Category: IVF

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.

 

 

 

Being a mum…hands down the hardest job in the world…

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I'll walk to the ends of the earth to take his pains away...

I’ll walk to the ends of the earth to take his pain away…

I can tell you the single moment I learned being a mum is the toughest job in the whole wide world. It was a Spring morning in October eight years ago. I watched my not-quite-three-year-old little boy sleep in the bed beside me. His beautiful lashes with the blonde tips on the ends, firmly closed. I still tell him to this day those lashes were kissed by the angels when he was born. I leave him to sleep a little longer. I want him to stay in peace for as long as he can. When he finally stirs I look into his blue blue eyes  and I do the single most hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as a mum. I tell him today is a special day. Today we will say goodbye to his daddy. ‘Daddy is gone to heaven and he’s never coming back,’ I tell him. Even though we lost him five days before that morning I didn’t want him to be scared. I tried and tried to protect him from reality but the time had come and it was my job to shatter his tiny heart into a trillion little pieces.

He tells me ‘No, no!’ in a big voice for an only-just-woken toddler. ‘Daddy’s not dead. He’s at the racecars.’ I am his mum and I can’t lie. I tell him his daddy had an accident in his racecar and he has gone. I will tell him this over and over until his little face bursts into floods of tears, hot red cheeks steaming from his anger, frustration and disbelief. He puts his head back on his pillow as if he’s trying to go back to sleep, to step in reverse from the words he’s just heard from his mummy’s mouth. His mummy, how could she be telling him such horrible horrible things, she’s meant to keep away the pain not stab it in.

That morning I would have rather been anywhere but in that bedroom telling my little boy those words. I would have taken all his pain, his fear and his loss. Syphoned it out with my heart and poured it into my own body so he didn’t have to suffer. That’s what you do when you’re a Mum. You take their pain away…when they’re sick, when they’re scared, when they’re sore and when they’re hurt by the most horrific loss of grief.

It’s the hardest job in the world. It just is. The next time you hear yourself say ‘I’m just a mum’ or ‘She’s just a mum’. Or the next time you think you’re not doing enough. Or the next time you beat yourself up because you’re doing too much…holding down a job, raising kids, keeping a house, just remember there is nothing you can ever do, no job in your life that even comes close to the role of Mum. For those of us who have had to be both a mum and a dad, for those who have taken on other mum’s kids, for those who have spent months and even years trying to become a mum and for those who haven’t got their own mums anymore you probably know this already.

Tomorrow, it’s hospital time once again for this here thirtysomething mama as I try to become a mum to another precious little person. It’ll be our eight time on IVF and I’m more hell bent on beating this asshole affliction than Kim K was to be a Vogue covergirl. I’m lucky enough to already know what it’s like to be a mum and that’s why I’ll never give up trying. Love n’hugs, LadyMamaG xox

 

 

 

 

We can fix you, poke a finger in my eye and hope to die, promise…

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I have one in every colour...

I have one in every colour…

There are some really fun things about being infertile. The most funnest is of course the not being able to get pregnant bit. The second most funnest is having your hormones turn you into some crazy-assed banshee who, at will, (which coincidentally is most of the time) can explode like a landmine when pushed. The fourth most funnest is taking about six hundred and fifty-two pills every single day – to the point where your pee resembles the colour of yellow powerade and actually begin doing the opposite of what they’re set out to do…yes melatonin, we be talking to you. Apparently it helps you sleep. Unless you’re in that small percentile where it does the opposite and keeps you awake for approximately…oh just the ENTIRE night.

The most funnest bit that I really love is when people you trust tell you they can fix you. I’ve been to see, well actually I lie when I say I’ve been to see her because in my two consultations both of them have been via skype, so I actually haven’t physically seen anyone. But this person I’ve seen-via-skype informed me she didn’t think my tubes were blocked and also apparently – and despite every other fertility specialist and scientist disagreeing – that my eggs are actually fine and 38 is apparently a good age for conceiving, she believes in all her wisdom (I should point out she’s neither a doctor or a scientist). Trouble is you take one partially demented (via hormonal infliction) desperately wanting, possibly naive but very trusting infertile woman and you sprinkle your seeds of hope over her head…it gives her false hope and that, my friends can be dangerous. It creates a girl who argues with her heart and her head on a constant basis.

