You have to laugh, or you'd cry!

Morning.

So this picture really made me laugh, getting this instead of a big black 'NOT PREGNANT' would make it a bit easier to take I would think. This is what I'm imagine in exactly 14 days from now (extra points to those of you that have read enough to know what day that makes today...)

And this 

Tiny little stitches....

So I'm trying to be positive, to not let infertility beat me. It's a battle we're fighting but we're stronger, we're better and we will beat this.

But sometimes I can't be strong and I just let it win. I had an episode of that this morning.

I logged onto Facebook to receive a message from an old colleague of mine, she was a good friend and I have no bad feelings towards her. It started off as a generic message, "How are you, hope the moves going well etc..." Then there it was. The sentence that I now have the amazing ability to sense coming before I've even heard it. "I'm pregnant" (honestly, the past two family members who have gotten pregnant, I have bet my husband it will happen a good few weeks in advance! Shit magic power though...)

That sentence has the ability to change everything I'm currently feeling or thinking, and I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. I'm jealous, I'm angry and I'm not proud of it. Some of you will be reading this in horror, or what selfish monster I've becomes, those of you with IF will be reading this and nodding your head with everything I'm saying.

I've come to terms with the fact that I will never get a happy surprise, Im never going to become a mum without expecting it. I'm never going to get the chance to surprise my husband with the news he's going to be a Dad (well I suppose we would both be surprised if it ever happened). I'm never going to conceive my child in my own bed. My child will be conceived in a hospital, without any intimate contact from my husband what so ever. No romance, no cuddles or excitement afterwards, just hospital gowns, needles, doctors and stirrups. I've come to terms with that, I don't care. I just want a child, I don't care how. But I will never come to terms with hearing that sentence from many may people while we're trying so hard to achieve the same thing.

It's almost impossible to hold back the tears now.  Me and my husband usually leave as soon as possible and go home and cry. We're both angry. We're both envious and nothing will take that feeling away.

The upside of it, is I truly believe I will be a better Mum because of it. We've had more than enough time to think about if this is what we want. I already know what kind of Mum I want to be, I already know the names of my children and why their nursery will look like. If they ever arrive, I will know to cherish every single moment I have with them, because we longed and tried so hard to make them exist. This is what makes me so angry when I hear or see people moaning about their children. You don't know how lucky you are.

So every time my period arrives, every time I hear that sentence, I develop a new tiny tear in my heart. Its my job then to put it back together with try little stitches and keep going. Anyone who had dealt with this for years is a very strong person, feel free to disagree with me, but you're wrong. We pick up the pieces every month and carry on with life, we suffer the loss of something we love and want so much every month, but carry on. Not many people can say that. So in my heart are 27 little tears, for every month we've failed and every baby that has been born around us, and right in the middle is a big gaping hole for the baby that we lost before we even got the chance to meet.

A month in the life of an infertile couple. Fun!

Hello!!

So I haven't updated our little blog of ours for a while, I have been SO busy marking exam papers and moving house that thankfully, infertility had not been the main thing I think about.

I know that I sound like the most depressive and obsessed woman, and some of you will be reading and thinking "God just stop thinking about it! you're going on and on and it won't help you" etc...

Well no it won't, but thats the harder thing to get people to realise, infertility is something that you HAVE to deal with every single day, not because we like to sit and mope and wallow in self pity, but because it's a medical disease which requires you do something every single day. Just so you get a better idea of what a 'month' in the life of an infertile couple is like, here's our monthly routine..

Cycle Day One - You realise that you've failed to get pregnant for another month. With every month that passes statistically the chances of ever conceiving a child drop. So you have to go through the grieving process and come to terms with another failed month. Just when you thought things were bad enough, you have to deal with the physical pain which is just another reminder of what you haven't got growing inside of you.

Cycle days 2-6 - You've grieved, you've cried, you've been mad at the world, then you have to start taking another months worth of fertility medication (In my case Clomid). Every morning, wake up and pop one of these tiny little white pills that are supposed to be a baby in a tablet, and hope for the best. Then spend the rest of the day dealing with the side effects which are just a constant reminder that you're infertile, and the drugs are making you ill.

Cycle days 6-18 - You can only get pregnancy when you ovulate. Fact. Average woman ovulates anywhere from 12-18 days into her cycle. An egg lives for about 24hours, sperm lives on average for up to 3 days. In order to get pregnant you have to make sure you have sperm in place, ready to meet the egg when it finally pops. No good having sex AFTER you ovulate, or too early, it won't work. In order to find out when you're ovulating you do ovulation predictor kits (OPKs). Just to make it a little bit harder, fertility medications can change dramatically the day in which you ovulate, so you have to test every day from cycle day 6 to 18, in the hope that somewhere along the line it turns positive. A positive ovulation tests tells you you are going to ovulate in the next 12-24hours, so have sex NOW!

