Take what you can get…

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Lotsabubs: Never have more babies than you have hands...

Lotsabubs: Order the mini van…

Don’t be at all alarmed if my voice drops a peg or two. Or if I start sprouting a few little hairs on my chinnie chin chin. Or even if I develop Arnie-like biceps bulging from my arms.

Because this here Lady MamaG vessel is producing bugger all eggs and even less of those that make it to embie stage, Dr Babies has signed me up to take Testosterone, which has in turn seen me check the mirror every morning for signs of an Adam’s apple appear out of my throat. So far so good. Why the need for man juice? Well, apparently it aids the growth and quantity of eggs. I’m all for whatever means I don’t have to keep going through another year of six anesthetics, three egg collections and six embryo transfers – hells to the yes, where do I sign me up? I lost the ability to care what goes into my body and how it looks long ago. Around the same time my wardrobe stopped fitting me. And the good doc has also been kind enough to prescribe a little Melatonin to help make me less cranky. sleep better, for which the men of my household are extremely grateful.

We’ve decided to sit this month out and give it one last shot for the year in November…which also happens to be my month of birth (all choccies, prezzies and diamonds gratefully accepted) by which time, hopefully my pipes can produce some fighting little embies that are able to make it the whole nine yards this time.

There’s one more change to our next cycle and that’s the decision to pop two lovely little embies in on our next transfer. Now don’t think I haven’t considered this as much as much as Britney before shaving her head. I have so many friends with twins I could actually start a David Koresh-style commune and still have some left over in the neighbouring suburbs. I’ve seen them juggle babies on boobs, change nappies by the green wheelie bin load and buy van-like vehicles just to transport them but I’ve also seen the beautiful gift that is multiple births and while I’m in no dreamland that it would be ‘fun’ to have twins despite The Vet and the 9 y o thinking this would be ‘awesome’ (their word, not mine) I would rather be blessed with two than none at all. It’s something I’ve had to get my head around and when Dr Babies suggested it would be the best option for our next round, after I slapped him in the face (no I didn’t really) I took a moment to think – that would be a nano second – and you know what…? Whatever number that Big Bloke upstairs decides to dole out the little people, I’ll take thanks very much.

When you undertake IVF, you do so knowing there is always a risk of multiple birth because of the drugs, the potential of embryos splitting and a few other factors. I’ve considered this and unlike the muppets on Today Tonight that have decided to sue their fertility doctor because they ended up with triplets and not twins, I know what I’m in for…be that one or two, I’d just be grateful to have any at all and count my bloody blessings.

So cross everything including your nose hairs this might be our final round and we get the little dream we’ve been hoping for…however many that might be… Lov’n’ hugs, LadyMamaG xox

Sometimes it’s just shitful…

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No stork stopping at Lady MamaG's this year...

No stork stopping at Lady MamaG’s this year…

So the end of the LONGEST two weeks of my life is up and nudda. Not one little embryo attached. Bugger. What do you get for all your hoping, praying, wishing that maybe, just maybe you might get lucky this time? Well you get a big fat one line on the POAS (for those who don’t know what that abbreviation is, I’ll spare you the overshare, let’s just say it’s a test). After going through what was our sixth round we came out with just one surviving embie and even that little sausage just didn’t manage to make the distance.

There are so many questions – why, why and mostly WHY being all of them but really, there ain’t no answer… it just is. Didn’t work. Again. But being the tough Scorp that I am, as well as being determined as all hell, stubborn as a forehead pimple and basically not ready to give up, we’re back up on the horse’s back. Well, not right now but after a nice little break of one month where I hope I might be able to have something that’s been absent for the past few months…and that would be a full night’s sleep, thanks very much. Not even the 9 y o kept me awake this much when he was a newborn.

