The gossip

In the last week, I've met two people who have mentioned IVF to me. The first was someone I met at a baby group. The second was an aquaintance whose daughter had IVF.

With the first, I outed myself - although I think the person in question was more looking for an audience for the story of her IVF journey, rather than a general chat.

With the second, I  didn't. I was too scared! I explained we'd had a baby - I hadn't seen this particular lady for a while. She said

"Ooh! My daughter's having twins!"

I made the appropriate remark, and wondered quietly if they were IVF. She then volunteered:

"She had that IVF, you know."

And I nearly said, "so did I", but then she continued;

"She had that endometriosis, you know. All her insides got scraped out and everything - "

Ouch!

" - and it still didn't work. So then she had to have IVF. And it worked first go. Which was good, because you only get two goes on the NHS. And after that her husband would probably have thrown money at it."

Erm, so, within a couple of seconds, I knew more than I suspect her daughter would have been happy with a random stranger knowing about her medical history and a bit about her family finances too.

I don't know - it's a tricky one. If fertility problems are discussed in hushed tones as "women's problems", then people that go through them are isolated. But then, the reason I really didn't want to tell her about my own IVF after that was that I wouldn't have been very comfortable with her going around saying "That Sushigirl, she had both her tubes cut out of her! And spend loads on treatment!"

I suppose being open or being closed about IVF doesn't guarantee sensitive treatment. But there should be some sort of middle ground. But I don't know what that is, although maybe the key is that I'd have found it less uncomfortable if I heard it direct...  it was the fact that the person in question might not know her details were being discussed that made me squirm, rather than the discussion itself.

Any thoughts?

Fast food

Since we got home, the Boy has been breastfed. He gets an expressed bottle about once a day -partly so my husband gets to feed him, partly so we don't have any issues with using bottles when I need to go back to work. But apart from that, it's all me.

There's loads of benefits to breastfeeding and I don't particularly want to list them here. But one of the odd things about it, that I hadn't thought about before I did it, is that you're always on the clock.

Consequently, the Boy and I are together the vast majority of the time. Sometimes I run the odd errant when he's having his daytime nap. Or I've given a babysitter - my Mum or sister - a bottle of milk in case he wakes up, so we can have a little couple time. About two or three times, I've gone out in the evening - popping to the shop, usually - leaving my husband with him. Evening time is usually when the Boy does a lot of eating. I always feel a bit apprehensive leaving him, but I've always come back to find the Boy and my husband contented.

Which they should be, really. There's loads of spare milk in the freezer, and I always leave at least 130 mls fresh before I go out. And there's even an emergency carton of formula.

That should mean the Boy is never hungry. You'd think.

I'd gone to a function tonight - because I think it's a bit unhealthy all round if I never leave the Boy, and my husband never gets to look after him alone, and besides which, it's nice to have a little bit of adult conversation. I fed the Boy just before I left. I got on the train, went to the event, excused myself at bang on when I was meant to leave, and quickly walked back to get the train. I was away for less than three hours.

When I got on the train back, I called my husband to let him know I was on my way. He said that the Boy had drunk all the fresh milk he'd been given. For some reason my husband had waited until the fresh milk was totally finished before he took the frozen stuff out the freezer.  In the half hour between finishing the fresh bottle and getting the frozen milk defrosted, the Boy had screamed. Then he had refused the bottle, screamed some more and fallen asleep.

The train journey took around five minutes - I didn't go far. It was the longest five minutes of my life. I kept imagining the Boy's little face all twisted up and making his hungry cries, which are particularly piercing.

You know, rationally, that you're not going to get investigated by Social Services for your baby not having a bottle ready immediately when he wants it. And that the Boy is not going to say in his wedding speech "...and I'd like to thank my Mum, even although she once went out, leaving me with my Dad, who didn't feed me straight away when I was hungry when I was 11 weeks old." But I felt like a complete cow for going out, and like the whole episode was a big black mark against me as a parent.

The journey was made even longer by a tremendously irritating chap sitting across from me. The conversation went something like this:

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm just tired."

"Oh, right. It was just you looked a bit worried."

"I'm fine, thanks." I started playing with my phone. Because I was a bit worried about the Boy not being fed and I didn't want to share this with a random bloke on the train.

"Oh, you were miles away, miles away. You must have been thinking about something."

"Yes..."

