So far, so good

I've spent the last few days peeing on sticks, comparing the darkness of second lines and all the usual neurotic shit that pregnant women with a history of miscarriage go on with. I had my first blood test to check progesterone, oestradiol and beta hcg on Wednesday, and the levels were all as good as can be expected at this stage. HCG was 49, but given that was 15 dpo, that is ok. Of course when I got the results, I immediately started googling "hcg levels 15 dpo". Anyway it's all good so far.

I'm going to continue going to my wonderful Napro nurse for weekly blood tests for the next few weeks, so she is more or less taking on my care for the first trimester. It gives me a great feeling of reassurance to have my hormone levels checked on a weekly basis. I felt brave enough the other day to put my name down for an early ultrasound, so I called the Early Pregnancy Unit in Limerick maternity hospital. So December the 16th I will have my first ultrasound. If I am still pregnant by then, I should be 8 weeks along. Part of me is thinking all sorts of negative thoughts. Like what if they diagnose a missed miscarriage then and they take me in for another D&C a few days before Christmas. My sister calls this kind of thought process meeting trouble half way, so I am trying not to think like this.

The other half of my brain is already working out due dates, churning possible names around in my head, and wondering if it's a boy or a girl. For some reason we both think boy this time. Oh well, I suppose we have a 50/50 chance of being correct. I am really trying not to indulge in these kind of thoughts too. I just don't want to make too much emotional investment in this and then have my world come crashing down around me again.

The wonderful thing about not being back at work these days is that I can hide away from the world and rest whenever I feel like it. So there's no trying to stay awake at my desk or answer queries from head office when all I want to do is go home and sleep. If I'm tired, I can just rest up on demand. So there's something to be said for unemployment after all.

Yesterday I took another digital clear blue test and it came up "pregnant 2-3 weeks", so that gave me more reassurance that my hcg levels must be rising to some extent. My next beta is on Tuesday, so I'm keeping everything crossed until then. The a la carte crisis Catholic in me is even lighting candles. I will keep you posted on results.

Conceived in man flu

After thirteen cycles of clomid and (I think!) fifteen on pregnyl injections with nothing to show for it but non stop mood swings, exhaustion and hot flushes, I finally kicked the fertility drug habit two months ago. I had had enough. Physically and emotionally I just had to get off the hamster wheel.

Two weeks ago, John was home sick with man flu. He was making noises about swine flu, but given that he was still getting out of bed and faffing about the house, he wasn't getting a huge amount of sympathy from me. Cups of tea and dinners, yes, sympathy, no. Heartless bitch of a wife that I am. So when I got a smiley face on an OPK, I jumped his flu ridden bones. A woman's got to do what a woman's got to do.

This month marked our twelfth month trying on this stint of the ttc journey. That's not to say we have been at this lark for a only year. We first started humping and hoping way back in the spring of 2006. So imagine my gobsmackedness when I got this result this afternoon.

Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen. Conceived in man flu and without the aid of fertility drugs. I'm still pinching myself.

That time of the year again

I ventured as far as Cork at the weekend, to visit one of my long term friends. We went to Uni together, way back in the late 80's, so we've seen each other through many of life's ups and downs in the past 22 years. (Yes we were both child geniuses who gained entry to a B.Sc. course at the age of eight. I wish.) She has just broken up with her boyfriend of the past 18 months, so I was on a cheer my friend up mission. We went out for dinner, drinks and dancing which was nice, it's a while since we have caught up and done that.

On Saturday we headed into the city centre for a spot of retail therapy. And there it was in every shop we entered. Christmas stuff. Arghhhhh! I mean come on lads, I've only just finished gorging myself on the mini chocolate bar multi packs bought for the trick or treaters who never showed up. It's the first week of November for the love of Jehovah. Can't we have a couple more weeks grace before all this shite kicks in?

