Category: fertility in your 30s

Dear body: I forgive you…

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You’ve been my sidekick for the best part of, okay well actually, for four entire decades now. We haven’t always been the best of besties and lately I’ll admit I’ve been blaming you for a lot of shit. It’s no secret we haven’t seen eye to eye or even seen each other at all. 

You’ve let me down. You’ve changed. You’ve stopped doing the things you used to let me do so easily without even blinking an eyelid. You’ve made me bat shit crazy at times and sent me almost to the brink, dangled me over the edge with nothing but my fingernails to hold on with. 

You’ve made me know things I didn’t want to know. Forced me to ‘discover’ so much shit about myself that at best is an overshare and at worst is fucking downright cruel. 

 Yet now we’ve become closer than we ever needed to be and I fucking hate it. You share far too many of your monthly secrets with me. You fire out hints of happiness and then just as quickly yank the buggers out of my hands before I can hold on tight enough to believe in them. 

  You make me feel so utterly inadequate sometimes I wonder what the fuck I did, or who I mistreated in a past life to end up with you. 

       There’s been far too many nights I’ve woken up, or not even made it to sleep for worrying about your stupid self so damn much. Shit there’s been moments I’ve been so angry I’ve thought I needed to harm you a little bit just to snap you the fuck out of it. But of course I haven’t. I can’t. We’re too close for that. 

Last weekend I went to a function for spinal injury research and I listened. I drank in the stoic atmosphere as an incredibly courageous group of people – those who’ve had a much more difficult relationship with you than me – shared their humbling but tragic life stories of being confined to wheelchairs, of being involved in horrific accidents. Of having their lives irrevocably changed involuntarily. 

I sat intently listening to a woman tell of her life spent conquering battles after an accident almost all but took her hopes of becoming a mum. She’d spent years trying before and continued to traverse the IVF terrain for seven years after the accident and then finally falling pregnant naturally to a healthy baby boy

She could breastfeed her beautiful bundle but she couldn’t hold him. She managed to bring a life into this world but will never run, climb or carry him to the swings. 

But she wasn’t looking for sympathy just help. Help for her and the most amazing group of talented scientists, specialists and researchers who make it their life ambition to cure spinal injuries. It was both humbling and awakening to hear her’s and those of her compatriots’ plight. It’s something close to my heart having lost someone I loved with all my heart from a spinal injury. 

So I’m sorry, Body. I’m sorry for blaming you and being so angry at you all the time. You’ve tried your best and you’ve been the pilot at the helm this whole time. You haven’t always let me down and the times you have I can forgive you for. You’ve carried and brought into the world the most spectacular mini human in the 12 y o. So thank you. At least when I feel like shit in the morning I still get to put my feet on the ground…to live my life mostly like normal. There’s an awful lot of people who don’t get that choice. 

Promise I won’t take you for granted again. For the team at the Griffifth university Spinal Injury Research thank you for not just the incredible job you do…but for opening my eyes and making me forgive myself. Lov n’hugs, Lady MamaG xox

You just have shit luck…

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At least you have one. A throwaway comment but it sliced like a box cutter when someone said to it to me last week (after I’d already told them our last cycle had failed, but she’d seemingly forgotten). ‘At least you have a healthy boy, you should be happy with that.’

Shit, lucky you told me because had you not pointed out this fact to me I would have completely forgotten I gave birth to the world’s most perfect tiny human twelve years ago and who has been and always will be the absolute light of my life ever since. Just as well I have people like you to tell me the most blindingly obvious stupid fucking facts. Don’t you think I know this already???!!!

babyfeet

There are some things you just don’t say to a girl hiked up on fertility medication like a crack whore. And ‘at least you have a child’ is one of them. The other is ‘it’s so easy for me to get pregnant’. If you mention these lines to a woman coming down from a cycle you may want to wear protective eyewear…And possibly one of those Joan of Arc-style chainmail vests before doing so.

