunking in the holy water baths there". What? You mean their tubes miraculously unknot or their polycystic ovaries are polycystic no more? The closest I've ever known of a miraculous cure was the one my brothers used to get every Sunday morning in the pub in Knock. Courtesy of St Arthur Guinness.

"I'm praying to Padre Pio/St Joseph/St Anne to get you pregnant". Really, Padre Pio is going to do the job. And I was going to give my husband all the credit. While you're at it throw in a few words to St Jude, he's for hopeless causes, isn't he?

Why is it that some people make me feel like I am just not on good enough terms with the Man Above to warrant a baby? Do they think it's only church goers who earn themselves babies?
What about all the smack heads, murderers and general wrong doers who have kids?

***Pfffzzzzzzztttt*** (Bolt of lightening strikes Jane and she descends straight to hell)

That bloody "R" word

Lately a few people have started to ask me how our fertility treatment is going. I usually explain to them about the treatment I'm on, and how after a very tough year we have now been given the go ahead to start trying to conceive again.

And guess what pearl of wisdom always comes next? "Well the main thing really is that you need to relax about it all and it will happen". Really? Like, no shit? Gosh I've never heard that before. What original unsolicited advice you offer, you patronising fertile person. Any ideas on relaxations techniques? A bit of ohm chanting before shagging? Meditating under one of those hippy pyramid things? Inscence burning? No ideas? Then fuck off and keep your platitudes to yourself.

Pimp mah symptoms

So I ovulated on Sunday, and despite me being plagued with a dose of man flu, we managed some rather enjoyable baby making attempts. As I said in the comments in my last post, it turns out that the digital opks I picked up in the company shop are actually being given away for free. I have no idea why they are doing this, it's hardly profitable for them to encourage the female half of their workforce to get knocked up, but I'm not complaining. The kits they are giving away cost approximately €40 to buy in the pharmacy, so happy days.

I'm now officially on the two week wait, for the first time in months. The last time I was on the 2ww was last June, and I wasn't particularly hopeful, as I think we got the go ahead to ttc after I had actually ovulated, which wasn't much good. The time before that was October 07, which was our first time to try again after a miscarriage at 9.5 weeks. That was the most freakish two week wait I have ever had. Within 3 days of ovulation (yes 3 DAYS!) I suddenly had melons for boobs (ok, I'll admit I'm not lacking in the chest department as it is), a sense of smell to rival any blood hound, and an overall bleurgh exhausted/flu like feeling. It turned out that I was in fact pregnant, but it was a very short lived one.

A poster on a ttc board I frequent started a thread some months back entitled "Pimp my symptoms" for two week waiters who wanted to be totally irrational regarding every little twinge and sniffle. Stuff like "I have terrible wind, is this a symptom?", "My pet cat is ignoring me, could this be a sign?". You get the drift. It's nothing to do with that vindaloo you ate last night, or that cats are snotty little fuckers at the best of times (except of course for my little fur babies, who are four legged love sluts). So this morning when I woke up and felt a slight sore twinge in my right chesticle, the pimping began in earnest. I've been feeling a bit knackered for the past couple of days, but that could be post man flu fatigue. Or, it could be a.....SYMPTOM!
I've been peeing like a race horse in the past couple of days, but ordinarily I think I must have the tiniest bladder in Ireland, so that's nothing new. So far I haven't experienced any bionic nasal passage tendancies, which is usually a dead giveaway. The last time I was pregnant, I could smell bacon frying in the staff canteen as I walked past the car park, which is a freakish distance for a cooking smell to carry. I will keep you informed if this starts happening again.

Because of the fertility drugs I am on, my luteal phase is almost always bang on 16 days. I am on hcg injections on peak (i.e. ovulation day) +3, +5, +7 and +9. Because it takes some time for the hcg to work its way out of my system, I am not allowed to take a pregnancy test until peak +17. So looking at the calendar and counting 17 days from December 7th, it looks like the either the wicked witch or Santa with a very big Christmas gift is due to show up on Christmas Eve. So it could be the Best Christmas Ever Ever, or it could be the Biggest Bummer Ever Ever.

I've never been much of a Mariah Carey fan, but this morning I found myself glancing down at my belly in the shower singing the following:

"I just want you for my own,
more than you will ever know,
make my wish come true,
cos all I want for Christmas is youuuuuuuuu, babeeeeeeee"

Let's hope I don't scare the little bugger off.

I really am a share holder...

