One in six. Those are the stats. So before you’ve even pulled off your knickers, you’re already fucked (don’t worry, the fun part of that sentence packed its bags and left long ago). Which means if you count on two hands all the women you know, chances are at least one of ’em is about to discover, or even worse, knows already that her chances of having a baby are more slim that Em Rata’s waistline.

It would seem that for some of us, our uteruses (don’t say that with a stutter, you’ll need a brolly) and ovaries were not put in our bodies simply to reproduce…but rather just to sit there and observe the very lovely non-reproductive work they are doing by instead delivering something resembling a very severe form of internal Chinese torture every month.

And for one of those one-in-six chickadees, them stats won’t be the first to deliver a flat out upper cut to the face. No siree, that’s just the beginning. Fertility is all about numbers from the very outset. You’ll be given numbers and stats about your age, about your egg count, about your hormones, about your weight, about your ovarian reserve, about the odds of anything actually working, about the age of someone’s sister/friend/cousin who miraculously cured herself and got pregnant, about how many days it’ll take to fertilise, about how many cells you need for a viable embryo, about how many days you’ll have to wait to know if your embryo took (which your hormone-ravaged brain will neurotically divide into nanoseconds). About how long until you can have your first scan, about the odds of you having a chemical/non-viable pregnancy, about weeks until your second, third, fourth and fifteenth scan. About the likelihood of some sort of birth defect. About whether you’ll have multiple babies…numbers fucking numbers not even Count Dracula would like.

As I type this I can hear a gorgeous model who, when asked if she has any baby plans in the near future, has all the grace and complacency of a 28-year-old with all the time in the world. ‘No way, not for a long time,’ she quips. And why wouldn’t she? She’s got #life #goals before she even contemplates reproducing. Oh to afford that decadent nonchalance once again. Take me back to my mid-twenties when I conceitedly and perhaps ignorantly thought pregnancy and children were my woman’s right and would be there waiting for me whenever it would eventuate that I should need them. I’d like to share my more recent stats with her, or even those of women I know much younger than her who’ve battled with infertility for years, to share my Mr Miyagee-like wisdom that the simple fact of the matter is, one-in-six is some pretty fucked up odds. But I’ll keep my shit to myself. No one likes a know-it-all twat so pull your head in.

Right now I’m in the midst of some sort of (totally wanky) reboot. After what was the terrible awful most fucking pitiful failed IVF cycle ever I told myself that maybe if I stopped drinking and instead swapped it for two cups of dandelion root tea (yes it tastes as shit as it sounds – think ground up gravel with a hint of horsesweat), swore off shit food (all except chocolate, that’s just sacreligious) and took up pilates three times a week, this little health binge might kickstart my body into thinking it could possibly have the teensy ensiest slither of reproductive potential if we just meet in the middle somewhere, have a quiet coffee and talk about our feelings.

Or not.

Six months later and we’re still not talking.

There’s every chance that it won’t make a blind bit of difference but at the very least it’s seen me shed my ‘IVF kg’s’ that really weren’t welcome anyway so high bloody five to me (insert fairy clap here). And yes that is Drew in caramello you see dangling from my shoulder 🙂

And I promise not to name it North, Rocket or Pear

I’m still completely haunted by our last ditch at a ‘super cycle’ which turned out to be an even shittier comeback than Basic Instinct 2. The emaciated little group of eggs that were so dusty they couldn’t even get themselves together enough to make anything even close to an embie has given me the worst kind of stage fright ever.

We have every intention of doing Ovulation Induction but I’m even more scared of that than I was of our last cycle. Probably because I was naiivly (stupidly) more positive than Charlie Sheen that it would work. There is only so much disappointment two people can take and it tears huge fat gaping holes of fear all through my heart that it might not work either. I’ve been procrastinating with a whole bunch of bullshit excuses – which while some are completely vaildated – most are just really full of shit. There was the trip to Hawaii, there’s the fact we’re selling our house, and then building a new one. Then the fact The Vet is ridick busy, stressed off his face and exhausted. And I forgot to take my multivites for two weeks. I could bore your face right off and write an encyclopedia of excuses but most of them would come back to the same thing…fear.

