Words fly up

I may have mentioned in passing (cough) that Significant Other loathes Christmas and everything Christmas-related. The past three years have been a bit of a struggle as I love the festive season, but generally speaking we've all managed to have a fairly nice day.

This year, though, I think that it was all too much for him. We got to my parents' and did the traditional gift exchange, after which Significant Other retired to the spare room bed with his book. He came down for lunch and then went back up again, came down for dinner and then went back upstairs. My parents have become used to Significant Other yawning and sulking on the sofa in previous years but this year I could see them exchanging puzzled looks. My dad was even worried enough to keep my wine glass topped up (usually I'm allowed one glass maximum).

Meanwhile, I was miscarrying my third pregnancy. The clinic had told me that it would "be like a period, perhaps a bit heavier". Erm...not so much. The pain, the - well - the free-flow necessitating a visit to the loo four times an hour, and the pain. Even my mother didn't blink when she saw me wash down analgesics with a mouthful of Merlot.

Significant Other managed to muster up enough energy to come down to brunch the next day, which eased my parents' minds a little bit. He was silent the whole drive home and as soon as we got through the front door he retired to the bed and has been there ever since, only emerging for meals which I insist cannot be eaten in the bedroom.

We were meant to be going to visit some friends of mine for a few days over New Year, but Significant Other said this morning that he wasn't sure he felt like it after all. I'm torn - I really want to go anyway; they are very close friends whom I don't see nearly enough since they left London, and they live by the sea. I love being by the sea, it's where I'm unfailingly happy. But - I can't leave Significant Other alone over New Year, that's just not nice.

This year just doesn't stop sucking!!

Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful and supportive comments. Thank you to those who came over from LFCA (and for whoever posted my news) and thank you most especially to those of you who took time from the pile of poo you yourselves are wading through to offer me comfort.

It seems so crass, in the face of all your support, to keep on keeping on, but I have another bone to pick with the universe. Not enough for me to miscarry my third pregnancy over Christmas, dear universe? Not enough for it to happen while I'm still suffering with a chest infection? Seriously, you had to give me a lump under my breast at the same time? I mean - seriously?? A lump so painful it actually restricts movement of my right arm? Did you think, dear universe, that giving me this just when I can't even attempt to make an appointment with my GP until Tuesday, would add spice to the festive season? Well, guess again. Too much has happened this year to make this anything to fret over.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

And having got that off my chest, I would like to, rather less dementedly, wish everyone a very peaceful Christmas.

Just got the call from the clinic with the results of my second blood test. My beta hCG level is down to 38 (from 41) and the progesterone only increased slightly.

The nurse said that I can expect to start miscarrying in the next week.

That's two pregnancies lost in one year, 3 in less than 2 years. Starchild, Bean and now my little stars.

I don't know how we are going to bear this because this is so hard. It's too hard.

So Sunday was the big family do at my aunt's house. A day or so before I got a text from my cousin (she's my favourite cousin, eight years younger than I am, I was her babysitter, confidante, advisor - big sister really). I already knew that she is pregnant but she wanted to warn me that she is starting to show and didn't want me to be faced suddenly with a pregnant belly. My cousin is the only family member apart from our parents to know of our struggles and losses - she herself lost her first pregnancy so she understands some of how I feel and has sensitivity and love enough to try and imagine the rest.

We had a good time at the party, I ate more food than I think is decent and Significant Other drank too much wine and snored loudly for the full hour's drive home. Later that evening I found out that Ross and Rachel had their baby, a gorgeous boy. I love them to bits and I am genuinely happy for them. But... oh, but... You all know only too well, I don't have to say it.

And then we decided that I should POAS on Monday morning so I staggered into the bathroom at 6.00am and did the needful on my penultimate stick. The wretched thing was a dud - I was using an own-brand from a large high street chemist chain and a positive test shows up as a cross in the first window and a line in the control window. I had half a cross and no control window line. Significant Other made me a large mug of hot blackcurrant cordial, we waited half an hour (bladder the size of a pea) and I tried again but this time on a F1rst Response EPT. A faint second line which if you weren't really looking for you would have missed.

Naturally, on the way to work, I stopped at my nearest branch of the same high street chemist chain and bought a 2-for-1 Cle@r Blue and did a third test in the ladies' loo at work. A much less faint, but faint nonetheless, positive. So I phoned the clinic and made an appointment for a blood test later that morning and waited.