If the nasty infliction that is infertility has taught me one thing, it’s that you can’t give up hope. You can’t chuck it in just because it didn’t work. You can’t ‘put a number on the amount of times you’re going to try’ any more than you can put a number on how much you want a baby (but if  you’re asking that would be the mostest in the world). You can’t feel sorry for yourself and be weighed down in the gallows of pity because there is always someone who has been on this journey longer than you, has suffered more loss than you or is taking it a whole lot tougher than you. As women we can’t help but feel like we’ve let the side down worse than the Wallabies in a test match because that’s what we girls were put on the earth to do…reproduce…and when that natural right is taken away, or at least out of your control you become more obsessed than Kris Kardashian over a new handbag line.

I’m just grateful that on what was yet another of the saddest nights of my life, I could still sneak in to 9 y o’s room and kiss his little golden lashes on eyes long ago closed. That I could climb in bed beside The Most Beautiful Man in the World and know that everything’s going to be alright. Cos it is the people who love you who get you through this shitful ride… Lov n’ hugs, LadyMamaG xox

Heads up: you may get a lump in your throat…

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I've got your back, mama...

I’ve got your back, mama…

‘Yay I’m so excited! Will I get to see the baby moving around?’ This was 9 y o’s reaction when I told him he had to be chief support crew for our embryo transfer this morning because The Vet was being chained to his clinic by a hectic back-to-back appointment schedule. ‘Well, no buddy, when the embryo goes in it isn’t a baby yet, it’s only slightly smaller than a pinhead so all you’ll see is a little white light.’ He bounces out of bed and gets dressed. ‘We need to take Lucky with us,’ he says grabbing a little soft toy bear sent to us by some very dear friends from home. ‘He’s going to be our lucky bear,’ he tucks him under his arm.

I swig down the three glasses of water they make you have an hour before so your bladder swells up to an uncomfortable balloon-like shape and means they can see what they’re doing down there when little embie gets tunneled in. ‘I’m so excited when do we get to find out if we’ve got a baby?’ 9 y o asks in the waiting room. It’s clearly evident he has inherited his mother’s impatience for waiting any length of time whatsoever. For anything. Well, once it’s put in we have to wait for 11 more days until they take a blood test and tell us if it worked or not, I explain. ‘It’s going to work,’ he says triumphantly. God love his optimism, little champ.

We get to the doctor’s office and unfortunately for both me and my bulging bladder they’re running half an hour behind schedule which means those three glasses I told you about earlier are about to erupt out of my bladder at any given moment like Mt Vesuvius. I smile sweetly at the nurse when she says she won’t make me laugh. Yeah, it’s not funny, love. AT ALL.

We go into the doctor’s room and 9 y o takes the seat beside me while I climb up on the bed. He shakes the doctor’s hand like a grown up and sits down with Lucky in his hand. ‘This is our lucky bear,’ he tells the doctor. As the bed is lifted and the transfer begins 9 y o gently places Lucky on the pillow beside my head. ‘Here mummy, hold my hand,’ he says gently. I look up at the nurse and she’s got tears in her eyes. The last time he did that was when our wedding cars never turned up to take us to the church. He wraps his little fingers tightly around my hand and watches intently, but silently as they implant our little embie. A few stray tears trickle down my cheeks and I feel his soft fingers wipe them away. ‘It’s okay mummy, you’re being so brave,’ he tells me. I think the nurse and I are both about to lose it. Even the doctor has to swallow.

We’ve been through a whole lot, 9 y o and me. I’ve always known he was one helluva special little soul but it’s times like these that I’m reminded exactly how damn lucky I am to have him. We exit the clinic and to my great relief after a quick toilet stop, I’m able to actually talk without holding my breath. The kid tells me he can’t wait to meet our baby. ‘Can I come to the appointment when you get to find out?’ he asks. Sure I tell him. And may we be blessed with another one exactly like you. Only two-hundred and sixty-four hours to wait…and counting.

With all the love of your mama, daddy and your big brother who just can’t wait to meet you, grow little embie, grow…Lov n’hugs, Lady MamaGxox

It’s getting hot in here…

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It won't hurt a bit...

