Not gone away yet.

Throughout the month of August I seem to have been struck down with blogger's block. The truth of it really was that I was beginning to get a pain in my face from all this infertility shite. The clomid and hcg shots were making me more and more exhausted and depressed. We went away for a romantic weekend to Killarney in the middle of the month and AF arrived two days early. That put paid to the romance I can tell you! We still made the best we could out of the weekend, but it was still a downer.

We signed up for counselling a couple of months back, after the false alarm debacle, and I have to say it did help us to get our heads around where we are with this whole journey and what we want to do next. We came to the conclusion that since I am now on my thirteenth consecutive round of clomid and facing into my seventeenth round of hcg shots, it's time for a break. So we went back to the clinic last week and I pretty much threw a hissy fit at the doctor and said (no, sobbed!) that I had had enough. So the plan of action is this: after this cycle, if there's nothing happening, I am going to take a break from meds for at least two months. Then I am going to try another fertility drug, femara. If that doesn't work after a few months, then we are going back to our GP for a referral to a mainstream fertility clinic, with the view to doing IUI.

One piece of possible good news is regards our health insurance. John's employers pay our policy for us, and recently they changed insurance provider. It turns out that the new provider is going to allow a contribution of EUR 1,000 for one course of fertility treatment, either IUI, IVF or ICSI. given that IVF costs approx EUR5,000 per cycle in Ireland that is not a huge contribution, but as they say, it's better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish. AS far as I know, IUI costs around EUR1,000, so that would cover one round of treatment. It's good to know it's there in any case.

So we'll see what happens with this cycle, and after that I am going drug free for a while. I feel as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Clomid is nasty stuff and I really don't think anyone should be on it for more than six months. It's just too damn hard on the system. At this stage I am really beginning to wonder if this will ever happen for us, and the idea of it never happening seems far too hard to contemplate.

I have wanted to be a Mum ever since I was twenty years old, when I used to help my mother with minding my oldest nephew. When I was 21 I met my first husband, and I was sure back then that I would be a mother in my late twenties. However, the time never seemed right. I wanted to be married before we had kids, I suppose you could put that down to a traditionalist Catholic upbringing. Then when we did get married, I was 27 at the time, we were renting a tiny flat and were stoney broke trying to save the money for a house deposit. I was in a low paid job and the time just didn't seem right. I started my exams, which was a four year part time course, so the goal posts of starting a family were pushed out for another few years. The plan was to get the exams in the bag by the time I was 31 or 32 and then it was baby time. Every time I felt the tug of maternal instincts I just pushed them out of my mind. We would do it when the time was right, that's what I kept telling myself.

Unfortunately, baby time came around a little early for my then husband, earlier than it came around for me. He started an affair less than two years into our marriage, I actually think it wasn't his first one, and after a number of months of very strange behavior on his part I confronted him and he admitted his guilt. I left shortly afterward, and around that time he and his 22 year old girlfriend conceived their son. It was a very hard kick in the stomach for me. Like now, every time I walked down the street I seemed to see pregnant women. I was like they were creeping up through the cracks in the pavement. Cute babies everywhere. Work colleagues having babies and bringing them into the office to show off. Me fast approaching thirty and further away than ever from motherhood.

I was lucky to meet John soon after my first marriage ended. As a friend of mine said, I met a good guy before I had the chance to grow bitter. It took me a long time to get over the heartbreak, plus I had to wait four years before I could file for divorce, so we both knew that marriage and babies weren't on the cards for us for a few years. All the while we attended weddings of friends and family, and watched many of them start and complete their families while we just sat in limbo. All the time I just kept telling myself it will happen when the time is right. I remember going to visit my sister in hospital when her third child was born. It was two days after John's sister's funeral. As I took my new niece in my arms, a combination of emotions hit me at once. First of all it was the joy of seeing a new life, the grief that I had just witnessed the death and burial of a beautiful vivacious 36 year old woman, and the sheer anguish of "am I ever going to hold my own baby?".

I have felt that anguish, that yearning so many times since then. When at long last the time felt right, my body didn't seem to concur with my mind. Sometimes I feel like it's saying "tough shit, you had your chances, you should have just taken them". Nowadays I go visiting friends who are ten years younger than me, bringing gifts for their newborns. Some of them have already completed their families. Everywhere we go we see couples with babies. Every shopping mall, street, park, restaurant they are there, the happy families. John still smiles and says "that will be us, just you wait and see". I just shrug my shoulders and say "maybe".

