Mother's Day

Since we had the miscarriage I've been pondering about the theory that secondary infertility is just as difficult as primary infertility. And why I don't think it is.

Realising you're infertile, or at the very least not as fertile as you'd like to be, isn't a very pleasant thing to do through. For years women are fed the idea that if they're not really careful that they'll get pregnant at the drop of a hat, but that it's easy to manage fertility.

It's a bit of a shock to the system that it doesn't always work like that, and I think always takes a bit of time to work through.

Personally, I've accepted being functionally infertile now. Although it caused me immeasurable pain in the past, I've now got to the point that I might as well rage about not being able to sing, or - to use a more practical example - being shit at parking. There's just no point in getting upset about not being able to get pregnant without a lot of help any more, I'm good at other things and in other ways have been quite lucky.

Losses also causr their own grief, in their own way. Not neccessarily in any logical fashion - the most upset I've been was having a chemical pregnancy after my first ever IVF shot.

The missed miscarriage was awful too of course, but I wasn't in anywhere near as bad a state. It's partly because you get a bit easier at managing things; aiming to be as out of it as possible for the actual miscarrying (not for everyone, but I don't trust my body to do anything well when it comes to pregnancy, even miscarrying), already knowing that things can go wrong, and of course I had the Boy.

That's the difference. If there hasn't been an adoption, or a bereavement, then the vast majority of people who have secondary infertility have their child in their lives.

The drugs still give me a thumping headache and a bad temper. But a couple of mornings ago the Boy came into our bed, snuggled under the covers and we miaowed at the cat until she came over so I could teach the Boy how to stroke her (put your fist out until she bumps it with her head, then front to back, and if her tail flicks she's getting annoyed).

Teaching your kid how to treat animals, or read, or swim isn't the only thing you can do. I'd probably have gone further at work, travelled more, learned more if I'd decided not to invest so much time and money in IVF and then the Boy. Neither option make anyone a better person. But I don't regret my decisions, although I am very aware that IVF doesn't always work out for everyone.

I got another negative today so I'm very nearly out for this cycle. But at least I got to spend the rest of the day taking the Boy to the park and then digging for worms in the garden.

Schrodinger's pish stick

I've been getting sick in the mornings. I know, I know, that this is from the progesterone more than anything else. But still, at 3 days post transfer, I cracked and decided to pee on a stick. It was negative.

I hate the waiting. I don't think I've ever had a cycle where a negative turned out to be a positive a few days later.

And, I don't know if this is just because I'm getting a bit older - although not, apparently, any wiser about early testing - but the drugs feel awful this time around. In addition to the weeping I'm also getting spots everywhere - my face, my scalp... urgh.

But at the moment I am neither pregnant nor not pregnant.

I've also been arguing with my husband a lot. He's been preoccupied with lots of other things, which we've been talking about more than the cycle. But I'm getting really fucked off with him hiding upstairs on his computer while I sit downstairs with a thumping headache, fielding questions about trains and atoms from the Boy.

Tonight's row was at dinnertime, because I was trying to put together a plan B if this cycle doesn't work. I find this is immensely helpful. It means if the cycle doesn't work I'm not totally pulling myself up off the floor, I've got something positive to focus on. Normally it involves booking a holiday or, more generally, having something lined up to look forward to.

So I was talking to him about holidays and generally trying to make myself feel like it wouldn't be quite so shit if this cycle doesn't pan out, and then he came out with "Oh, but it might still work this time".

I felt like stabbing him with my fork.

I think his point of view is that the drugs are driving me up the wall, that we're maybe doing this too soon after the miscarriage and we need a good long break after this cycle. And that we're going to a kiddie theme park near a big post-industrial city in a few weeks so I should be content.

Mine is that the drugs are making me feel like shit, but in order to cope with this I need him to be a bit more supportive and actually come up with plans and suggestions that aren't as a result of me prodding him. I am not getting any younger, I hate the limbo of treatments, and I need a more definite timescale for career purposes, and, more importantly, the more you can ignore the emotional trauma and just do cycles the more likely it is that IVF will work. And yes, a break would be nice but it needs to be something a bit more life affirming than what we've got planned so far.