It won’t hurt a bit…

Well butter my toast if I’m not flippin’ over school holidays already. Yes, yes I know I should be grateful that I’ve got a kid at all but it’s not actually mine I’m sick of it’s just other people’s. Case in point: Some little kid pushed in front of me in the line at the video kiosk (seriously how good are those green machines?) the other day and it took all my control not to grab him by his little rat’s tail and give him a good telling off. Respect these days. There’s none of it. I wondered if I shouldn’t have waved my tuckshop lady arm at him and told him I have the potential to turn little rude kids like him into piles of slime with the power of my eyes, but then he’s probably never read The Witches so therefore my rant would be wasted and he would just think I was loopy. Which possibly, I am. Temporarily of course.

This time Dr Babies has ramped up my hormone injections to the same dose I was on last time which did produce more eggs but now we’re just waiting to see how many will grow into tiny little hatchlings. My belly is beginning to resemble something like those kids you see in the Save the Children ads because it’s all puffed up like I’ve swallowed an actual basketball from my egg collection on Monday. Oh fun times. Let’s just say if you’re bored one day and have nothing better to do, don’t go and fill your uterus with a whole lot of fluid and gas. It’s not as fun as you might think. It actually hurts to laugh. Or move, or walk. It’s got bruises from where the injections have gone in and even though I’ve asked The Vet very kindly to do it gently, sometimes I think he forgets I’m not one of his dogs who has the fortune of having thick fur to soften the needle prick. Don’t even get me started on hot flushes that feel as though someone’s plugged an electric blanket into your bum.

I had to stop myself from hyperventilating when Dr Babies told me he was taking his kids on holiday and wouldn’t be here to do both my egg collection and my transfer (how inconsiderate of him to take a day off in a year!) but calmed myself the hell down when I realised there’s bound to come a time when your doctor has to actually have a holiday. I’m not going to lie, I did wonder for a short time about offering to pay for his holiday to be taken at a time after my own treatments.

I decided to watch a video of how they do the egg collection last night and I wouldn’t advise it for Wednesday night viewing. An STD episode of Embarrassing Bodies would make you squirm less but you know what there really are a lot of people in the same boat as us. Infertility is spreading faster than a One Direction infection only it’s much much more emotional – I’m aware those of the female fourteen year-old-variety would disagree but with one in six, them numbers are not great.

So now it’s back to waiting by the phone. I feel a bit like Miley hoping desperately for Liam to take her back. Except I don’t have little horns on my head and have, thankfully kept my undies on and my tongue in my mouth…for this week at least, after another ten days on progesterone I can’t be certain. Lov n’hugs LadyMamaGxox

Hello old self, are you there?

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Least I haven't reached this stage...yet

Mind out where you put that chain, lov, you’ll end up with a nasty yeast infection… Just saying…

Today I thought about doing some pilates. Which is better than yesterday when I didn’t even think about it at all. I still haven’t done it but the very thought of doing it, I believe, has awoken some very very lazy muscles in this here LadyMamaG. The reason I’m telling you about thinking about almost doing pilates is because I want to share with you how much fun it is to not feel like your real self anymore.

This morning I thought it might be a good idea to weigh myself, see what all them lovely lil’ fertility drugs been doing to this here 37 y o body. To my greatest relief the scales had gone flat. Thanks to the Gods who made that happen. It still doesn’t change the fact almost everything, no actually everything don’t fit no more. I used to love getting dressed in the morning. It was like a little fashion magazine shoot going on in my wardrobe every single day. Now I’m quite happy to mooch around the house in my pilates pants (let’s not judge me) until oh, at least before I have to do the school run. Sometimes I might even do the school run while still wearing them. To which 9 y o rather unsubtly reminds me, ‘why are you still wearing that mummy?’ when he jumps in the back seat. Thanks young man for making me feel like Britney post-shaven head. He also likes to ask why I haven’t got any makeup on. Kids are good at honesty, I’ll give ’em that.

