Place

Okay, so I’m rather late to the healing salon party and in a way I don’t think it matters.

Knowing me, I’m probably not writing about quite the right thing, anyway, because gad knows I’ve spent the better part of seven years blogging about the wrong thing in as much detail as humanly possible. Some of the things I’ve gone and written about speculums are dead dodgy, for a start, and there was this time I turned them into a personal art project with mixed results and so on. I’ll leave somebody else to pull my back archives for speculum art because unfortunately I never did create the tag ‘speculum rabbit’ to celebrate the occasion and to be brutally honest the sheer weight of crap I’ve written over the years makes finding the post in question a bit to terrifying at this time of night.

In other words, life has phases, even virtual ones, and for those of you who found my coffee-fuelled ramblings at the frazzled Mama stage, this is my story.

I am a real person.

For those of you who prefer it straight,  these are my kids and this is my life. I have public blogs for both and am happy to share. I try not to get comment linkback here for obvious fanny-related posts aplenty along the IVF brick road way, but a friend acquired here is a friend. Period.

So, once upon a time I wrote about infertility. About dead babies. About my period. About cycle after cycle. About IVF. About miscarriages. About loss.

At the end of the day what I write about is my life so over the years what I write about has changed. My life has changed. I write about my ridiculously funny, wonderful, terrifying, rewarding, life-hogging job, my children, the family I finally have. I even write about my blasted home renovations or at least I plan to when I can get around it because goodness knows if I haven’t already bored the socks off of the last reader, then writing about paint colours should do the job for me.

I write about my life and that’s all I can do. I’m not good at other stuff. I like to write about my feelings, my day, the things I probably shouldn’t put on social media. I’ve done it for seven years and I guess this blog is seven years of me, in a slightly neurotic nutshell.

I don’t have the time I used to. I  adore working in obgyn, but it’s pretty much a lifestyle option. Accordingly, I have to pony up and pass some real ass big girly part doctor exams one of these days.  I also have three children.

Something has to give. I don’t write as often as the post come into my head. I simply can’t anymore.

But I write, anyway. Half the time i should really be doing something else, like folding the neverending pile of washing, but instead I write to you all.

Because I want to and it’s as simple as that.

I write about my infertility, about my losses, about my children, about my work and about ME. I can’t change it. I can’t sex it up any.  My place may not be squarely in the infertility blogosphere any more, but I am here nonetheless. I can’t say I fancy chasing fresh readers in Mamablogland because what I write isn’t conditional on how many people read. I just write. From both sides of the stirrups.

I plan to keep writing. I aim to be funny as piss if I can do so, because personally that’s about  the best coping strategy I have and goodness knows I’m going to be stressed enough over the next half a dozen years to need a little light relief. A vent. I don’t think there’ll be any new stuff about IVF. I could be wrong, but for so very many reasons I think that part of my life is done. But if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be on the other side of the stirrups, then I guess I’m your lass. The one with the bad reproductive past history.

I can’t control my audience, who and how many. It doesn’t matter.

I write because I want to do so and I thank you all, whatever brings you here and however many of you there may or may not be.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Bhaji is being a right bugger and has just escaped from her baby straightjacket for the third time in an hour and is duly flailing looking for the boobie. Yes, I am cussing myself for that particular sleep association right now.

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Be careful what you wish for.

Or, on how I feel like a total b!tch for ever, even briefly, wishing bad fortune on another.

Let me explain.

I don’t believe in magical thinking, really I don’t.

But.

A while back, I was reading the story of a woman on her first cycle of trying to conceive. In the manner of many carefree fertile types, her writing was chock full of optimistic references to the planned nursery, baby clothes, names etc etc. All the stuff that gets taken for granted by so many women, because for so many women the act of trying to get pregnant actually leads to pregnancy. Often quickly. In their bedroom. Without thousands of dollars in expense or, g-d forbid, having anybody other than their spouse put anything remotely near their cervix. Let alone a catheter right through it. Or blood test after blood test, injections, inseminations, ultrasounds, public exposure of one’s genitals, living life via reference to ‘cycle day’, loss and heartache.

