I’m sorry, I’m like that friend that never returns calls, or worse…that returns calls with a text, instead. I know I haven’t been in touch for like forevs’ but I been a busy lil’ bee, I have. Parts of this year seem to have flown by like a pair of granny’s underpants off the line, then other bits have been like waiting for the Divine Upstairs himself.

For nine months I have been working on a baby, unfortunately it probably wasn’t quite the baby we were hoping for but it is certainly one that will house our hopeful-one-day-peanut. As it stands I know every single tile, sink tap, carpet and benchtop sample ever made. I am also rather more intimate than I prefer to be with a whole host of plantlife, grasses and decorative rocks. Yep you guessed it, we (well mostly me because I’m a control freak n’ all that) have been building a house. Nine little months was all it took to incubate the most incredible digs you could ever lay your divine lil’ lashes upon.

It is the house of our dreams and I have put every ounce of my heart, soul and OCD perfectionism into it to make it one that makes my belly go all warm whenever I walk inside. It’s got lots of bedrooms and just as many bathrooms (which means my new year’s reso is to hire a cleaner) and lucky it has too because we had about four hundred and fifty three people staying for Christmas.

No really, we only had 17 for Christmas day and 13 people staying – yet we didn’t manage to fall on top of each other, or stab anyone with a kitchen skewer. Lucky. It had been a bloody tough old year twenny one four, not so kind to us in some ways yet a great year in others so I got on to the old fandamily and said ‘y’all need to get your asses over here for Christmas’. And they did. Almost every single one of them. It was the first year I can remember where my whole family was together and our blended tribes could mingle like Prince Andrew in a harem. It meant so much to me to have them here. And to the 11 y o who has managed to be more spoilt than North West at Disneyland. I hold genuine concern for when the last of them leaves and he is back to boring old Mama. His life will seem quite shitful, I expect.

We had friends come with their divine little bunch of hooligans and liven up our house with their delighted screams. We’ve had time with family who I haven’t seen for a couple of years because I haven’t been home. It has been a truly lovely holiday. Even Marley has grinned his lovely golden lashes at loving so many people pat him daily. Nothing like the holidays to make me realise I am truly blessed to have such incredible people around me, my friends, my family and of course the absolute cherries on my sundae, The Vet and the 11 y o.

This summer I’ve worked very hard on a seamless no strap-marks tan, laying the final interior design touches on our home and finishing up opening a new business…oh and bumping into Chris Hemsworth in Byron Bay (see pic below) we be like old friends now.

Already we are part way through the first month and I’m no closer to deciding when it is we go for our ‘last go’. It’s looming. If I’m honest it’s actually becoming a big fat pain in my arse, nagging in my ear like an old fish wife. One of my new month’s resolutions is to stop looking at my many six gazillion fertility apps to see where I am in my cycle and if it’s ‘time’. Nope, now I’m going all Thelma & Louise on this goddamn baby making shit.

To everyone who has made my year go by easier than it could have…who put the wheels back on when they so frequently fall off…who put the pop back in my candy, you know who you are and even tho I don’t need to…thank the hell out of yah, you are gems, every single one of you.

Twenny one five…come what may, biatch! (but just make sure there’s a small sized person please). Happy Nu Ye-ah to you and your own fandamily. Lov n’ hugs, Lady MamaG xox

Infertility is really starting to get on my tits. The way she controls my life like some possesed she-devil, belting me with her whip whenever I get anything like close to thinking I’ve beaten her there she goes again and reminds me with a good sharp stab between my toes that indeed, she is control and no, no you are not going to beat her. It would seem I have become what they call a Hope Slut.

It has such a lovely ring to it doesn’t it, but really there is no better way of describing how you feel with each passing month you find out yet again, you are a failure….and still infertile. It’s like a giant light above your head screaming ‘loser uterus inside’. I blame it on chlomid. I also blame it on my lucky shrine I’ve built beside my bed. Oh and I blame it on being somewhat of an optimist too. And you know what, I damn well blame it on the fact that so clearly my heart is ready to have a baby but apparently my body is not. Get your shit together and kiss and make up you two…time is getting away on us here.

The fact I am truly a Hope Slut is also evident in the fact that despite it having been well over two-and-a-half years since the nasty witch of infertility cast her shitty spell over us, I still find myself punching in baby names under the ‘notes’ section of my phone – and no there is no South West or Pear on the list. Nor for that matter is Blue, Green or Pilot Inspektor (yes, an actual celebrity baby name). I’ve planned a ‘baby nursery’ for our new house and I still sneakily imagine what our little person will look like. Damn it I wish I wasn’t constantly drawn into the web like some crazy junkie but I dangle each and every month under the pendulum of hope and it doesn’t look like – unless we give up all together – that I’ll ever get free of it.