I would love my identity back. No really. I’d love for almost every conversation that comes out of my mouth not to begin with the words, cycle, failed, embryo or ovulation. If the little teeny fertility people who live inside my head and occupy most of the space could kindly just fuck off and leave some room for creativity, kind thoughts and normality to move back into their old room, it’d be real swell.

For the one-in-six fertile-challenged who read this, or to anyone just going through their own sort of shit on any level, to those who are stuck inside a pit of pain with 10 metre high walls, to those who feel swept under the current of fear, loss, grief and panic who find on some level my crazy bloody ramblings give you any sort of comfort or sistahood like warm hug and a hot milo…I sure be humbled. Love, hugs and supercalifragilisticexpelia-fucking-docious luck, healing and strength to anyone with numbers of any sort hanging over their head. Lady MamaGxoxo

As the night fell on what was my fourth Mother’s Day caught up in the fucktard clutches of infertility where I’ve watched everyone from Kimmie K to the gorgeous actual Duchess herself sprout out a couple of lil Angels, saints and compass directions, and friends, family and even hairdressers welcome their beautiful bundles… I could have so easily felt woe is me. 

But bullshit to that. 

I spent the day wrapped up in the safe clutches of my darling boys – all three ov’em and felt nothing but blessed as the holy mother Theresa herself. They spoilt me senseless with love (and a bloody beaut handbag) and I got to choose everything all day…much to their disgust as it did involve being stuck inside a shopping centre most of the day (they did ask, fools).

 And when the 12 y o asked what’s the best thing about being a mum? I said, never take it for granted. I’m one of the lucky ones. 

  Everywhere I’ve looked lately – even in The Vet’s copy of bloody GQ mag for fuck’s sake – there is a big puff of black smoke choking those of us infertilee’s. 

But there are the good stories too. There’s my very dear friend who spent many years before me strapped to the fertility coaster, years full of battle and heartache and fear, and is now about to welcome her fourth baby into the world – but this time, pure luck and rather than the need for medical intervention.  And another girl I know who spent many light years, and so many more than me, locked in the grief filled stranglehold of babylessness and has just had her second daughter in three years. There’s the friend who thought both her daughters might never have the chance to have children of their own and now she’s got baby grandsons coming out her ears…and another very beautiful friend who thought she might never have another baby is now floating in a cloud of pink with her gorgeous second tiny baby girl. 

Yep there are so many shit sodden tales to tell of fear and hopelessness and what ifs and when do I stop. But there are a whole lot of great ones too. 

For all the new mummies, almost mummies and one day will be mummies…we all have stars we wish upon, some of is will just be waiting a lil bit longer for the one that picks us. 

The best part about being a mum is that I am one. And you lil nugget will always be the best thing that ever happened…the brightest star in the night sky who picked me…

As I write this we three are bout to board a plane Hawaii-bound where I can take my leave of absence from stupid-ass fertility and just be loved. Aloha and lov n’hugs, Lady MamaG xoxo

Sure, being a mum is one of the best things a woman could ever do, it remains and always will be, my greatest achievement in life. But with the territory, along comes the shitful too. And so far I’ve learned there are two things you dread doing as a mum. Hell, there’s a giant elephant’s shitload more than two, I know, but right up the pointy end of things you’d rather pluck your eyelashes out one-by-one than do is 1. have your child go through grief and 2. be the one who has to tell them.

Nine years ago, when I was first taught the hardest lesson in MY LIFE EVER AS A MUM, I was given a book by one of my best friends, who’s also now a paediatrician and helped bring my baby into this world. What Colour Was the Car, Mummy? was a little book not more than 100 pages, with a yellow cover. Back then (and I doubt much has changed now) there was little to zilch written by young widows, and even less for young widowed mums. No road maps, I was just driving blind. It was about a doctor from New Zealand who had also lost her husband in a car accident when her baby was just days old. One of the questions her little boy asked some years later was ‘What colour was the car?’ That’s all he wanted to know. Not how it happened, when it happened or even who was involved, just simply the colour of the ‘other’ car who hit and killed his dad. A simple line with so much to say…a message of a child suffering from grief-far-too-y0ung.

As I began raising my own boy through his fuckful sea of grief, I soon realised there’s no way for a tiny mind to truly digest death as a real and finite thing like an adult would (or at least an adult might attempt to). He’d pick out tiny bits here and there, when was he coming back home from heaven? Who would wear his clothes that still hung in the wardrobe for months afterwards. What would he eat for his dinner up in heaven?