I was already feeling like a bucket of shit-stained undies at that moment in time and I felt like spitting staples at them. I didn’t say anything. Instead uttered under my breath the shitfulness of people’s ignorance.

What I wanted to say is, I’m quite sick of being Fertility’s bitch locked up in her dungeon of pain. I want out, I’m using my safe word, let me go. Let me goooooooooo. And I want all the people who think what they say is helping to shut the fuck up. It doesn’t help. There is nothing about ‘oh you have a child already’ that could possibly help someone who has been trying to make a small version of herself and her beautiful husband for the past four years and has been utterly consumed by it. Not ever. If there’s any kind of mind altering hypnosis/medication/therapy that can magically erase your ability to think about fertility, fertility and nothing but trying to get pregnant every waking day then I’ll take it. Shit I’ll even sign up for vintage-style electric shock treatment if you reckon it’ll make me forget about every single thing that isn’t working and blowing our dreams up like a hillbilly bonfire.

Last Monday it was time for my routine debrief with Dr Babies after our failed IVF I’m going to call the Worst Motherfucking Cycle Ever, I asked the question we all nervously mumble knowing full well we’ll never get a straight answer to. ‘Why didn’t it work…?’

It didn’t work because it wasn’t ‘our time’. It didn’t work because my eggs are shitfully old and shriveled into tiny caper berries. It didn’t work because The Vet is too stressed and exhausted. It didn’t work because I hadn’t detoxed for long enough. It didn’t work because I didn’t have acupuncture regularly for 18 months beforehand. It didn’t work because I waited too long between cycles. It didn’t work because I had six wines on Christmas day. It didn’t work because I didn’t drink the bin juice the naturopath prescribed me two times a day. It didn’t work because the protocol wasn’t right for us this time. It didn’t work because I rode my bike that one morning. It didn’t work because my body’s getting too old to reproduce. It didn’t work because I haven’t eaten enough leafy green vegetables. It didn’t work because my tongue is white and apparently that means your liver is fucked. It didn’t work because I waited too long. The biggest reason it didn’t work…ass-achingly shitfully bad luck. That is all. He didn’t have an answer because there really is no actual answer. It either works or it doesn’t. A fifty per cent gamble and our horse didn’t come in. It was a stupid fucking donkey.

The next words he asked have to be – apart from being told you are infertile – the single hardest words for a woman TTC to ever hear…’have you considered donor eggs?’ Bless him, it’s not Dr Babies fault, he’s clutching at whatever straw will help him make our dreams come true but I felt like tearing my eyeballs out of my head. ‘No, no, we won’t’ I answered a little too quickly. When you’ve brought a tiny piece of yourself and your partner into this world and you get to see little mannerisms, looks, features and personality that remind you a little bit of you or him, it’s a hard thing to get your head around. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t love myself that much but once you have had your own biological child it’s kind of hard to have that right taken away from you.

I had never considered it before. Ever. Yet we’d talked about adoption – of which our chances are zero to zilch. Donor eggs were not on my agenda but all of a sudden they might have to be. If it means the difference between actually having a child that is at least half ours, and not ever realising this dream…well I’d be a dumbass idiot to not at least try it. And while it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to get my head around I’m slowly beginning to realise it might be our only option left.

For now we’re trying one last little glimmer of hope called Ovulation Induction – which at least involves no general anaesthetic, limited drug injecting and a bit of good old-fashioned rooting. Our chances are as slim as Kendal Jenner’s waist, I know but we have to try our luck.

3 things that scare me most…

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There’s three things that scare the living shit out of me. Well, no technically that’s not true, there’s an entire 18-wheeler’s trailer load full of things that I’m afraid of – walking on glass floors being one of them – especially if they’re at a great height (and what a stupid place to put them in the first place) I’m all like one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-while-fiercly-gripping-the-walls-as-if-I’m-a-base-jumper in those damn touristy shittown places.

ggirl

Lady Hope herself…

But the three things that scare me most at this right here second are: Snakes in my garden…anyone who has seen me on my daily walk-run down the bushy paths of our community will have laughed their squirrel nuts off at the sight of me leaping into the air when I thought a fallen palm frond was an actual boa constrictor lying in wait (it was very convincing, at a distance).