As if time itself is not the ever present constant ticking inside my fertility-challenged self, in a little over two weeks, I will be on the latter part of thirty-something. The veeeeeery latter. And as we all know…time, she be not kind to those of us over 35. While on the one hand it is my birth-month and this does mean it is my time to be abso-fricking-lutely spoilt shitless – lavished with all manner of my favourite things – it does also mean something else. It will mark the last year of my thirties. Shhh, don’t tell anyone I said that because I’d like to think I’m still 32 (that’s either my mental, my fashion, or my horoscope age) but dammit if the veeery latter part of your thirties doesn’t spell the stupid assing end of your ability to make good eggs.

Two cycles of chlomid and not so much as a flutter of embryo implantation. Even if I did put on my sexiest heels, pasties and a pair of French knickers…

I read somewhere this week about a woman who had tried for 15 years to get pregnant. Bloody marathon I know. She’d been through some ridiculous amount of fertility specialists and tried almost every single thing you could think of, and then some. Finally, and yes it was with IVF, she got the baby she had been hoping for. Probably the biggest part of her story that resonated with me was she said ‘I refused to give up’. I mean really, if she can keep going back for 15 years, what’s a couple of years between friends? Hardly seems to be scratching the surface does it? So, it seems back I go to being a Hope Slut. Wish me luck (both with the almost farewell of my thirties and the next round of chlomid), Love n’hugs, Lady MamaG xox

How do you cram fifteen whole years of memories into just five minutes? It’s impossible, you can’t. There are so many lifetimes full of happiness, joy and sometimes heartache in that decade-and-a-half. Tomorrow is pretty a momentus day for me…It’s the first milestone we haven’t been together in my entire adult life. We spent first our 16th, then 18th, 21st and our 30th birthdays together…and there were the engagements, weddings and the birth of our son dotted in between. We traveled the world, built our first home and launched a business. We followed our dreams and crossed the Tasman. It was half a lifetime but, boy was it one led to the full.

Tomorrow Mark would have turned 40. Except he never quite made it. He told his mates only weeks before he died, ‘He who dies with the most hair wins’…and he must have had a real chuckle to himself because yep, he sure did have a mighty damn fine crop of hair. Now he will be immortally 32. No grey hairs, no wrinkles, no balding. Just 32 forever.

There’s heaps of things I’d like to say, to tell him, remind him but he’s been asleep for 2920 days…and while it might have taken me a long time to accept it – for years after, I kept thinking I’d wake up from this shitful nightmare, he’s not ever waking up. Still, it doesn’t stop there being one single hour of any single day when I don’t think about him. It’s impossible. You don’t get to simply forget someone who helped shape your life. He taught me so much about strength and courage. About believing in yourself and following your dreams. He had a heart that was full of love and probably one of the kindest natures you could ever be lucky enough to meet.

On what would have been your big 4-0, Didley, I know you would have knocked the top off a beer or two, maybe even celebrated a bit…but only because I would have made you! There are so many things you missed – our son learning to ride his bike, going off into the big wide world on his first day of school, losing his first tooth and scoring his first goal. Learning to drive his own little rubber ducky and zooming round on his scooter like some crazy daredevil (that bit, we know he gets from you). He’s old enough now that he wants to know every little thing about you and loves hearing the lads tell stories like when a bunch of you took the race truck for a spin down the bottom of the property, hanging on by the skin of their teeth. He wants to be just like his Dad…his little eyes beam brightly whenever someone tells him how much he’s just like you.

We are lucky enough to have the most incredible, beautiful and wonderful man who lights up my life just like you did. Who loves me, adores me and heals me, just like you did. Who takes our son as his own and honours your memory the way you deserve…but hey, what am I telling you this for…? Course, you knew already because you sent him.

So now all we have left are just the memories…but no one and nothing can take your memories, not even death himself. Lov n hugs, Lady MamaG xox

http://https://vimeo.com/107674443

So a long time ago, like forever ago, before the word ‘infertile’ was even uttered between these four walls, I was a relatively ignorant girl, yes okay perhaps verging on a little naive and it wouldn’t impress my fifth form science teacher, Mr Chisholm to know that I really knew jack shit about fertility and all its winding roads…who knew there are only two days a month that a girl could get up the knock? It seems writing my initials beside my boyfriend’s in vivid on my folder was much more interesting than biology, chemistry or reproductive learning…my bad.

