Still Passing Open Windows ....

Well ...

You know what's coming don't you? This cycle started ok. There were four follicules, not a lot admittedly but at least a starting point. I did the injections etc. etc. and at my first scan what do they spot? A dominant monster follicule. So, this cycle is officially cancelled.

I keep on telling myself it could be worse. It was a risk with a the protocol I was following, that there would be a dominant follicule. At least I responded. At least there were follicules. At least it wasn't cancelled because of lack of follicules. Still, I am pretty pissed off, which I suppose is also better than being weepy. Anyway. So, I have cancelled the hotel, changed my ticket and the good thing is I fly back to H tomorrow. Also I have done some fun things this week and I always like travelling so it's not like it is all bad.

Have to hang on to that thought.

Chocolate spread on toast

There is wonderful news at the moment and there is really shitty news . I am like a janus face, smiling with joy at Niobe's and feeling so sad about Aunty Becky's. I don't tie things together well and I am unable to go on and pay tribute to either of these great bloggers and link their news into my post, but their news really touched me and I wanted to mention them.

Back to me, I am eating chocolate spread on toast. H is out tonight and leaves on a trip tomorrow so it will be a week of toast. Toast with tuna. Toast with sardines. Toast with chocolate spread. Toast with marmite. Maybe toast with cheese as we have a LOT of cheese in the fridge and we leave on Saturday. Me for The Cycle, H on business.

This week I promise to myself to stay out of pharmacies. Today I had to buy sunblock and some rescue remedy so I went to two different pharmacies, actually three as I had to drop off a prescription too. Big mistake. At the first pharmacy I bought maca because the little advertising thingy to the left of the till said it boosted male and female fertility. At the second pharmacy I bought royal jelly as I read last week that it boosts ovarian function. At the third pharmacy I was starting to slow down and I only bought rescue remedy. Thank goodness. Once I pick up this prescription, which is vitamins and oligo elements, my suitcase will be 80% pills. And then I come home and eat chocolate on toast. Well, it is organic chocolate spread. And the bread was organic too. And it had sesame seeds. Those must count for something.

If anyone has any tips for fertility boosting, I'm your woman. Any ideas on stress management will also be welcome. So far I only have herbal sleeping tablets, homeopathic anxiety drops, herbal tea, decaf coffee, my yoga book and one bottle of rescue remedy and one box of rescue remedy pills. Still lots of room. Worried? Who, me?

And Niobe and Becky's news helps to encourage and remind me in equal measure. Anything is possible.

The time to hesitate is through

I'm listening to The Doors, can you tell? As the date for the IVF cycle approaches I am surprisingly calm. I don't know how this will go but I am hoping that it all goes ok. I am hoping that I remain this calm. I hope there are enough follicules. I hope enough fertilise. I hope this finally gives us a child.

I can see our children sometimes. I can imagine a lanky ten year old leaning against me as I sit at my aunt's dining room table, just because he's bored (and yes, I know boys don't do this but it's my daydream). I imagine his slightly bolshy sister downstairs in her bedroom shouting at her younger brother because A SHOP KEEPER IS NOT SUPPOSED TO PLAY CARS! I can see a little bemused toddler with food all over her face from lunch sitting on the floor and watching this scene, and I can hear my aunt looking frazzled and saying, "Carlynn, shouldn't you go down there?" I know, I know, four kids. Where did I come up with that? I don't know. It's just the scene I imagined. Maybe it's because after all this time I don't know how many children will fill this need that drives me on. I wonder if we have one child from this surrogacy if I will always want another child and if somehow I will pass this feeling of not being enough on to my only child? I wonder if I have two if I will always long for more. And I wonder if somehow we did have four kids, how would H manage? Four kids is a lot of money, and H takes his responsibilities seriously. Not to mention his love of plush hotels and nice restaurants! As you can see, despite myself I am taking this daydream seriously. It sure beats worrying about the number of embryos.

If suddenly today you could have as many children as your heart desired (physical limits and money aside), how many do you think you would like?

Warming up

Tomorrow I start phase 1 of this next IVF cycle. I am not thinking about it. La la la la la. LA LA LA. Not thinking about it. So far it is working, but I am pretty sure that by the time I hit wand exams I will be a nervous wreck, hitting all my little homeopathic bottles of remedies and then spending 3 hours feverishly searching the internet for any possible reason why I should not be taking such-and-such remedy while doing IVF.

It's weird. I don't really know where I am. There is part of me that really misses being pregnant and hopes that one day, against all the odds, I will actually carry a pregnancy to term. Then there is another part of me that is so tired of trying the latest fertility trick/avoiding coffee/trying to reduce stress/doing yet another blood test. Part of me is just so used to not having children that I think, "Is it really worth it, Carlynn?" And then I will have a seriously bad day and think piteously, "I would be such a great mother!" and I'm off searching for adoption sites and stories. This is usually followed by another day of lying on the couch with a junk book and chocolate and thinking, "Man, I just don't have the generosity of spirit to be a mother."

So you see, no idea where I stand.