I mean, who does this? I don't mind talking to random people on the train, but why keep going on at someone who is so obviously preoccupied that it's the first thing you can think to talk to them about? Why? Why?

Mercifully, the bloke's mobile went off at this point. He had the conversation and then said,

"Oh, aye. I was just on the phone. I was just on the phone, you see!"

Aaaaaargh!

And then it got to my stop. By this point, I just wanted to sprint to the house to feed the Boy. But the annoying twat started walking really slowly up the stairs in front of me. The stairs are too narrow for more than two to walk abreast, and another woman was passing him so I had to wait for her to get by. But it was like going on the train was some sort of special occasion for him and he had the wring the maximum enjoyment and social opportunities from using public transport. He started talking inane gubbins to her as well;

"Oh, you're going faster than me! You're passing me!"

And I had to stop myself from attempting to hurl him bodily onto the tracks.

Anyway, I burst into the flat to discover the Boy in my husband's arms, gulping on the bottle he'd initially refused. So I hopped impatiently about the living room, waiting for him to finish. He was still hungry, despite having had the two bottles. And as soon as he'd had enough, he went back to his usual easygoing self.

So, all sorts of lessons were learned. Don't rely on my husband to be organised enough to defrost milk in advance. Remember the Boy can put away an incredible amount of milk in the evening. And beware of mentalists on the train.

I am crap

Our pram (or travel system), is a very nifty piece of technology. The chassis is a basic pushchair. It has optional car seat and carry cot attachments. So it should, in theory, manage all the Boy's needs until he is 3.

Except - and this is a big problem - I can't fold the bloody thing.

There are two levers, almost level with the handle on each side of the pram, that you're meant to pull back and it neatly folds down.

The saleswoman demonstrated it to us before we bought it and it looked dead easy. I even had a go in the showroom and it worked fine then - it's very simple. And it is to everyone else, still. My husband can do it. My parents can work it fine. Even a friend with no experience of babies pulled the switches back with no effort at all, giving me a strange look for struggling with it.

It's really embarrassing. I stand outside our flat, pulling back with all the strength I have in my hands, getting all red in the face and cursing whoever designed it. It's like pushing at a door when you're on the "pull" side - there's no give. This goes on until I lose patience. Then I have to summon my husband or whoever else is around for help.Which is a bit inconvenient, given that we live a couple of storeys up and the chassis stays in the car boot.

I'm too scared to drive anywhere and take the Boy out in the buggy by myself, in case I can't put the fucking pram back in the boot at the end of the trip. I always pack the carrier - given the Boy is getting heavier by the second, I don't know how long I'll manage to carry him in it for.

It's definitely, definitely me. It's something to do with the angle that I'm pulling the levers back. But I can't work out what, exactly it, is. With my husband's somewhat exasperated help, I can pull one side back or the other (not, irritatingly, the same side every time). I've tried jiggling about with it, I've tried lots of different grips. I've tried it with the brake on and off. Stubbornly, it remains upright while I sweat and swear and my hands ache and I get annoyed at myself for being pathetic.
 
I will figure it out. One day. Maybe by the time the Boy is walking.

Flog it!

I recently bought a paper which, to my surprise, had a supplement on fertility treatment. Like most supplements, it was basically a vehicle for advertising, but the blurb on the front claimed it contained up to date information on treatments.

It didn't, as far as I could see. One of the few bits of editorial claimed that 'new treatments' could boost IVF success rates from 50% to 80%. But didn't give any detail on what those treatments were. The editorial also mentioned that infertility could be very difficult and that, basically, it wasn't only older women who suffered from it. That was really about it on the practical and emotional side - the rest was adverts.

And bad adverts at that. They made me cringe. One clinic, in the Bahamas, inferred that you'd do much better there as you'd be relaxed. The Lister had an ad encouraging readers to go there to egg share to save on costs. Another advert had dotted lines around the margins and encouraged you to cut it out and keep it - like it was a coupon for tinned beans (although it didn't promise a discount if you brought the token to the gynaecologist).

I don't really have a problem with people paying for IVF. I wish it was more widely available on the NHS. But it isn't, so people have to pay.

What I do object to is the whole thing being so monumentally tacky, and the idea that it's merely a case of picking the clinic and parting with the money. Egg sharing is a bit more complex than just getting a discount. The 50% success rate is unlikely, never mind the 80%. You can't relax yourself into getting pregnant.

