Glass half full

So, egg collection was today. I've had a few operations in my time, so all pretty much normal.

On the good side, I have 8 eggs which were good enough to fertilise. Hopefully enough will get to blasto stage to get us pregnant this time.

On the bad side, one of my fucking ovaries is inaccessible. At some point between now and the last fresh egg collection - during which I've had an ectopic and a caesarian - it appears to have become fused onto a scar and moved further up than it normally would be.

This means that the surgeon couldn't get at it without going through the side of my womb and a bit too close to an artery.

Of all the things I've read about happening and experienced myself during IVF, this wasn't one of them. So even someone who has spent a lot of time in the trenches can still be surprised.

The Boy has a chunky wooden elephant jigsaw. Every piece is numbered, and slots together. Sometimes the Boy jams one piece into another in a way that doesn't quite fit, so comes up, waves a trunk and a leg jammed together at me and shouts, "Fix it!".

We have lost a couple of pieces of the jigsaw in the big box of Duplo, which is currently topped with bits of marble run, Peppa Pig, bits of plastic Cbeebies crap and just other random things shoved together.

It feels like my reproductive system is like the elephant, except some bits are beyond a grown up patiently and gently pulling the pieces that have gone awry apart and putting them together in the right order. I'm not about to get the missing bits back.

On the outside, things are loosely in place by the skin around my stomach, which has itself become increasingly loose, ill fitting and elephantine with each round of surgery.

I could apparently get a laparoscopy to check out why the prodigal ovary is merrily dancing around further up my abdomen, but if I manage to have another child from the eggs we got in this cycle then I think I'll be quitting when I'm still, moderately, ahead.

Then I'm going to have a tummy tuck. Or stuff all the toys beneath the folds of skin while I glug wine on the sofa.

Anyway, 8 eggs at this stage is not so far - I just need to keep everything crossed they get to day 5 and go in the freezer. Then I have other stuff on...