T-3/7, and counting.

I guess I better clarify the title, although those of you unfortunate enough to be familiar with medical slang probably get my drift already.

Basically when you see numbers looking a bit like fractions, the gist of it is that the ‘denominator’ helps you work out the time frame the first number is referring to.

Clear as mud?

So, if the ‘denominator’ is something like 24, this implies that the ‘numerator’ refers to an amount of hours. Because there’s (with rare exceptions involving the start and end of daylight savings) 24 hours in a day. Geddit?

I could have referred to 72/24, but that would involve writing two whole extra digits and nobody in health care, bar the social workers who like to write novels about the average complicated situation they are requested to somehow simplify, writes so much as a punctuation mark more than they absolutely have to.

Trust me on this one.

Nobody reads most of it, anyway, for a start.

I’m assuming by now you’ve twigged that the 3/7 above refers to three DAYS.

Yes, there’s seven of them in a week although I often hope for a bonus one in order to get stuff that needed doing half a century ago DONE already.

Three days until I go back to work full time. Yippee.

Then I can call people ‘SOB’ (short of breath, really) in their file and get away with it. That one’s a genuine legit acronym, however I should warn you that all the ones in the link below are rather less kind.

 I have never actually used the abbreviation ‘PAFO’ (pissed and fell over) to explain an invigorating alcohol related piece of stupidity although I have often wanted to do so. Oh, and while I’m on a theme here, alcohol is better known as ‘ETOH’ to us cool types in the know. We like to pretend this means our patients won’t understand that we’re calling them flagrant boozers right in front of their faces in the middle of the ward round.

Many of the boozers in question have done enough high-school chemistry to work that one out, by the way, but usually they don’t bother denying it. The more experienced frequent flyers hate getting the shakes and know we give them free beer with dinner in order to stop them having fits on the ward.

Oh and some tasty benzodiazepines. Fitting patients are untidy buggers, really, and it’s bad PR (Okay, ‘publicity’ and not ‘per rectum’ in this instance). Lots of sheet changing and all that. Annoys the nurses no end.

Oddly enough, I had absolutely no intention of writing so many vaguely revolting things about work today and yet I seem to have done so quite effortlessly.

Perhaps it is time to go hang out the washing, or something. That only downside of that plan is it does mean I’d have to get IN the lot that’s been ‘drying’ for about half a week already.

In the countdown-mode meantime if I can get through today without my very nice but overly enthusiastic and a bit terminally misdirected neighbours ‘borrowing’ my spawn in order to use the multiple birth freak show as a conversation piece for their visiting friends, or as the sole entertainment on a video call to family back home, that would be nice.

They’re not circus animals, you know.

Apart from anything else, I am becoming heartily sick of the incredible amount of shit the poor kids are doing after being fed a non-stop diet of bananas and chocolate all day. They’re literally burning their poor little arses off and our nappy budget is feeling the fecal strain.

Also, since half of the plants and decorations in MY house and garden now seem to be staring right back at me when I go over to their house to retrieve said chocolate-covered-shit-machines, it’s starting to get a little creepy. I keep worrying that one of them will don a bad blonde wig and go for LS’s eyeball with a stiletto heel at this rate.

Actually, lest I sound like a raging bitch, I shall add a small disclaimer. They ARE quite nice people, and I have thought of doing similar things to LS before myself.

Except I don’t own any stilettos because I walk like a newborn giraffe when I try.

Shopping, or how I have my priorities all screwed up.

Please click on the logo, and join in this year’s cross-pollination effort! I’m taking names for another week or so, and then I’ll be emailing out matches. It really is a good way to get involved and make new bloggy friends. Promise. All welcome, just let me know whether your blog includes children or not…..

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Really, I do.

Let me explain.

From my point of view, all shopping is not created equal.

Grocery acquisition, whilst mildly interesting at times, is not really something I covet. I don’t look forward to it, I don’t browse aisles dreamily examining the latest in fabric softener technology. I really couldn’t give the proverbial rat’s re.ctal cavity about the various merits of the fifty kinds of dishwashing tablets I have to choose from.

I am a list shopper.

I write a list, of things I need. No extraneous items.

I then go in, get a trolley, and march around the aisles (occasionally taking out the odd shopper who fails to notice my determined trolley-wielding charge) until I have my list.

Then I go home, pack it all away (including an anal degree of organising perishables by expiry date) and bask in the satisfaction that I won’t have to do it again for a week.

But lately things have changed, and I don’t think it’s simply because I get to dump the Terrible Twosome on Long Suffering and escape for the duration. I’m quite attached to the tiny tyrants, and I’d much rather spend time with them than in grocery purgatory.

Given the change in my purchasing habits, I’m guessing it’s because of  the you-know-what’s rather than in spite of them. I’ve become one of those painfully slow moving g-damn aisle browsers who won’t commit to either one side or the other, completely oblivious to the presence of others. I used to cause occasional podiatric damage to people like that, with a well applied shopping trolley to the absent-minded foot.

I buy so much baby crap in my absent minded travels (Ooooh, Butt Paste comes in so many varieties these days….) that I think an intervention may be in order. Or a firm thwack aside the head when I ignore my list, or we just may starve Chez MII.