Those monthly battles go something a bit like this: Heart, ‘I think I’m having some symptoms, we should really do a test,’. Head, ‘No.’ Heart, ‘but you don’t understand I really think it’s worked this time, she said it could, she said I might.’ Head, ‘No.’ Heart, ‘but just one, please go on I’ll only do one, promise,’. Head, ‘No. End of.’ Heart then turns on her heels and stalks off with her nose stuck up in the air. She’s pissed as all hell. But head is right. Tests only make you a) more anxious and b) even more anxious. Fertility can be a mind struggle and half the battle is having hope, being positive but it’s also being real. Every single specialist will tell you your eggies have less chance of baking once you plummet from 35, apparently it’s like being on the edge of a cliff once you reach old age of 38 and by 40, well it’s almost goodnight nurse. Sure, there are miracles, hell even some women can do it on their own at 40 and older but they are a minority. A girl can dream can’t she? It doesn’t stop me from being ever the optimist and hoping just one day it might come true.

I’ve had everyone – except Dr Babies – tell me their little concoction can help. If I go and have needles before and after, apparently there’s a 65 percent chance of conceiving. If I go a naturopath and follow their diet, drink their bin juice – which is what The Vet calls it because it resembles the remnants of week-old bin rubbish in both aroma and appearance and the taste is possibly similar too – two times a day for three months, there’s also around a 60-80 percent chance of conceiving. Oh boy, sign me up. Fire away, if you can give me those kind of stats, I’ll let you string fishooks through my arms if that’s what you need to do. Only problem is, where do they base these stats? Are they based entirely on medical results? Are they completely accurate…your guess’s as good as mine.

We’ve had our break. It’s been four months since our last confession, I mean cycle, and we’ve got our combats on ready to face the next war zone. I’ve given up gluten, alcohol (okay mostly) and shopping – alright that one might not have been for fertility but I lost my will to shop long ago, along with my waistline. I’ve been keeping calm, even been wearing tiny pressure point needles (that look like massive pimples) in my ears. I’ve been drinking green juices and have given in to eating the odd kale salad. I’ve tried massaging my belly with a healing crystal and when I get my lazy ass there, have been doing Barre classes to ‘improve the positioning of my uterus’. Yes folks, I’ve gone completely batshit crazy. I’ve done everything they told me to do and then some. I’ve listened. I’ve believed. The control is no longer mine.

Next week will mark the start of our eighth round of IVF.

We are back with Dr Babies, who throughout this has been our voice of reason. He has given us real medical stats, they might not be great, or what we wanted to hear but they are proven.

Don’t ask me how long we’ll keep doing this or even how I feel about starting all over again because I don’t know. To answer that would be to give up hope. All I know is I’m ready to start the battle again. The ups and the downs, the invasion of my body, the insomnia and the stress. The hopes and the dreams, the cautions and the disappointments. The numbers and the stats, the tests and the results. And the waiting, oh the waiting…

I come ready to fight this battle…and, by f*** I want to win. I have my steel armour, crafted by my army that is the constant love and strength I get from The Vet, the 10 y o, my family and my friends…and let’s just hope there’s something Over the Rainbow…Love n hugs, Lady MamaGxoxo

Telling it like it is…

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baby factory? I'll take that one thank you...

baby factory? I’ll take that one thank you…

You could hear a pin drop, the room was so quiet. We were in Dr Babies’ office and had just been told of my many issues leading to my infertility. It was that silent. No words. Just a distinct disbelief. I wanted to ask him to just check again, look over his notes one more time (because of course I’d almost tripped over and fell up the knock with 10 y o). But words failed me. Silent tears trickled out of the side of my eye and I looked down at my hands. I was pissed off as all hell. Angry and downright gutted. Gutted this body I’d taken care of (mostly well, yes yes apart from the drinking, the partying and a little more drinking) could let me down. Worst of the facts was that age was a persistent player in my now unreproductive organs. The cobwebs had long grown over them and deemed them almost all but unuseful.  Our chances, Dr Babies told us, of getting ourselves a lovely jubbly little bundle of loveness were somewhere in the vicinity of 10% on our own and not a whole lot more via IVF.