Rollercoasters and anything that tips you upside down…this is a real and actual physical anxiety and no amount of coercing by the 12 y o is going to change that. I did enough of the stupid ass things in my teens to put me off for life (thanks to my thrill-seeking bestie) and being that it’s school holidays there’s a very real chance my son may actually want me to partake in such life-threatening voyages.

Mostly I’m shit scared of failure. And by failure I don’t mean in life in general (though I may have slipped up on my 2015-diet-and-pilates regime, yes) but I am sweating bullets that this one-time-only last cycle won’t work.

Today my friendly needle nurse and I became acquainted once again. She placed a tournequay around my arm and I obligingly squished the stress ball. She then gave me a scrip to collect approximately $6k worth of drugs which probably isn’t the best thing to repeat to your girlfriend loudly when you spot her in a shopping market full of people. The filthy looks were reassured with my addition of ‘oh they’re not recreational drugs or anything’ to the man restocking the aubergines.

Loaded with anxiety and ‘will it fucking work this time?’ kicking around in my head, we’re about to start our ninth cycle of needle bashing.

There are fears I didn’t even know I had the inner fuel for but shit they’re burning into my psyche like a fucking furnace. Over the next 10 days those close to me will witness The Shining level psychosis that comes hand-in-hand with those wonderful things they like to call Follicle Stimulating Hormones (look them up, great lube for a party mood) and my favourite, the thick needle ‘trigger shot’ that is the gift that keeps on giving – pain that is – for sometimes an entire day if you’re lucky.

The next few weeks will go a little something like this: I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to punch something. No hold on, I want to snuggle a kitten. I need chocolate by the tonne, no wait maybe I need sponge layered cream cake…

To the person upstairs who is giving out the luck dust, I think it’s about time you come spread some of that shit this away cos Lordy knows I’ve had plenty of your bad stuff…now it’s time to play nice. All we want is our family complete, please? Love’n’hugs and Happy New Year, Lady MamaG xxo

Dear 40…you don’t scare me one bit…

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I remember when my mum turned forty. Shit it seemed soooo old. I was 14, and with my head up my butt (metaphorically not actually physically, I gave up ballet years before) meant old to me was anyone over the age of 25. Taylor Swift hadn’t even been born yet. But now it’s me knocking on 40’s door (November 10, if you’re asking)…it doesn’t seem half as bad. Could we say young, even? I can happily tell you I’ve so far managed to abstain from injecting botulism into my forehead or the cheeks of a dead pig into my face which means you’ll know when I’m pissed off with you because my eyebrows can still sit up in an upside down V at the top of my forehead and the tiny lines that sit at the creases of my eyes are there to remind me of the road maps of my life so far. Every one of them I’ve earned.

things get better, so much better...

things get better, so much better…

Even though my metabolism might have decided to all but give up on me, as have my ovaries and there might be far more cellulite making its way onto my thighs than I’d like…there is something quite enlightening to turning over another decade into demureness. My fondness for D’Auphinois cheese and a smooth Merlot, for one. My level of give-a-shit has depleted to almost nothing and gone are all those stupid years spent so indecisive in my twenties. Hanging on by a teeny thread are my thirties where I’ve discovered my faults don’t matter anymore. If I could tell myself anything it might be with each decade, the best is yet to come. I’d maybe warn myself of the shit that lies ahead but to treasure the wonderful moments that are gone in a tiny blink, too.

If Marty McFly really could travel back in time in his Delorian…I’d hitch a ride and this is what I’d tell myself…

Dear 10-year-old me: Yes life might seem shitballs because you’re growing up in a solo-parent home. Your brother leaves to live with your dad soon and it’ll feel like you’re an only kid. Sometimes that sucks balls big time. There’s gonna be heaps of stuff you want but can’t have – it’s character building. Your mum says so. You don’t know it yet but you’ve already made your friends for life and those three besties will be there for every one of your happy times and tragedies over the next thirty years. Just over halfway through this decade, you’re going to meet the boy who will change your life forever. Guess what…you’ll marry him one day, I know totally crazy huh? You end up leaving school and home much sooner than you should but it sure as shit won’t stop you fighting for your dreams.