Now I’m a walking bloody encyclopedia (that’s the book form of wikipedia for those born after the nineties) of all things fertility. Some of it I really don’t want to know. Like here, have your FSH, your natural killer cells, your lapraoscopy, hysteroscopy and any other ocopy that causes so much pain it feels as if your insides have blown up inside you. And while you’re at it, take your figures, your stats and all your bad news and shove it fair up your bum.

We had though last month was our last round….except fate has a funny way of intervening. Just two days before I was due to go for an endometrial scrape (I’ll let you work out the logistics of that yourself) which was meant to help any little embies that might make it down the bumpy ride to fertile stick their guns in tight to my uterus. Stuff happened and then we didn’t get to go through with the round. Can’t lie and tell you I wasn’t a little bit disappointed because when you get your mind set on something (particularly if you’re a bordering on control freak Scorpian) and it doesn’t go to plan, shit can get real preeeetttty quickly. Around this point it’s best to lock up all sharp objects and hammers. So even though our minds were pretty much made up for us, we decided to put it off for a few months. Work up the courage. And the funds.

After a brief visit to Dr Babies office for one of his lovely internal scans one morning he looks up at the screen on the ultrasound and utters, ‘mmm well, this is interesting’…no girl ever wants to hear that when someone is scooting around in her insides but it seems it was positive. I had developed eight (yep, count ’em…one, two, three) follicles all on my ownsome. I COULD NOT believe it. Don’t go planning the North West proportions baby shower just yet. He sent me off to the lab for some bloods and the nurse called that afternoon to say they looked great. What? I thought I couldn’t pump out my own eggs? Maybe the bin juice, the acupuncture and the Buddhist Monk’s stone have helped.

But there’s one rule with infertility: Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself. It didn’t work. Despite my thinking my ovaries, tubes and uterus had miraculously recovered overnight and turned into those of a 21-year-old, it wasn’t to be. Back I go to the office of my beloved Dr Babies who I’m damn sure if nothing else, admires my perseverance. He sends me for an HSG. For those who’d rather I didn’t share the details it’s basically like shoving a plastic tube through yourself, blowing up a balloon once up there and then running dye through it, slowly and painfully. Sorry, too much?

With little to no time to prepare myself, I was flat on my back before I knew it, without even so much as a little foreplay. The good news is, the lovely lady doctor who performed my carnival ride of an x-ray discovered that my tubes are in fact not blocked. Yes you heard me right, not blocked. Or no longer blocked. One is slow but they be working like a regular fire hydrant. I waited until I was outside the x-ray room before I side-ankle-kicked to myself but whoopty shit, I got me some working tubes. And some follicles. Life is good, yeah? Well as good as it can be when the odds that were stacked higher than the Berlin Wall, suddenly seem a little bit less…where the hell are Dorothy’s ruby slippers when you need them?

Armed with my good news I would be adding yet another drug to my ever-expanding (yet possibly not retaining) knowledge bible…let me introduce you to my little friend, Chlomid. She is going to make me ovulate rather than the normal once, a few times….the thought of Octomum did cross my mind but the likelihood of any, let alone seven of my little embies sticking is next to zilch so that’s out. As are my reality TV show prospects, bugger it. 

I’m glad to say this month there are no needles, no anesthetics, no hospital gowns. No mortgaging my left breast to pay for the next round. No Britney meltdowns. The roads are safe from my hormonal episodes of rage and the male population of my household may be free from the firing line (though I make no promises). Love n hugs, LadyMamaG xox

 

CHAPTER ONE:

 

 

January 2007

If you’ve ever physically counted the amount of minutes in an hour – consecutively – for three or four hours at a time, chances are you – for whatever reason – suffer insomnia.

I don’t have the energy to pull myself out of bed. I could lay under the crisp white sheets of my king size tomb with the cool air-conditioning blowing gently around my face, the long curtains pulled tightly across the ranch sliders, the room dark and still, and not move for a week…a month even.

Maybe nobody would notice and I’d become cocooned in the safety of my bed forever.

No facing the outside world. No listening to reality berating me with its nasty conversations inside my head, ‘You need to get up, you need to carry on, get yourself together’.

‘Shut up,’ I tell them silently and pull the blankets up higher around my neck, burrowing underneath my pillow. Real sleep hasn’t visited in a very long time – not in anything longer than a three-hour stretch at least. Nights are long but the days are even longer. It’s morning already but I could swear it were still the middle of the night – the hours just seem to morph from one day to the next. The door handle to my bedroom pings open and I hear the footsteps of my three-year-old, Flynn.