Yesterday I came home with three kinds of nappies, two new types of bottles, a swag of clothes that won’t fit either child for at least twelve months (But! Were On Sale! Bargain! Whee!). And a bunch of bananas and three tomatoes for the dinner of the adult quotient of the household.

For the rest of the week.

With a now emptied bank account.

Um.

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Clickity-click…….

Crazy talk.

A.k.a. a post about how I must have flipped my lid.

I think I’ve blown a fuse.

In my head.

Or possibly, perhaps, maybe, years of leaving the Baby Making mental switch flicked on Overdrive whilst churning my wheels frantically through oodles of fertility treatment has permanently jammed the thing. Circuits inside my daft head related to all things conceptual have melted, and the net effect is somewhat disturbing.

To make myself rather more clear, I shall resort to bullet points:

• I have twins.
• They are very young.
• Two my g-d I love them but damn it’s hard work babies.
• Two I remember when I used to sleep full time 24-hour on call jobs.
• Lest I forget the above points, TWO.
• Oh, and I’m really tired. I keep forgetting that only because sleep deprivation is a real killer in the cognitive performance department. I’m like that poor goldfish who swims around it’s rather small bowl all day with a five second memory span- constantly admiring the same pretty piece of sea-plant, if you get my drift. To be brutally honest, I keep finding old pieces of paper (usually several days old and in a random pocket, or once even the fridge) covered with important notes-to-self about the likely name of the current day of the week and a tick box for items such as ‘shower’ and ‘changed underwear’ . Power to me for at least ranking clean unmentionables, but clearly things are not easy Chez MII.
• So, refocusing, because I am rather scattered these days, I (to obnoxiously publicly remind myself, again) have the thing(s) that I was really after. Got them. Lucky (about to be deservedly belted for mentioning the you-know-what’s so many times in one post) me etc. Life thereafter. Isn’t that nice? I can close down the blog and go home now, right?
• Logically, and with what little sanity remains, clearly I don’t really precisely need to be, um, (to resort to goldfish analogy again) fishing for any more.

So could somebody please scream in one ear that I have the you-know-what’s? Loudly?

Louder than that, please. If my eardrum isn’t bleeding, it wasn’t good enough.

You see, all that time really really  obsessionally paying attention to the likelihood of egg-action means that it’s almost impossible for me not to notice that some might (as far as I can tell in the circumstances) be imminent. Years of knowing how precious these opportunities are has me reflexively wanting to, not to put too fine a point on it, shag.

Clearly I am greedy (and need to be belted), mad (and need to be belted), suicidal (and really need a good old fashioned thick ear) and finally an eternal cockeyed optimist (because who am I kidding, it’s not like it would work).

Ack……

Green eyes.

So, I think I have a teeny, tiny problem with jealousy.

Of what (now), you might reasonably ask…

Bumps.

Geebers knows why, but I’m jealous of all the pregnant bumps I see at work.

For the record, clearly a lot of the women I work with have either

• A: engaged in multiple IVF cycles back to back lately (actually, probably just me), or
• B: had actual s-e-x and got pregnant the storybook way that I refuse to believe actually works (surely they’re hiding something), or
• C: sat on the wrong chair, drank from the wrong cup or had a casual shag with the wrong workmate at the office christmas party (or whatever it is that causes swathes of women in the one office to all get knocked up at once).

I have a lot of bumps to glower at.

Yes, I know that I’m pregnant and newsflash to my bitter neurones that means that I actually have one too, but I’m still jealous.

Big bump, small round bump, wobbly-bloaty-is-she-pregnant-bump, huge-how-does-she-even-walk-bump, I’m jealous of ‘em all.

I’m sure that most of ‘em are nicer than mine.

For the record, I don’t know why I’m in such a flaming rush to acquire a more impressive foot-view-obscuring device since I already look like THIS as of fourteen weeks, but there you have it.

Pregnant and irrational. Rather like my non-pregnant and irrational state.

P.S. A small public service announcements to all endone seeking junkies who haunt my cover shifts with complaints of severe pain from their self-inflicted facial scratches. Sod off. Actually, f-ck off. I’m not stupid, so stop taking me away from actual sick people with your lame whinging for addictive painkillers you clearly don’t need. Thank you.

Morning, redux.

Somehow, I don’t think the smarty-pants addition of the ‘redux’ renders the post title any less unimaginative but it’s the best I can do when I’ve literally spent the entire night dreaming of dunking an endless conga-line of wee sticks.

Let me tell you a story.

I believe I’ve told a similar one in the past, but I’m never a woman to pass up an opportunity to anonymously embarrass my darling spouse on-line.

Winding back to around ten thirty last night, i.e. the time several hours after dark has fallen at which a premature Nanna such as myself likes not to be out raging, but tucked snugly in bed (furiously counting sheep if needs be).

From the bedroom I hear a noise…clink, clink….pause…..clink….snuffle, giggle….clink.

My suspicions raised, I call out the following ‘Oy, you daft prick …Oh love of my life, light of my day and apple of my eye, have you taken a stil.nox again?’

The answer is in the affirmative. I get up and investigate. He’s stacking all the small change he can rustle up from around the apartment (including a thorough fishing expedition down the back of the couch) in random arrangements on the floor tiles. Those damn sleeping tablets have a lot to answer for.

‘I’m making a mirage….erm frieze…..um, compendium. You know‘,  he helpfully explains. Muttering ‘That’s nice, dear’ under my breath I take him by the hand and lead him to Bedfordshire.