It kind of rankled that this woman was taking her fertility for granted, even though she had every right to. After all, my experience, like those of most women in this community is (whilst more common that publicly acknowledged) not how the majority of people make their babies. It seems surreal, but for many, many couples their high school biology teachers were right.

To be brutally honest, it pissed me off.

Rather than doing the smart thing and stopping reading, I was drawn to her journal like onlookers to a particularly nasty car crash. I just had to keep picking at the scab that remains over the scar infertility and loss leaves, even after finally having children.

Pick. Talk of baby names.

Pick. Talk of which room the nursery will be.

Pick. Talk of gender. Talk of her husband as a father. Talk of lots of baby related stuff.

…….and she’d only JUST started trying….

and, of course, wouldn’t you know it but bammo, pregnant. First bloody go. Talk about bile in the back of the throat.

PIck. Pick. Bloody PICK.

Here is the bit I’m so dreadfully ashamed of.

My first reaction was to wish that something bad would happen, just so this woman would learn that you shouldn’t assume. That life isn’t that easy for some of us. That it’s somehow wrong to buy baby clothes before you’re even pregnant. That many of us suffer loss and heartache after heartache and that it isn’t always as easy as she’d had it.

Not nice, huh?

Then I stopped reading, because I was ashamed of just how uncharitably I reacted to the happy news of a stranger.

Recently, I started reading again.

She lost the baby, late in the second trimester.

Now, intellectually, I know that nothing I thought had anything to do with it, but boy do I feel like shit about even ever thinking it. Because now that it’s happened and this poor woman has had her world turned upside down I am mortified that I would ever ever think anybody deserved loss and pain like that, just because they took their fertility for granted.

Sigh. Not nice at all.

I expect limited sympathy.

I deserve very limited sympathy.

I’ve simply become morbidly convinced that something dreadful has to go wrong with this pregnancy, soon.

Every single time someone tells me everything looks good, I just can’t get my head around it. I’m not used to good news on fertility related matters, and I’m convinced on some level that they’re simply messing with me.

Let alone the fact that I am probably giving some of the most underwhelmed responses in history to the inevitable enthused ‘twins, wow’ that happens every darn time somebody new finds out. Cue external plastering of shit-eating grin whilst I cringe inside every single time I have to think about actually having real, live babies. I just can’t picture it.

Blergh.

Twelve weeks.

…and rapidly approaching Tuesday, and The Scan.

The Scan that fills me with terror.

The Scan that is giving me nightmares.

The Scan that I can only hope like hell won’t commit another pregnancy to end in disaster.

I can’t do this again, I just can’t.

I’m a regular ray of flipping sunshine today.

For the curious, I include a picture of what 12 week 0 days looks like with what I hope to hell is normally shaped twins:

Just what the world needs.

 

 Before you read…..click on the bee and Cross-Pollinate!

……………………………………….

Another whine from myself.

Hold your hats, ladies and gentleman.

Dear Universe,

May I raise a few points?

Whilst I do, truly, appreciate all the damn character building that my empty uterus brings me, I think it’s more than time for things to change.

I understand that throwing money at infertility hard enough and for long enough does NOT a  viable pregnancy entitle me, but quit it. I get that lesson, truly. I’ve had enough.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars in the last month for the pleasure of continued menstruation and it just doesn’t have the thrill that it used to. In fact if I were being completely honest with you, Universe, I’ve never particularly enjoyed leaking blood out of my whatsit at all. I’d be more than happy to save myself, say, the cost of 40 weeks of Kotex’s finest in exchange for the rather more significant cost of obstetric care. For a healthy baby this time, Universe.

Please do pay attention to my last point, and quit the sniggering. I thought I just saw you pass a note to Fate, and if it happens again, I’m going to make you come up to the front of the class and read it so’s that we all can have a giggle. I could do with a laugh.

Could you at least throw me a bone and give me a chemical pregnancy, if nothing else, whilst I wait for the Real Deal?

Hell, you could throw me the Real Deal, but lets be frank, I think we both know that’s not happening anytime soon.

I know that we’re not on the best of terms right now, so I’ll rephrase my request in terms that might render it more attractive to you. I need something new to cry about and a flutter of HCG would really fill the void right now.

Plain old infertility and dead baby thoughts are getting old,

cc. my empty uterus.

Yours,

Geohde.