‘Hello mama,’ he says, his little just-woken-up cheeks still red. He pads towards me with his arms outstretched. I lift open the sheets and let him in breathing his beautiful smell in deeply and grabbing hold of his tiny body for as long as I can, trying to drain out some of his happy into my own soul.

It’s already 7.30 and I’m going to be late again. I can’t fight it. It’s time to get up.

Without want I drag my tired empty body out of bed and take my son into his bedroom.

‘Come on little buddy, let’s get you up and ready for kindy,’ I say, pulling his faded blue t-shirt over his head and carrying him on my hip downstairs to our kitchen.

I make his lunch of vegemite sandwiches with the crusts cut off and cut into tiny inch sized pieces. Packing his sunhat with a brim on it so his face doesn’t get burnt, his cot sheets for the little plastic mattress on the floor where he sleeps with all the other toddlers and a change of clothes – in the unlikely event he might have an accident – into his bag.

A simple, morning routine but right now it’s the only thing keeping me sane…the only thing keeping me going.

I wipe up his toast crumbs from the bench and help him down from his stool.

‘Okay let’s get in the car,’ I try to lift my voice so at least he feels like his mummy isn’t a vacant robot.

‘Kindy day,’ he says and skips to the garage, reaching up to pull open the door handle of our black BMW four-wheel drive and climbing into his booster seat.

At Bonny Babes – a family run daycare centre with bright oversized native animals painted on its outer walls, just three kilometres from our home – I sign his name in at the register, giving his soft cheek a big kiss.

‘See you later my beautiful boy. Have a wonderful day and remember mummy loves you…’

‘Bye mama, love u,’ he chirps.

In the time it takes me to drive back home my mummy face has gone and the clouds in my head begin to go grey once more.

Walking back into my kitchen where the morning’s dishes look at me, taunting my laziness, I go over the list of jobs I need to get done today. Piles of washing and ironing, the grocery shopping…and I really must get Flynn some new undies pairs of them just seem to keep going missing, either lost at kindy or discarded in place of swimmers at the beach.

It’s a hot day in the middle of January, 2007. Our home in Hope Island, a resort at the northern end of the Gold Coast, is fiercely bolstering itself against the heatwave with an air conditioning unit that sounds as if it might soon take off. Laying my body on the sofa, I focus on the ceiling trying to see colour inside the cold white paint. Minutes, then hours pass.

By late afternoon I head to the grocery store and put my hand-written list inside my shorts pocket. I walk around the lino-lined floor of the supermarket mostly hoping it might open up and swallow me. Standing in the detergent aisle with the metal stacking shelves in front of me, anger wells up inside my gut. I scan the boxes…there’s plenty of packets of top loader options – in fact every single type of washing powder except the one I’m looking for. The pack I normally buy, for sensitive skin in the soft mint and grey box isn’t on the shelf. I need it because he likes it.

Where is it? Why don’t they have any front loader sensitive skin washing powder? My mind gets louder and louder until the words violently spit from my mouth like sparks off a metal welder.

‘Why is there no sensitive skin washing powder for christ’s sake?’

Without realising, I’ve just yelled at the top of my voice at a carton of wash powder.

My feet give way under me and I fall to a heap on the floor, my shoulders heaving as tears spill out in floods down my face…hands clenching at my bare thighs.

‘This isn’t fair…it just isn’t fair…’ I howl.

A lady aged in her mid-50s, wearing a pair of large framed gold sunglasses on top of her head comes and gently places her hand on my shoulder.

 ‘Are you alright love, did you fall?’ she asks calmly, lending her hand to help me back up on my feet.

Did I fall…? That would seem like a perfectly good reason why a 31-year-old woman has collapsed in a heaving mess in the middle of an upmarket suburban supermarket.

People shuffle past pushing their trolleys slowly in an attempt to subtly sneak a glimpse of the trainwreck on the floor in front of them.

‘Thank you…yes, I’m’ okay…thanks. I’ll be fine,’ I reply trying not to get eye contact.

‘Are you sure, do you want me to help you?’ she asks, kindly.

‘No,’ I say bluntly, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

 

“She’s being so strong”, they’d say loud enough for me to hear but not quite directly at me. “God, she’s so brave, I could never be like her. I would never be able to keep going.”