...in Clearblue. In my more active baby making stick peeing days, I used to joke to John that I should have shares in Clearblue, I'd spent that much money on their products. Well I found out yesterday that I actually have shares in the company that manufactures them. As I mentioned in a previous post, I work for a multinational which makes all manner of consumer goods, one of them being Clearblue pee sticks. And I happen to be a member of the share ownership scheme at work. So there you go. Keep peeing ladies, I want a good dividend this year.

The way I found out was that when I visited the site shop yesterday to stock up on skincare products for myself, shaving products for John, and nappies for our as yet unconceived children, there on the shelves were Clearblue Ovulation kits, the digital ones. So I grabbed a box, thinking they have to be cheaper than the pharmacy, even though I have a stash of cheapie internet ones at home. But hey, when you're an addict, you can never have enough peesticks in stock. Anyway got to the counter, trying to avoid other people looking at my purchases. The guy behind the counter said "sorry, you can't buy these (the peesticks) until next week, they're not input in the system yet". I went "well.....erm....I kinda need them this week". Without making eye contact he went "Oh. Right so. You can pay for them next week then. Is that all?". Me: "Em no, you haven't scanned this (inordinately large) pack of nappies, God loves a trier eh?". I don't know who was cringing more, me or him.

Anyway I reckon the shagfest begins this weekend, even though I am smothered with a cold. I think I'll go home, get on the hot lemon drinks and try to shake it off. Nothing worse than coughing and spluttering when you're trying to get it on.

The green light at last

At long last after twelve long months of knicker watching and ewcm charting, eight months of home injecting, four months of clomid popping and all the associated angst, we have been given the green light to go. All I'm waiting for now is the Goddam witch to arrive so that can get this party started.


I've got my prescription for five days of clomid @ 150mg per day at the ready. I went online today and ordered a ten pack of opks, a ten pack of hpts and a six pack of pre seed. Maybe I should pop down to the offie for a six pack of beer as well just to get us in the mood. Did I ever think when we started off on this baby making journey way back in the spring of 2006 that it would involve such a plethora of pharmaceutical goods? Erm, no, actually. I thought all we would need would be a glass or two of wine (enough to get in the mood without getting comatose), a nice bit of nookie and Bob's your uncle, or rather Jane's your Mammy and John's your Daddy. I never thought it would get to the stage that I'd end up on first name terms with my local pharmacist, a fertility specialist, my gynaecologist's receptionist; or that I would end up having repeated rendez vous with a dildo cam. But such is life.


So as of this month, we have graduated into a class of real ttc'ers. I'm already looking to the calender and trying to figure out will John's work's Christmas do coincide with my ovulation date, and if so, will he co-operate and stay off the beer for the night, or will I have to take advantage of him in his drunken state? If this cycle goes like the last one, my next visit from the red menace will be due around December 23rd. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, because I know if I build myself up too much the let down will be great, especially on Christmas week. But isn't it the time of year for magic and wishes coming true? So Santa, if you're reading, I've been a very good girl all year, and I promise to go to bed early every night between now and Christmas, so can you please bring us a BFP?

Statistics

I was thinking the other day, as I face yet another monthly blood test, of my stats since we started on this long ttc journey.

So here's what I have counted so far:

Number of months since we started trying to conceive: 28
Number of BFPs: 4
Number of losses: 4
Number of ERPCs (D&C's): 2
Number of blood tests: 18 approx
Number of dildo cam scans: 17
Number of laparoscopies & hysteroscopies: 1 of each
Number of general anaesthetics: 3
Number of hcg injections: 30 (2 more to go this month)
Number of clomid cycles: 2
Number of Euro spent on all of the above: 2,600 + approx
Number of successful pregnancies: Nil
Age at next birthday: 40

And they tell me to relax and try not to dwell on it?

Edited to revise upwards no of dildo cam scans and amount of money spent.

The great fertility myth

Like most Irish people of my generation, I was educated in a school with a strong Catholic ethos. The school I attended, although co-educational, was run by an order of nuns, but there were a large number of lay teachers on the staff, all Catholic. So as you can imagine, there was a particular slant to the sex education we received. I remember in second year, we were all hauled into the home economics room for “the talk” from a couple from the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council, the man was aptly named Willie, and the woman’s name was Mary. My older brother told me he remembered getting the Willie and Mary lecture, with Willie giving it the fire and brimstone approach, warning 14 year olds that “if you get VD you’ll die roarin’!”. By the time I was fourteen, AIDs was the STD du jour, so they must have figured that VD was the mild end of the scale at that stage.