Now I am one of the fast-approaching-a-decade-that-closely-resembles-forty in denial, who me? who is apparently ‘clogging up the IVF clinics’. Did I choose to be in this position? Was I a career-driven, heartless bitch who put having babies way down the bottom of my to-do list? Did I prefer traveling the far reaches of the Morroccan desert on camelback to starting a family? Was I too busy waiting for Mr Right with my long-sweeping checklist to even see that he was right in front of me? Was I selfish and enjoying my own adult life too much to consider anyone under the age of 20 being able to inhabit it? No. I was none of these. But that’s what some would have you believe. Does someone who is 40 or even 43 have less right to undergo IVF treatment than someone who is in their 20’s or 30’s? Forget what priorities they may or may not have put first, having a baby is one of the most incredible times in a woman’s life. Becoming a mother is a gift that no trip, present, whopping great diamond or even flashy car could ever replicate but that doesn’t mean to say a woman still doesn’t have the right to give it a go because she apparently put babies ‘on hold’.

Some of us have no choice. Maybe we haven’t met our tall dark n’ handsome. Maybe we would really like to fulfill our achievements and kick our goals all the way to the glass ceiling. Or maybe some of us were like me. A widow. A single mother at 31, with a small boy to look out for. I had no idea that some four years later I would meet the most incredible man who filled my life with such joy that I so desperately want to have a part of him and I to share for the rest of our lives. Things are not always what you think they are and it’s so easy to ride side saddle on our high horse looking down at those around us who might be struggling with one of the biggest fears of their lives.

As the time draws close for us to start on our long and winding (though we hope a little less long and winding this time) road through IVF yet again and yes I’m getting scared. Scared as all shit. It’s another year, another round, another series of tests, another ride through the constant waiting but bugger it, what have we got to lose…? That’s a rhetorical question – especially to those in my immediate family who may or may not right now be using words like sanity, mind, shit, hair and just plain normal human being-ness. It’s time to make the appointment with Dr Babies. I’ve done my six weeks of hard labour (gluten free), I’ve taken more vitamins than you could point a sharp stick at. I’ve participated in many (okay not many but definitely a few) jiggly, sweaty gym classes. I’ve gone back to see Mr Needles, I’ve tried to calm myself and keep busy. I’ve worked on my positiveness and being Brady Bunch-happy. I’ve even whispered to the big fella upstairs. Now it’s all up to me, right? No pressure or anything.

It’s been so much more than a ride on the crappy carnival of infertility and if I’m honest I’m not looking forward to revisiting her nasty self. And just a quick word to the wise, there’s some things you just should never say to a woman who is a) hormonally challenged and b) who has tried every goddam thing under the sun and still has nothing to show for it. What I’ve learnt so far is not to take to heart what people genuinely think is okay to ask.

Here’s a brief Q & A to get you up to speed. Do I want your eggs? No thanks I’d prefer my own, we’re not in a supermarket aisle. When do you think you’ll give up? I’m not sure, would you like to give one of your children back? How much has all this cost you? Thanks for asking. A frigging helluva lot, both financially and emotionally…but if you’d like to put your donation in the tin. Do you think it will work this time? Last time I checked I don’t have a crystal ball up my jacksie so my guess is as good as yours. Have you tried this…yes and everything in between. I know it worked for your friend’s sister’s cousin who tried for years but don’t mean it’s gonna work for me. When you give up, is when it’ll work…thanks, how enlightening did you study under the Dalai Lama? And my favourite of all, the bonus prize, the double-whammy, the supersize me with fries, Stop stressing, don’t think about it, just relax…let me just tie a led brick around your ankle and let you walk around with it for a few months, you know just to get the feeling. Don’t think about it though and you won’t even know it’s there.