Words from my many well-wishing friends and family swirl around my head and stick to my heart like labels on a fruit-preserving jar. Apparently, if you have a smile painted on your face and no redness from tears welling in your eyes surely you must be okay. In the past three months I have managed to become a master of deception…like a peridot clown with a painted on face…if they only knew the real me isn’t as strong as they think. Isn’t as brave as they’d like her to be and maybe doesn’t want to keep going…she just wants the hurt to stop.

It has been sixty-four days since the moment that changed my life.

 

I bend down to pick up my handbag off the floor and turn on my heels leaving my trolley and its contents stranded in the middle of the aisle and the nice lady with her gold sunglasses and flee towards the automatic doors, ignorantly pushing through shoppers picking out their trolleys. I keep going like a woman possessed attempting to hold back my tears as I frantically search for my car.

All my hair has fallen out of its hair tie and stuck to my face in the muggy wind. I must have looked all kinds of crazy. Flicking down the car visor I slide open the mirror to look at myself.

Shit. I really do look like shit.

It was such a kind gesture, of the lady with the sunglasses, to offer to help me. She wouldn’t have any clue – neither would all the other nosey shoppers – the reason for my breakdown. To them I could have been some deranged woman who had just had a fight on the phone with her boyfriend, after finding out he’d been cheating. Or a frustrated mother with young children, frazzled from lack of sleep and the constant strain of motherhood.

To the outside world they wouldn’t have the faintest idea 56 days ago I touched my husband’s casket for the last time as it was slowly and gently led into the ovens of the Newstead crematorium returning to me in a small hermetically sealed jar. All I had left was a 15cm silver urn sealed shut with his remains inside.

Now I have lost him forever. I will never see, hear or touch him again.

My childhood sweetheart my best friend, the man who had been my lover for over half my life and what will probably always remain both the best and the worst thing of all…the father of my little boy.

I am a widow. I will wear it like a thick black cloak over my heart.

 Love to know your (honest) thoughts if you’d want to keep reading…Lady Mama Gxox

Not quite seven weeks ago, I was sitting on my bathroom floor with a foil packet in one hand and a little white and pink plastic test stick in another. I’m more nervous than a Catholic schoolgirl at confession. Everything is riding on this. It is our last little icicle. It has to take.

As the fluid creeps up the window I can just slightly make out a faint line, it continues and there’s another brighter, darker line beside it. I wait two minutes. It’s faint but is it? Is it a line? Is it really? I can’t believe it. Holy mother of Jesus it is there – albeit faint but there’s a bloody line.

Friday morning has come, I get up at 7am, do one more pee-on-a-stick taking my total to four (yes, four in two days) and make the twenty-five minute trip to the clinic for my blood test. I’m in such a hurry I’ve forgotten to drink my water, which makes it hard for the nurse – who is in training – to find my veins. ‘They’re bad at the best of times,’ I smile to her as she pumps at my inner elbow attempting to make my veins stand to attention. ‘Sharp sting,’ she says as she attempts to prick one of my veins in my left arm. She’s not kidding. It hurts like all buggery.

I pull down my sleeve and hop down off the chair. ‘You should hear from us between one and three,’ she says. Usually the clinic calls around 12-12.45 and they always call the positive results first, which means if you haven’t heard from them by 1.30 your luck may just have run out.

I go to the supermarket and pick up a tiny set of newborn Bonds baby socks, then to the newsagent and buy a brown postage box and some yellow tissue to go inside. I got a permanent marker and on the first pee stick – the one with the best two pink lines, I wrote ‘congrats’ with a smiley face and an arrow pointing to the word pregnant beside the result window. I put them all in the box with a card for The Vet telling him ‘Congratulations baby, we did it…’

At five past two in the afternoon I’d had enough, I try the clinic and press two for the nurses, then three for my team. No answer, straight to voice mail. I wait another five minutes and call again.

‘Hi,’ I tell her when she answers, ‘I’ve been waiting for my call and it never takes this long…’

‘Oh yes, sorry we’ve been really busy,’ she says. ‘Okay well I might as well tell you now,’ she continues. There is a two second pause that seems more like an hour. ‘You’re pregnant, congratulations!’ she blurts excitedly.

There is silence from my end. I am shaking and tears are streaming from my face.

‘Are you there, are you okay?’ she says.

‘Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you so much,’ I tell her as though she’d given me the gift herself.

I drive as quickly as I can to the clinic. ‘Have you heard yet?’ he asks. He’d been watching his phone waiting to hear from me. ‘Oh, and this came for you today, no idea what it is,’ I tell him and place the brown box on his consult table.

