Working women often talk about how they feel that whatever they’re doing is wrong. They feel permanently guilty that they’re not doing “enough” for either their children or their careers. Finding out that I was pregnant catapulted me into a host of similar dilemmas. Did I carry on exercising as I had been? Or stop entirely? Should I contact my old clinic and ask them to prescribe more of the progesterone injections, the clexane blood thinners, the whatever the fuck else they throw at the women who manage to get pregnant on a wing and a prayer and want to stay pregnant? Or just carry on taking the Pregnacare Max that I’ve been taking for years as if it were a multivitamin?
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When you’re making other plans…
It was John Lennon who apparently said that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” and Woody Allen’s credited with saying “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans” — even though my suspicion is that Jewish grandmothers have been saying it for millennia. Undoubtedly there’s a bunch of other quotes from various wise civilisations that say pretty much the same thing. The bottom line is that you can do everything in your power to create a certain outcome, but it turns out that “everything in your power” is pretty much the square root of fuck all.
Continue readingSo about that donor…
I know these things aren’t karmic. I know this by now. I know that when it comes to fertility, you don’t somehow suddenly get a smooth ride because it’s been bumpy so far. I know all this. But finding this Mary Poppins of a donor (she was practically perfect in every way) felt like we’d turned a corner, like it was the start of something brand new and positive. Like I said, I knew there were a load of hoops we still had to jump through, if this were a game of snakes and ladders, we had a lot more ladders to climb before we won that baby. But this was a pretty long ladder.
Continue readingIt’s not ideal…
Don’t panic, nothing’s gone wrong (that I know of anyway), there’s been no major setback or anything (as far as I’m aware) but do read on and the subject of this post will explain itself…
So I had the biopsy and now everything is just on hold while I wait for the results. I’m sure when we first discussed it the consultant told me that it was “like a smear test”. But then just as we were about to go in to theatre, she told me “it is quite painful” — I just laughed and said “well I’ll look forward to that.” And she quite rightly looked at me like I was mental.
I suppose what I meant was Continue reading
A quick tot up…
I started writing about the biopsy that’s part of The Plan but then someone asked recently if I was going to give costs for all this and so I thought I’d do a quick one on that. If I’m honest, this was a post I’d been intending to do, but I think I’d rather put it off, not just because I didn’t want to horrify myself, but also because in my heart of hearts I wanted to do it at a point that seemed to mark a final point, like, I dunno, when I had a baby in my hands (mine rather than just anyone else’s) but it probably makes sense to give you an idea of what I’ve spent so far. Continue reading
The Plan…
I rather feel like I’ve bigged up this Plan so I hope you’re not disappointed by it. Basically, The Plan came about when I went to see my consultant to have the post-unsuccessful IVF debrief — or the “what the fuck went wrong chat” as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it called on other blogs.
Anyway, I sat in front of my consultant and said, “So, we had one grade 1 embryo and it failed to implant. And I understand that there may be many reasons for this, but what can we do minimise the likelihood of these being reasons why the same thing doesn’t happen again?”
And that was when she told me about Continue reading
It’s just me — and that’s OK…
Before I get to The Plan referenced in my last post, I just wanted to write a short post about something that I hadn’t really thought about as a positive until quite recently, and that’s the fact that I’m doing IVF on my own.
I mean, part of the reason why I started this blog in the first place was because it’s just me, doing this on my own (although back then when I was egg freezing I was only doing half of IVF on my own) and I kind of bought into the idea that it was shitter to be trying to conceive on my own than as part of a couple. But the minute I found out Continue reading
So it turns out I was right…
… in that I’m not pregnant.
It shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise – who gets pregnant on their first round of IVF with one embryo? Well obviously some people do but not me. And while the logical part of my brain had committed to at least three, maybe more, cycles, there was a sliver of me thinking, “It could be me, I could be one of the lucky ones…”
And now, I’m going to sound like a complete dick, but I’m going to say it anyway. I don’t really know how to fail at stuff. I’ve passed every exam Continue reading
You just know…
That’s what they say, isn’t it? About so many things. About whether you should be marrying that man. About whether that’s the right dress to get married in. About whether you’re pregnant.
When people have said that in the past about marriage, I’ve always (usually silently) disputed that. Always thought I never just know whether I’m putting the right clothes on in the morning, let alone whether I should be spending the rest of my life with one specific person. I don’t think you just know, I think you just hope. I think you Continue reading
Conflicting thoughts…
I constantly have two conflicting series of thoughts in my head:
– why should it work first time around?
– well sometimes it does, doesn’t it?
– but you know you were thinking you’d do at least three rounds?
– well yes, but what if you can’t even get three embryos from your eggs?
– you need to stop thinking negatively, one day at a time, remember?
– I know but I need to prepare myself to not fall apart if I’m not pregnant
That cognitive dissonance my friend was talking about. It could drive a person mad. And it Continue reading
Egged On 