P.S. Since we’re talking, I don’t suppose you could throw in a lining between, say, 9 and 14 mm on Monday? You can choose the number, but anything in that range would be just swell. Then I can start re-acquainting my vayjayjay with the progeste.groan in anticipation of a honest-to-goodness transfer.

If I ignore them, do they go away?

Sometimes I really disappoint myself.

After spending literally half the morning desperately trying to ratchet up enough care factor to turn up to my clinical placement and only barely succeeding, I left after a grand total of one hour’s attendance.

It’s particularly poor of me given the following facts:

• My unit is ‘recieving’ today, i.e. all new inhabitants of our Temple Of Ill Health come under our care. It’s the busiest day of the week and there is plenty of work to do.
• I should be practising admitting patients where-and-whenever the opportunity is given to me. Like today, for example.
• A rather useful session on the minor matter of CPR/arrest management had been scheduled for the afternoon.
• Hell, even if all of the above carried no weight, turning up would be a good distraction from sitting around at home being persistently infertile. I could do it in a hospital, instead.

Even though the above list constitutes more than adequate cause for a thorough bollocking of self-recrimination, those aren’t the reasons that I’m currently rather jacked off at myself.

The real reason lies in what happened immediately before I left. Let me share.

Half an hour after arriving, my pager went off and it was the secretary responsible for our water-tight timetabling. It turns out that the main reason that I did eventually drag my sorry ass in had been cancelled due to unwellness on the part of the session facilitator. Unfortunate, as it would have been rather useful, but I guess I’ll just have to get by without the benefit of my advanced life support/CPR training. Shame really.

In light of this deficiency, I post a small note to all with dicky tickers: it would probably be a good idea to plan around having your cardiac arrest somewhere other than right in front of me. Thank you in advance.

But this is not the end of the story.

As I was leaving to give my fellow students the devastating news that they now had a sunny afternoon off, the secretary added an explanation, ‘ Your facilitator’s just so pregnant right now I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to come in when she was sick’.

Talk about an unexpected punch in the gut. Broadsided by proxy by a pregnant woman . I’m quite sure that I stood with an open mouth gape for about twenty seconds before I got myself under control. I nearly cried right there in the corridor. Rather uncharitably, all I could think was ‘Bitch’ about this (sick, pregnant) woman for cancelling and having the temerity to gestate when I couldn’t.

Why on earth is every other woman in the world pregnant right now, and why, oh why do I always have to hear about it?

I went home upset, full of self recrimination about being such a self centered, thoroughly self-indulgent, infertile loser.

I really have to get over it, it’s not like I can expect people to avoid breeding just to spare my feelings.

Nurse Oh

Ignoring the reality that I’m in the dreaded two week wait takes some effort.

One would think that the logical course of action for a slightly-underprepared student with rather frightening final exams coming up soon would be to throw myself into my work.

But no.

For once and for all conclusively proving that I really am the world’s laziest creature, I choose to blog instead.

I’ve said it before, but I truly mean it when I say that those who live in my part of the world should try to stay well for, oh, about the first eight years after I graduate. You don’t want me as your doctor. Goodness knows, you can ask Dr Google as well as I can, although I do boast a rather impressive typing speed courtesy of about a decade of essay writing.

Anyway, I’d like to tell a tale from the day of the transfer and, like the ones that the average grandfather prefers to launch into ‘About that summer in 1949,or hang on, was it 1950 because your father had just been born and Dot moved house and that’s right I remember now it was 1950 after all, but what was I telling you about?‘ it will be dull.

Feel free to tune out at will as I bore you with the transfer of 2007 and Nurse Oh.

Nurse Oh had the responsibility of taking me though the pre-transfer standard educational routine about behaving like a pregnant woman after the transfer, i.e. eschewing anything remotely fun until vices are required due to miserable failure. Or, possibly, vices are not required due to elation over actual success.

If the Pregnancy Gods are listening, I’d like the latter option, please. While we’re talking, just to clear up any lingering confusion from the last time, why-oh-why did you bastards not pencil in viable baby, not could survive to birth only baby on my last request slip? They’re not equivalent items. Please pay more careful attention in the future. Thank you.