He opens the box and looks inside, pulling out the contents and looking puzzled. He puts them back in and looks at the address on the front of the box, then he looks at it again. He looks at me and I can’t hold it in anymore. A smile breaks out over my face. Tears fill his eyes. He has a smile that only a man who has just learnt he is about to become a father could have. Words cannot describe our joy, our love for each other and for the tiny little person growing inside me.

The Little Seed as I’ve started to call it, will be due on February 9 – making it an Aquarian. We have one more blood test the following Friday, I tell him, and then we get to go for our first scan the week after that – at six weeks. That’s when they can hear a heartbeat. Grow Little Seed, with the love and wanting of your mummy and daddy, grow.

I go for the second test a week later – and yes, this time once again, I have cheated. I take a pee-stick test in the morning before I go in for my bloods. The nurse rings again. ‘Hi, your tests all look good and we’ll need you to come in for your scan in another two weeks.’

This is where we get to hear a heartbeat, the little tick tick sound of our seed growing into a real live baby. By the time we reach week seven, one of the four pregnancy apps I’ve already downloaded to my phone tells me the seed will have grown into the size of a blueberry. It will already have little arm and leg buds and a beating heart.

The morning of the scan I’m elated. I Can’t wait to see our little baby for the first time, hear it’s little heartbeat, see its tiny Little Seed self. I can’t wait for my husband to see his tiny baby growing inside me.

We make light conversation and joke about the fun side affects of progesterone (constipation), which really aren’t that fun at all quite frankly. I hop up on the bed and Dr Babies does the first scan over my tummy using a small probe. He looks around, and has a quizzical look on his face. He tells me to go and empty my bladder – which I’ve deliberately over-filled because I thought it might help to see.

I come back and hop up on the bed. This time the probe goes via another angle (which I’ll spare you from the details) – but it’s the most accurate way of judging the size of the baby. Five minutes ago, I was so happy. Five minutes ago, we were pregnant, having our little Aquarian in February.

‘Oh this isn’t good,’ Dr Babies says looking at the screen that even I can tell has an empty black sack on it. The tiny little black jelly bean-like shape is the sack where our Little Seed is supposed to be sitting – with its heart beating strong and its little limb buds waving about…only they’re not. There is no baby. Just an empty pregnancy sack.

The little embryo didn’t survive. I don’t know if it was five weeks, six or even four – we were pregnant at some stage but just as quickly as that hope is given it’s taken away again.

The good news, Dr Babies tells us, is that at least we can get you pregnant. That’s one hurdle over. Now it’s just making it to the next stage.

I had written a card for the 9 y o, telling him he was going to be a big brother. I hid it in my handbag and decided we’d tell him, like everyone else, once he got back from his holidays and we knew the baby had a heartbeat. He’d been looking for something one morning and found the card, asking if he could open it. No, not yet I told him. I wish I could hug him right now but he’s thousands of kilometres out of my reach. A month ago when we’d started this journey, he’d won a little red teddy out of one of those claw machines, ‘I’m saving this one for the baby,’ he’d said. Optimistic, like his mama.

Now we are back to square one. Back to injections, needles, bloods, hormones, drugs, waiting and hoping.

Sometimes no matter how big you smile, you just can’t hide the pain you feel inside.

Love n hugs, Lady MamaG xox

Waiting is shitballs. Just saying. But really, no it is. For the record, I’ve always been a girl who doesn’t like to wait. When I was a kid I always went in search to find my pressies early and would open just a corner so I knew what was inside. I never waited until Easter Sunday to eat my choccie and if I see something I want there is NO.SUCH.THING as layby. I’d like to say I’m a instant kinda girl. You know, someone who likes to be in control, know where I’m going…and to basically have everything like, yesterday.

I have to say I feel like this past week has dragged on longer than an entire year and thanks to those terrible awful things they like to call drugs ending in ‘erone’ I have been feeling lower than Lyndsay Lohan’s reputation. It ain’t easy waiting for someone to deliver you news as though they are God themselves. You get to wait for 11 days – that’s two hundred and sixty four hours if you’re asking – until you go for a blood test and then get to wait another four hours until the nurse calls you and delivers you…what has been for me, bad news, the past three times. It’s not her fault but shit, it is like the hardest phone call in the world, well almost. I have had another phone call which ruined my life but let’s not even go there. This nurse has all the power in her hands to tell you if ‘yes you are pregnant’ or the answer I’ve inevitably been receiving, ‘sorry, but it didn’t take this time’.