But it’s never that easy under the influence of stil.nox.

Once horizontal, he won’t shut up. Gentle shusshings and absence of verbal encouragement to continue notwithstanding. Cue eleven thirty. Clearly I’m going to need to do something.

So I ask him to zip it and be a good boy and go to sleep. Please.

He sulks, promptly forgets what I just asked him to do, and starts up, again.

I respond with the ever-charming ‘You’re doing it again……talking‘, and roll over. The one bonus to stil.nox is the amnesia, so I doubt he’ll remember just how rude I was. Sleep is important, after all.

Moments later I feel air flutter against my skin, but no sound. I open my eyes. He’s performing what I assume is sign language. It’s a pity the closest the man’s ever gotten to actually knowing how to sign  is watching the video clip for Y.M.C.A. I have no idea what he’s getting at, and even less curiosity as it is now midnight. I close my eyes again.

I sense him gesticulating away to the epithelium of my closed eyelids for a while and then, lo, he went to sleep.

Thank goodness for that.

Morning.

Morning has indeed broken on this side of the pond, the proverbial sparrow has passed gas, and so I have crawled my unattractively scruffy pyjama clad, scarecrow-hair-styled, coated-detritus-of-night-mouth-breathing, lefover-mascara’d-face and (to really be honest) slightly smelly self out of bed.

I (obviously) went straight to the loo, concentrated for long enough to wee into a cup and not on my hands, dunked one of those clever little strip shaped HCG assays into it (whatever will they think of next, I wonder?) and finished my ablutions.

Then I made coffee, as is my habit, and wandered into the study.

I turned on the computer to a veritable shitstorm (and I mean that as a compliment, let me make it quite clear) of suddenly very time-zone aware comments observing that, holidays notwithstanding, I should be outta bed and ready to goddamn update already. In fact I’ve only read a selection, such was the power of the repeated orders.

So.

I’ve checked this morning’s pee-stick and there’s still a line. To my oh-please-g-d eyes it looks if anything about the same as yesterday’s, certainly not clearly darker but not appreciably lighter either. The sod. I also observe that the pee stick from two days ago has faded into near invisibility, rendering accurate obsession very difficult.

I’m simply not sure.

It is  four days since my last petite dose of Pregnyl, but I’ve had rather a lot of the stuff cumulatively over the last fortnight, and I would expect it to take a while longer than usual to fade away. From recollection I still had positive pregnancy tests that only very slowly gave up the second line (over weeks and weeks) after PBWCLEW. I just don’t know.

This is precisely why one should never wee on sticks after Pregnyl, it really screws with the hope gland as well as giving one’s confusion centre a veritable field day.

In summary, I am either:

• A: Pregnant, and am picking up slowly fading Pregnyl and early-low HCG in an ungodly combination.
• B: Not pregnant, and picking up the very slow urinary decay that is the result of a bucket-load of fake pregnancy hormone.
• C: Pregnant, but on the chemical end of the spectrum +/- the Pregnyl dimension.

My tits are still plumping for option ‘B’ with the firm addition of option D: ’self-deluding fool’.

Only time shall tell.

Om (oh-fuck-oh-fuck-oh-FUCK).

Could it be?

Do I dare grant hope access to my soft underbelly, risking painful evisceration on the say-so of a few suspect Internet cheapie pee sticks?

Pee sticks, you will note, that most emphatically state that they are not quantitative (as I am attempting to abuse them) , just qualitative. They claim to provide a Y/N answer, nothing more. They ONLY officially have the power to divine whether my urine has (or has not as is so often the case) greater than exactly 20 mIU/L of the beta subunit of HCG. 

They certainly very clearly encourage rabid loonies like myself who pee on them with an indeterminate amount of Pregnyl in their system to get a life and wait for a blood beta due to ‘uninterpretable’ results. They’re so right, the killjoys, but it doesn’t stop me pissing away, noting the concentration of my urine, and comparing non-comparable lines until my eyeballs cross.

Here’s the thing, although before I go any further, please don’t throw the ‘P’ word around in any form because I’m quite sure that in a few days I will bleed and feel like a total fool who cried ‘pregnant’ (just in time for an especially joyous festive season).

• I’m currently 8DP3DT, which on it’s own would render any line suspect. It’s early, kids, dayum early. I’ve also had several lots of Pregnyl which can fully, reliably, account for the line without invoking embryo(s).
• I’m currently 8DP3DT, and my last Pregnyl (1500IU) was three days ago.
• My experiment to see two-lines-at-all-pee, in the post below, was at 7DP3DT in the afternoon with dilute wee.

Here’s the nail biting kicker. The lines today (morning and evening) are darker than yesterday. Still quite light, but darker nonetheless, where I would expect lighter for obvious reasons. I suspect that it’s simply because yesterday’s test was with dilute wee and has also faded overnight, but oh boy…..what if?

I’ve sensibly (although reluctantly given the unlikelihood of a genuine BFP) backed away from tonight’s naughty consolation for a not-yet-over bung cycle, wine, and I shall be on tenterhooks until I can expend urine on a stick tomorrow. It’s crazy though, right? Wee sticks are never positive in the afternoon so early, there’s just not enough HCG to fight that battle until 13-14 DPO on average.