Yes, fun times here we come. Love to all my fellow babywanters out there – close to forty or otherwise – big hugs, LadyMamaG xox

Ups and downs…

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I almost died today. I actually thought it was all over. Saw stars in my eyes. Went dizzy felt like I was gonna hurl up my non-existent, liquid, gluten-free breakfast. Honest to Goodness, I thought my number was up. I blame it on my girlfriend. She asked me to come to Barre with her. And while I’d like to tell you that involved learning how to perfect a Margherita or the ingredients to a divine peach martini, there was nudda alcohol (even though I really could have done with some) involved in this particular tryst. The result is I can no longer lift my arms above my head without wincing and I now require assistance to be lowered onto the toilet seat. Sorry. But it’s true. The Barre – and it was my second attempt, (in a row) I might add – was not of the suave inner city drinking kind, but instead of the burn your buns and ballet-kick your legs almost above your head without knocking someone out kind. I’ll be posting naked selfies in no time, I thought. Err, wrong. While our sweet and petite instructor gleefully told me to dig down deep into my squat so I could ‘feel the burn’, I’m not sure if the poor girl behind me appreciated my burn so much. I read somewhere Miranda Kerr or Gisele or someone equally as goddess-like swears by it so I said ‘sign me up to the Gisele-butt’ – except I may never return. Well, not until I can take myself to bloody loo at least.

I'll look like this in no time...

I’ll look like this in no time…

Yes ladies and ladsters, welcome to twenny-one-four…where a new LadyMamaG is about to be unveiled before your very eyes. Oh, I haven’t even told you about my new little journey yet have I? Alright, grab the nearest bottle of Pinot and I’ll fill you in. It’s no secret 2013 was not a very nice year to me. It’s also no secret that we’re still not speaking, so much so that I am now refusing to even acknowledge her other than to say she’s behind me, like waaaaaay out yonder behind denim dungarees and spiral perms, behind me. Along with her seven failed IVF attempts and one lost pregnancy. ‘Get out’, I told her. ‘And don’t you be coming back, y’ hear?’

Despite my need to constantly be in the driver’s seat of my own life I have given way to the patron saint of patience (just for a short time, mind) and decided to take a break from all the nasties that have been invading my body like a deranged PacMan for thirteen odd months. Dr Babies suggested that it might be a good idea to take a short holiday from the fun resort that is IVF and opt down the path of holistic remedies to see if they might help.

I’ll spare you the intrepid details to save you from falling into your computer screen asleep but I did enlist the help of a naturopath, and one who goes by the moniker of Baby Maker, no less. When a fertility-challenged, hormone-hyped, possibly mentally-unstable woman reads those words there is no need for formal introductions, you can go straight to first base thanks very much. After our first meeting where she told me there was a slight possibility my tubes are not in fact blocked (funny, a hysteroscopy, laproscopy and the photographic evidence proves otherwise) and also that age be damned, I’m in fact in the most common age of women trying to conceive you don’t need to ask me twice, sign me up and fill me with whatever it takes, I’ll even dance the tango round the Mulberry bush naked if you think that’ll help.

Only problem is, when you tell a fertility-challenged girl that you might just have the answer to all her hopes and dreams she will literally hang on your every word and hold you so true to it that I would look at maybe switching your address should it not work out. Jo-king. But no really when a girl is as desperate as I am and you tell her that you have a much higher chance of conceiving by following her guide, she is going to hold you to it like a marshmallow on a stick.

Here’s what she’s put me on. Some vial tasting liquid that may or may not be the fermented urine of a rare Alpine elk. Approximately fifty-four different types of ‘uterine-health’ herbs that make me sound like a pair of maraccas when I walk there are so many pills jiggling round in my belly and the best part – a gluten free diet. I’m all for things that make you healthy but seriously there is only so much quinoa, wilted kale and sprinkled flax seeds a girl can take, right? Okay I admit there is a slight possibility I may even feel better for it but oh how I long for a nice bloody crusty French roll and a bowl of pasta.