Happy Blogoversary to me!

This day last year I took the plunge and decided to start a blog. I had been following and commenting on a few infertility blogs for a while, mainly The Waiting Game and Xbox4nappyrash . It was around about that time that I realised that I was not going to be a mother before my 40th birthday. This was something I found extremely difficult to get my head around. One year on, and I realise that I am not going to be a mother before my 41st birthday. Such is life. At this stage I don't know if I ever will have a baby of my own.

I have been on clomid for more cycles than I care to count at this stage (I think it's around 12). I have been on pregnyl injections for I think 17 months. I beginning to feel like a 12 stone hamster on a very large wheel. A very very tired hamster to boot. All these fertility meds have taken a huge toll on my body, and even though I have been out of work for two months now, I still feel exhausted. I heard yesterday about the possibility of a new job, but it would involve over an hour commute each way daily. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but when I am this exhausted on a constant basis I really don't know if I could manage it. We'll see, I will cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.

In the past few weeks John and I have started going to counselling. After the highs and lows of last month's false alarm I really felt like we needed help getting our heads around this ongoing torture. Luckily enough, I am still covered by my previous employer's benefit plan, one part of which is the employee assistance scheme which provides five sessions of counselling free of charge if needed. Since it is not costing us anything, I thought feck it, why not, so we have had two sessions so far. We're trying to see where we go from here, come to some sort of decision as to how long we will keep on the road we are on, and then see what other options are open to us. So we will see how it goes.

Like all other infertility bloggers, I have gained an amazing support network of online friends in my first year of blogging. It seems funny to know so much about the day to day lives of people I have never met face to face. Last week I met face to face with another infertility blogger (hi M!). We live a twenty minute drive from each other, are the same age and have both been through the experience of miscarriage. Like us, her and her husband are trying to conceive their first child. We met for a coffee, which turned out to be a three hour chat. It was lovely to connect with someone my own age, as most of my friends here are much younger than me, and very few of them have been through a miscarriage. It was both strange and nice meeting someone face to face whom I had read about online. We both admitted that our husbands had misgivings at the idea of meeting someone from the internet. John was cracking jokes that my body would be washed up in Lough Derg without any kidneys, and her husband was worried about me finding out where they lived! Don't worry lads, neither of us are bunny boilers.

To all the wonderful people I have met in the last year, I just want to say thank you for all your friendship and support. Some of you have attained the holy grail of a healthy pregnancy, and to you I wish every congratulations and continued good health and luck. Some of you, like me, are still on this long road, and I hope and pray that we will see the end of it soon, and that one of these days life will bring is the joy that we have awaited for so long.

False Alarm

I haven't blogged in over a week because I am royally pissed off. I had a false alarm over the weekend. I tested on peak +15 and got a quite strong line. I thought this might be down to residual hcg in my system from the pregnyl injections, so didn't get too excited. I tested again the following day and the line was still there, but weaker. So I thought ok, it's not happening.

Being the POAS addict that I am, I decided to give it one last test on Friday, peak +17. By this stage there shouldn't have been a sniff of hcg left in my system. I got a very faint positive. I went out and bought a double pack of digital tests. Tested again and got a "Pregnant 1-2". I still felt a wee bit sceptical about it, as I was feeling crampy, but then I have heard stories of women getting severe period like pains and then discovering that they are in fact pregnant. I phoned the clinic in Galway and they told me to get a blood test done to check progesterone and oestradiol levels, and start on progesterone support immediately.

This I did, but the following day something at the back of my mind was still making me feel doubtful, so I tested again. Not pregnant. I got another double pack of digital tests from the pharmacy (I'm so going to get a good dividend this year!) and tested again on Sunday and Monday morning. Both not pregnant. So there you are, false alarm. I rang the clinic back and told them, the doctor said it sounds like a false alarm alright, and to discontinue the progesterone support. I said my period was unusually late, but he said that is down to the synthetic progesterone in my system. So basically synthetic hcg remained in my system, temporarily fooling me into thinking I was pregnant, and now synthetic progesterone has fucked up my cycle and delayed my period.

My head is fucking melted. I hate all this.

Holy high risk of multiples, Batman!

I got my bloods tested on Tuesday, results back yesterday.

