I mean, I say that like you have a choice, or like miscarrying any other time in history is a walk in the park. It’s not, I know it’s not. Although I’ve got to be honest and didn’t realise how fucking horrific it would be. And I don’t want to play Top Trumps when it comes to miscarriages, but doing it in a pandemic is really, really shit. How is it shit? Well let me count the ways…
Continue readingTag Archives: scan
The worst clubs in the world…
You know that plan to wait until 10 weeks for a scan? Yeah well on the day I woke up and my boobs didn’t hurt like they did before, I caved. Despite finding forums full of women saying the exact same thing had happened to them and they’d had healthy babies, I became utterly convinced that I had had a silent, or missed, miscarriage, where the foetus stops growing but you don’t bleed. I spent the morning in tears, suddenly realising quite how much I wanted everything to be ok. Knowing B was right when he told me that getting upset when we didn’t know if there was anything to get upset about was counterproductive. Knowing he was also right when he said that if this doesn’t work out we’re not in any different place than we were in before, and yet still knowing that for all our backup plans, this was the plan I wanted to work.
Continue readingThe hierarchy of shitness…
While I’m obviously writing and posting these posts many months on, at the time, I scribbled notes on my phone about my feelings. At night when I couldn’t sleep and B was asleep beside me, I typed my hopes, fears and dreams into that little illuminated screen. Some of those notes have made it into these posts. Here are two, in their unedited entirety…
Continue readingLast minute fucking about…
So I came back from my holiday, went for a scan, and then later in the week there was a whole load of last minute fucking about that made me wonder — yet again — how on earth anyone who doesn’t work for themselves does this.
The call at about 4pm on a Thursday went something like this:
“So your bloods suggest that you might be near ovulating so can you do an ovulation test and then call us back with the results? If you are, you’ll have to have the egg collection tomorrow and we’ll have to work out what time you do the Ovitrelle tonight, and if you’re not then it will be on Saturday and if it’s on Saturday you’ll have to stay up until quarter to 1 tonight and do the Ovitrelle injection, but you also need to do the Cetrotide injection when you get home tonight, oh and start taking the Indomethacin straight away but don’t take it on an empty stomach. Anyway, just call us back when you’ve done the ovulation test.” Continue reading
Finally, another cycle…
So — obviously — I got my period eventually, rather sweetly timed to ensure that if I did a cycle, I’d be finding out just before Christmas how successful it had been. Which of course is exactly the additional frisson of stress/excitement that this time of year needs. (I mean there may be people out there for whom Continue reading
More fodder for the screenplay…
Part of the reason I started this blog was to record all the blackly comedic moments that this whole process involves. I mean given that I wasn’t telling most people I knew about what I was doing, I rather wanted to share the lolz with someone, even if just with random strangers on the internet. Otherwise all my Easter Egg jokes would’ve been wasted. Perhaps for the best.
Anyway, the emotional rollercoaster rumbles on and Continue reading
And… pause…
So I started my second cycle, a medicated cycle — oestrogen three times daily from day two to suppress ovulation and build my womb lining, then at a certain point progesterone to mimic the effects of ovulation.
The idea is that you have a scan somewhere between day 10 and day 12 and the endometrium looks thick and then you start on the progesterone, and then five days later they do the transfer (assuming all the eggs/sperm defrost OK and you Continue reading
One day at a time…
“When exactly ARE you going to tell Mum and Dad?” my sister asked me the other day when we were discussing my latest scan. “Dunno,” I replied, “I’ll worry about it at the time. I might get you to do it.” (I wasn’t entirely joking.) “You could just send them your blog,” she said. “I’m not sure THAT’s a good idea…”
It’s not that I’m cavalier about it, it’s just that it’s really not a significant concern of mine right now. Partly because I’m not really worried about what they’ll say, but also because it’s SOOOOOOOOOOO far away.
Before I get to the point where Continue reading
I’m back (again)….
It’s almost Easter, which can mean only one thing… actually, no, I can’t. I think I eggshausted all my egg-based puns two years ago. So that’s not why I’m back. I’m back because I’m taking the next step. Or at least preparing to. More putting on my shoes and thinking about lacing them up, rather than Continue reading
A little more conversation…
Today I cried at the clinic. Nothing had gone drastically wrong, I wasn’t hurt, nobody had been horrible to me, nobody had been unbearably kind to me. Maybe it was the hormones finally kicking in which resulted in a disproportionately emotional response, but basically I cried because I was treated like an idiot, and treated like a number, and treated like a cash cow, rather than a person.
And I’m pretty sure that the person who made me feel like that didn’t mean to make me feel like that, but it did make me think Continue reading
Egged On 