It punches holes right in the middle of your heart when you see how a three-year-old kid doesn’t think the same way as a five, or even a 10-year-old. When you’re so little there’s just today and tomorrow. There’s blue cars and favourite cups. There’s Spiderman backpacks and your favourite little red shoes with the velcro you can do up all by yourself. There’s photos, books, pictures and newspaper articles. There’s videos and stories you hear adults telling all the time, sometimes in hushed tones so you can’t quite hear. There’s footage on the web and articles in magazines. Photos all around you, on every wall, of the person who left your life far too early. There’s tributes on a concrete wall far away from your home and the names of fans you’ll never know written on a flag. Little reminders and messages everywhere but you’re too little to see them.

A few years later when we lost our beloved family mutt, our golden retriever who’d made the journey over with us when we moved here, the then-six-year-old completely fell to pieces. He was devastated. I’d taken the dog to the vet in the morning and couldn’t quite deal with telling him the inevitable, so I lied. When he asked me why the dog was in the back of the car, I said he was just going to see the vet. ‘He’ll be fine,’ I told him. He wasn’t. He had to be put to sleep that night and my little boy never got to see him again. Grief had come back into his life, back again so soon he’d hardly had a chance to notice its absence. Maybe he would never forgive me or trust me again when I said everything would be fine. He still worries too much like his mum does and holds everyone close in his life, tight to his chest. He’s terrified of losing The Vet, or me. Grief will do that to a person. Even a little one.

When you’re a mum there are a gazillion tonnes of incredibly wonderful.

But some of the time there’s a whole lot of shitful too…

For every minute of these 12-and-a-half years I’ve had someone so much more important than myself to love. Someone who comes first above all else in the world, who I’d walk to the ends of the earth to protect, who I’d cut my arm off for if I had to. Someone to make me see the best in everyone and who with one single smile, can make everything in the world shine like gold…if just for a moment. For nine of those years I have hiked up the mountain of grief, I’ve waded through mud-like fear up to my fucking earlobes, felt every tinge of his pain and tried to wish it away…worried every minute of those years if he would be okay. It won’t ever stop.

And I would do every second of it all over again because I am his Mum. I am the person who delivered him into this world. Fuck it, I’ve done the bloody best I could. I’ve fought emotional wars and ridden great whopping tidal waves of fear…and so far I’ve managed to keep him bouyant and healthy and safe. We mums catch the falls…we wipe the tears and we fix the hearts. We protect our babies even well after they’re old enough to protect themselves.

These days there’s a rolling supermarket docket full of different things to worry about. It’s hormones and pecking order. Fitting in and being on the sharp end of bullying. It’s social media and popularity. Making the top team and scoring the most points. Exposure to drugs, alcohol and suicide…it’s wishing you could shrink them back down to itty bitty when all you had to worry about was how much formula they’d swallowed in their tiny bellies. Or if your baby was happy eating lamp cutlets and mushy peas for the nineteenth night running. It’s wanting desperately to make him so little I can carry him around on my hip, keep him up high enough so he’s out of danger. But I know I can’t.

This mother’s day I’m celebrating the incredible little life I’ve raised so far. I’m even more proud than a mother fucking hen of the beautiful 12 y o I’ve raised…to be kind, loving, thoughtful and generous. To think of others and always be considerate, charming and true to himself. I couldn’t ask for a better kid. You are my number one, lil nugget…lov yah guts forever and always. Keep being you. Lady MamaG xox

Four years ago tomorrow was my sunshine day.

The proposal came somewhat unexpectedly one Friday night we were sitting on the couch watching telly, he passed me his laptop, said he wanted to show me some pictures…oh okay…right here’s you climbing this huge mountain in Nepal, and here’s you swimming underwater with dugongs like Jacques Cousteau. And here’s you in some far away land apparently searching for something. Just quietly, WTF does this have to do with me? Look closer, he said. At the end of the slideshow was a picturegram. I was clearly a few sheets to the wind because I still didn’t get it. In the middle, was a ewe, a picture of the royal wedding and him. Must I spell it out for you…? Click, click, click my brain catches up with my eyeballs and…hold the fucking phone, you’re asking me to MARRY YOU, shit yes!! Yessssssss. He even turned it into one of those photo books. Yes I did Marry the hell out of him. And no, there’s no more of him. Mine for keeps.

