Still Passing Open Windows ....

Heartbeat

We saw the heartbeat today and I heard my favourite words, "Everything is normal." I stood up after the ultrasound and I was shaking. My voice wavered as I said to H, "I'm so glad everything is ok."

"You worry too much," he said and kissed me.

I approach every ultrasound with fear of bad news, every time I see that wand I hope and pray everything is going to be ok. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't but I have been lucky. Most times it has been ok.

Now I have to decide about an obstetrician. Either I choose one at the biggest hospital here and then if anything goes wrong, he will know my story and will simply carry on treating me 500m away from his office instead of 15km away. Or I choose Dr. Beautiful View and get out of hospitals and clinics but if things go wrong and I have to go into hospital/bed rest/worst case scenario then he will have to hand me over to a doctor in the hospital. So .... who wins? Pessemist Carlynn, who is actually lying very low or Pollyanna who is humming lullabies and planning the colour scheme of the nursery (green and yellow with Winnie the Pooh accents, if you want to know)? I don't know and when all else fails, an afternoon nap is always good.

Which brings me to 6 o'clock and pre-dinner time and I have hit that anti-caretaking wall. During my last pregnancy my in-laws were staying with me during my third and fourth months and I remember finding having guests at that time very difficult. Just having to decide what to make for dinner would stress me out. All I wanted was someone to take care of me. And now I seem to have reached that same place. I have absolutely no interest in food. I'm not that hungry but if you put a plate in front of me, I will eat it as H saw when he prepared a little cheese and bread snack and I ate half of it after declaring I didn't want supper. What's an easy supper that virtually makes itself? What do you do when you just cannot be arsed to cook something complicated but want something vaguely nutritious (because I must make an attempt to nourish the bean)? Do you think cereal every night is ok if I eat a normal lunch?

It's funny actually. I am loath to write it off on hormones because I think that is overdone but I'm not that interested in anything and I'm actually quite happy to lie on my bed or just gaze into space. It feels like depression except I'm not sad, I'm just a bit detached from everything. Weird but quite relaxing.

All is quiet on the southern front

Well, there is not much news here. I have had ideas for super posts, ranging from photos of my shoes to photos of my dinners to something very interesting I'm sure but I just can't remember it. The thing is I get home from work, lie down with my book and pass out and then it's dinner and after dinner I never get much done anyway so blogging (and working on my assignment for this course I'm doing) has gone out the window.

Everything is going fine. I've had one scan with my RE and it was all normal. Then I was interviewing gynaes for the standared annual appointment and I happened to stumble across one who a) has a fabulous view, b) knows my whole infertility team and c) seems experienced in high risk pregnancies. I am considering using him as my obstetrician. He gave me a scan, can you tell why I like him already?, and told me "Everything is developing perfectly normally for a 5 week pregnancy." I could have kissed him. I wanted to tape the sentence and play it over and over again, I could listen to it every day in fact. I am a little anxious, I have to admit. During the day I handle it just fine but at about 4 a.m. it surfaces and I start running through all the things I must do. It's as if I feel that I have to consciously keep this pregnancy going by nurturing it as much as possible. I feel as if only the force of my thoughts is keeping it going. No wonder I pass out for two hours every afternoon.

Thank you so much to everyone who has left congratulations. I know it is always strange when an infertility blogger falls pregnant. Maybe that's why I'm blogging less? Ha ha ha ha! Good one, Carlynn. I don't feel at all ready to leave this online community. It doesn't even have to be said that the pregnancy is in early early days and until I reach 32 weeks I don't think I will feel that I actually am pregnant in the sense that other people are. But aside from that I feel like I have met such an amazing bunch of women, people who have given me encouragement and advised me to try things I probably would have avoided for a lot longer and which in the end have helped me so much. I want to thank all of you for this support and information, you are wonderful and I wouldn't be here pregnant if it wasn't for you, I would be drinking pastisse down at the scaly local bar with the bar flies.

I've been a bad blogger

Don't read this if you are having a bad day. Go and do something nice for yourself. Blogs are always around, they don't often disappear.

Thank you to everyone who has left me encouraging comments and to those who sent me an email over these past few weeks when I have been so absent. I have been so touched by people half-way across the world (or the country) who were thinking of me.