Besties forever...

Besties forever…

Listen up, 20-year-old self: Your plans to travel the world will be put off for a while. Actually a whole decade but so much other stuff will happen it won’t even matter. You’ll land a top editing job on a couple of glossies and will love the shit out of it. That guy I told you last decade was the one, really and truly is and you’ll marry him soon. A couple of years later you’ll be in the hospital holding the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen…your baby boy. It’s going to be your greatest role yet, motherbood…so don’t wish away a single second of it. Not long after, your husband’s going to decide he wants to cross the Tasman. You’ll swear no for two years and one day, finally give in. Then you’ll never want to come back home…funny how fate changes you like that.

Dear 30-year-old me: I’m not sure how to tell you but this will be both the worst and best years of your life. One October day only just before your first year in your thirties, a call will come and take the wind from your lungs. It will completely kick your legs out from under you. They will tell you your husband’s been in an accident. You’ll fight with every bit of you but it won’t do any good. You will lose him. Yes, life will stop but trust me when I tell you you’re going to make it through. You have to. Over the next few years you will live in a blur never quite believing what’s happened. That pain you feel, it’ll never go away. But you know what? You might not believe this but a few years later, a man will come along who’s going to give you back the light you lost. He’ll ask you and your little boy to marry him and for the second time in your life, even though you’ll be scared to say it out loud, life will be perfect again. Don’t get too comfy. Soon you guys will learn the baby you so desperately want will come within a whisper many times but just as quickly fade away. It will take every bit of your fight to keep going back, again and again. What will be a complete mindfuck is that what was once so easy, now isn’t. You never even knew jackshit about IVF before but after three years, you’ll know more than you ever wanted to. Keep it up. You have to. One day it might happen.

all you need is love...

all you need is love…

Your biggest lesson in these three decades is to be grateful for all the good in your life. So yes, 40, you are so close I can smell you but you don’t scare me shitless…in fact I’m getting quite used to having you around – who knows, we might even become besties one day…give it time. Lov n’hugs Lady MamaG xox

To our unborn baby…a letter of hope

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babyfeetwings

For the unborn baby we might not ever get the chance to meet…there isn’t enough words in the google dictionary to tell you how very hugely desperately we want you. For almost three years we have waited and waited and waited for you to come into our lives. We have hoped, prayed and done a fertility handstand in the hope we might one day be able to grow you inside my belly. Your daddy has thought of all the things he wants to teach you and all the soccer games he can watch you play. We’ve wondered whether you’ll have his beautiful eyes and your mama’s lips. If you’ll be just like your brother and light up the whole room wherever you go…

Your big brother has been praying on the brightest stars in the night sky that you’ll come really soon. He’s getting sick of waiting too. He can’t wait to teach you how to ride a skateboard and cast a fishing line. He can’t wait till the time he gets to say he has a baby brother…and yes, even a baby sister. He says you’ll be the best thing ever and he’ll always stick up for you no matter what, cos that’s what big brothers do.

I’ve thought of names, even nicknames for fun. I’ve thought of all the books I’d like to read you while you’re growing inside me so you know my voice just as soon as you come out. I’ve thought of how much I’ll try not to be as scared as I was with your brother that you might stop breathing in your cot…I’ve promised I won’t keep putting my hand on your belly to check it’s still rising. And I know to live each precious moment because they’re gone far too quick. I’ve come up with colour schemes for your room and wondered which soft toys will become your faves when you sleep.