I can't imagine such a thing being produced for any other form of illness. Plenty of people use private healthcare for all manner of illnesses, but surely no-one would produce a supplement in a national newspaper filled with adverts from cancer clinics vying for custom (Perhaps there are and I just haven't seen them. But it just seems repellant).

Maybe, just like any number of other products, the advertising for infertility treatment needs to be regulated. Fucking with your hormones, your emotions and your future can be bad for your health. At least compelling fertility clinics to link ads to a government website giving relatively unbiased facts would help.

But anyone who has ever seriously considered fertility treatment knows that it's an expensive and uncertain procedure. I suppose my main worry is that casual readers might pick up an advertising supplement for IVF, flick through it and get the idea that using assisted reproduction is perhaps easier than going to the dentists and that you can have a holiday at the same time... it doesn't really help anyone.

Tall Boy

Erm, I've been holding off blogging about the Boy because it's probably going to sound awfully smug. Also, I'm worried it may jinx things.

But I'm wondering if the fates have decreed that since we've had such an awful time of it for the past couple of years, we've gotten a fairly easy baby. The only times he really gets upset is if he's hungry and I'm in a situation where I can't feed him straight away, or if he's got a dirty nappy. Or if something hurts him - like an injection - or if he's looking at a very bright light (unusual, but it happened a couple of times on public transport). But it's generally straightforward to anticipate his needs or deal with them if he's unhappy. At least, so far.

I've found breastfeeding fairly easy too. There were days at the start where I was doing really long feeds, and every so often the Boy seems to need to crank up my supply. This means I get a day of doing nothing else but feed (the more he feeds, the more I produce). This does get quite trying and I'm always relieved when those days are over, although I think infertility has made this a fairly small thing to take in my stride. But, the vast majority of the time, it's been straightforward.

I'd expected a breastfed baby to be smaller than a formula fed one, and expected to have the occasional worry about weight. Instead, the Boy is a bit of a bruiser. He's bang on average for weight - so above average for a breastfed baby - and well above average for his height. In fact, he's about to outgrow some clothes that are sized for 6-9 month old babies. I thought the clothes might just be cut small, but I took him along to a baby group for the first time today and he really is bigger than some much older babies.

Also, he's never had problems with taking a bottle. I felt awful when he had to be formula fed after being born because his blood sugar was low. But, on the plus side, he's never been freaked out about having milk from a rubber teat. This means I can occasionally express and go out - I don't do this a lot, but we have had two trips to eat out and one to the cinema since he was born although he goes through the expressed milk really quickly and starts bellowing equally fast if there isn't milk to hand when he's hungry, so I need to leave a lot with whichever relative is babysitting!)

Developmentally, he's been doing well. I mean, I'm not claiming he's a child genius and some websites say he should already be rolling, which he definitely isn't. But we'll get there. Even in the past week, he's made different sounds, has learned to grab, and has got much more interested in different toys as well as the trees in the park and other children. He started making odd shouty noises at the baby next to him at the baby group, which is the first time he's attempted to interact with someone who wasn't making an effort to play with him!

Sleep wise, we're doing good. He sleeps from half past nine in the evening until between half four and half five in the morning. I get up and feed him and he immediately conks out - it's quite funny sometimes! Then he gets up properly at around half past seven in the morning. So he's not sleeping through yet, but between us, we can live with his sleep pattern. And it certainly beats getting up every two or three hours to feed. His instinct seems to be to eat lots in the evening so he's totally full - he apparently doesn't drop off if there's even just a tiny little bit of space in his stomach.

I'm sure it won't always be plain sailing. Watching him kick in his bouncy seat, you can see there's a lot of energy zooming around his little body that we're going to have to find other outlets for very soon.

Perversely, I also worry about him when he sleeps for long periods, or that he may be too big for his age. But I think that's probably normal for first time parents, too.

I also worry that the moment I hit 'publish' he will turn into a milk refusing insomniac, will begin teething, or have some other sort of drama.

I hope I don't sound too smug or boastful about it all... in fact, it's twenty to eleven and he's just uncharacteristically woken up!

Northern soul

I would like to live in Sweden
When my work is done
Where the snow lies thick and even
'Neath the midnight sun

The Divine Comedy, Sweden

As well as Disney having more of an influence in our lives, the Boy seems to have resulted in us buying stuff from Sweden. The Swedes seem to have something of a reputation for producing high quality, well designed but affordable baby stuff. Which, as we shall see, is not always entirely deserved.