When Nurse Oh reached the shiny listeria brochure, instead of the smart option of meekly thanking her and taking the damn thing, I spoke. I really have to curb that habit. My voice stupidly offered ‘It’s ok, I’ve been pregnant before, I remember the drill’.

Rather tactfully, although slightly awkwardly, she enquired if the pregnancy was ‘successful’. I guess that it’s a better class of response than an enthusiastic ‘How old is she/he?’ but I would have rather not discussed the whole mess whilst on tenterhooks about embryo-ness. My fault.

Anyhow, I’m quite able to offer a pared down statement about the anencephaly. Most health care providers get the gist and move on rapidly. Unfortunately she didn’t and I decided to eliminate all confusion by helpfully offering three words ‘lethal birth defect’.

Her response?

‘Oh’.

I guess it’s a bit of a conversation killer.

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Protected: Getting soft in my dotage

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When normal just can’t be.

I’ve been in a funk since approximately 5pm yesterday. That’s 24 whole hours of self indulgent weeping and “I can’t go on with this” palaver that my darling husband is going to have to add to his list of grievances when he finally snaps and gives me the old heave-ho (I *think* I’m joking on that point, but I’m really pushing the man lately).

The chromosomes for PBWCLEW came back. Normal.

Clearly the baby was, most emphatically, not normal. The only conclusion I can draw with my I’m-skating-awfully-close-to-clinical-depression-and-only-do-negative-cognition brain is the following.

I turned a normal baby with normal DNA into one missing the most critical part of it’s central nervous system. Into the kind of baby that is still parts of folklore and superstition in parts of the world. Into a baby that still has the word “monster” attached to the definition in some sources.

I dread to think what that says about me….I think a date with Zoloft is looking more and more like a good thing to do. I haven’t mentioned the eating part till now, but that’s not going so well, I’m not sleeping and I’m full of self recrimination and negative thoughts. At least I still have insight, mercifully, that I’m behaving like a total twat….

Blah

Just quick note to make it clear that I am still alive, and attempting to function.

With varying degrees of success.

Sleep is a plus/minus event. Eating is a bit the same.

As for school, I can hi-light a set of notes just beautifully. In so may pretty pretty colours. Ask me something practical about a sensible approach to a seriously sick kid and I just cry.

I’m guessing this isn’t the sort of behaviour that will turn me into any sort of employable doctor in the near future, no matter how much they bash on about the new age touchy-feely-empathic medical scene.

I also have to apply for jobs next year, which is another blow, since I was kinda planning to have a baby instead. Much less fun this way.

Blech! And furthermore Blah..

Function-Dysfunction-Unfunction-Refunction

I don’t have time to say much, and really to be honest, another post about how I’m emotionally up and down like the proverbial stripper’s knickers doesn’t add much.

I am trying so very hard to pick up the pieces and get back into everything.

School has been tough, I went back less than a week after the death of the baby, and am not taking much in, nor am I able to think clinically about a patient. I can however look stupid and the go off and cry really, really well.

It really will be touch and go as to whether I can really do this term (followed by obstetrics in a few weeks…), no matter how tough I like to think I am.

Did I mention that I started running again less than 24 hours post op?

Trust me, the olympic team currently have NOTHING to be worried about. I think beached whales have moved faster and with more grace than I.

I even keep my, fairly reliable, thrice daily cries private.

The toilet and I have a good counselling service going on. Hey, there’s a seat, tissues and privacy, perfect!

It’s the oddest stuff that cuts me, when I least expect it. A friend commented that I was looking good and had lost weight. Isn’t that otherwise a dream thing to hear?

In my case, it’s NOT funny how, as I have been billed by the OB, a ‘second trimester labour’ and not eating through shear stress can do that. Why, I’ve lost inches off of my abdomen. Gah.

I must get it together enough to a)physically have a chance of getting pregnant again which = eating and sleeping without waking 3x per night, and b)salvage my career before that, too gets suctioned down the proverbial gurgler and gets post mortem-ed by a bunch of strangers.

At the end of all my, as usual, complaining, I must mention that those who know the gory story, by and large, have been wonderful and if anyone can think of something USEFUL and SPECIFIC to do with all those well meant offers of support (i.e…..why yes, thank you, I could really do with……), let me know. I guess a new car is out of the question?

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