Least Favourite Nurse rang with the results - "well, it's a positive result but the levels are very low" she said, coldly. Beta hCG was 41.4 (Nice Kiwi Nurse who took my blood told me that they were looking for over 100) and progesterone was 60.1 (hoping for over 200). Least Favourite Nurse made an appointment for another blood test on Friday morning, advised me to continue with the clex@ne injections and increase the cylc0gest to three times a day and that was that.

And on Tuesday morning I was struck down with an even nastier version of the chest infection I thought had been clearing. I have been home in bed, coughing up bits of lung, ever since. As Significant Other left London for a city in the Midlands on Monday, my mother came to stay and looked after me. I'm usually a reluctant patient, always think of myself as much less sick than I am and able to do much more than I can, but this week I have been luxuriating in having hot drinks and dry toast being brought to me during the times when I surfaced from those vaguely sinister dreams you have when you have a temperature.

Significant Other came back last night and my mother went home. I was meant to be going in for my second blood test this morning but the heavy snowfall and my improving but still tenacious chest infection made me put the appointment back until Monday. Another weekend of waiting is nothing to us IFers, accustomed as we are to possessing our souls in patience. But I did POAS on the last stick in the house - the second of the 2-for-1 Cle@r Blue. Even more faint, which I didn't think possible.

So, what do you think, dear interwebs? Chemical pregnancy? The remnant of beta hCG from the post-retrieval trigger injection? Final cosmic joke for 2009?

And finally, just to complete my sour, sorry-for-myself mood, Signficant Other has taken to the bed and banished me to the sofa. Apparently, although he had a high old time while he was out of London (2 Christmas dinners and 1 Christmas party), he's now "too sick" to get out of bed (he has an intermittent cough) and needs hot drinks and lots of snacks brought to him.

I'm sorry for being such a whingey old moo. I do plan on cheering up and getting more into the festive spirit (ho, ho, ho) but I just don't seem to be able to manage it this morning.

I haven't POAS yet but I just know that I'm not pregnant. You know what it's like, no-one is more in tune with her own body than an infertile.

But, because it isn't over until the fat lady sings, or in my case the slightly overweight lady pees, I haven't shared my sense of failure with Significant Other. He's still stressed enough already with work, Christmas (he's a rabid atheist and loathes the festive season) and, of course the whole infertility / loss / TTC extravaganza.

Helping to reduce stress in Significant Other includes being solely responsible for the preparations for Christmas, which is a time of year my beloved rabid atheist loathes. It means doing all the shopping, cooking, laundry and cleaning - although I have to admit that the last currently consists of nothing more than a cat's lick and a promise as having bronchitis has severely restricted my ability to dust or wield a vacuum cleaner. It means pretending that the clex@ne injections don't hurt and that waking up at 5.30 every morning for the first Cycl0gest pessary of the day is no biggie.

I'm trying so hard to keep everything held together and sometimes I think I'm managing. Other times, like today, I feel like I am trying to carry around a handful of water.

Bang in the middle of the 2ww and I am having the usual attack of the split personality crazies.

Yesterday I was all "Woo-hoo, I just know that this worked! My b00bs are bigger! I have nausea!! I'm hungry all the time!!! I'm totally craving pizza!!!! Can't go 30 minutes without having to pee!!!!!"

Today Little Miss Rational has come to visit. My b00bs are exactly the same size as they've been since a couple of weeks after losing Bean. No nausea, normal appetite. I crave pizza all the time because it's a forbidden food and, trust me, gluten-free pizza bases taste like biscuits (cookies, not the sort you eat with gravy). And peeing the livelong day? Well, drinking several glasses of juice or water or cups of tea an hour will do that to a girl.

In order to distract myself I have been putting together a mini hamper to send to Significant Other's parents for Christmas. We have a number of small treats from H@rr0ds, a mini Christmas pudding from M&S and some cat toys from my darling little cat to their darling (somewhat larger) cat. The presents are beautifully wrapped in festive paper and I've even sprinkled some seasonal confetti inside the carton, and the parcel is sitting, ready to go, on the desk. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Last air mail posting day for parcels from England to the Antipodes was yesterday...

Amama (my grandmother) died today. She was 92, confused and very frail and it wasn't entirely unexpected but it was still a shock. She died peacefully, quickly and in her own bed, with family around her - and I guess that is all that we could ask for her. The last thing she did was to have a couple of sips of her morning coffee, a thought which even now, in my first pangs of grief, makes me smile. She passed her obsessive love of coffee to her daughters and her grand-daughters, you see.

The last time I spoke to her, Amama didn't always know who I was - sometimes she thought I was my mother (her daughter). But the last thing I said to her was that I missed her and I love her - and that will be true forever.