A while back I looked at my blog list and EVERYONE, well it seemed like everyone, let's say 80% of it was pregnant and I couldn't believe it. Pregnancy announcement in the infertile blogosphere are like dewdrops on spiderwebs in the grass, so beautiful and yet so tenuous a smile slowly makes its way across your face as you hold your breath because you want everything to stay exactly as it is in this moment, you want everything to turn out right. And at the same time as I was feeling this, I felt like the wicked witch of the south, the oldest blogger (or at least oldest lurker-turned blogger) on-line and still not pregnant. I mean, I was reading Julie's blog before she fell pregnant with Charlie. I read the Naked Ovary through her long, long wait for Maya. I know this is not a competition and there are no prizes but I felt like the last person to be picked for a game of rounders; a little uncoordinated, a little weird. You know maybe I was talking my drugs incorrectly? Maybe there was something really basic I hadn't grasped. Or maybe, the scariest thought, maybe I was never going to fall pregnant, never have children, maybe I just couldn't despit the best medical help in the world.

And we went back to the doctor and we did IVF. Transfer number one : no. Transfer number two: despite a promising start, no. And people spoke of the blogosphere being full of happiness and pregnancy announcements and I snarled in my corner, "Yeah, whatever. Let's do transfer number three and use up that last bloody embryo and then we can forget about it for a while and go on a nice holiday."

And we did transfer number three and the protocol was strengthened and I waited for failure no. 3. And nothing happened. No spotting. Nothing. "It's the estrogen," I thought, "Holding everything in." I did the blood test and went to work. My aunt called on her "number withheld" line (unlisted number to deter salespeople) and I didn't pick up. I didn't want to speak to ANYONE except the hospital and it was too early. My aunt phoned again. She called a third time during lunch and I blithely ignored her. At 2.30 on the dot I phoned the hospital, "Mrs. H?" the nurse said, "I've been trying to get hold of you. I phoned three times! It's good news, it's positive."

"I thought it was my aunt," was all I could say.

"Come in again on Thursday to see if it doubles in 48 hours," she said about to hang up.

"What was the figure?" I asked (I'm well trained by all of you now, I know they have an exact figure and the laboratory does not simply send back the test marked "positive".)

"330." she said.

Can you believe it? A year and a half after my disasterous loss I am pregnant again. The beta doubled in the Thursday test (700 something) and so far things are ok. The night terrors wake me up at 2 a.m. but otherwise things seem fine. Next visit to the hospital: Tuesday.

And I apologise for holding out on you all. It just seems so early, you know. It's the size of a sesame seed. Anything could happen. And yet, it is lovely, lovely, lovely to be pregnant again. Finally. And I'm scared of telling people. Scared that it will make it real to the outside world and it will all come crashing down but if I keep it secret, it can develop for a while longer and become stronger. Part of me wants to announce it when I leave the maternity ward with a healthy child in my arms and part of me want to tell all my friends, "I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant!" So I can tell you all and you know what's like and hopefully all will go well.

My enclave

Julie, over at alittlepregnant as if I needed to say that, asks about the gentlemen's enclave where the man goes to do his bit for the war. Apparently here it is standard - down in the basement, small room, chair, few magazines. I was thinking about it and I realised that at this point, if H told me there was a sexy little thing in stilettos and black underwear brandishing a whip to spur him on, I would only think, "Oh, how nice. Hope it's fun for you."

Doing a transfer followed by two FETs back to back has exhausted me. I feel like I have spent the last three months waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And resting. And reading books and eating healthily and avoiding questions about whether we are taking summer holidays. In a nutshell it has been really shitty. There has been the odd dramatic high point like me screaming at H in Madrid airport that we should get divorced because I will never give him a child and our marriage is not one that will survive childlessness but other than that it's been pretty quiet. And so boring. So, so, so boring. Good grief, if I don't do something I will ..... just go on being nasty to everyone around me I guess.

Other bloggers have written how infertility has made them a better person; made their marriage stronger or given them more empathy or introduced them to amazing people. I just think infertility has made me into a wrinkled little prune of spite. A friend said, "I was talking to someone, I can't name names, and she is going through the same thing as you for the past few months and she's doing injections now." And all I said was, "The past few months? Is that all?" Go Carlynn, bring on the compassion girl, don't hold back.

How does one cope with failure after failure and the feeling that one's life is just stuck? How do you do it? What do you contribute your emotional equilibrium to? Mel talks about human harbours, people who just make you feel better by being around them. I find the longer this goes on for, the more I isolate myself (hence the divorce statement) and the only time I feel ok is when I am alone. Only problem is I want to go away and I don't like travelling alone. Oh, the problems I have.