Our wedding day arrived about five months later on April 12, 2012. It was full of emotion, elation and an Indian taxi driver (don’t even ask). It was the most incredible day as The Vet kept his promise to the-then-8-y-o and I that he’d be in our lives forevermore, that he’d be my love, my life, my, our all…through good shit and bad.

all you need is love…

I expected nine months later to be celebrating a little mini Vet. How wrong I was.

The first month, nothing. That’s okay it’ll take a while for everything to get going again. It had been a bloody long time  since my body had thought about anything even closely resembling pregnancy. Two, three and four months later and still nothing. I knew something was up, I could feel it. After five months my smug ‘I’m totally fertile’ look was bitch slapped right off my face. You are infertile, the doctor told us. You have about a 10 %  chance of having a baby. Exce-fucking-llent. How did that happen?

And ever since, like a dirty great fucking black cloud, infertility has been hovering over our married life. Pissing it down with fear and loss. It’s sat in the corner of every day, of every week of every month like a cockroach you just can’t stamp on. I really wish it hadn’t. That our life together so far had been free of the emotional turmoil I know you’ve suffered at the hands of my hormones. But like a blown out tyre we don’t know where it’ll end up.

When I was little I had pictures of brides blu-tacked to the back of my wardrobe door (between posters of Madonna and Sebastian Bach – do NOT judge). Partly because I loved fashion but I knew when I grew up I wanted to have a partner who was in my life and my kids’ life, something I’d missed out on – well a solid family life at least. I came from a bitterly divorced home where my parents words were not so much spoken as slung at each other at high speed.

I’ve learnt marriage isn’t just about cohabiting with another human. It’s having that someone who believes in you and all that’s different about you but all that’s bloody shit hot too. It’s listening to them go on about their shit and acting as though you want to hear it. Again. About letting them be right even when you know they’re not. They’re still right (okay, me). Ignoring their stupidity and encouraging their great. It’s not about material shit. That novelty burns off pretty quick leaving nothing but dust in its wake. You need the foundation of someone who never waivers his love, who’s thoughtful, loving, caring and respectfully stays out of the way when you’re ranting and swearing at the top of your lungs because the bench hasn’t been wiped properly, or some stupid fuck pulled out in front of you at the school carpark and nearly took out your wing mirror jesusbloodychristthatwasclose.

I’ve learned so much about my husband these past four years. I’ve watched him become an incredible father. A hero. A saint. I’ve seen him as the most compassionate and empathetic human to all those around him in his daily work, devoting long nights and weekends and physically exhausting himself. I’ve seen him brokenhearted every time we’ve witnessed a loss in our battle to make our family whole. But still every day a warm smile comes over his face and he tells me how much he loves me. Yep, that’ll do me.

I knew the day we met you were a keeper. Despite the fact your hours long dutch courage had you a little more conversational than you would normally be, you made my heart jump rope double-dutch style. You still do. Every. Single. Day.

To the man I’m lucky enough to call my husband I’m just as in love as the day we met. Actually no, even more. Thank you for being in my life you beautiful human, thank you for being By My Side, always. Lov n’ hugs Lady MamaG xox

When I was 10 I used to wear a lilac coloured piece of lace tied around my head in a bow. My favourite outfit was a black lace rahrah skirt (see ’80s fashion tragedy) and a glitter-flecked singlet top with about thirty plastic bead necklaces twisted around my neck. No outfit is complete without accessories and I saw fit to add to this stunning ensemble my most coveted fingerless lace gloves. Yes you did read fingerless and lace in the same sentence (see ’80s fashion that should never come back).

If you are turning your nose up at reading the above then we were clearly not friends in the mid-80s and possibly never will be. By now you may have also worked out the inspiration behind my most bestestly fave outfit to ever be made by some poor sweat shop in India, along with the four LP albums (those were records you used to have to put on a turntable to play), the same four in cassette version, p0sters magazine cut-outs and if I could have got my hands on one, a lifesize cardboard version of her standing beside my wardobe. My favourite movie was Desperately Seeking Susan and I truly believed one day we would perform a duet together.