Yes she’s lovely, yes she’s kind but if you’ve ever sat and willed a phone to ring with good news, maybe you’ll know exactly how I’m feeling. Sure, there’s other ways, I could go and take my own test, soften the blow somewhat but like all fellow IVF devotees know that is sacreligious. You are meant to wait. Wait for the blood test. Wait for the phone call. Wait for the news. Wait for the joy – or the heartache.

Which would be fantastic if it wasn’t that it seems to be occupying every single inch of my headspace right now…there’s not even enough room in there to consider if I need a new pair of winter boots it’s that bad (I hear your collective sighs). Or enough space to consider that the world is not about to end and that really if I miss an episode of Offspring that I won’t completely go into meltdown…or that I really am a fortunate little Lady Mama G with so many good things going on in my life.

But balls to that. I want a baby. I want the damn thing to work and I want all the second-guessing I keep putting my body through, all the constant hormonal army inside my body causing a complete uprising to just bugger off and have it’s own little protest in someone else’s head.

Love n hugs, Lady MamaG xox

Sometimes things happen that make you think, why? Like the fact a tiny little baby thousands of miles away was left for dead inside a sewerage pipe while for almost a year now, we’ve battled our own journey trying to bring a small person into the world. But then life doesn’t always deal out fairness in dollops.

Earlier in the week we implanted our last little icicle in the hope we might be blessed enough to have another – well for me at least – baby in nine months time. There’s no more little icicles left in the freezer for back up so this one has got to make it all the way. This time, it was not just about simply sending a little defrosted kidsicle up but there was so much more than that. I have grown so fond of my dear specialist Baby Doctor that I am planning on suggesting Queenie puts him up for an OBE in fertility.

Through yet another set of tests – and more needles – fun times, plus a uterus biopsy (oh, you want to know about where all the good times are being had, you come see me) which revealed my NK cells are way up high, like a diamond in the sky. Except that’s not a good thing – well it isn’t when you’re trying to conceive. It basically means my immune system seems to be a little too good and basically goes in and kicks the ass of anything trying to make a little nest for itself…great for infections or bacteria however, shitful for a little harmless embryo doing its best to burrow in under the layers of uterus lining.

To try and counteract this, four days before implantation, I was hooked up to an IV of introlipids (fat cells) for five hours in a hospital bed while my uterus hopefully gained enough fat and lining to go all Kill Bill on those NK cells. It has also meant I’m a pill-popping manic…and I do mean M.A.N.I.A.C guzzling anything that starts with a p and ends in something erone…including a nice round little group of four steroids, plus oodles of progesterone and HRT a day so don’t be surprised if you spot my family walking down the street with their suitcases in tow. Life in the Lady MamaG house may not be as fun as it once was.

I’d decided after going three months back-to-back and having three failed attempts I needed just a little break to regain a little bit of positivity (and perhaps some saneness) and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was scared as all hell that this one isn’t going to take either. Strong as I’d like to think myself as, this whole infertility thing is so much bigger than me. But then when I feel all sorry for my own lovely self I am reminded of others’ pain being far more greater reaching than my own. At the clinic the other week, I watched as a girl asked the scientist if she thought a picture of her blastocyst (embryo) looked like it would take. The scientist was about as able to answer that question as the Big Man upstairs himself. She patted her gently on the shoulder and kindly reassured her, ‘I know you’ve been through so much, I really hope it works for you this time’ the scientist told her. Her shoulders hunched I could see the woman fighting back her tears. I didn’t know her but I wanted to go and give her a big old hug, to tell her I’m sure it would take to share some of her burden because there is nothing more painful than being constantly deprived of the greatest gift of all time.

While it feels like everyone from Kimmie K to the girl in the hairdressers seems to be up the knock except me, it’s hard to remain up beat when the thing you want most in the world is so utterly out of your control…but while we cross our fingers and wait, hope and pray I am reminded of the two biggest blessings I do have…9 y o and The Vet…for that I am truly grateful…Love n hugs, Lady MamaG xox

 