As we drove out towards my friend's house, she sighed "Another Christmas being single.....it's crap". I agreed with her that I'm not all that keen on the festive season either. She asked why, and I explained that the lack of customers for Santa tends to get to me a bit. It hadn't occured to her. I suppose to a long term single person of our age, being happily married is the recipe for contentment in life. It made me realise that it could be a hell of a lot worse. I could still be married to old Bollicky Head (an affectionate term for my ex husband) and be as miserable as sin, or I might never have met anyone since I left him eleven years ago. I know someone my age who this year was widowed after three years of marriage, six months after her husband was diagnosed with cancer. I can't begin to imagine what Christmas will be like for her this year.

So while we might not have that nuclear family chocolate box dream of Christmas to look forward to this year, we still have each other, we have our health, we have our home. And feck it, Santa still comes to our house. He brought John a top of the range digital Scalextric set the first year we were married. Mind you, he's been having a bit of trouble equalling that one ever since. He aimed a bit too high in the first year I think. It's great fun watching the cats in the middle of it though!

Speaking of me kittehs....

I used to think that teeny tiny kittens had the monopoly on fluffy cuteness until our two grew up. Here's some seriously cute kitteh video footage. Warning: this contains some disturbingly incestuous tongue action between two litter mates.

The ice breaker

When we moved five years ago to the town we currently live in, we knew nobody here. I had never lived in a small town before. I grew up in the country, where everyone seems to be a distant cousin of their neighbour and the postman knows what you had for breakfast. From there I moved on to university life in Galway, a small city in the West of Ireland. College life is the easiest time to make friends because everyone is up for partying and meeting new people.

After that I lived in the UK for a short stint, on the outskirts of London, and from there I moved to Dublin. Dublin is an easy place for a country person (or culchie, as the Dubs like to call us) to make friends, as there are enclaves in Dublin, mainly around the Dublin 6 area, inhabited by culchies in their twenties and early thirties. Working in any large organisation in Dublin, you will easily make more friends from outside of Dublin than Dubs. It's a sense of all being in the same boat which fosters a certain cameraderie.

So it was a bit of a culture shock to say the least, when I moved down the the arse end of Tipperary, to a town with a population of around 7,500. Work colleagues my age were people local to the area, who had never really lived anywhere too far from home, so they had their own lives, family units and social circles well established, and had no interest in meeting new people. My sister had moved to a town outside of Dublin in the mid 90s, and she always said what broke the ice for her was her kids. She struck up friendships with women at mother and toddler groups, or even just striking up conversations with other pram pushing Mammys when she went out for a walk. Once her girls started school, she made new friends at the school gates. So all in all, when you move to a new town, kids are the ultimate ice breaker.

So what happens when the kids just don't come along and you're living in a small town? Well we were lucky enough to meet a younger crowd of people through my work. Mainly professionals in their mid twenties to early thirties, these people were blow ins just like us. Unfortunately, now that the plant has downsized hugely, most of these people have moved on, and we are getting back to square one. I often go out for a walk during the day, and I notice how the women with babies and toddlers in buggies tend to stop and talk to each other. I often wonder will I ever be part of that.

One day when the sun was shining last week, I pulled on my runners and set off to walk the three mile round path that starts at the end of our estate. I had borrowed a cat carrier from my vet a few days previously when I was bringing the fur babies in to get microchipped. Since the vet's surgery is only a ten minute walk away and it was on my route, I grabbed the cat carrier on my way out the door since I was going to be passing the way. As usual, I met a few mothers and babies along the way, and I just smiled and nodded hello at them.

Then as I walked along, a lady came up to me and the following conversation ensued:
"Ah, are you bringing your cat to the vet?".
"No, just returning a carrier I borrowed to bring them the other day".
"Are they ok now?"
"No, they weren't sick, I just took them in to get chipped"
"I'm up and down to the vet the whole time with my two, they're getting very old. How many have you?"
"I have two, but they're only four, so they're fairly healthy apart from the odd eye infection or war wounds"
"I don't know what I'll do when mine are gone, you get so used to them around the house don't you?"
"I know, I dread the thoughts of anything happening them, you just get so attached"
"Ah sure they'll be fine, they're only young yet"

And with that, we went our seperate ways, me with a smile on my face. So you see, kids aren't the only icebreakers.