For those of you wondering, you don't just get a "yay" or "nay" on OPKs, you have to play mini scientist to decipher the results.

Positive OPK looks like this

A negative OPK looks like this

Not that easy is it??

Cycle Day 10-20 - Ok you've taken the drugs, you've taken the ovulation tests, but obviously you need to make sure that (sorry parents and family) you're having sex in you're fertile 'window'. You might have thought you were following this so far, but now I'm going to throw a spanner in the works. Although an ovulation test tells you when you are going to release an egg, you are fertile for about 5 days leading up to a positive OPK. But, how do you know when these 5 days are, before you've even got a positive?? See the problem. So you pretty much have to make sure you're having sex, whether you like it or not, every other day throughout the whole month, just to be on the safe side. (Just on a side note, infertility takes all of the fun out of sex!)

It doesn't matter how tired you are, how poorly you are, if you have friends and family staying over, how early you have to get up etc...you have to have sex. Final line is, if you don't, you've wasted another month, and that month could have been the month. (see cycle day one)

Cycle day 18-28/35 - A womans 'average' cycle is 28-35 days long, its normal and healthy to fluctuate between the two. After you've tired yourself out forcing your poor partner to have sex a ridiculous number of times, got the positive ovulation test, you would think that you can have a few weeks of rest. WRONG. Then you are in, what us infertile woman like to call 'The dreaded two week wait'. It takes 14 days from an egg being released, to a period starting. This is called a luteal phase. In some cases it can be longer, but often not shorter, as that in itself can lead to infertility.

Anyway I digress, the two week wait is the 14 whole days you have after ovulation of obsessing over 'am i pregnant or not'. A woman will never be more in tune with her body than when she is trying to have a baby. Every cramp, every pinch, every case of indigestion, every headache, case of wind or sore boob is a possible pregnancy symptom. Not only do you have two weeks of this, you also have to now be careful of what you eat, no drinking, no heavy exercise, no junk food, no caffeine...just incase a miracle has happened and you have been successful in joining a sperm with an egg.

Then some months we're really lucky, and our cycles decide to be a little bit longer. So 14 after you ovulate you are waiting for your period to arrive, and it doesn't! Something magical has happened, you're excited, you can't sleep, you wake your husband up at 4am to tell him it hasn't happened, you plan hospital appointments and names and are elated that finally you're not broken anymore and you're going to be a Mum. The you do a test, negative. Confusion sets in, how can it be negative, my period isn't here and I'm always regular? You google. Maybe the fertilised egg implanted late? It takes about 2 days to get enough HCG in your system to show up on a test. Yes that must be it, it didn't implant until late so I can't tell. I'll test again tomorrow. So 15 days after you ovulate, still no period, still excited, still elated, test again, negative. Still holding onto that one desperate hope that its just too early. This carries on for 3 more days, and then it's 18 days after you ovulated, still no period and no positive test. Then on the 19th day, your period decides to arrive, 4 days late. You are now devastated, heart broken and feel like a failure. Then we're straight back to cycle day one.

Cycle day 1-35 - Lets not forget that while all of this is going on, every single morning you have to wake up and take your temperature before you do ANYTHING. Basal body temperature is a good indication of whats going on in you body. It drops before ovulation, rises after, and if your pregnant continues to rise, if not starts dropping again. So as soon as you wake up, before anything else is done that day, you must take your temperature using a basal body thermometer and record it on a chart, once you start moving your temperature fluctuates, so you don't get a true reading. Then you get one of these

And being the trained infertile mertyl I am, I can tell you from that chart exactly when I ovulated, when I had a bad nights sleep, when I ate too much and when I failed to become a mother. 

So there you have it, yes I sound like a broken record, and I know there are people in this world that are much worse of than me, I am extremely thankful for my brilliant family, my wonderful family in law, my fantastic husband and my marvellous friends (I was running out of adjectives then) if we never become parents I will still have them, but infertility is never ending, you can't get away from it, and seen as this is an infertility blog, I will sound like a moany old cow. But I don't want you to pity us, or feel sorry for us, but as this is a disease which we are fighting, which is vastly ignored and treated as a taboo subject, I just want people to understand. 

Aloha,

In case any stumbles across this blog (not sure why or how) while researching infertility/pregnancy or suffering from infertility yourself, if you don't belong to this community, go and have a look.

http://babyandbump.momtastic.com/

Brilliant woman, fantastic support and tons of inspiration. Not just for infertile woman, pregnant woman, woman who have suffered losses, woman with new babies, woman with toddlers or teenagers or even woman who are waiting to try and conceive. Give it a go.