I know this is all probably variation in wee and test showing the same old Pregnyl sloooowly departing, but…

Holy crap, what if?

I’m reading far too much into a test never designed to be abused in this way, and I fully realise it’s completely fucking unreliable given the uncontrollable variables of rate of elimination of HCG, varying concentration of wee and varying sensitivity of each stick, but it’s all I’ve got. I’m so far out on a limb with this one, I’m seriously in danger of completely running out of tree.

To conclude with a statement of guarded self protection, I’m quite sure the line will be lighter again tomorrow, neatly dashing my raised-at-the-last-gasp hopes, and reconfirming that the Universe is a total Bitch. After all, my tits are pretty sure that I’m not knocked up, and if you can’t trust your funbags, what can you trust?

Just promise not to say ‘I told you so’ when it turns out that I’m not pregnant, as events up to this point strongly suggest.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. I’m scared. I so goddamn want this to work, I just really don’t think it will. Even an unreliable hint of a possibility has me absolutely packing myself.

P4? Mere piffle, my dear.

After being on the receiving end of so damn many blood draws in the last month (fortunately mostly competent) I think I almost qualify to claim status as a semi-professional pin cushion.

My darling spouse, ever un-tactful, observed that my arms had begun to take on the appearance of someone who, to put it delicately, had developed a vested interest in repeatedly accessing their own venous system for nefarious purposes. To put it rather less delicately he said that I was starting to look like a junkie what with all the bruises and half-healed needle holes.

I shall certainly not easily forget the lesson learned:

• A: Having so many tests and therefore numbers potentially available to obsess over, plus
• B: Demanding said numbers at every daily fraught wait by the phone, calculates to
• A + B = C: Rabid anxiety.

I have surprised myself by discovering that it is actually true that living in an information vacuum, whilst worrying in itself, is less worrying than hanging and hanging and hanging on result after result after result. Especially when they’re bad.

I’m beginning to get why my clinic plumps for the limited monitoring approach where possible, because it gives less opportunities to freak the hell out. I’m never a woman to miss a golden opportunity to panic.

But for the fact that my talented biology renders predictor kits unreliable I could have just peed on a stick daily, waiting for two lines and happily stuck to familiar territory obsessing over the relative darkness. Granted, the prolonged delay to ovulation would have resulted in no small amount of angst, but it still would have been preferable to the roller-coaster ride from hell that this cycle became pre-transfer.

My, ever lovely although probably sick to the back teeth of me, RE has been thinking along the same lines.

She’s not ordering a mid-luteal P4 and she told me this in the context of a bang-on observation that to do so would add to my worry.

I’d say that she’s a mind reading genius but I suspect the twitching eyelid and wringing of hands during transfer gave it away, clued in by my insane quoting of every single test result (out of a field of lots) in chronological order complete with panicked interpretation.

As for the transfer itself, she used less lube on the speculum this time (for which the cleanliness of my underwear is eternally grateful), but she did crank it open eye-wateringly-suppressed-gasp wide.

I mean, ouch, my vag.ina is nulliparous (along with the rest of me) and it resents being stretched to such painful dimensions. How painful, you ask? You probably could have driven a small truck into my pelvis via the opening created after first having built a full sized petrol station and rest stop in there for the damn thing to refuel. As long as you had applied for the appropriate council planning and zoning permits first, of course.

Heck, to put it another way, I’m sure the yodellers amongst you would have got a ripper of an echo in there.

Needless to say I was very relieved that she ‘took the pressure off’ before the embryologist (who again felt the need to stare slightly too intensely at my business end) confirmed that catheter was clear. I just hope that things down there return to the dimensions I know, and my husband loves, is all.

So, returning to my earlier point, my arms shall be unmolested for another twelve days and I’m just going to have to go for nebulous terror over focused, goal directed panicking about my P4.

Wish me luck.

Oh my g-d, make it stop….

The cycle from hell continues, unabated.

Due to my teeny tiny problem with an elevated baseline LH that I may have referred to in passing, probably connected to some permutation of the words fuck-this-for-a-joke, ovulation predictors are a cruel, cruel tease. Who the hell knows if that almost-as-dark-as-control-line really means something except in retrospect when it’s totally useless.

Yet I still use them, because when the DO turn unequivocally positive, I know that I’ve probably succeeded in pulling an actual egg out of my arse ovary. That’s when the obsessional temperature-measuring takes over, of course.

Can I level with you?

The thing is, apart from the reason of prolonged tension waiting to find out if my cycle shall be binned after all, this cycle is totally doing my head in because I keep getting these patches of, well, discharge that suggest I’m suspiciously well oestrongenised. If you get what I mean. If you don’t, Google ‘spinnbarkeit’. Some of the links even come back here, amusingly enough.

Then after all the leaky-whatsit excitement (of course) I have yet another set of crap bloods or a totally shite scan and promptly come crashing down to earth in a thud of who-cares-if-the-wee-sticks-have-nearly-said-for-sweet-christ’s-sake-SHAG three days in a row? My ovaries are totally faking it for a screw, the tarts.

Ironically enough I’ve been so dispirited with the whole process that we haven’t bothered to shag. For about four days and counting, and now sod’s law is fully operational in that my vayjayjay is doin’ the ovulation tease again and my spouse is working nights.

I did offer to go to his work to screw, but since it’s not in a particularly safe area and I’d prefer to be pregnant with my husband’s baby, perhaps not.