Apparently all these things are going to get my hormones back on track. Perhaps you should ask The Vet, the 10 y o and possibly even the dog (who always remains my biggest fan) and may all argue that Mrs Bitchypants got a whole lot nastier this month.Thanks to the lovely spirit goddess who ended school holidays this week, lov yah guts baby. Apparently I need to open up my spiritual vessel (eyes up here, thanks) to a more positive and healthy and welcoming state. We’ll see how long that lasts without KFC and bread rolls in my life. Love to all the GF sufferers out there…let’s hold hands, LadyMamaGxox

 

 

When are you going to give up…?

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this many more...

this many more…

With soggy wet hair, stepping out of the shower 10 y o scrunched his nose up the way he does when he’s deep in thought, blinking at me through shampoo-redened eyes he asks, ‘why don’t you just get the IVF doctors to fix what’s wrong with you and you can have a baby. Can’t they fix your tubes so they work again?’ Nope, I never thought my 10 y o would know what tubes were either, much less that mine needed to be unblocked before we could have a baby. We’d just been watching Ricky Ponting’s story on ABC. ‘How many times did it take them to have a baby?’ he asks. I tell him they went through seven rounds before falling pregnant with their first daughter. ‘What number are we up to, maybe our seventh one will work,’ he says as if that’s the lucky number for everyone going through IVF. If it worked for a cricket legend, surely it’ll work for us too, right? I tell him we’ve already had our seventh go but that maybe eight will be our lucky number, instead.

‘How many more times will it take?’ he asks. That, Charlie, is the golden ticket. ‘Who knows,’ I reply. ‘If we did then we wouldn’t have to keep trying, buddy. We just have to hope the next one works.’

Then I started to think about how many times I’ve been asked what’s my lucky (or unlucky) number? When will you give up? When will you stop trying? How many goes until you decide enough is enough? What’s your limit? Truth is I don’t have that answer myself. If I did then maybe we wouldn’t be on this shithole journey in the first place.

You can’t put a number or a limit on how many times you’re willing to give it a go, much less than you put a number on how much you want a baby (and if you’re asking, Fertility Gods, that’s a real lot, heaps, like gazbillions). You just have to keep saddling back on up to that horse, grab it by its nasty little reigns and do your best to pull that crazy Mustang into line.

I’m thinking 14 might be my lucky number, well the year at least (nooo not fourteen babies you crazy fool) and that eight, well eight has a nice little ring to it thanks nicely. I’ve gone and signed up (under Dr Babies’ guidance) with a naturopath who has given me a list longer than Julia Roberts’ arm pit hair circa Oscar winning days, of potions and lotions that she promises will get my body back in perfect baby-making shape. Or at the very least, they’ll make my hair shiny and my nails grow (an obvious positive). I’m not wholly convinced by anyone who refers to themselves as a ‘baby maker’ but I figure, do your worst love, the crap this body’s seen in the past year would make a junkie look like a saint.

The ‘Herbs’ she has prescribed me, she admits, taste fairly close to ground up gravel and the amount of little brown bottles I have on my kitchen bench which are certain to aide everything from gut issues to healthy liver, heart and folic acid levels are sure to do me no harm. Well apart from that of my hip pocket. At the very least you may see me sign up to run a marathon very shortly. Or…then again, you may not.

No, I’m not ready to give up. Not just yet. Ask me in another year…Love, as always, Lady MamaGxox

Laters, twenny-one-three…

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a new year, new luck...?

a new year, new luck…?