We’ve thought of how much you will complete our little family of four. How even though there’s going to be a big gap, you will be more cherished than the Pope at the Vatican. There’s been times when we’ve thought it was time, inched ever so close that it’s like I can actually see you, hear your soft cries and feel your silky skin. Every now and then you’ve made your way into my dreams, maybe you’re trying to remind me that one day you will be here. I’ve tried so hard to get keep you coming back night after night but you’re gone before I get the chance…disappeared into the night.

So wherever you are out there in the universe and whenever it is that you come into our lives we’ll be right here waiting with the widest most open arms, hearts so full they could burst like water balloons and smiles so big our faces might crack….but that day comes when our skies are lit up with rainbows, and we meet you little unborn baby…know, just know you’ll be cherished and loved beyond words. Love n’hugs, Lady MamaG xox

Tick, tick, tick, tick…BOOM!

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ka-boom...

ka-boom…

That is the unfortunate truth of what my life has become…a mother f’n ticking time bomb – both in the metaphoric and grammatical sense. I miss my old self, the self who used to be able to shop at whim (and still fit into a size 8, at times a push) stalking out of my fave shop, designer Loubs in one hand, and a bandage dress in the other. The old self who could melt away in the bath every night – and not be worried I was melting my uterus, cooking my eggs or harming an unborn foetus (because apparently overheating yourself in the bath can cause miscarriage, who knew?!).

The old me who didn’t have to shove a basal thermometer up my jacksie every morning before I get out of bed…and know exactly where I’m at in my cycle every. single. godamn day (TMI even for me). The old me who could still ride her pretty pink cruiser bike down to the shop and not worry that again, I could be harming any possibly carrying foetus onboard my womb. The one who didn’t need to be, or wasn’t totally and utterly consumed by fertility. Who would eat gluten – KFC included – with gleeful joy because she wasn’t being told by some naturopath that it could be hindering my ability to naturally conceive. Who wasn’t worried about eating bananas, because apparently they could potentially block your tubes during ovulation…according to Mr Needles.

The old me who didn’t have a particularly unhealthy obsession with buying ovulation tests to the point where I could in fact be considered a fertility test junkie, beady-eyed and hunched over with my paper bag full of goodies firmly in my grip like an addict who’s just scored a free hit. The me who has not one, but about a trillion different types of ovulation indicators – the pee ones, the spit ones, all the fun kind and then is reduced to tears every time they bring a negative result.

The old me who didn’t have to explain to every one I see, know and some I don’t that we’re either in the middle of a cycle, about to do another cycle or just had yet another failed cycle. The one who would seek out the latest foundation instead of yet another fertile herb she’d heard about from the far reaches of Northern Cambodia that was a surety to cure infertility (yes, I fall for it every time, just you try asking some desperate infertile woman not to). And the me who didn’t have to consume approximately four-hundred-and-thirty-seven horse tranquiliser-sized vitamins every day. The old me whose life wasn’t defined by grief and fertility – the two of which go hand-in-hand.

Then I remember I did all these things in my twenties…riding bikes, eating gluten by the bucketload, drinking (lots), having super hot baths every night, getting stressed with a full-time job…and I STILL got pregnant.

The hardest most constant fear in infertility is the ticking time bomb that resides inside your head – and you can think you can hide from it, banish it to the naughty step but that shit just keeps coming back like a teenage pimple on your forehead. Tick, tick, tick, tick…Ka-bloody-BOOM! To all my beautiful one-day-mamas out there on this bumpy road, loves to you…and to the gorgeous blonde who came up to me in the mall because she reads this here blog and told me not to give up, bless your darling heart…Love n’Hugs, Lady MamaG xox

Somtimes things go grey, REALLY grey…but there’s always a rainbow

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you are my sunshine...you make me happy, when skies are grey...

you are my sunshine…you make me happy, when skies are grey…

Earlier this week was a day I’d really rather forget. It was a bad day filled with grey and covered in so many uncontrollable emotions. That’s probably the worst part of it. As a Scorpian, as a Woman and as a bloody Stroppy Bird, I like to always be in control. Stand up to my emotions, look them dead in the eye and tell them to piss the hell off, there’s no place for them here. It was one of those type of days that rhymes with what people do on horses when they’re trying to kill a fox (you can work it out among yourselves and yes, I do have the tongue of a sailor).