Bollocks.

Given the adverse circumstances, I’m bound to ovulate tonight since the universe does really, really have it in for me.

Finally, yes, yes, YES  before you (quite reasonably) point out the obvious matter of this being an IVF Thaw cycle and the whole male-factor bizzo rendering a shag largely pointless anyway, I do actually realise that if I ovulate the main goal is to transfer embryos that I already have on ice (rather like expensive champagne). But please don’t tell me that you wouldn’t screw your optimistic brains out too, just in case, if you were in my shoes. If you could. 

If your husband wasn’t working nights in an unsavoury part of town, of course.

They meant it.

Let me divulge the rather attractive list of side effects that my luteal-propping progesterone has the power to inflict. Fresh from the ‘mouth’ of the information leaflet:

Very common

• Cramps, abdominal pain, perineal pain
• Headache
• Breast pain
• Constipation
• Feelings of severe sadness and unworthiness, feeling emotional, sleepiness.

Common

• Bloating.
• Dizziness.
• Vaginal discharge.
• Diarrhoea, vomiting.
• Painful sex.

I immediately dismissed many of these items as either not especially connected with the known pharmacology of progesterone at the dose provided, or just plain weird. Who the hell gets diarrhoea AND constipation?

In an interesting aside, the most common reported side effects of PLACEBO are headache, dizziness, nausea, and constipation or diarrhoea. Let’s hear it for placebo effect and placebo SIDE-effect.

But the mood item, despite my scoffing? Surprisingly accurate. Just ask my long suffering spouse. In fact, it should be entered more accurately as ’raving madwoman’.

Let me explain.

I’ll start with the dreams. The nightmares I’ve been having are intense enough to make me get out of bed three hours early. I just can’t stand the ritual mental self-flagellation all night. I’m exhausted and yet I cannot rest.

More superficially, yesterday I couldn’t for the life of me find a single, solitary, way to be happy with my appearance before leaving the house. I didn’t leave because I couldn’t bear people to see me. For absolutely no objective reason. Realistically, other than some ovarian-enlargement-and-progesterone-bowel-dilatation induced gut bloating, nothing has changed in the way I look.  I will never be a supermodel, but I’m not completely offensive to the visual system.

This sudden degree of histrionic over-reaction is most odd on my part. My hair usually looks like I’ve gone through a hedge backwards, so why this would cause me such intense psychological distress now, I cannot fathom.

It gets better.

I, totally randomly, cried in the car on the way to work this morning. If you asked me why, well, to my eternal confusion I have absolutely no idea.

Even the very reasonable point that we have plenty of embryos for FET’s before another full cycle gives me no mental relief. I have had visions of all 11 embryos biting uterine dust over the next six months and my RE cheerfully telling me that I would have be better flushing them down the loo since it would so clearly be a better gestator than I.

Yet oddly, I’m not truly all that worried about this cycle. It either works, or it doesn’t. Simple.

In summary, I am a totally insufferable, self-absorbed, pathetic mess and I know it.

Gotta have faith…

As the rather eccentric public-convenience-and-shrubbed-garden-alfresco-sex loving George Michael famously sang.

If I just be good and don’t over-think everything, keep taking my FSH and hang on until Monday, all will be well, right?

Yeah, I thought so too. Screw that.

My crop might not be super-bumper, but let’s face facts. I currently have more eggs in my ovaries than I would normally make in a year. It’s making me decidedly nervous.

I’d like them to stay there until retrieval, please.

Having passed through the other standard fears of an IVF cycle, I am on to the next-stage (?retrieval) obsessive emotion.

Standard fears, you ask? I would be delighted to elaborate (with examples):

1. Baseline angst. Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, is it okay if I spot on the pill?

2. Groundless worry. Eeeekkkkk, I don’t think down-regulation will happen to me. How can this drug which feels like it does nothing really actually work. My ovaries must have resistant superpowers. Oh my GOD the downreg scan is going to suck. Over before it’s begun. Woe is me.

3. Shame. I just bled like a haemophiliac all over durex’s lubricated best on a vaginal ultrasound probe, and I was down-regulated to boot.

4. Fear. Oh shite, shite, shite. The FSH won’t work. I’ll have no eggs. It’s menopause for me, baby. Retrieval? Retrieval, are you on drugs?

5. Amazed embarrassment. Eggs? Holy crap! You mean this shit works?

5. Panic. That piss-weak GNRH analogue couldn’t possibly stop my Super-Ovaries-Laden-With-Potential-Babies from gently releasing their payload into my peritoneal cavity before retrieval.

6. Acceptance. Yes, Virginia, you shall have needles perforating your vagina in search of ovary. Soon.

7. Fear, redux. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Will I even make an embryo? Two sounds too good to possibly happen. What do you mean I have to decide how many to shove back in-utero?

8. Panic, redux. How the hell do they even stay in there? Maybe if I can squeeze my thighs just so my future child(ren) won’t fall out of my cervix and bite the dust in my underwear before the Big Blood Beta?

9. If any of the above concerns actually happen. Alcohol.

I’m at number 5 presently. Do you recognise the previous four? To my shame, I do.

What did I do about it? I present the evidence:

 

Yes folks, I peed on an OPK.

Yes, it was negative.

Protected: I’m truly screwed, and not in a good way.