Dear twenny-one-three, this might hurt a little bit so, like ripping off a week-old band aid, I think it’s best if I come right out and say it: I’m not going to miss you, not one teensy bit. You’ve seemed to lack mostly what I would say is just a mortal thread of common decency. Yes, there have been some wonderful highlights – you’ve seen the decade roll over that was the birth of the 10 y 0, and the greatest day of my life. You’ve seen the first anniversary of the day I married the Most Beautiful Man in the World, and you’ve finally seen the end to open home weekends. But, apart from that, I’ve got a bloody big bone to pick with you because it seems you’ve wanted to throw curve balls at me which ever way I’ve tried to turn. Thirteen has been about as lucky as a black cat crossing in front of you while walking under a ladder, with an umbrella up inside.

As I sit here – in my running shorts that I’m very unlikely to be running in – and try (hard) to think of all the new resolutions I need to make; no more KFC (cravings be damned), actually do my pilates DVD instead of allowing it to gather dust on my bedroom floor, eat nothing but kale, chia seeds, acia berries, quinoa and tofu EVERY night, walk the dog daily and curtail my sailor’s tongue (okay who are we kidding for that last one) I cast my mind back to the days before this year clicked swiftly into the number thirteen that has been about as lucky as Liz Taylor’s wedding vows. Yes, all seven of them.

I’d hardly even heard of Folicle Stimulating Hormone, progesterone, ovulation suppressant and trigger injections, must less known anything about how much they’d become a part of my daily life for the coming year. I’d had two, maybe three general anaesthetics in my lifetime, my thighs didn’t touch at the top and my wardrobe still fit me. I thought testosterone and steroids were for crazy gym junkies whose heads seem like they’re too small for their bodies trying to increase their biceps that one more inch and, here’s the big one, I actually stupidly beligerently believed it would take one go of IVF and I’d be up the knock.

It’s fair to say that twenny-one-three, you’ve been about as kind as Gordon Ramsay in a hot kitchen to this here fertility-challenged thirtysomething…so please please let the new one that arrives tomorrow and takes over from your shift be so much better than you. Laters sista, like a teenager’s training bra you won’t be missed.

Happy and safe New Year my lovely jubblies, love n’ hugs, Lady Mama G xox

Infertility, you win. Again.

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Look out Infertility, I got your number...

Look out Infertility, I got your number…

It’s no secret infertility and I have long been battling this year. She throws up a curve ball at us every month and we dodge it. Or at least we think we do. Then she ups her ammo a bit to wrecking ball proportions and we all know there’s no hiding from them. Specially ones on big fat chains. So it would appear yet again that nasty nasty little biatch has slapped us up with another of her brutal blows. Big. Fat. Negative. No good. Nothing. Nudda. This time it actually hurt.

With each and every loss through our seven cycles of IVF this year (yes that would be se-ven) I’ve jumped back up on the horse’s back and soldiered on. Through seven lots of drugs. Seven lots of steroids. Seven lots of progesterone. Seven lots of blood tests. Seven lots of waiting. Seven phone calls to tell us ‘sorry, it didn’t work this time’. We all have our breaking point and while  I’d like to say to Godmother Fertility that I got her number and I gonna find her and kick her lily white ass into next week, truth be told, I’m not even sure I’ve got the energy. A bit of a slap round the ankles is probably about as much as I can muster right now.

We thought it would work. No we really really did. What with all the testosterone, the melatonin, the steroids, something’s gotta make one of the lil’ embies stick, surely? Well no. No it didn’t. The only thing it appears to have helped with is the mood swings and weight gain – yes, the two of my most very favourite parts of IVF. And two of the things I’m managing to increase quite rapidly on my own thanks.

I was rather looking forward to celebrating our Island chrissie this year with a little bump on board. I even bought a special new bikini for the unveiling of it. And the only thing I really really really wanted was the one thing I clearly can’t have.

Yes I’ll still count my blessings. And yes, life will still go on. It just makes the grief all the more harder when you think you came this close to it actually working. Within a caterpillar’s toenail of having our dream come true and then poof…just as quickly as you thought mid-week, mid-11-day-wait that you were up the knock…your dreams are shattered like a mirror with the reality yet another one didn’t take.

