Tomorrow morning, somewhere after 10, I’ll wake up in a hospital bed with an IV drip pumping some sort of pig fat-like substance (no not really but it looks weirdly similar to the shit in fast food thickshakes) into my wrist and a number written in biro on my left hand. The number will have been put their by Dr Babies to let me know how many little follies have managed to grow themselves into eggs before he’s carefully sucked them out and off to the lab to await their little friendies for a petrie dish hook-up.

I’ll want to look at that number but I’ll be scared as all shit. It could be okay, it could be zero…I’ve never actually had zero before so maybe they don’t even write it, they let you work it out for yourself. But if it is a number and is higher than the average two-year-old’s IQ, then we’re in business.

an essential tool for all serious Infertility Junkies

So much of our life will stop over the next two weeks and despite my vastly raging hormones I’m relatively – thanks to my new Dr Needle Lady – calm. Ish. Sort of relaxed. Maybe on the very lower spectrum of psycho. Oh let’s just settle in the middle and call it quietly neurotic.

I’m certain all the members of my household, including the blessed sweet dog who can’t even speak for himself, would have been ecstatic if I had taken myself and my 375mg of FSH on a ‘maniac break’ to the other side of the continent this past week just so they didn’t have to tread on eggshells around me…which by the way is very fucking loud and irritating and makes a big ass mess of the floor, so could you not even do that for shit’s sake? I may have threatened to leave the 12 y o on the side of the M1 (child services, I did not actually stop the car in the middle of the highway, I merely said I would) for reasons that are now unknown to us both but at the time would have been highly validated and completely rational. Did you get the hint, I am right, always.  And especially where copious amounts of hormones are involved.

If they thought I was batshit crazy this week, wait till my old foe Progesterone kicks in…it’s up there with Lyndsay Lohan after a three-day bender who’s been refused entry into a nightclub at 3am. And because of this factor, I hereby denounce all responsibility for anything that comes from my lips these next 16-odd days unless it’s to tell you how cute your fluffy new puppy is, or how much I like your lippie colour. Then, and only then is it safe to instigate a conversation…otherwise, keep walking people and look straight ahead.

If, and it is a big IF we get some decent eggs tomorrow and then IF we manage to fertilise at least one or two of them by Saturday and IF they then grow into fine little embies by Wednesday there’ll be something to celebrate. Oh no wait, we can’t celebrate because after that it’s another IF the embryo manages to stick in my slightly uninhabitable uterus (hence the need for an IV of intralipid and steroids for the next three months) and make itself all nice n’ cosy up in there. And we haven’t even got to the good bit. There’s one more IF it makes it to four weeks we can sigh a fucking massive relief…oops be careful, already counted those chickens and found plastic eggs. I might have to hold off ordering my favourite shade of Bugaboo because yet one more IF the embie sticks and actually works, it’s a heartbeat scan at 7wks and then weekly monitoring after that…waiting, hoping, scared shitless, paranoia.

Don’t count your eggs before they hatch…but another one just like this please…

I’m a great believer in good luck charms like the little carved wooden Chinese luck stone I keep in my bedside drawer (beats wearing lucky undies) and I’d like to think the tiny dolphin who popped up out of nowhere and jumped back down beside the 12 y o’s boat yesterday afternoon just in front of my pool – any closer and Flipper and I might have been swimming lengths together – was a sign of good luck that this last round is going to be our best one yet…the one that works. Either that or I was seriously daydream/hallucinating and am going to become impregnated with some sort of weird mermaid-child.

But it’s not just my battle. Before I’d became a badge-wearing member of the Infertility Junkie Brigade, admittedly, I didn’t know a whole lot about it, all the people involved, how much support you need and why the most essential part of this fucked-up ‘journey’ (what a wank of a word, there is absolutely nothing fun or enlightening about it) is to have the World’s Most Beautiful Loving and Considerate, Supportive and Generous partner in life before you get on this road because the jolts and sharp hairpins are more than I could take if I didn’t have Him and the 12 y o by my side as my trusty pit crew. Lov n’ hugs and baby dust, Lady MamaG xox