Although, we love the Baby Bjorn carrier we got. It's made the Boy much more transportable. It's one of our favourite bits of kit, particularly with the carrier cover. Apart from being endlessly useful, it makes him look like a little hooded hobbit. Later, he will get bigger and face outwards on the sling, and the hood also turns round to look like... a niqab. I can't wait.

Then there's the flip side. Fucking Naty Nappies. We got a big bag of them on special offer. They were cheap, but also because the package promised they were eco friendly, well designed and all those other admirable Scando attributes. They even had Swedish flags on the packet.

Maybe Swedish babies have differently shaped bums, but Naty have been involved in many incendiary nappy incidents in our household. Poo leaking out the sides, up the back. They just don't fit, and any eco-friendliness is negated by having to do more loads of washing. And the special offer was buy one get one free, so we've got endless numbers of the bastard things to get through. We've started alternating them with another, less leaky brand, and my heart sinks whenever I go through to the change mat and there's a Naty at the top of the pile.

From the good, to the bad, to the ugly. The other big Swedish brand for all things child-related is, of course, IKEA.

The thing is, I've never liked IKEA and, although everyone seems to get their nursery furniture there, we didn't. I like the idea of it, but then, like any sort of home improvement store, I go and then lose interest within about five minutes. I'm just not that interested in house-y stuff and IKEA goes on and on and on, and not even the furniture with names like WNKSTIN or FINJOPOKR is enough to make it tolerable. The thought of wheeling the Boy around one for the afternoon makes my heart sink, even with the allure of the gingerbread houses, meatballs and the novelty ice molds.

I've never been to Sweden, although I'd like to. I always associated with hiking trails, attractive locals, open sandwiches and... that's about it. But now, thanks to parenthood, I also know that it is populated by blond people striding around with their babies in carriers with poo leaking out the sides. We will wait until the Boy is potty trained before we visit.

Gender specific

I did a course in feminist literature at Uni. It was all a bit bonkers and I did it because one of my friends was and I had to fill in a bit of my timetable somehow. The woman that ran it was awfully po-faced and we had all big crushing lectures about the patriarchy and the male canon of literature and so forth. My favourite moment was when, at the end of one of the tutorials, one of the mature students started talking about her problems with finding a nursery. The lecturer said,

"Yes, well, I know what you mean. I've got a little girl - " and then she frowned and interrupted herself.

"Oh dear! I called her a little girl. That's so gender specific of me."

Oh dear.

Anyway, I had read that women who have gone through IVF and infertility become more fixated with a fantasy child, and pick one gender or the other that they want, and then build up from there.

My personal experience is the opposite. I got a bit funny about planning either way, partly out of gratitude I was going to have any child, but also because it felt like jinxing it. A lot of people I know found out the gender at scans but didn't tell anyone, or made a big thing out of the reveal. I resolutely did not want to know. After all the previous losses, you get paranoid about anything that might make another one more difficult.

Anyway, I'm actually not that keen on the whole pink for a girl, blue for a boy thing - although we seem to have vast amounts of blue clothing anyway, mostly given to us. I did find it a bit odd that there's so little unisex baby clothing out there, and even one very gender neutral thing I picked, with a safari print on it, had a label that specified it was for boys. I do have a "Mummy's little boy" vest somewhere, but it gives me the boak. Possibly just as much as a "Daddy's little princess" dress would.

It still feels a bit strange, sometimes. It's good having a baby, of any shape or form, without starting to attach conditions to it. It's very hard not to attach any conditions, though. I'll be happy if any child of mine grows up to be happy, and enjoy reading and travel, and are prepared to stand up against injustices. Those surely aren't bad things to want, regardless of whether you've had a boy or girl.

I think it's a bit different if you've had a late loss and know the gender of the baby that's died. That must be an awful thing to work through.

Rather less sympathetically, I know there are people that want to find out because they have a baby of one flavour and want one of the other. A very irritating colleague, when I was 38 weeks pregnant, told me a big long story about how he had two boys already and wanted a girl, then his wife found out she was having another boy but it was a happy ending, because they were both okay about it really. I think he expected that made him look admirable. I think it made him look like an arsehole, but was too polite to say.

But, for me, although the Boy is the Boy, he might as well be called the Baby. Gender doesn't make much difference at the moment. Although he does do very loud farts.

Associating farts with masculinity? How very gender specific of me.