The great pearl of wisdom I remember them imparting to us was “the best form of contraception is to say no”. Yes, very useful when you’re an adult on your wedding night and you don’t want to conceive just yet. Anyway, the thing that really stuck in my mind was that we were told it was frighteningly easy to get pregnant, and that it could happen on any day of your cycle. I think most teenagers were given the same misinformation. When we started on our ttc journey, I started to frequent a ttc message board on the internet. It’s amazing the amount of women on the board who keep saying the same thing, “I really wish we were educated about fertility at school, we were handed so much misinformation”. We were warned not to get pregnant, but none of us were told about the stats of one in six couples who experience problems trying to conceive. Basically, the policy was, keep your legs closed and your eyes open. End of.

I was talking to one of my in-laws (who is in her mid 30s) shortly after my first miscarriage, and she happened to ask me how we had enjoyed a weekend away in France three months before. I mentioned that that was the weekend we had conceived, joking that we would have to go back there to make another one. She asked with a slightly puzzled look “But how do you know when you conceived?” I didn’t want to go into the nitty gritty of it with her there and then, so I just mumbled something about “when you’ve been trying for a while you know”. The way she looked at me, I knew she hadn’t a clue what I meant, but I wasn’t going to explain that we were there for 3 nights, mid cycle, and I had a positive OPK and a rise in BBT while we were there, so let’s just say we made the most of the opportunity, the romance in the air, the champagne and the hot weather that puts you in the mood :o) I met her again a couple of months back, and she is now expecting her first baby. I reminded her of the conversation we had that night and she said “I know, it’s mad, I was always led to believe that you could pregnant any day of the month, I had no idea about ovulation times and fertile days or any of that”. Another recovering convent girl obviously!

The other weekend I had my oldest niece staying for an overnight visit. Like Xbox, I was hiding the ttc evidence that lay scattered all over the house. Two pregnancy books, a great big pack of HPTs, a book of baby names, and a book on preparing for birth with yoga, which I really must drop back to my osteopath. Not to mention the bumper pack of nappies still sitting in the under stairs cupboard (l know, but a girl’s got to keep hoping right?) It’s not so much her knowing that we might be trying to conceive (although it’s an image I’m sure she’d be grossed out to conjure up), but I didn’t want her seeing the evidence, and putting one and one together and coming up with two and a half i.e. another little cousin on the way. But afterwards I was thinking, she is probably being taught the same thing in school now that we were, it’s piss easy to get pregnant, and she’ll probably only realise the truth in maybe 15 years time or more. It’s not my place to tell her any different, I’m not her parent, but should this fertility myth continue to be perpetuated? Should all girls and women continue to be left in ignorance about the workings of their own bodies?

Those nuns have a lot to answer for!

PS I'm going for my monthly bloods this evening. If you have any "make the hormone levels good" dust to spare, please sprinkle it in my direction. Here's hoping the clomid is working it's magic this time.

Hello.....anyone out there?

Well I have spent the last few months reading, commenting and lurking other other peoples' infertility blogs, so I've got to the stage of "if you can't reproduce, then join them", so here I am. Quick introduction - I'm 39 years old, married just over 3 years. We started ttc in April '06, just before I turned 37. Why wait so long, you probably ask? Well that's a very long story, involving one failed first marriage, and a long wait for a divorce, but that's a story for another post. Part of the reason why I felt it was ok to wait so long was that I come from a large and uber fertile Irish family, where having babies in their late 30's and early 40's has never been a problem. My Mother had me at the age of 39. One of my sisters in law started her family at 38 and had her youngest at 43. So I foolishly thought if the rest of my family were able to do it, then so would I, what could possibly go wrong?

Well a lot can go wrong, as I have learned in the past 19 months. I first got pregnant after six months of trying. We were at a friend's wedding in France when we conceived our first baby. (Well ok, we didn't actually shag under the dinner table at the reception, but it happened over the course of the weekend. In our hotel room). We nicknamed our little bean Kermit (as in Kermit the frog, because he was made in France). Kermie for short. At five weeks I started spotting. Had two emergency scans. On the first one, we saw a gestational sac, but nothing more. A week later, we saw a heartbeat, relief all round. The following week, we saw no heartbeat, devastation all round. A week later, 8 and a half weeks, I had my first D&C. It was one of the worst days of my life. Right up there (or should I say down there) with the day I left my first husband.