International pregnancy and infant loss awareness day

DEAR PARENTS

I did not die young
I lived my span of life,
Within your body
And within your love.

There are many
Who have lived long lives
And have not been loved as me.

If you would honor me
Then speak my name
And number me among your family.

If you would honor me.
Then strive to live in love
For in that love, I live.

Never ever doubt
That we will meet again.

Until that happy day,
I will grow with God
And wait for you.

by Christy Kenneally

Why don't you just.....?

This is a topic that had been done to death on message boards and infertility blogs, but it's a bugbear of mine these days, since many people have thrown this question at me.

Why don't you just adopt?

Or, the more sensitive version, have you considered adoption as a possibility?

The more sensitive version I can answer in a calm manner, and I usually get a reasonable response. So I say "no, it's not where we are at for the moment" or "no, we've talked about it and just don't think it's for us". To which the enquirer usually says, "fair enough, it's not for everyone". End of discussion.

On the other hand the "why don't you *just* adopt?" people really rub me up the wrong way. When I give the same response as above, they usually look at me aghast, and ask in wide eyed terms "why ever not?". Recently someone (a mother herself) said this to me, followed by "but those Chinese babies are just soooo cute, I'd love one". To which I replied "Well if you're so keen on them yourself, away with you to China".

It's the word *just* that really gets on my wick. It's not as if there's a special on babies and children at your local Tesco this week. What gets me is that people who have never been faced with involuntary childlessness have no idea what the adoption process is like in this country. A work colleague of mine who was going down the adoption route gave me a brief overview a while back. Basically, in Ireland, domestic adoption is almost unheard of these days. Nobody, or very few, are giving newborns up for adoption. There might be two or three babies a year who come up for adoption, but as the waiting list of couples is several hundred names long, the chances are between slim and nil. As for adopting older children, this doesn't really happen in Ireland either. Social services are reluctant to take children away from the family unit on a permanent basis. So while there may be a large number of children and teens in foster care, these children rarely become available for adoption.

So the only other option is overseas adoption. I don't know a huge amount about this, having never gone down that road, but I do know that it takes a very long time between initiating the process and bringing your new son or daughter home. At least five to six years on average. So if we were to start the process now, we would be in our mid to late forties before we could expect to become parents. Up until recently, a large amount of overseas adoptions were from Vietnam. From what I can gather from internet boards, Vietnam is now closed to prospective adoptions by Irish couples due to international laws.

From what I have read on parenting message boards, it's a very emotionally fraught process, and not an inexpensive one. Also, when you live in a rural location which is not particularly multi cultural, as we eventually will, you are facing a whole other set of issues. I read a thread on one site the other day where a mother was asking others in the same situation how do you deal with instrusive remarks and questions. She said someone came up to her in a supermarket when she was with her adopted Chinese daughter, and asked her straight out how much she paid for her. Enough said.

The other thing that really irks me is when infertility and associated treatments come up as a topic of discussion on mainstream internet sites. Invariably someone will wade in with a comment along the lines that why do these infertiles think they are so special that they have to have children with their own DNA? And that IVF should be banned until all the orphans and abandoned children in the world are adopted. And that the world's population is far too large as it is without bringing more people into it. I shy away from getting into these arguments, as they have a tendancy to raise my blood pressure, but I always wonder about the people who make these comments. Have they children of their own? Are they biological or adopted? Or if they haven't yet gone down the road of starting a family, are they going to consider adoption as their first option in family building rather than trying to conceive a biological child? After all, our planet is over populated, why leave it to the infertiles to pick up the slack? Let's ban natural conception until all orphans and abandoned children have been adopted!