And then, of course, there was the global pandemic.
I almost don’t even know where to start with that. Except that it made me think a few things. Firstly I was SO grateful that we had made the decision to use donor eggs before all this started. As the world ground to a halt and IVF clinics shut down, my heart broke for all the women who had planned an IVF cycle with their own eggs, but had no idea when that would ever be possible again.
Continue readingAs I mentioned in my last blog (all those months ago), you can’t run away forever, so I got back from running away, and made a decision that I probably wouldn’t have made if I were on my own. I decided to try to find an egg donor.
When I was single and doing this alone, I had pretty much decided that I wasn’t OK with the idea of trying to become a parent of a child that I had no genetic relationship to. I had said — to myself as much as anything — that I might feel differently if I were in a relationship with someone else but that idea was so abstract, I didn’t have to think about Continue reading
I ran away in January. To a place that I didn’t associate with trying and not succeeding. Somewhere I drank wine and stopped worrying about whether I was eating enough vegetables. (I wasn’t.) Somewhere I stopped caring if food was packaged in plastic (it was), or whether the tomatoes were organic (they weren’t). Somewhere my life wasn’t measured out in blood tests and supplements and scans and injections. Where I rudely
Continue readingIt’s been a while (August, last year, I can’t believe it’s been that long.)
I feel like you’re entitled to an update. (Thank you to those of you who emailed to ask how I was.) But the news is that there is no real news. At least no news about eggs, or IVF, or pregnancy. I’ve taken a break. Sorry, we’ve taken a break.
That pronoun has taken a bit of getting used to. That realisation that it’s not just me dealing with this big stuff on my own any more. Because that’s the news. The good news. He’s still here, we’re still here, and it’s great. And almost impossible to Continue reading
If you’re here because you read my piece in the Daily Mail today, hello! Thanks for coming to visit. If you’re here because you’ve been following and got notified that there was a new post, welcome back.
I hope you’ve all been having lovely summers. I have. I’ve mostly been living my life as if Continue reading
Or, as anyone who’s ever had to wait to find out if they’re pregnant will know: the best way to basically stop time. Two weeks? TWO WEEKS? It’s bloody interminable. And they say the best thing to do is distract yourself. So I did. I went skiing.
I know, I know, but chill the fuck out. I didn’t do anything hardcore, but this was a trip that had been in the diary for months. It was a group trip for a friend’s birthday that was going to include a load of kids and non-skiers and so I knew I could pootle around. I looked into all the advice — eat as you would if you were pregnant, avoid saunas, hot tubs, lifting heavy stuff, and anything that’s going to count as hardcore exercise. Continue reading
I was going to do the next cycle right after Christmas, buoyed by the success of the frozen blastocyst. But then… but then… but then I talked to a consultant, and we talked about whether — if I got another blastocyst from this cycle — to do a fresh transfer or to freeze. And there seemed no real reason NOT to do a fresh transfer. But then… but then the timings meant I’d be going straight from a fresh transfer into a two week skiing holiday, the first few days of which would have been with people who like to ski hard, fast and would have found it more than a little odd if I suddenly didn’t. Continue reading
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
… because obviously I haven’t fucked everything up. As Laura Jane Williams brilliantly put it once “none of us is fucking up like we think we are” — which is invariably true. So I thought I’d better just check in with a post to let you know that that was a low point and I have (for now, however temporarily) ascended from there.
On the one hand, I still haven’t got my period. I mean I’m pretty certain I’m not pregnant, Continue reading
So last time I wrote about the fact that I was taking Microgynon to help get rid of the cysts on my ovaries, and the idea was that I’d stop taking it, have a period/withdrawal bleed a few days after that, go for a scan and start another cycle.
But I haven’t. I stopped taking Microgynon nearly a week ago having taken it for about 5 weeks back to back and although Continue reading
Egged On 