We waited two cycles before trying again. My gynae said there was no reason why this should happen again. So in March 07 I got my second BFP. Again back up on the joyful high. Less than a week later I started bleeding, and my second miscarriage happened. It was less traumatic than the first one, being so much earlier, but the sense of disappointment was emmense, particularly when it came the weekend of Mother's Day. Ouch.

We decided to try again straight away, and the following month I was pregnant again. While we were both over the moon with thoughts of our Christmas baby, this one nicknamed Rudy (short for Rudolph, we really have to start thinking of kinder nicknames), we were trying not to get too excited in case the rug was pulled from underneath us again. And pulled it was. I was just six weeks gone when the spotting started. We were packing to go away for a night for our second wedding anniversary, when I went to the loo and saw the spotting. I nearly lost the plot. I rang my local maternity unit, they told us come in, they took bloods, but as it was a Saturday, they had nobody on duty to scan me. So we had to wait what seemed like an eternity until Monday to return, and miraculously, see our baby's heart beating away goodo on an external scan. I remember bursting into tears at the sight, and the sonographer reassuring me that every pregnancy is different, so just because it happened before, didn't mean it would happen again.

I was put on bedrest and told to come back a week later, and not to worry. Ha! Easy for them to say. The following Monday, I was scanned again. It took her longer to find the heartbeat this time, and when she did, the sac was measuring 6 weeks 3 days, instead of 7 weeks 3 days. It was lagging behind by a week. I was reassured that this was perfectly normal, and that scans are inaccurate timewise in early pregnancy. Later that day, I read in my pregnancy book that scans are most accurate in the first trimester, and alarm bells started to ring in my head once more.

I went back to work, and eleven days later I had my first sceduled scan, which was at nine weeks. Bad news, the sac was now measuring seven weeks, so lagging behind by two weeks, and the heartbeat was much too faint for normal. My gynae sent me away with a prescription for progesterone pessaries, and told me there was a 50/50 chance that our baby would make it. We were told to go back into the maternity hospital on Monday for another scan. So that night I rang my mother and told her get out the rosary beads and put all her favourite saints on overtime rate, which she duly did. Bless her, I'd say she had half of Mayo praying for us! Anyway it wasn't enough, and on Monday we were told that our little Christmas baby had died over the weekend. I had a D&C the following day. Words cannot describe the grief we felt.

We spent the summer of 2007 having bloods done, trying to make our way through the sheer fog of grief that had descended upon us. I found people's reactions baffling. My MIL's reaction was "Ah sure your troubles are small really". Well they seem pretty fucking big to us. Colleagues of mine totally ignored my loss, treating me as though I had been off sick with flu, while simultaneously sympathising with another co worker whose sister had lost a young baby, right in front of me. A pregnant friend whose baby was due the day after the one we lost told me I was lucky to be able to go out on the beer. Unbe-fucking-leivable. I ended up going for five sessions of counselling, and by total coincidence, the counsellor I went to had been through five miscarriages herself. She was fantastic and really helped me get back to myself.

Anyway, blood tests done by the gynae were pretty inconclusive, so we were given the green light to go again in October. Yee haw, back in the saddle again. Lots of walking like John Wayne jokes and all that. And yes, we hit target once again. As soon as we got the BFP we drove stright to a late opening pharmacy and got progesterone pessaries and aspirin. We travelled up to Mayo that weekend to attend my parents' 50th wedding anniversary celebrations. While it cut me to the quick to hear the repeated references to the number of grandchildren and their age range in both the prayers and speeches, at least I had my own little bean on board to comfort me through it. Alas, this little one was not meant to stay long with us either. At five weeks two days I started bleeding again. Miscarriage number four was under way. At this stage I felt like I was losing my mind.

During the summer I had made contact with the Fertility Care Clinic in Galway. We were offered a cancellation appointment and jumped at the chance. The programme they use involves tracking your fertile signs, ie cervical mucous, and noting colour of menstrual flow (sorry if TMI, but that what's involved!). I also had to get a plethora of blood tests done on day 3 of my first cycle with them, and a blood test of progesterone and oestradiol on day 21 of every cycle. Since March, I have been on pregnyl (hcg) injections on dpo +3, +5, +7 & +9, and the month before last they started me on Clomid.

So that pretty much brings me up to date, and from here I can start on my day to day rantings. Thanks for bearing with me so far...