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Protected: My body is an, err, wonderland?

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I *really* need a hobby

Today I reached a new low.

Despite a rather reliable up-the-you-know-what scan on Monday, I’m managing to delude myself that I will ovulate soon. Somehow. Who knows, if relaxing doesn’t do the trick, maybe concentrating real hard will do it.

So, for the last several days despite the mantra ‘NOTHING over 10mm, YOU FOOL’ running through my head, I’ve been expending urine on OPK’s.

So what, you quite reasonably ask? After all, I purchased such an extravagant collection purely so I could get the urge out of my system.

As an aside, the urge to POAS in my case is kind of like restless leg syndrome, but with wee. It just builds up until I can’t deny it anymore. So I POAS. And feel better for all of 5 minutes. Until the urge gradually increases to the point that only repeating a POAS will make me feel better. It is really some kind of miracle that I’m only sullying two perfectly good OPK’s with my (non-lutenised) urine a day.

Anyway, to get to the rather sad point. This morning I even sat and watched the bloody thing dry. I couldn’t walk away from the OPK and let it do it’s thing, even for a minute. You know, just in case I miss that elusive second pink line.

Urgh.

I lied….

I know that I promised to jabber on about all sorts of matters both major and minor today.

But, to be honest, I’m going to plead off one more day.

I can happily say ‘Bite me’ over any actual upset caused, because I’m pretty sure that nobody’s managed to do that over the Internet just yet. So I’m safe from any toothy attacks. But you may curse my lazy typing hands. Go on, I don’t mind.

If it helps (and any of you are, in actuality, disappointed by my failure to deliver), just think about the following.

Tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about that (hopefully) magic follicle, having seen it in person. And (also hopefully) I’ll be bouncing around with elation at the guarantee of gainful employment next year. METH or FAITH? Who knows….

At the moment, however, I’m all kinds of computered-out and my four eyes are significantly squarer than they were before I attempted to read, and comment on, each and every single blog-roundup post.

It took me all day, and I lost track a couple of times, but I think I just about managed it. If you’re reading this entry and indignantly thinking that I didn’t leave a comment for you, I sincerely apologise. I truly meant to.

In summary, dear reader, tomorrow I will have something worth reading to say. Relatively speaking, of course, compared to this particular entry.

So many blogs, such little time….

Insert mental image of Geohde. Still in pyjamas. One hand on hip, the other airily waving her second coffee mug of the day as she inches away from a conversation-ee towards the internet…….

You know, I’d love to stop and chat about several things I’m just gagging to blather on about. I have, as usual, both plenty to bore you with and not enough time to do the typing to achieve that aim.

Usually my excuse is doctor related, as in it takes a freaking load of time pretending to learn how to be one whilst also trying my guts out to get pregnant, have children, and thus be the first doctor to retire before even beginning. But I digress….

Today, although I do not have a note from my mother, please accept the following apology. I may be some time, to quote a certain historical figure, reading the Grand Roundup Celebration list and doing my darnedest to comment on all and sundry entries. In addition to my usual extensive blog-perusing (yes I’m nosy, I love to know what you’re all up to).

Perhaps tomorrow, I will be able to discuss just how I feel about the following items.

1. The fact that apparently (rather counter-intuitively) infertility can run in families after all. My sister is also heading to IVF.
2. My follicle scan on Monday, and hey, who knows, maybe I will have the golden follicle (capable of fertilisation) this time?
3. My future career being decided for me, precisely one hour after the scan, when doctor jobs for next year are officially released.
4. The, never ceasing to amaze me, ways in which Google thinks my blog is helpful to others. Whom I strongly suspect would not agree given that they’re mostly looking for porn related items.

Announcing them in advance gives you, the reader, the option of deciding whether you’d like to stop by Chez MI after all.

If you don’t, I understand. The Muzak is always this bad, the chairs just horribly uncomfortable, and the newspapers old, old, old.

I’d leave, but I’m stuck here waiting in sweaty fear over both that damn scan and my future employment.

Do you think I’ll have enough?

I present to you the fruits of an infertile woman’s idea of online bargain shopping.

All blissfully complete with the conspicuous absence of the inevitable ‘Why do you need so damn many?‘ from a pimply cashier.

My latest indulgence:

  

Industrial quantities of ovulation predictors, and somewhat whimsically, pregnancy tests. I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit that when I realised that purchasing by the hundred was cheaper per unit than 50 or 20, I figured what the heck? I’m in this game for the long haul, so I may as well be prepared.

These, I think rather exciting, urine dipping sticks were only yesterday delivered to my door in a discreet brown envelope that in no way screamed out ‘I’m trying (really hard) to get pregnant’. Apart from the great big sticker “BabyWishes” on the front. That just might have given the game away.

I prefer this method of test acquisition to the alternative option, despite the postal indiscretion.

I’ve had enough of emptying the paltry supply of OPK’s from my local pharmacy and hungrily looking about for more. They barely stock them because, apparently (and I’ve asked), apart from my frenzied purchases, these kits sit on the shelf un-loved. Far away from their intended home in a cosy warm cup of female human urine. Such a travesty.

Clearly my local attempted pregnant-ers are complete amateurs. Let’s not reflect too hard on the fact that they seem to succeed despite the lack of fancy wee-sticks. Whereas I, a seasoned professional when it comes to everything you can pee on for 5 seconds and then lay flat, do not.