>>>> Later notes <<<<

I feel a bit unreasonable for some of the stuff I was moaning about. The whole point of IVF is that you get to do stuff with your kids, after all, and even if I wouldn't choose to spend a day in a children's theme park normally, I'm sure it'll be lovely memories for us and the Boy.

We also had a big talk and hopefully he'll be a bit more supportive from now on.

Transfer day

I have been weeping since I started progesterone. It'll take something relatively small to start it off, but once it starts, I can't stop.

I also feel absolutely foul. I have that horrible hair-sticky-up, too-hot, bad-tempered feeling that's similar to very bad PMT. I couldn't wear makeup to the clinic and my face looks like corned beef.

Despite all of this, I thought it would work out fine if I drove myself to the clinic because we couldn't get childcare.

We didn't want to ask my parents as to be honest, driving myself up was less stressful than explaining to them. They had, coincidentally, tried to invite themselves over today to drop off a toy the Boy had left there at the weekend, but I said it was a bad time as we'd be out.

The drive involves going along the motorway and then taking a complicated route around the edges of the city centre. I was feeling relatively pleased with myself when I managed to get there without going the wrong way once.

I started crying when I got into the fucking clinic, and then I was sort of low level sniffling for most of the time I was there.

To make matters worse, I used to get a weird twitch in my leg when I was giving presentations at work. This stopped a few years ago.

But when I was in the stirrups and had the catheter in, my fucking leg started trembling. I'm not consciously doing it so I can't stop doing it either.

I hate my leg. Fuck sake, leg, letting the side down.

The staff didn't mention the weird shaky leg thing but they were like "Aha! You've stopped crying" a couple of times. Which immediately set me off again.

When I set off for home, I went the wrong way straight away. So I had to double back.

Then a roundabout appeared when I didn't expect it and I realised I had was somehow driving into the city centre rather than onto the motorway.

Finally, I got back onto the right route and decided it would be a good idea to stop at a shopping centre on the way home.

This was a good plan until I couldn't find a parking space and then accidentally drove into another car while looking for one.

Mercifully at low speed and only with slight damage to both cars, but probably not a recommended course of action in any of the books I used to read about increasing one's IVF chances through meditation and eating mung beans.

So, the actual transfer seemed to go pretty well. But I am SO getting my husband to come next time.

When I got home my mum had left the toy in a bag in our back garden, along with, inexplicably, a bottle of chilli sauce.

Prostap, again

Aside from completely failing to keep up with the 100 books challenge (I started playing the South Park game instead) I went to the clinic and had another prostap injection.

So now, for the fifth time, I'm getting headaches, hot flushes and feeling sleepy. Oh, and fat. All hormonal medication seems to inevitably make me fat. Even 'normal' things like the Pill (which also gave me horrendous thrush... a silver lining of having no tubes is no contraceptives).

This time around, I've been doing far more exercise than I usually do not just when cycling, but generally. Admittedly, this is only partly due to the keeping-fit-for-IVF motivation, it's also because all the mums doing pickup at the Boy's school seem to do some sort of fitness and I didn't want to be fat, unfit parent for the next thirteen years or so.

(Incidentally, I saw figures recently about healthy life expectancy in deprived neighbourhoods vs affluent areas being almost 20 years, so presumably this herding instinct/peer pressure to exercise is part of the reason for that gap).

The exercise is making the side effects less bad, although I don't know if it's just that less sitting around gives me less time to focus on them. Although then I worry I am not doing it properly if there's no side effects.

I'm also wondering how many times it's healthy to go through a fake menopause. I have been assured that there's no long term health effects of multiple IVF treatments.

Is that the truth or does nobody really know yet; wonderful though fertility treatment is, it's a relatively new technology and, as far as I can discern, the drugs regimes are much newer than IVF itself.

But I've got to make the best choices with the information and circumstances that I have, so I am sitting here feeling hot, a wee bit headachey and slightly mad.