I'm sort of in limbo. There are still possibilities and so I don't have to work on accepting a childfree life. And I am terrified of diving into that swamp because it tends to suck me down and I spend the next month spitting out black self-hatred and smelling evilly of swamp water as I slump through life with my knuckles grazing the ground like a true swamp creature (well, the swamp creatures in my mind at least) trying to avoid everyone.

In the meantime I am apartment hunting. You know, why not buy a new flat and move everything we own while we attempt to have a baby and H is sweating blood as he learns a new demanding job that means a lot to him?  Oh yes, and did I tell you I crashed into a motorbike  a motorbike crashed into me last week and my car might be totalled? While waiting to hear its fate I am taking the bus with crazy bag ladies who yell, "It's green! Go! Go!" to the bus driver as soon as the traffic lights change.   

Testing, testing, once, twice ...

As one does, I was sitting at work thinking about life in general and my hormones in particular. Tuesday I went to see my RE. The first time I saw him, he barely looked up from the paperwork and seemed shocked to hear me express an opinion, mainly one of "No hormones. I want to do an unmedicated IUI." Fast forward three years, molto IUIs, molto injections, one IVF cycle, three transfers and two losses and he now says, "I know how much you have suffered." I'm thinking his clinic has sent him on a touchy feely seminar or his wife gave him a stiff talking to about his bedside manner. Whatever it is, I don't think it's a good sign. I obviously spend too much time in tears in his office.

"But it's good that he understands what you're going through," says a friend.

Mmm. I guess. I would have preferred to still have our slightly distant relationship that an IVF cycle every 2-3 years for the next child would have brought us.

Anyway, back to my desk. So I was sitting there thinking about my hormones and as one does, I got to reading about FSH on the internet. Not a good idea, as we all know. I found out that one high FSH reading is a very bad sign. One high FSH pretty much means your eggs are on the downward slide, even if they are sandwiched between two totally normal readings. I also kept on reading about the FSH test being done on day 3. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I had done the FSH test with my RE on day one. The fourth time I read this, I gathered up my handbag and my coat and headed off to the closest laboratory to do the test on the real day 3.

"When will you have the results?" I asked.

"Tomorrow afternoon," said the nurse.

The next afternoon I was in the laboratory as soon as I could leave work and opening the envelope in the lift on the way down. "FSH: 6.6." I read and I burst into tears. I still pick up the piece of paper and look at that figure and think, "Thank you, thank you, thank you so much."

One piece of good news. Finally. My FSH hasn't budged since 2006. My RE is testing my AMH which he says is a more accurate measurement but I don't care. If we are to go forward with another cycle, the clinic we are working with just wants an FSH below 10 and the estradiol reading; and they are fine. And I am so glad. So happy. It feels like a reprieve.

And for now it feels wonderful.

Moving along

I am feeling much better. So much so that I feel embarassed about last week's breakdown but I want to thank my commentors for being so nice about it. It's funny, I regularly wear sackcloth and ashes about what a bad wife I am in not being able to give H gorgeous little H-lets to run up and down the corridor. Then I get told that H can still have children but me? possibly not, and I go to pieces. Obviously my desires are more present in all of this than I realise. It is all about me after all.

And there are still options. We are lucky enough to be able to consider other options. I definitely need to work on the glass-half-full-view.

It's been interesting, I can say that much.

Maybe not

Well, as the ambitious young businessman, H is now travelling with his laptop and so this has been the most connected holiday that I have had. It's nice actually. We can look up addresses of places we want to go. I can check my email. I can even post to my blog. It's a brave new world for me.

So far so good, but you haven't heard about our trip to the surrogacy agency and Super Duper Fertility Specialist. That was not so good.

It started off well. We flew in and as we flew over the city, I looked down and thought, "My child could be born here." It was a weird thought. We drove to the hotel and I wondered if good things could happen in this place but I felt nothing but apprehension. I burst into tears at breakfast out of sheer nerves and H calmed me down as he always does. I calmed down and we went to the agency first. Everyone there was very nice and extremely chatty and the meetings went well. Then we went to the Super Duper Doctor. We chatted in his office and he asked a few questions. Then there was the standard stirrup examination and he could only count 3 baseline follicules. "How many do you expect to see usually?" I asked him. "At least six," he said. To summarise, he wants me to do an FSH test and then we go on according to the results but the dreaded words "donor eggs" were mentioned, as well as "reduced success rate".

It seems so innocuous as I write it here but I was devastated. I am devastated. It's not a surprise. I expect the bad news now but I still hate having it confirmed. I took to my bed for the afternoon and it was not pretty, I was a horrible, nasty mess. I don't even understand it myself but having a baby has become the thng I want to achieve most in my life and I seem totally and completely unable to do it. I have never subscribed to the view that a woman's total fulfilment is to be found in being a wife and mother but not being to achieve motherhood devastates me more than any other failure yet. Maybe it is the repetition. Every year there seems to be another confirmation that I cannot do this and every year the confirmation seems to hint that my body is pretty much screwed.

I spoke to a relative who funnily enough had her children with donor eggs last night. She even said that in the end it hardly matters; your children are your children, you don't ask how they were conceived. It helps. It will just take a while to accept.

H is positive. He says it worked last year, can so much have changed? He says to wait for the FSH test results. I am just worrying.