Oestradiol = 1238 (should be 400-800)
Progesterone = 150.8 (should be 60-100)

This result means that there is a very strong chance that I produced more than one egg this month. So if we hit target, we could have two little stowaways from Italy on our hands. I have never had a result like this before. WTF? Was it the Italian air, the Mediterranean diet, all the wine, or dare I say it, the relaxed state I have been in since I left work? Who knows?

The other day I was saying to John that I don't want to stick my neck out too far, but I have a good feeling about this month. I was on a supplement called FertileCM, which not only improves the go goo (TM Xbox) but also increases the libido. So between that and the heat in Italy, John thought all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once! The marathon 2ww is due to finish tomorrow week, so I will keep you posted. In the meantime I am going to lead a life of virtue with lots of fruit and veg, swimming, gym, and as little alcohol as possible. So begins another painfully long week.

The life of leisure

Well I am now heading into my fifth week since my exit from my previous job. The time is just flying by. Going on holidays for 10 days in the middle of the month broke it up hugely, but I still can't believe a month has gone by. By and large I am really enjoying the time off. It's great to have time to just look after myself. I was given a number of vouchers for a local beauty salon, so I block booked myself a course of swedish massages. So now every Wednesday, I go for a 30 minute massage. It's pure bliss.

The other thing I am loving is that I have really got back into cooking for the first time in years. For the past ten years or so I have been working in large organisations with subsidised canteens, so I had totally gotten out of the habit of cooking dinner during the week. In the past year or so, the standard of food in the canteen was going downhill, but I still didn't bother cooking dinner. Now I cook good healthy dishes for dinner every day. John hasn't been this well fed since he left his mother's house! We had our next door neighbours over for dinner last week, and I even baked a pavlova. I filled it with raspberries, and topped it off with grated dark chocolate. Yummmm. It's been about two years since I have done any baking, so I was really proud of myself.

Anyway, I promised you some Italy photos, so here goes....

Street scene, Riva del Garda

Us on the ferry from Riva to Desanzano, with the Dolomite mountains in the background.

Beautiful Lake Garda
I read in a guidebook that the emblem on the rails outside the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo of three testicles is a fertility symbol, and it's good luck for couples trying to conceive to touch it. So I duly dropped the hand on the three goolies. Desperate times, desperate measures :o)

While in Milan I decided to take a cultural walking tour....
which finished with us taking in the cafe culture.

This little D&G number was a snip. Perfect for those dominatrix nights.

And finally, a couple of nice pics of me and mah honey.

Bella Italia

Bon giorno internets! It's Sunday evening, the sun is shining and we have been in beautiful Riva del Garda 4 days now. All I can say is wow. We have totally fallen in love with Italy. It's our first visit and we are just loving it. We arrived in Bergamo on Thursday morning, picked up our hire car, a dinky little Fiat 500, at lunchtime and took our life into our own hands on the Milan to Venice motorway. I thought Irish drivers were crap motorway drivers, but we're in the tuppence ha'penny league compared to these guys. As a front seat passenger, I would strongly recommend a valium sandwich for lunch before you set off, possibly with a stiff G&T chaser.

Once we left the motorway and got onto the Roverto to Riva road, we entered a long tunnel, which took an age to exit. We soon realised that the traffic was backed up at least a mile. It turned out there was an accident up the road. But even in a traffic jam you couldn't help but smile when you are surrounded by breathtaking scenery and rows of vines at every turn. We got to Riva in the early evening. As luck would have it, our hotel is just on the edge of the town, so we found it in about 3 minutes. It's a stone's throw away from the lakefront, with the dolomites providing a dramatic backdrop. Gorgeous.

We immediately warmed to the Italians. Neither of us had a word of Italian before we arrived, but a quick consultation with the Rough Guide language section afforded us the basics. The old "cupla focail" (couple of words) of Italiano definitely endears you to the locals. Mind you they're probably smiling at us warmly while disguising their mirth at our pathetic attempts to speak their language. So far they seem to be like Paddies with suntans and a jaw dropping sense of style. When it comes to style, these people have it in spades. Same goes for charm, and sense of humour, as well as the innate ability to flirt. I love them. Next life, I want to come back as an Italian.

I'm off now for a swim in spectacular Lake Garda. When I get to it I will uploads some photos, just to piss you all off even further. So until next time internets, ciao!

Joy to the world.....

ET and Xbox have good news!

May I say in my inimitable Wesht of Ireland way, I'm feckin' delighted for ye, lads!