I don’t quite know what triggered it. Maybe someone cut me off in the traffic. Maybe it was because there wasn’t any fruit toast left in the fridge. Maybe it was because I couldn’t find my favourite running pants (okay, who are we kidding, I don’t actually run in them but they are bright…and supa comfy). No, I know what it was, fertility. She has this really uncanny ability to get in the way of being able to pursue a normal life. I watch my temperature like Courtney Cox waiting for a Friends reunion and it’s a constant reminder that I’m on the train of Unfortunate Mess.

The Naturopath has suggested I start meditating. Who are we kidding? I can’t even sit still long enough to finish my cup of herbal tea, relaxation is the Andrea to my Gina…we just shouldn’t be in the same room together. That is, if you don’t count a nice relaxing massage but the last time I tried one of those the ONLY thing I could think about for the entire forty-three minute ‘journey’ was if it was harming my as-yet-unborn-and-completely-ficticious-embryo by sucking in the ‘harmonious essential oils’.

As it stands I’ve decided to go Gwynnie and Consciously Uncouple with Fertility because she just won’t play nice. She lives inside my head and takes up way too much space, wears all my favourite outfits and doesn’t return them, breaks everything she can get her hands on – mostly my heart and my head. She changes my mood and makes me cry uncontrollably for three hours – so much so that the poor unfortunate girl who happened to call me on said morning possibly thought she might have needed to alert the people in the white coats. Yep, like big thundering clouds every damn thing went grey. So I cried and cried and heaved and heaved until I thought my eyes were going to fall out of their sockets they became so red. I was like a five-year-old trying to explain why their big sister is soooo mean because she pulled my arm out of socket. Emotion came in and took over, she rode off into the sunset with my sanity and left me a helpless mess.

But once all the clouds were gone I came out and felt okay. At least I hope I did. I haven’t been broken in a long time. A LONG time. But like anything you learn to ride the bumps.

Infertility is a curse but it’s not an affliction. Sometimes it feels so much like it’s not fair but not fair is the kids of the beautiful Gold Coast mum who will spend their first mother’s day without a brave woman who lost her battle with cancer last week. Not fair is the parents of the 200 young Nigerian girls who wait anxiously to hear if they’ll get their daughters back. Not fair is the children of the families who went missing on Malaysian Airlines 370, who today don’t have a mum to call and wish a happy mother’s day.

It is hard, hell yes it’s shitful but there is always a rainbow after all the grey. For me it’s the little boy who has spent 10 wonderful beautiful incredible mother’s days with me and one smile from his twinkling eyes is all I need to remember in the end, it will all be okay. To mums everywhere you are and share a blessing. And to the 10 y o, every minute you’re in my life I am grateful for. Love n’hugs, Lady MamaG xox

I’m running out of my lucky stars to thank…

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shove it up your arse...

shove it up your arse…

I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard not to feel like you’ve been ripped off more than a Glee kareoke remix when it comes to infertility. I mean shitfully ripped off. You get your hopes up, you really think it’ll be your lucky day this time. You chant the little mantra ‘it’s going to work, it’s going to work’ over and over inside your head. You put a little bag of pink crystals that someone gave you for luck under your pillow every night. You think when you hear a fave song on the radio on your way to the hospital that it surely must be a sign.

You stop drinking (okay, maybe not all the time) because you think it might hamper your chances of it ‘taking’. You don’t ride your bike (and it is a really pretty pink one with a big cherry seat on it) because you read somewhere that it might reduce your chances of the embie sticking. You don’t go on holiday because you (do have a slight fear of flying) but have also been told it’s not good to fly in the first trimester.

You pretty much put your whole entire life – and that of your family – on hold for as long as you’re willing to dedicate your every ounce of being to trying to procreate…which for us is now two years, twenty-four months or seven-hundred-and-thirty days.