Anyhow, never again will I have to whinge about not having something to do when I go number one. Not that urinary boredom has actually ever actually been a problem.

Wishful thinking

Guess what?

No, not that. Guess again.

This isn’t quite a happy ‘Gosh darnit, wouldn’tcha know that I was knocked up all along’ post. But I am still somewhat pleased with myself, and considerably less embarrassed than I would be if I was indeed in a family way after all the whining about my knockers.

Today marks thirteen whole blood-and-cramps-and-products-which-belong-in-delicate-pink-wrappers free days since I ovulated. A new record. Believe me, I’ve been counting them off in disbelief.

Again, I would like to refer to my chart.

I currently bask it all it’s biphasic-with-intact-luteal-phase glory several times a day. Really. I keep a tab in my browser open at all times so I can flick over to it and smile contentedly. Proudly.

Isn’t it just so pretty? I haven’t had such lovely luteal temperatures since PBWCLEW. Or 13 days (and counting) between ovulation and menstruation, for that matter.

Unfortunately, it’s all fake, fake, fake. Those 3 little ‘H’s stand for HCG.

My hypothalamus and pituitary (I do believe I have previously alluded to their violent aversion to working correctly) don’t know what hit ‘em. Actually, that isn’t quite correct, they do.

At least they can still pick out HCG in a hormonal line up.

Those slack glands of mine think I’m pregnant, and are consequently doing their job for once. Lazy bastards. I’m sure they’ll shortly wise up to the ruse in their best ‘Durrr, hang on……’dis can’t be right’ fashion, but in the meantime I’ve still probably got another day or two of Tampax-free existence up my sleeve.

Which means I can give my husband that TTC-free (i.e. fun) shag he’s been hankering after.

Does this count as recycling?

I posted this in reply on Ann’s blog, but I felt the need to do it again.

How to do the TWW, neurotic style.

Step 1. Obsessively check panties for mucus every time you go to the bathroom, whilst furiously calculating where your little love-bean would be both in terms of cell division and location in your tube/uterus.

Step 2. Really obsess over point 1. A lot. Invent reasons to go to the bathroom to facilitate your habit. Fake gastroenteritis, a urine infection, terminal dysentery, anything.

Step 3. After, say 7-8 DPO, obsessively pound our breasts for tenderness. Check them out in the mirror, do they look bigger? Squeeze into your smallest, oldest bra so you feel ‘expanded’.

Step 4. Live in denial of any herald traces of red stuff or cramps until it’s too hard to ignore any more. After all, it could still be implantation, right? Leave the house in white trousers, sans tampons, on 14DPO. When strangers start letting you know that you’ve had an ‘accident’, it’s officially over.

Step 5. Rinse, and repeat next cycle.

Charters anonymous.

I’d like to commence this post by thanking you all for your helpful suggestions about my chart. You all, dear readers, are not only wise (it was CD 15 in the end), but tactful.

Not one of you posed the very reasonable question as to why the hell I’m even charting.

Not in writing, anyway.

After all, there’s nothing natural or spontaneous about my cycle to learn from. I take Clomid. My follicle(s) are monitored, courtesy of a rather ancient-looking dildocam. I artificially trigger ovulation with a tasty shot of Pregnyl in the ass, or the deltoid (depending on my mood, a girl needs variety). My luteal phase is artificially propped up with more of the same. If all this wasn’t enough, things are double checked with a midluteal serum progesterone.

Ergo, I know that I make follicle(s), ovulate, and make progesterone.

So why do I continue to chart?

I think, to be honest, that my inner control freak likes to be able to do something on a daily basis. And, being the non-caring-sharing-naturally-cynical and distrustful type, I like to see that things have worked.

I hasten to add that I am aware that charting is not the best form of cycle monitoring, but it is the only one easily available to me. The phlebotomists at work think that I’m joking when I proffer my rather easily venesected arm on their rounds, and I’ve already covered in a previous post the reasons that self-transvaginal scanning is probably not ideal.

Finally, in my departing comment for the day, I acknowledge that referring to another barren cycle as ‘worked’ is a lax use of the term. The real definition of ‘worked’ is a pregnancy. But, failing that, I’ll take technically-perfect-but-didn’t-succeed cycle over a complete balls-up every time.

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A quiet achiever

It turns out that whimpy little loser of a follicle on my left ovary has been quietly planning to ovulate not so far away after all. I will try not to be so tough on the pipsqueaks in future.

I have a positive OPK and the irony is I only tested to get the early urge out of my system, trigger finger on the wee-sticks that I have.

Cue surprised gape.

It’s CD 16, people.

A new personal best has been set.

Now if only my luteal phase comes to the party, I have a (mostly theoretical) chance..

It’s about that time

It’s about that time in the ‘cycle’.

You know, the point where I (despite all known facts to the contrary) start to wonder if I could indeed be knocked up.

This persistent hope, in the face of rather a lot of evidence is, depending on your view, either:

1. One of the more endearing aspects of the human condition, or
2. The only thing stopping me from slitting my wrists.

I personally am concluding that it is inappropriate hope that keeps many of us as relatively functional taxpayers, leaving our whole retirement free to be bitter and twisted. Everybody needs a hobby. Even the seniors.

Anyway.