So besides the fact I dress to do pilates but don’t actually do it. And that every single thing in my wardrobe no longer even wants to look at me it’s so disgusted, there is the other thing. What have I become? Am I the girl who is happy to let her armpit hair grow a couple of inches (stop screwing up your face, I haven’t reached that stage yet) while still trying to squeeze into a pair of shorts sans-IVF that are two sizes too small and therefore give me two bums? Lucky for you all, I have not assaulted your eyeballs with this visual though summer is just around the corner you’ll be glad to know. Have I become that girl whose vocabulary doesn’t stretch much further past progesterone, gonal-F, orgalutran, prednisolone, progynova and elevit – which besides the fact makes me sound like some really clever person who might be a doctor, when really I’m not – can be mighty boring. Especially to those who may just think I’ve rattled off the cities of some far away country.

Well at least I’m not swinging naked from a giant cement ball. Though if I did look like that, maybe I would…

Countdown is back on until my next round of friendly local neighbourhood needles. Fun times indeed. Lov n’hugs to y’all specially those with foam fingers, LadyMamaGxox

Seven years…70,353 words…two-hundred and forty-five pages

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Before tragedy struck...

Before tragedy struck…

It’s done. I’ve been waiting to exhale for a long long time but now I can finally put it up on a shelf where it belongs and breathe a big fat old sigh of relief, while high-fiving myself. I’ve been on a long and winding road of love, of loss, of grief and of finding love again. I’ve laid bare my inner most feelings on The Day That Destroyed My Life. I’ve poured out the things that were inside my head and put them all down in front of me – the bad, the terrible and the heartbreaking. I’ve spent seven long years riding a journey through grief that I’ve often wanted to get off. It’s been cathartic and at times down right bloody annoying. Not to mention the pain that hurts my heart every time I relive that day.

I’ve read it, re-read it and re-read it again. I’ve lived memories and felt goosebumps. I’ve chopped and changed and cried and laughed. But now I can truly say I’ve finished. I hope it does him justice. I hope it helps someone else who ever has the misfortune to walk in my shoes. I hope my son grows up and one day reads it for himself, learning of how we made it through together. Holding hands. Mother and son.

Love n’hugs, Lady MamaGxox

Here’s a little synopsis…

The Sweetheart Widow

 

We’d only been in Australia three years. We moved over in January 2004, packed up our son, the dog and all our belongings and shipped them from Auckland to the Gold Coast.

My husband was running a large earth-moving machinery company on the outskirts of Brisbane and motor racing in the weekends. I used to be a magazine editor but had given that up when I gave birth to our little boy. Ours was a strong marriage built of stone – we’d been together since we were 16.

I didn’t go to Bathurst that weekend. Our son was two and getting too fidgety to be kept in the confines of a pit garage so we went up to Noosa on the Sunshine Coast instead. When the phone rang that October Friday two years later, I thought it might have been to invite us to a weekend barbeque or a play date with the kids. It wasn’t. It was a call that made my whole world stop.

It’s taken seven long years for this story to take flight and there’s been a lot of heartache, love and happiness peppered throughout the days, weeks and months that have slowly made up that time. Being a widow isn’t something you get to choose. There’s no gate where you take a ticket or exit left. Especially not when you’re a mum. I’ll be forced to make decisions I don’t want to make. I’ll have to turn his life support off. I’ll donate his organs. And put the pieces of our life back together without him.

People have said I’m strong, brave and full of courage. I’m all but none but of these. I’m just a girl whose story started out like something out of a movie and then went terribly horribly wrong. I was thirty years old and left on my own to raise our little boy who will never know his dad even though he’s exactly like him in every way.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have expected to have a child, lose a husband and find a new one all in the space of a decade but this is a tale of love and survival…because you can’t have one without the other.

 

Return to sender…

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Not this time...