Enough hints? If not, you need to stop playing along with this game and go and reconnect with your 1984 Atari game console.

Yes its Madge, Madonna, Her Madjesty, Ms Ciccone, or as I liked to call her as a 10 y o, my bestie and future big sister.

If that ain’t style, class and beauty I don’t know what is…?

There wasn’t a day went by in those early tweens where I didn’t fling myself around my peach-toned bedroom singing into my brush every lyric of every song from every album she ever had the endless talent to produce. I thought she was a goddess. An enigma. This incredible woman who had taught me everything from Spanish, to my love for Marilyn Monroe, how to dress like a chick with ‘tood and what being raised as a strict Catholic could do to a girl in love. Shit I loved the face off her.

These days I don’t sing her lyrics quite so much but I’m not even the slight bit shamed to admit I have a few of her goldens on my itunes playlist and when The Vet and the 12 y o are not in the car, I sing the shit out of those puppies with the sound on full tit. In fact, just last night Live to Tell – an all-time classic ballad stopped me in my tracks mid-cooking and may have even glistened a tear in my eye for a second as a boyfriend who dumped me flicked back into my head. Shithead. Lucky for me he’s a dipshit loser now. Thanks Madge, you got me through the hard times, lovie.

I truly thought one day I would meet her. My absolute girl crush. As it happens we might not quite cross paths but in two more sleeps I’ll be singing my lungs out as I watch the Queen of Pop herself (think ’80s version of Tay) sing all my faves and I’ll dance nostalgically back to a time when life was all about lace headbands and cassette tape covers stuck to your bedhead. And all because two very special people, knowing my passion for 80s pop princesses decided to make my dream a reality and as a prezzie for my b’day shouted me a golden ticket to see the Greatest Girl of All Time. I. CAN. NOT. WAIT. Lovn’hugs, Lady MamaG (aka ’80s chick and proud of it) xxoo

At first I wasn’t that keen on you…well when I say you, I mean moving to your shores. Yeah, there was your cracker hot days, your relaxed lifestyle, your beaut beaches…but I was stuck in my roots, you know, wanted to be where my friends and family were.

I thought it would pretty much be temporary, once your golden shores enticed my new family here twelve years ago. Give it a year or two, we’d be back where we belonged (well where I thought we belonged, at least) I told my friends. But then I started getting used to you. Slowly I realised how much better our life had become since we started our new one…and like some sort of spell of the down under, you had started to win me over.

Then one of your great mountains took the life of someone I loved most in this world. Shit I was angry, I thought I hated you and would have to leave, take what was left of my little family and scurry back to the place I was so used to, my home, my comforts, my memories like a frightened little bambi hiding in the woods. But much as it pained me to realise, he’d said he would never leave, so neither did we. Instead, I went against my own instincts, the little voices telling me to ‘go back home and curl up in a hole’. It was the days full of sun that helped my heart get warm again. It was your beautiful people – kind and loving and sharing and welcoming. It was your ability to laugh at yourself and a place where people live and breathe summer, water, beaches and sand in your bum crack. Your your way of life pulled a swifty on me. We stayed.

Lucky I did because it was also your Great Southern Land that gave me the incredible person I now call my husband and made my life whole again. The man who makes sunshine. It was your beautiful long days of warmth that helped heal my heart and build my soul. The waters that keep warm until well into the evenings, the love of your people, your incredible cities and burnt orange landscapes.

Straya, it’s taken me almost twelve years but I’m so proud to call you home…this little flightless bird has officially had her wings clipped. Sorry it took me so long but while I’ll never forget where I came from, I sure am glad I live in this incredible land of yours…and can call Australia home…lov’n’hugs Lady MamaG xox

There are some phone calls you just dread. Yesterday afternoon was one of them. From the second the number of our specialist’s Lab came up on the screen I felt a tsunami of fear wash over. They’d already called me at 8.30 yesterday morning to say the three possible embies we had, had dwindled to just one.

‘That’s okay, we only need one,’ The Vet said enthusiastically when I told him our hopes were being sucked down the plughole of infertility. If I had a dollar for every time someone said that…we’d be sunning our pins in Monaco on our 100-ft yacht right next to Kenny & Harry right now.

I am hopeful but my heart is telling me don’t be so stupid.