You go to Ikea and it’s like there’s a goddamn dedicated baby aisle popping out newborns because on a Thursday morning at 11am (yes, my life is sad) EVERY single woman who has given birth in the past three months has decided to venture to Ikea for a flat pack cot, change table or $10 bath.

People still tell you it was easy for them to get up the knock. Nice. They even ever-so-helpfully tell you that ‘trying to have a baby is the fun part’. Excellent! If daily needles, maniacally hard out mood swings, masses of weight gain, hot flushes and days spent in floods of tears is fun, then yep…it’s like a day at the frickin’ circus.

You start wondering if you’ve done something that Lady B Karma might be slapping you in the face for and constantly look at ways you can blame yourself for yet another let down. Along with telling The Vet that (coincidentally you have also read somewhere among your countless supplies of fertility self-help books and memoirs) that you really don’t think he should be cycling every day because it’s not good for his swimmers (and not of the tog variety). There is every chance he will utterly resent you after pretty much removing all caffeine, gluten, dairy and now red meat from his life, what’s giving up one more thing anyway…

Yep, it’s real hard not to feel bloody well ripped off. To feel like someone keeps pulling out the rug from under your feet. And it’s even more hard to find the will to keep on trying and not just give up…words you’re not even supposed to utter among infertility circles. But bugger it, shit got me sad and I’m allowed to feel like I’ve just won lotto then discovered I threw the ticket in last night’s fire. Love n’ hugs, Lady MamaG xox

 

I really want to punch Mother Nature in the face…

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How many times can a heart be broken? Turns out a shitload!

How many times can a heart be broken? Turns out a shitload!

There’s been plenty of times in the past two years when I’ve really felt like hitting something and by something, I mean of course someone. Not anyone in particular, just the one who happens to be at fault for my infertility – which would clearly be myself. Or that nasty biatch who has cast her ugly spell on us, Mother Nature. Or possibly the Fertility Gods who keep giving us dreams and taking them away just as fast. Whoever be to blame for this bullshit heart-ripping pain, I want to smack them real hard in the face with my knuckles. Bare dust-style. I am beat. We are all beat. Today we got the delightful news that yet again, another cycle has failed. That would be our eighth if you’re counting (and yes, I bloody well am). Turns out eight isn’t such a lucky number…well not for this girl at least. Maybe it’s time I looked at my Feng Shui.

We had two lil’ embies this time and were so sure they would stick like honey to a fry pan that we’d given them names. We started talking to them at night, we were going to have the perfect pigeon pair – a boy and girl and it’d be all done in one go. Except it wouldn’t, it didn’t and it isn’t.

I didn’t get ‘that feeling’. That one where you just know. You know there’s an itty bitty peanut growing inside your belly ready to make it’s new home for nine months. Settling in, making its own self comfy, twinkling in your eye and fluttering ever so slightly with it’s teeny tiny embryo magic dust. Maybe it’s mother’s intuition, preparing your mind and your body for protection mode. Telling you it’s time to rest up and do your best to grow a little person. But still, you must wait. In infertility they call it The Two Week Wait. The single most infuriating, mind-destroying, sanity-depriving, sleepless and nerve-wracking two weeks of your life. Well, technically it’s only eleven days but boy is it eleven days of complete and utter shitfulness. If you don’t come out of it and the end at least a little bit like Sissy Spacek from Carrie, you’re doing well. Real well. Eleven days of questioning your every internal move…was that a flicker of a cramp? Could that be a twang of implantation? Could have sworn it hurts to sleep on my chest, must be a sign, surely a sign, definitely a sign…or not.