I've decided that not all of my blog ramblings should be all doom and gloom about infertility, as other things so happen in our lives shockingly!

Today is cycle day 3 for me, I have started taking my Clomid again, a bizarre side effect of which I seem to get its awful vivid nightmares. Seriously my sleep is terrible when I'm taking these, and to many ladies they would probably just shrug it off as a side effect, but with being a psychologists, and having studied sleep and dreaming a lot of the past few years, I just can't make any sense of it!??

For those wondering, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence to suggest we can explain why people dream. We just can't, same as yawning, nobody can explain why its contagious. There are theories about why we dream (brain repair, fixing of neurones, working through lives problems, making sense of the day etc...) but not one solid but of evidence to prove either one right. So why is it when I pump my body full of hormones designed to make me super ovulator, that my dreams are effected?? I feel like I have found my future PhD...

Dreams aside, no other clomid side effects as of yet, Im moody, but that could be down to PMS...I don't appear to have got the hot flashes like last time to fingers crossed it was a 'clomid virgin' type thing!

Today my darling husband is playing on his Xbox, which I keep up to date with my ladies and I have the boys curled up on the bed with me (those are my boys ^) I have some lovely A level Psychology exam papers waiting to be marked but no motivation to mark them, boo.

We move into our beautiful new home next weekend which is exciting, apart from the moving part, as I HATE moving, and then the week after is ovulation week. Joy. I hate it, tests everywhere, tablets everywhere, pillows available at any opportunity, not to mention the paid of ovulating on Clomid. Please, if there is someone out there that deals out the cards in the cosmos, just make these eggs be the good ones, because frankly, I'm fed up!!

 I know this shows how bitter and twisted IF had made me, but mostly baby brag book feels like this! 

This is a pretty good explanation of life at the moment....

Warning: I'm currently as hormonal as they come...

Aloha,

So, on my website today (babyandbump) where I have met a lot of friends who are battling infertility (yes, even though we've never met face to face, I can talk to them more candidly and openly about infertility than I can my real life friends, so to me they are friends) somebody very brave told us we didn't have the right to be bitter about infertility and we should be "bigger people" and be happy for woman. Well, maybe it's my hangover, or the fact that AF is in full swing (google it) or that my Clomid has kicked in, but I felt like actually SCREAMING at the computer screen, but reading the replies from other woman, woman I class as friends, I realised something, I might be infertile, and I hate it with every ounce of my being,  but there is some good to come out of it. Some people are genuinely amazing people.

Martin - My dearest husband, my fantastically supportive and patient husband who I could not do this without (obviously, durr!) For us there is a certain point in every month that is the hardest part of the month, and it can only get better from there, but no matter how much I scream and shout and cry and cry he's always there, sometimes as a counsellor, sometimes as a punchbag, but always there. He would be a fantastic father, there is no doubt about that, and sometimes the hardest part of this infertility malarky is the fact that him being a father hasn't happened yet. With this whole thing being a massive secret for a long time, Martin was the only person who truly understood what it felt like to grieve every month, and have to pick yourself back up and get on with it, fake a smile and act like everything was good when inside you felt like curling up in a ball and bawling. Even though we are battling infertility, I have realised that I still have to be grateful for my brilliant husband. Yes, we don't have a child yet, but there are people out there that do have children, but don't have someone like Martin beside them helping them, don't have a happy relationship, and don't have somebody to look after them and their babies, so even though we're not yet 'mummy and daddy' I am honestly married to my best friend, who I have been in love with since the moment I met, and I suppose it would just be too perfect if we had that, and a baby without any problems eh?

Other infertile woman - Now don't get me wrong, I love my friends and family to death, they mean the absolute world to me. I have two best friends in particular who I couldn't live without, and they know who they are. I mean this in the best possible way, but unless you too, are suffering from infertility, you don't have the faintest idea what its like. I really don't mean that in a horrible or belittling way, it's a bit dramatic but it's like being in a wheelchair, you have no idea whats its like unless you're also in a wheelchair. Anyway, enough with my mental rambling, other infertile woman and truly an inspiration. We have only been dealing with this disease (yes its a disease) for 2 years, but some of the friends I have met have been dealing with this for 5, 10 or even 15 years and are still hopeful and still positive and keep going. I don't know if I'll ever be strong enough to deal with this for that long, and sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud belonging to an infertility group after 2 years with all of these lovely woman on there, but I'm glad they're there. After all the pain and disappointment they have suffered, they are still so supportive of every other woman who is going through that journey, and even though I'm only a novice compared to them, they take the time to cheer me up, ask how I'm doing, give advice and just listen when I need to speak to somebody who knows. When I see woman who pop out 4 or 5 babies, all to different dads, chain smoking and spending their dole money on cheap cider and pot noodles (I do live in kiveton after all) I just think how much of an injustice is being done, when they can get pregnant and have a family, but the amazing woman I have met through being infertile can't.  Just a side note, but also, don't piss these woman off. The woman who said we were all bitter and needed to be bigger people earlier soon got told where she could shove it, in the most eloquent way possible of course!