I’ve been pummelling my chest to see if it’s the least bit sore, and, sadly, the answer is no. Not unless I push really hard.

Sigh.

I’ll try anything a thousand times…

I’ve had just about enough of sex for to last the rest of my life right now.

It’s no longer even funny.

It stopped being arousing about four days ago.

I’m going to be walking bow-legged at this rate. Permanently.

Since the situation is getting desperate, I’m going for the (historically repeatedly proven) best method for ensuring ovulation and conception tonight.

Alcohol.

Sigh…..

A bit more on the abortion thing, I’m enjoying (perversely) the opportunity to be on my high horse some more.

As Cece said (in reply to my bitch about the UK’s recent stirrings with regard to termination of pregnancy)…

Politicians have NO right to tell us what we can or can’t do with our bodies.
Assholes.

She also brought to my attention the recent decision in the US to restrict access to a certain type of second trimester termination. This blogger summarises why it’s all so daft far better than I could.

Sigh.

These sort of decisions are not easy for the mother or her doctor to make. Restricting things further is just madness.

The fat lady is warming up….

I know that it isn’t over until the fat lady sings, but my temperature has taken an ominous dive this morning. Fat lady, your cue….

Sigh.

I had been hiding, deep down, dreams of being able to tell people that I was pregnant. Again. Already. In my fantasy world, it was going to be the most wonderful cure all for PBWCLEW. Of course it was going to go perfectly smoothly for 40 weeks, followed by the easiest delivery and most lovable baby that ever did scream all night.

I knew that Hope* was seductive, but come on. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango, so the fault is at least partially mine for the optimistic indiscretion I made.

God I’m daft. And not pregnant. AND unlikely to be any time soon.

Now I’d just like to get the hemorrhaging over with so I can delude myself for another six to eight weeks that it could be “the” cycle.

* I’d like to clarify that by “Hope” I mean the emotion, and most emphatically NOT the big-lipped, amazingly-pneumatically-racked soapie character. She freaks me right out.

Houston, do we have ovulation?

For those of you who are playing at home.

http://www.fertilityfriend.com/home/144066

My temperature chart has a suspicious wiggle in it.

It go down, it go level and it go up.

Somebody call NASA, Houston, do we have ovulation?.

I, ever the pessimist, remain to be convinced. I prefer to think that maybe my chart is telling me to go hiking, it has that kind of look to it. If it *was* ovulation it was the whimpiest, saddest, little ‘pop’ in a bid for the full complement of chromosomes that a half-arsed ovum ever did make.

AND after all my talk about sexual Dedication To The Cause, I don’t think we even did the horizontal folk dance anywhere NEAR the right days.

Figures..

?Negative, ghostrider?

This morning I performed my weekly PBWCLEW routine.

I peed on the holy stick to see if my body has worked out that it’s been tricked, and I’m not pregnant any more. I figure (genius that I am) that I’m pretty unlikely to ovulate, or be able to have any fertility treatment until it does, and, well, it’s a hell’va lot more $$$ friendly than weekly blood draws.

I know. I’m cheap.

In my defence, pregnancy tests are pretty sensitive anyway, it saves the needle, and I’ve had rather a LOT of medical bills lately.

I freely admit I haven’t actually read the instructions for a pregnancy test in a long, looong time. I mean, you pee (Or dunk in a cup depending on your aim. I definitely dunk, or I’d get wet, but I, erm, digress….) on the end not coated in plastic, right? The rest is just window dressing . Including the time at which you’re properly meant to read the thing by.

Anyway.

It was pretty much negative at about 5 minutes, and I have to say, it’s the first negative test I’ve ever been glad to see. If I *could* have been knocked up, however, I would have gleefully shoved the test (and my urine) under my husband’s nose and ran around the house whooping with glee.

So, yes, *mostly* negative test, if you get the point.

Buuuuuuttt….here I have a confession to make. I fished it out of the bin about an hour later, and would you believe it, there’s a reasonably clear second line.

 

F*$k! and furthermore c*@p!

Darn it.

P.S. Please don’t mail the poor sod at c*@p (if there is such a person). This software seems to equate the presence of the All Powerful “@” with an email address. Clearly the writers have never heard of polite swearwords.

On: I admit…I have a problem

Can I make a confession?

No….??? What do you mean, no?

You know that I’m going to anyway, right??

Ahem.

Now that all of you who have officially had ENOUGH of my neurotic behaviour have run screaming, I will continue. It isn’t THAT bad.

Whilst I have been STRONG and BRAVE (Ha!) and not chased a random phlebotomist down and forced them under pain of, well, ME to repeat my beta (or done it myself at work as threatened previously), I have been a LEETLE, tiny bit bad.

I am hereby ‘fessing that I still jump outta bed, take (another poor, long suffering) pregnancy test and then take my temperature to see if it’s still up each and EVERY morning. As soon as I start to even get close to waking up, that’s it, gotta do it. Can’t sleep in. Ever. I’m not only out of bed before sparrow’s fart these days because of this, but so early that the damn sparrow hasn’t even eat that darn gassy bug in the first place.

AND I’m still obsessively checking for any sign of blood south of the border (none so far), and wondering if that random thing I just felt in my abdomen (which is probably actually lunch related) was a cramp.

I’m going to need to buy shares in a pregnancy test company, since I have 241 days to go……