While my heart aches for my family that we, or maybe I have failed yet again, and that a tiny bit of our dream gets chipped away with each loss the most incredible bouquet of all my favourite bright fuschia flowers with tiny diamantes peeking out from their heads handed to me by the one person who makes this all worth while is enough to give me the strength to keep on going. Infertility, you might have got this one but by f*&% am I gonna break you next time. I. Will. Win. Love n’hugs, Lady MamaG xox

 

Once was Fertile…

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the good, the bad and the ugly...infertility

the good, the bad and the ugly…infertility

There’s a picture of us on our wedding day, over nineteen months ago. We are so unbelievably happy. There is nothing that can break how good we feel. At least we think there isn’t. Yet what neither of us know with our smiling faces and twinkling eyes is what lies ahead in our first year of marriage is a ride on one of the most painfully emotional journeys that will test every ounce of our souls. Constantly. We thought we’d be pregnant by the end of the honeymoon. Hell, I thought I’d trip over The Vet and instantly become up the knock. Oh. How. Wrong. I. Was. Because I Once Was Fertile. Hells to the yes I took it for granted. I thought I was born as fertile as a field bunny. Turns out maybe I was in my 20s. Another decade (okay, and a bit) later and it’s taking every little bit of my courage left in the jar just to keep getting out of bed in the morning.

It’s not just the fact my wardrobe seems to have shrunk…along with my (very cherished) Tank Cartier, my equally beloved wedding rings and even any type of shoe that doesn’t resemble an open-toed jandal (sorry, can take the Girl outta Kiwiland). It’s not the fact my once taut belly has turned into mushy tiramisu. It’s not that we’ve spent so many thousands of dollars we could have gone on a round the world trip – and still had money left over to buy a luxury car. It’s not the fact the hormones make my personality switch from lovely to Kathy Bates’ Misery in the blink of an eye. It’s not that my bowels think it’s a funny joke to either withhold everything for days or expel it immediately (sorry for overshare) when there isn’t a loo within cooee. It’s not that I have had more general anesthetics this year alone than Courtney Stodden has for all her surgeries put together. It’s not even that I’m taking every kind of hormone you can think of and then some (and deeply concerned there could be an onset of facial hair growth at any minute). It’s not that my arms look like pin cushions and my belly is full of little blue bruises from where the needles have gone in.

No, the really suckful thing about this ride is that I. Lost. Control. Of. Everything. Long. Ago. My body, my emotions, my ability to be any sort of rational. To be patient or even positive.

Everything about IVF and infertility involves waiting. You wait until you can start your daily hormone injections then you wait 10 days to see how many follicles have grown. Then you wait to see how many of those turn into eggs. Then when you get the eggs out you wait to see how many of those they could inject. Then you wait to see how many of the injected ones make it through the night. Then you wait each day for five days after that for your phone call to tell you how many cells they’ve progressed. Then you wait to see if you’ll have an embryo to implant. Then you wait 11 days to see if that embryo has embedded in your uterus. Then you wait to see if it makes it to your first five week scan and blood test. Then, just to be sure you wait for another week to see if your hormone levels are still increasing. Then you wait until eight weeks to see if it has survived. Then you wait until 12-weeks before you know if there are any genetic defects. Then and only then do you get to finally think you might have a little bit of luck. You. Might. Actually. Have. A. Baby. One day.

This month we are on our seventh cycle of IVF. That’s thirteen long months of mood swings, dimpled thighs, disappointment and dropping more wads of of cash than Squizzy Taylor. Even the strongest Scorpions have their breaking point. I’m just hoping I can find a pocketful more brave to keep me going through this round – which this time is a bit like being in the ring with Mike Tyson. Blindfolded.

I know I’m not alone. There’s girls out there who’ve been on this journey a helluva lot longer than I have. There’s people who’ve had success and there are people who have not. There’s couples who, like us, have come so close they could almost smell the baby powder.

Cross your fingers that the two little embies we have left will make it. To my fellow infertility junkies…love, luck and wonder to y’all. Love n’hugs, Lady MamaG xoxo