Not this time…

Just how many times you can get knocked down and actually be able to get up again depends on who – or what, more to the point – that keeps on pushing you over. Yet again, we got the big fat Negative. Sorry, no. Not this time. Nudda. I can’t say I didn’t see the warning signs though. There were the mood swings that had me lower than one of Amy Winehouse’s singlets. The agro that saw me scream like the girl in Poltergeist when poor little 9 y o packed the wrong board shorts in his camp bag (pretty sure after that little outburst he’s glad to be going away for three days and is rather hoping his real mummy will be back by the time he gets home). And the general feeling that something just wasn’t right…who knows, maybe I’m psychic or maybe I just had my girlie intuition radar on full noise.

We only had one go at it this time so now we’ve got the added kick in the guts that there’s no more little icicles left in the freezer. They say the only way you can ever understand the ride of infertility is unless you’ve been through it yourself, but I really really wish we weren’t the ones having to find out first hand. I’ll see the movie instead, thanks. I want off now. I’ve had enough of the rollercoaster. I hate heights. I get bad motion sickness and I’m no thrill seeker. Get. Me. Off, you hear?

I suppose we got a bit ahead of ourselves because last time it worked so of course this time it would too, right? Big fat no. Don’t be going and getting ahead of yourself now ‘cos Fertility gonna come right back at you and slap you hard. There, shouldn’t have thought you were so clever.

So another little almost peanut is on the Return to Sender list. Gone in the bubble of hope we held it in so tightly. Gone to join the thousands of other ‘almosts’ of the couples who, like us, are battling this evil curse. If there is such a thing as wanting or wishing too much, maybe I’m guilty of it but I’m too damn stubborn to give up just yet. To the Big Bloke Upstairs, if you’re listening up there, chuck some luck our way, would you please.

While I try and keep my chin up, dust off my knees and get back up on my feet I’m reminded that I wouldn’t be on this journey if it weren’t for The Vet who keeps me going day in and day out. Who never ever says, ‘enough is enough, that’s it.’ Who never tells me to ‘just get over it’. Who is always there to catch my fall and who keeps me going with ‘it’ll happen…’ I guess for now it’s just going to take time. Love n’ hugs to all the Lady Mamas out there who are fighting this battle… Lady MamaGxox

 

You know, don’t you…?

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Do NOT get in my way...

Do NOT get in my way…

To the tosser in the white ute who cut in front of me and came within a cat’s bum whisker to taking out my front bumper on the highway yesterday morning, I have your licence plate you little toe rag. And so help me God, I will hunt you down. To the woman in the school drop off run this morning who thought it was more important to be on facebook than concentrating on the road in front, you’ll keep. And no, 9 y o, I do not know where your bloody lego man with the white helmet is but maybe if you look in the bottom of the washing machine you’ll find it – along with all the other contents of your pockets.

Hello people, hormones. Can we please try and remember. Yes, it’s a Fun House alright and the evil clowns have names – Progesterone and Prednisolone – who both thought it would be a great idea to have a bitch fight inside my head at 3am this morning like a pair of Kardashian sisters squabbling over shoes. And they wouldn’t let up. So now not only am I more hormonal than a woman going backwards through menopause but I’m bloody tired too. I possibly could have solved the economic crisis in the time I was awake for last night.

As if last week wasn’t bad enough having to deal with the loss of Patrick…let’s just all take a moment to observe a minute’s silence for television’s hottttest doctor (producers at channel 10, I’ll deal with you later)…but I had my own shit going on – once again, the waiting train. The baby boiler only managed four eggs this time, slack thing that it is. And of the four, only three little suckers could be pricked. By the morning after my little visit with Dr Babies, I was left with just one embryo. ‘We will call you tomorrow and let you know how it’s going,’ the scientist told me. And each day, for another four days after that you get to wait to see if your one tiny chance of hope will make it. Just imagine you’ve gone for an interview that would get you the best job of your career…something you’d worked your whole life for. Or you met a guy who literally made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up (in a good way of course, not a creepy socks pulled up to his knees kinda way) and you were waiting for him to call. It’s like that all rolled into one and then dusted with some crazy hormonal fear to make it look pretty.

