Im so rubbish at updating, I know

Aloha,

So its been quite a while since I last updated, for any of you that do check this every so often (hello!) I apologise that you haven't had any mad rambling to read for a while.

So as you know in the past month we have moved house, and I have started a new job, hence why this has kind of gone on the back burner. Well in my last 'blog' i was 10DPO and as there is no happy news blog, you are right to assume that good old mother nature arrived right on time with my monthly gift. Thanks for that. So we are officially into month 29. This month feels good, I don't know why, just does. I love my new job, I love my new house, we're not stressed or tired all the time like we used to be in our old house, our sex life now exists (sorry friends a family) and things just feel good. If you know what I mean. So i'm feeling quite content with how this month will go.

Clomid round 3 has been taken, hot flushes are getting worse with every cycle, particularly at night when I feel like I want to claw my skin off just so I can get cooler! I also changed the days I took clomid this month (naughty naughty!) as 3-7 seems to have higher success rates than 2-6. Something to do with it producing more 'mature' eggs than more eggs in general, so we'll see how this goes. My poor hair is also falling out left right and centre, thanks hormone treatments, so now not only am I infertile, but at this rate i'm going to be a bald infertile as well! I suppose it would save money on shampoo and time straightening my hair...

Anyway as for the TTC at the minute, well I am in my 12-24hours til ovulation window after getting the darkest positive ovulation test ever this morning, and my ovaries are causing me pain so I know I'm about to lay an egg (Or two, or three depending on how good the clomid has worked) so fingers crossed this one is a good 'un! (Or two....twins would be great, saves us having to do all this again when we want a second child).

This might make people feel all funny inside, but it fascinates me. I've spent 2 years now thinking about this magical ovulation moment, but never actually thought about what was going on. This photograph was taken of a woman who was in surgery for a hysterectomy, and when she was opened up the doctor realised she was actively ovulating right there on the table. So off he popped to grab the camera and viola, a real life photograph of the female body in action!

Good thing is that this week, despite being up at 6am every morning for work, we've found plenty of time for 'husband and wife time' so hopefully the egg won't stand a chance against the barrage of swimmers that should be laying in wait for it! Interesting fact, did you know that when sperm is in a womans body, it actually goes to sleep and lays dormant in the uterus, then when an egg is released, the hormones wake the sperm up, and off they swim! Hence why you can get pregnant up to 5 days before you actually ovulate, because they are persistent little buggers! However, thinking about this, maybe our problem is that the sperm don't wake up again, Martin has always been difficult to wake.....

Ok thats enough about sperm and eggs, my lovely husband is now cooking me enchiladas in the kitchen, and then a nice night curled up together in front of crap Sunday TV awaits I think!

I'm baaack!

Hello!

Well i've been away from the internet for a while as last weekend my husband and I moved into our lovely new house, which doesn't yet have internet connection. After 10 days of no internet access I caved and decided to pay £5 for a day of wifi internet to keep me sane while I'm at home on my own. Hurrah!!

So aside from the usual, we have a new home!! yay! I got a new job with a university in Manchester and my husband still works in our home town of Sheffield so we moved half way in between the two, Holmfirth. We're in Last of the summer wine territory!

Isn't it oh so very pretty?? Not that we've had one dry day since we moved in (lovely British Summer) we're still in the process of sorting out the house, but it's getting more homely as we go on. Here's our new abode 

We love love LOVE it here, and cant wait to get properly settled and hopefully have a fresh new start in our new home (we even have a second bedroom for the first time...hopefully it'll bring us some luck eh?)

Well back to normal business, I am now 10 days past ovulation and no sign of a pregnancy this month, so I goes we're onto month number...29 I think, I don't know I've lost count. In good news I think I'm becoming a bit numb to the pain now, when I did the HPT this morning and I was slapped in the face b a BFN, I didn't take it apart, I didn't hold it up to the light, I just pulled a face and threw it in the bin. Waiting for AF to arrive so we can start month number 3 of clomid. I'm going to change my climid days from 2-6 to 3-7 also, as I hear thats more successful so we'll see.

In good news my medical records finally made it from my old doctor down south to my new doctor up north, which means yesterday we were referred to our new fertility specialist to pick up where we left off. So excited! Sheffield fertility centre has a brilliant reputation so I'm hoping we get somewhere with this. So in my calculations it will be around 3 months until we get an appointment (god bless NHS) so we should know what our next steps are by September! I'm hoping they go straight for IUI so we can skip all of these months of 'letting nature take it's corse' because frankly it isn't working! On the upside if we are given IUI on the NHS then we can get rid off all the stress that goes along with ovulation week, and just let the hospital do it for us, hurrah!!

My second piece of news, you have heard me talk about a website I was part of many times in this blog, and it provided me with lots of support during my infertility journey, until recently. There were lots of pregnant woman and mothers coming into the Long Term Trying to Conceive area telling us infertile woman to grow up, stop being so bitter towards pregnant woman blah blah blah and the sad thing is the moderators and admin of the board seemed to agree with them. How dare they?! I'm sorry but I frankly don't care how many children you have or how many times you've been pregnant, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO HAVE INFERTILITY as so many of thee pregnant woman do. Bugger off, go and hug your children and feed your babies and leave me to moan and cry and hate the world for not letting me have something that comes so easy to you!

Anyway, me and a few friends I had met on there decided enough was enough, and we made our own support website/forum! We run it, with many of us as moderators (me included) and admin so we can keep an eye on whats going on, who's posting what etc... and although we're a bunch of infertile betties, the website is designed for all kinds of parents. New parents, prospective parents, people trying to get pregnant and people who can't get pregnant.

Please have a look, it's still in its infant and still a new website but once it gets up and running we'll be great. We're very proud of it and hope you'll like it.

Hearts of Mummies

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....