So it’s been a while since Lady Mama G has enlightened you with the goings on of the world of infertility…and man has it been unkind. Hello My Name is Lady Mama G and it’s been over two months since I last posted. In that two months some stuff has gone down. Bad stuff. Forgive me Father for I’m about to ask…where the hell were you when I needed you to sprinkle me with some bloody good news dust, huh? You was awol, that’s where you was.
 Let me tell you about the ride so far. It goes a little like this. We had another transfer – following the typical protocols where they wait till after you’ve ovulated, then they chuck a little embryo in the hatch and hope like hell it sticks. Except it didn’t. Despite that nasty little drug they like to call progesterone tricking me into thinking it did. My dose had been upped to the point where I was convinced not only was I definitely up the knock but was pretty sure there were two little inhabitants cruising round in my uterus. Except there wasn’t. When I got the call to tell me the shitballs news that the naughty ‘P’ had fooled me into thinking I’d be getting a positive at my 11-day test I’d be lying if I said I was anything but completely shattered. This one was different from the first cos I felt all the signs…the early signs. Except they weren’t.
 So ever the optimist, if I’ve learned nothing in this tough old life so far it’s that when you get a kick in the guts, you get your breath back and act like nothing’s happened. Back on you go.
 I like the number three, I think it has a good ring to it and like they say good things come in three’s. Third time lucky. Three for free. Well that kept me in high spirits as did the fact my son was conceived in March so I was convinced, much like a female dog, that perhaps March is my ‘season’. Call me crazy but I’ll take anything. This time round I got to take a lovely little concoction called HRT three times a day, as well as my good old friend progesterone. I hadn’t gone out and bought too many baby clothes but a little part of me thought I’d been dealt enough hurt and a bit like Clint Eastwood, I was feeling Lucky. Like the good old luck god would bring me some loving. Except she didn’t. All the pains, all the nausea, all the little flutterings of joy were mistaken. Nothing but an empty old uterus. Yet again.

People want to know if you’ll go again. You’ve got more embies in the freezer, you should use ’em up, right? But exactly how much hope I’ve got left in me I can’t say. How many more times I can put me, my darling husband and our boy through the disappointment of ‘just one more failed attempt’, I’m also not sure. I’ve decided to hibernate for a bit because like a good Scorpio, I’m not a fan of fuss. I’ll dust myself off and probably be up for one last try next month, or the one after that is, if my head and heart can get along and play nicely again.
I’ve still been frequenting Mr Needles, and Dr Babies has been amazing – I know I’m in good hands there but what about the hurt…? Not just for me, but for The Vet who is also heartbroken and the nine-year-old who rather optimistically told me that ‘we can try again though, right?’ when I explained yet another baby hadn’t made it past a poppy seed. Yes, optimism it’s the only thing that keeps us going. That and love. And fortunately, I’ve got plenty of that to keep me going through the pain.

I’d be fibbing actually, no, I’d be damn lying if I didn’t say I was nervous as all crap about what is going to be one of the biggest days of my life tomorrow.

After a bit over two weeks of poking, prodding and punching holes in my skin with some rather unsharp needles containing some pretty unflattering drugs, consuming more hormones than is completely necessary for a woman of my age, resulting in enough bloating to rival Bridget Jones in her nana pants (which also means my ENTIRE jeans wardrobe seem to have mysteriously got faulty zippers) and being put to sleep by the nice tall man in his floral surgery cap who struggled to find a good vein for which to thrust his rather thick needle into…it has now finally come…D-day.

So yes, I’d be telling big gigantic porkies if I didn’t say I was more than a little bit of a scardy cat blithering mess ahead of what is called ‘implantation day’ tomorrow.

That’s where they take the little eggies (which have hopefully, by now, grown to the size of a poppy seed) and slide ’em up inside their mummy’s baby baker with the hope they will then grow into something resembling a zygote in a few weeks’ time.

As you know, waiting isn’t my strongest point as a Scorpion and it has taken all my strength to not go on a crazy baby room decorating spree (seriously, have you seen baby cots these days? Rockin!). And while I may have worked over a few colour schemes and mood boards, I have managed to refrain from purchasing anything except Evie – she is my good luck charm and I wear her every day. I actually picked her up at the Auckland airport when I was flying home at Christmas time. She was part of a collection of jewellery by Kiwi fashion designer Karen Walker – who I did a story on way back when Adam was a boy and she was just starting out. I’ll never forget she wrote me the most beautiful card thanking me for the story, so I decided this would be my good luck charm. I named her Evie after the little girl robot in the kids’ movie WallE and I twist her around in my fingers whenever my nerves get the better of me (which is mostly every single day right now).

I’m fortunate to have the incredible love and support of my beautiful better half, my gorgeous son (even though the end of school hols is driving me to the end of my wick) and all our family and friends in what is a pretty emotional roller coaster of fear, excitement and nerves but all I can think of is that perhaps, just maybe…I’ll be able to hold a tiny piece of my beautiful husband in my arms in nine months time.

Fertility gods, I have been a very good girl. Not one single baby thing bought. Love n hugs, Lady Mama G xox