Words fly up

I have my protocol in my suddenly clammy and trembling hands.

Cl0mid / Cetr0tide / Men0pur are my drugs of...well, not choice.

Men0pur 75iu - inject 3 ampoules daily for 9 days.
Cl0mid 50mgs twice daily for 5 days
Cetr0tide 0.25mg - inject 1 daily for 8 days
Pr0gynova 2mg - 1 tablet 3 times a day for 18 days
G0nal F 450iu - inject 225iu daily for 9 days

And of course, the garnish of Pr£gnyl 5000iu injection and Vibr@mycin 100mg for 8 days.

I'm scared.

This post is going to contain rather too much information, please feel free to avert your eyes.

Yesterday was D9 of my "preparation cycle" so, as instructed by Hawkeye (my consultant looks like Al@n Ald@), I took myself off to the clinic to have my dummy embryo transfer and HyCoSy.

The first, obviously, requires a full bladder so I duly drank a vat of water and hopped around the waiting room in agony until I was called.

"This won't take long," Calm Nurse said as I assumed the position and awkwardly exchanged handshakes with a new doctor who was already inspecting my lady-bits. The speculum went in, jiggled around a bit because it wasn't quite in the right position, jiggled around a bit more and then was extracted again.
"Sorry," muttered new doctor. "I will need to try it again."
This time she meant business and practically slammed it into position. Reeling from the pain, I was almost completely unaware of the catheter being placed, or the swabs being taken or even the probe pressing on my protesting bladder.

It truly didn't take very long and before I knew it, I was tottering off the table. I made a less-than-dignified sight hot-footing it down to the loo in my socks, sheet gathered around my bare nether half with the "NHS Property" stamp positioned comically over my rump.

Back then for the HyCoSy. I had been told that, while not something you would do for fun, the procedure was nowhere near as bad as an HSG. As I had sailed through that ordeal without too much trauma, I was rather arrogantly supposing that this one would be a piece of cake.

Not so much. Slam! The speculum went in. Eyes watering, I turned to the monitor to watch the show as the balloon followed the speculum. Out came the speculum to be replaced by the magic libido-reducing wand but nothing appeared on the monitor. New doctor moved the wand around with determination but still nothing. With a sigh she warned me that she would have to do the whole thing again.

By this time I think she had a grudge against my cervix as the speculum went in with such vigour I was concerned it might never come back out again. But apparently brute force does work because my innards filled with saline to new doctor's satisfaction and pretty soon I was tottering off the table again and inserting myself gratefully back into my clothing.

Last night and today I feel pretty grim, but anyone about to have an HyCoSy for the first time - don't be alarmed. You get given antibiotics afterwards, wherein lies the rub for me as antibiotics and I have a hate-hate relationship. They give me dreadful GI upset and all I am fit to do is sip ginger tea and lie on the sofa in a Camille-stylee.

So there we are. Nothing more to do until D14 when I start the Primolut again and head off down to The Cycle.

Crikey...

Popping into the chemist at lunch-time to buy folic acid and a box of c0nd0ms...

Hey, did you hear the one about the couple who met, fell in love, got married, moved out of the city and bought a big house in the country, decided that they wanted a baby, 2 months later were expecting a baby, told all their friends almost before the stick was dry, had a healthy and care-free pregnancy followed by a beautiful, healthy baby?

True story, it happened to friends of mine. That's the Hans Christian Anderson part.

Here's the Brothers Grimm bit.

Same friend - who knows about the loss of Starchild and Bean and the TTC struggles - emailed baby photos with the message: "Motherhood is the best thing ever. You should try it."

A full day later and I still have no idea how to respond to that.

Because I was still Flo-free yesterday, 6 days post primolut, I was asked to go in for a session with the magic libido-reducing wand. The pregnant radiographer (dontcha love it?!) had a good peer around my ovaries (no cysts, hooray) and my uterus (thick lining, hooray) and was confident that it would only be a matter of days.

But Aunt Flo showed up this morning, around 4.30 and in an increasingly vicious mood as the day has worn on.

But - she is here and I go for my D3 baseline bloods and ultrasound on Friday.

Oh frabjous day! Callooh, callay!

IVF here we come.

Crikey...

"Hasn't it been a nice, relaxed weekend?" Significant Other has just asked me as he stretched out on the bed after dinner, watching me put piles of newly-ironed clothes away. "We've done nothing!"

And indeed, WE have done nothing. I, on the other hand, have been food shopping, cleaned the flat, changed the bed linen, taken out the rubbish, changed a fuse, cooked two dinners and washed up afterwards, done 4 loads of washing and ironed for 2 hours.

To be fair, Significant Other did spend yesterday installing some new gadget. Apparently it records stuff straight to USB, pauses live TV, has some kind of fancy display, speaks six languages and massages your feet at the end of the day. And he did bring me a cup of coffee and a buttered crumpet this afternoon (Significant Other, not the gadget).

Still, one of us has had a rather more relaxed weekend than the other...

... and despite having taken 5 days' of Primolut, Aunt Flo is still AWOL.

I've done everything. Apart from taking Primolut I have also:
worn my best white nether-garments
forgotten to take extra sanitary supplies and painkillers to work
changed the bed linen

What more is a woman to do??

I was overwhelmed to be given this award by the amazing Kate; thank you so much.

The rules are that you reveal 10 things not previously known about you, and pass along the award to others. Compiling the list below has proved a nice distraction this evening.

1. I have a wheat and gluten allergy and pizza in particular makes me very ill the next day. But sometimes I clear my weekend schedule and order in a deep-pan, seafood pizza with extra onion on a Friday night.

2. When I sing in the shower I think I sound wonderful even though I know that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

3. Living alone never scared me; the thought of dying alone always has.

4. I twirl my hair when I'm nervous or stressed or upset. It feels like I have had a strand grafted to my fingers these past 18 months...

5. I got a tattoo for my 30th birthday as a present to myself. It is of a cat stalking along my right hip. I have never before or since let flow such a stream of profanity as I did when it was being done.

6. I was an ardent Catholic as a child and never really fully lost my faith until 28th April 2008 when we lost Starchild.

7. I hate clothes shopping, shoe shopping and grocery shopping but have to be dragged out of bookshops, protesting bitterly.

8. It bothers me beyond all sense when people wrongly use "and I" or "and me" (as in "my friend and me went to France" or "it was given to my husband and I").

9. I think that Ceylon tea is the best in the world and all other teas are mere upstarts.

10. I genuinely believe that my darling little cat understands every word I say to her.

I would like to share this with:
Circus Princess
Loribeth
BarrenBlog
IF Crossroads
May

For the past month I have been in denial but this evening, when I opened the freezer and the ice-tray was full of barely chilled water I realised that the time has come.

I need to buy a new fridge-freezer.

But that's okay because I realise that a couple of hundred pounds is nothing, a mere bagatelle. You know, after having spent £4000 on replacing windows in March and almost £1300 on vet's bills last month, and almost £1000 on IUI / drugs / consultations, and about to hand over thruppence ha'penny for IVF in the next few days.

Ho hum.

It was Significant Other's and my 3rd year anniversary yesterday.

We put on our Sunday best, went to a fancy restaurant, had delicious food and wine, got a little squiffy, treated ourselves to a cab home.

We exchanged gifts: he bought me ear-rings, I bought him shoes (not so much romantic as practical).

We didn't talk about babies, treatment, money or the future.

It was a wonderful evening.