So really, even though what we're going through is shitty and it hurts everyday, there has to be a silver lining, and the woman I have met, and my amazing husband are mine.

"....just get over it"

Aloha

So since our big "unveil" of our infertility,  we've decided to keep this blog going as a kind of personal diary of everything that is related to trying to conceive (TTC), that and somewhere that I can rant and rave about things that piss me off when on the outside I'm smiling (i'm so nice to peoples faces) we might never make it public, might only make it public to family and close friends, but what ever happens, we needed somewhere to write everything down so it makes more sense to us. Of anything in the world, I can promise you that you have no idea what infertility feels like, or does to a relationship, until you've experienced it yourselves, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy so sincerely hope you don't have to find out what its like.

On our LONG journey of TTC our first child, suffering one miscarriage and spending around £1000 in pregnancy tests, ovulation tests, lotions, potions, vitamins, prescriptions etc...over the past 2 years, I found a really lovely website dedicated to woman and couples also suffering from infertility, some unexplained like Martin and I, some with physical issues preventing them from becoming pregnant but all of us with a final goal in mind. It might sound silly to other people but it has actually provided us with a lot of support and advice over the past 2 years, and I've made some good friends on there who know what we're going through. Today I went onto the website to see how the weekend had been for some friends of mine, as the jubilee brought many family parties and BBQs, which for someone suffering from infertility can be a worse nightmare to see other people with their children and have to seem happy about it.

Anyway, on there was a new member who had recently fallen out with her infertile friend after becoming pregnant, as she hadn't seem as supportive as she had wanted her to be. Among this post were phrases such as
"Get over yourselves...", "just adopt...", "You don't have the right to be pissed off..." "You are all selfish"  and my personal favourite "...Infertility is not a disease, stop treating it as one, if you want a baby so damn much go and adopt one".

After I'd finished with the voodoo doll and casting spells, I realised that generally people are just so bloody ignorant to infertility because for some reasons it's a taboo subject. I'll admit I don't know anyone who has suffered from fertility problems, but since 1 in 5 couples in the UK do, I probably do, but just don't know about it because 'nobody talks about it...'.

We suffer from unexplained infertility, probably the worst kind, as nobody can give you n explanation, and nothing can be fixed. Unexplained infertility is annoying because at no point in time will a doctor say "this is not going to happen for you" because there no reason it won't, it could take 3 years, 5 years or even 15 years, but theres nothing medically found to be wrong...so this vicious cycle could continue indefinitely...

Unexplained infertility, is not actually "there isn't a problem". Unexplained infertility means in the medical world 'There is a problem, but at the moment the technology doesn't exist to be able to detect what that problem is'. Do you see infertility charities advertising for donations for new tests and technologies? Nope. Do you see support groups advertised in doctors waiting rooms for infertile people? Nope. Do YOU really know what infertility is? The processes a couple goes through, the tests, the procedures, the assisted conception methods such as Clomid, IUI, IVF, ICSI etc...? Probably not. Do YOU understand what actually goes into making a baby? I'll give you a clue, there is a hell of a lot more to it then just having sex (so one night stand and accidental babies simply PISS me off) do you know what TTC, LTTTC, OPK, HPT, CM, SMEP, U/E, IF, BBT, PGST, LH, LP, DPO, EWCM, POAS, FRER, AF, DH, MIL, BFP, BFN and BD mean? Nope. I do, because I suffer from infertility. I need to know what these things mean, I need to know the perfect recipe for making a baby, I need to know what vitamins to take, what days to have sex, what not to eat, what not to do, what time to have sex, to take my temperature EVERY MORNING before I do anything else, to take tablet after tablet at the right time, then wait two weeks to take a pregnancy tests only to know I have to do the same thing all again next month because we've failed. Because thats infertility, thats not being able to do the single, most natural thing our bodies were designed to do.

So please, before you assume a female friend of yours, or a family member must be having babies soon because she's a)married b) getting older c) already has a child who is getting older think before you speak. Maybe they have been trying to have a baby for a very long time, but it's too much of a taboo subject to talk about.