On the last day before we were due for transfer, I’m waiting for the scientist to ring me and tell me whether or not my last hopeful little embryo has made it to day five. If it hasn’t survived we’re back to shitsville, but I haven’t even let my brain think about that yet. Finally the call comes through after lunch and yes, it has survived another day (hooray, order the cake) but if you get a call in the morning before transfer, she tells me gently, it means you won’t be having one. The phone doesn’t ring. It’s a big-assed bright green light for the transfer.

I’m now four days or, as I like to call it, 96 hours into my 11 day wait. Because the hours like to tick by nice n’ slowly thank you very much while my brain busily disects every. single. tinge, pain, cramp or niggle. And then some because you know, don’t you. I mean you know if you’re up the knock, right…? It’s possible Cruella De Ville may have stepped into my body and taken over. Look out public, you have been warned. Love n’ hugs, Lady MamaG xox

Would you read this, if it were a book…?

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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

Fertility…it’s a bit like driving a car with no wheel nuts…you have no control

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So yesterday I was back in hospital, I think they know me pretty well because, it’s about oh, I don’t know, the four hundred and seventeeth time I’ve been under general anaesthetic this year (okay, so maybe not quite that many but sure is a real lot). And it’s no secret how much I love needles. Almost as much as I love pulling my toenails off with a pair of blunt pliers. But I do have a bloody funny story to tell you about being in the recovery ward which involves some intimate elective surgery and an 82-year-old.

But yes, I’m back to the start. Back to waiting. Back to needles, popping pills by the plenty and generally stuffing my body full of things that not only make me more cray cray than Sharon Osborne after a few chardy’s but has ensured that pratically every. single. thing. in my wardrobe doesn’t fit me anymore. And let me tell you sista’s, this Lady Mama G has a wardrobe that could rival Miranda Kerr on a bad day. Bit like being put in front of a giant bowl of M & M’s and told you can only look at them, thanks very much.

After my much loved needle treatment, it was time for egg retrieval. And you know the really awesome thing about Fertility (or lack thereof in this instance) is that absolutely nothing is in your control. Nothing. Around every corner there is a waiting game. You have to wait to see how many eggs they found in your baby boiler. Then you have to wait to see how many got injected. And then the real fun part, you get to wait each day for around five days (in my case) to see if said eggies have hatched into some little embies – and those are the jackpot. You need embryos to last that long so they’ve got a much better chance at making it to home base…which of course is being up the knock.

For some reason, this time I only got a third the amount of eggs as last time which means our chances of getting some good little growers is somewhat slimmer. I’d be lying like Bill Clinton if I didn’t say that didn’t hit me hard. Now it’s all in the control of the gods, the scientists, or someone anyone but me. I must sit and wait for my daily phone call to see how my little hatchlings are growing.

Every shitful bit about this infertility process is ups and downs. Ups are good and downs, well they’re about as low as scooping up a half-used cigarette butt from the gutter. And then smoking it.

But I did promise you one good story didn’t I? Sitting in recovery in my white fluffy dressing gown (standard issue) to the opposite of me was a dear old 82-year-old lady who had been in for back surgery. Beside her sat two young twenty-something girls with plastic surgeon bags beside them. After dear old Mrs Love finished telling us about her operation, she turned to the young girl beside her and asked what she’d been in for. ‘Oh labioplasty,’ came her reply. Mrs Love thought she didn’t hear right. ‘Pardon,’ she asked. ‘What’s that?’. Young twenty-something was then left to explain to the woman beside her – who no doubt had seen a lot in her time – but nothing quite like that. I’m pretty sure she will never ask another young patient what she’s in for. Ever. Again.

If you caught Mary Costa’s interview on 60 Minutes last weekend, like me, you would probably have been bawling. Her journey has been one of hardship, heartache and total and utter turmoil but – and even though it took 10 years – she finally has some good news. There is nothing easy or simple about going down the long and windy road to fertility but at least at the end of it you get something you will cherish more than life its very self.

Right now I’m crossing everything I have and mustering up all my courage just to make it through this week of waiting. Cook little hatchlings, cook good. Love n’ hugs, Lady MamaG xox