At the end of that Two Week Wait, a nurse will deliver the news you already don’t want to hear. Sorry, it didn’t work. Not this time, or the time before that, or the time before that even. Then it’s my job to ring The Vet and tell him. I would put off that call forever if it meant I didn’t have to break his heart one more time…but I can’t. It is what it is and we can’t change a single damn thing. Love n’hugs, Lady MamaGxox

Patience…

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In the words of the great poet, Axle Rose, ‘all you need is just a little patience…’

And a whole lot of optimism. An army truck size load of it. Apparently eight is a lucky number in the Chinese horoscope. I’m hoping their little luck shines down on me like one of those little brass cats you see on the bench of Chinese restaurant with the waving arm. Things have been a little different in camp fertility on our eighth round. Dr Babies has tried a different protocol using something called Menopur, an older style IVF drug they bring out when women don’t respond to newer age drugs like Gonal F (of which I’m well-acquainted).

I rather like Menopur, she hasn’t caused me much bloating and even the crazies have managed to stay at bay…for a touch at least. I still get a daily (actually two) needles stabbed into my belly every morning and if you’re especially lucky and dehydrated it feels a hundred million times worse, bit like a cat claw ripping into your skin. After eight or nine days with my lovely new friend Menopur, I’m off for my scan. The specialist says he likes what he sees. I think even the word ‘wow!’ might have escaped his lips. When your fertility specialist starts to dance a merry jig around you, things might just be looking up. My oestrogen levels have tripled, he says, looking at my blood results. This is a good thing. Could be the naturopathy, could be the break, could be my stress levels, could be luck could be just that the flippin’ sky is blue…whatever it is this is a good thing, right?

He scribbles in his illegible doctor scrawl on a sheet on his desk and books me in for egg retrieval in three days’ time. There are 13 nice little follicles making themselves cosy in my ovaries, he says. Some on the left. Some on the right. I am so high on my happy news right now my smile’s bigger than Pharrell Williams’. Yes, 13, that’s like huge. Massive numbers. My surgery is booked for 7.30 in the morning on Wednesday.

Hospitals are the shittiest places. Their colour schemes, their staff uniforms, nothing says happy. They’re just drab, colourless pits of fear. They lay you on a gurney with your arm stuck out onto a vinyl strip that reminds me of those rooms where they do final executions on death row inmates. When the anaesthetist sticks his great big hulking needle into my hand he says I might feel a bit of pain. Is he fucking kidding? If they didn’t have a gas mask over my face I would have ripped that thing out of my hand and walloped him one right across his cheek. Shit it hurt, all up my left arm not to mention the hole in my hand where the electrical wire sized catheter has gone in. Five, four, three two…and she’s gone.

I wake up in recovery an hour or so later and the nice nurse in her blue scrubs is chatting away animatedly in my ear. She’s got an earring in her eyebrow and her hair tied up high on her head. For a minute I forget where I am. I want to open my eyes but it’s hard. I’m pretty sure someone has glued them shut. I look down at my hand and see the number 6 written on it in biro. That’s what they do when you have an egg collection, they write the number of eggs they fished out on your hand. Six? What? I thought there were 13? Bugger me! Well there’s as good a reason as any not to count your damn follicles before they hatch. Six eggs. My belly is swollen to the size of an NBA level basketball and the pain is like someone has taken a blender to your insides. I take six panadol when I get home and still the pain is hanging round like a Beverly Hills housewife at a restaurant opening.

That afternoon the scientist from the lab calls and lets me know they’ve fertilised five eggs. They’ll call again in two days time to let me know if they’ve survived and then by day five, if we have enough, two lil’ fighting embies will start renovating my uterus to make their nice new home inside for nine months. And for extra good measure, Dr Babies has decided he’ll also give me a Pregnyl injection when we go for the embryo transfer which will hopefully act like a bit of Spidey’s good stuff and make it stick like glue to the sides of my uterus.

I’m thinking if we have a girl, we might name her Hope. Not because I watch Young & the Restless but because hope really is all you have when you’re spun out of control down the path of fertility. Hope, patience and fear mixed with a tiny bit of strength.

While I wait for my belly to stop looking like one of those poor starving children, all distended and swollen, we also wait for our two little bubsicles to grow nice and strong so they can last the distance…maybe if we have twins we’ll name them Hope and Faith… Love n hugs, Lady MamaG xox Here’s a little ’80s rock to brighten your day. You’re welcome.