Why would the clinic be calling again? Twice in one day is not likely to be to tell us they think we have wonderfully supersonic embryos bouncing off the side of their petrie dishes, they’ve never seen anything so incredible. No it’s more likely to be a big steaming pile of shitty news.

I try to answer as cheerfully as I can and after spouting off my personal details to ensure she was delivering the blow to the correct person…it came like a left hook from Ali. And sting like a motherfucken bee it did.

‘I’m sorry but the embryo we had this morning has developed abnormally, it isn’t our practice to continue with such embryos, I’m sorry we have to cancel your cycle…you have nothing left.’

Cancel. Done. Finished. Nothing. No fucking embryo to transfer on Wednesday, nudda little potential wriggler. My empty womb has been kicked hard.

Like that our dreams are gone. I don’t know what to say, my tubes are still swollen like I’m three months full and aching like fuck from being scraped to within an inch of their lives…all for what? Shit fucking all, that’s what. ‘Thanks, uhm yep okay,’ I say stifling in my tears. She tells me a nurse will call me in the morning. I don’t need a nurse, I need a baby I want to say but it’s not her fault.

I want to scream so loud my lungs collapse. This is so far out of my control.

Now I have to deliver that multi-fucked-blow to The Vet – whose still wincing from a three-inch fucking needle being drilled into his clacker (and yes, for any blokes playing along at home, it hurt like you’d been kicked with steel-capped boots in your money-makers). I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell him, to destroy his dreams too. He’s still at work, saving lives all the while smiling heartily to his clients. ‘It didn’t work, we don’t even have one left anymore.’ I think the short silence between us is deafening but at the same time loud enough to hear both our hearts shattering. He tells me it’ll be okay and he’ll be home soon. We can go and have a few drinks, celebrate what wasn’t to be.

I have no idea where we go from here. We’re on the crash collision course of infertility with no brakes and no fucking road map to direct us.

It’s so bloody achingly numbing to know we went through all that for absolutely-shitting-nothing.

Our ninth round, the one we’d thought would work, the one that had all the trump cards up its sleeve, our lucky last, the Cadel of cycles…FAILED. It fucking failed.

I decide to wait to tell the 12 y o until when we got home late last night and I let him know too, that he won’t be having a brother or sister any time soon. His sweet little face drops. He goes to The Vet and hugs him tight. Then he comes and gives me one of our Squeezy Hugs I love that’s so tight his head might roll off. ‘I’m so sorry it didn’t work, mummy but I love you,’ and that is the reason we can’t give up. He is so damn beautiful. Well that coupled with the fact I have the Most Incredible Human Being in the World in The Vet and who wouldn’t want to procreate with him?!? Lov n’hugs from a brokenhearted Lady MamaG (and my boys) xox

Know what I love most about hospitals, well GA’s specifically? It’s not just the needles – a cannula the size of a crochet needle going into your wrist – which spell fun in themselves and not even that fear which washes over you just as your about to go out for the count that you could end up never coming back…it’s the shit-ass yakking up for six hours afterwards. Fun times indeed. 

I’m the worst at recovery. I take forever to wake up (despite the nurses constant chatter in my ear about the ‘gorgeous shade of nail polish’ on my fingers) it takes me for ever to come to. I want sleeeeeeep. Leave me to sleep, for your own good. 

Once I could keep my eyelids open longer than a flicker then comes that feeling like you’ve been riding the giant drop all day. Backwards. I’m pretty sure my lungs may have exited my mouth at one point I was retching they hard. After three hours and the same amount of different anti-nausea drugs I won the battle with anaesthetic and stopped hacking up last week’s breakfast. 

I want to look but I’m a bit scared.  My head’s all Brad Pitt ‘the box, what’s in the boooooxxx’  eventually I turn my hand over and here it is. Five little eggies. 

  
I’ll save you The Vet’s Battle of Duty tale, it’s one he can tell you himself later but let’s just say he can probably sympathise with some of his male patients right now. And is likely going to need much consoling. 

Now we wait. Now we try not to get too excited. Or disappointed. The lab has called to say three were able to be injected so now we see if those three can grow. We wait. We wait. We wait. 

I’m settling in to watch some crappy acting and even shittier storyline in Fifty Shades. Grey might be a welcome distraction. Don’t judge…hormones and all. Lov n’ hugs, Lady MamaG xox 

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