A Tiny Candle in the Dark

I have a lovely post about my life-affirming date with Morrissey in the wings but it must wait.

More importantly, I am absolutely shattered by all the bad news happening to so many sweet bloggers. I cannot comprehend how we manage to survive the blows but these sweet, brave women need all the support we can muster.

Millie at Out Damned Egg just found out her much-longed-for pregnancy is ectopic.

Akeeyu at Herveryown just found out at her 8 week scan that the Good Embryo has not made it.

Lisa at The Strollercoaster is suffering prolonged agony after her D&C.

DD at Knocked Up just learned that her last ever IVF attempt did not work.

Nina at Stella and/or Ben does not have any embryos to transfer after her poor husband underwent TESA to extract sperm.

Julianna at My Eggs are Cooked is still too, too quiet after her last IVF and I worry so, so much about her.

Pain happens everyday when you are infertile but at times like these, it all seems too damned much. So many other finer bloggers than I have decided to throw in the towel and I completely understand. Sometimes you just want to be oblivious of all the pain of infertility and the losses. But these ladies can not do that, reality must be faced and so must we.

Please visit them with some IF love and kind words to help ease their sorrows in some small way.

My heart goes out to you ladies.

Thunderbirds 1 & 2 are a Go!!!!

5....4....3....2...1....Lift-off. Full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes etc etc.

We have suppression and are cleared for stims/hormones. Nary a cyst or an unruly lining in sight x 2. I start on the blessed estradiol valerate tomorrow. Farewell hot flashes, hello bloating. (When I googled Progynova, Tertia and Lynnette at Labor Negotiations both came up. It is a common treatment in the UK, SA and Australian fertility clinics, apparently.)

I can release the breath I have been holding. Gordon Bennett! What will I be like in a real-live 2ww??? Bloody giddy, I promise you.

Now I can concentrate all my energies on getting ready for my date tomorrow night with my folie d'amour.

Best black all the way, baby!!

I Can Hear The Grass Grow

Tonight is my last sniff before the baseline tomorrow.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I am tied up in knots thinking of what can go wrong with me or my donor or both of us. Or maybe neither of us. Please shoot me before I overthink myself to death.

Another week has passed and another week of feeling like crap. All I do is whine. Mr P must be sick of it.

In an effort to buck myself up, we went out today. The sun was shining and it was 17 degrees(62F). Perfect blue sky and no wind. When the weather is like that here in ofttimes grey Scotland, it means head to the coast.

A bracing walk from the West Sands to the East Sands here was just what the doctor ordered.

Together with a lick of Mr P's raspberry ripple icecream and my very own iced frappucino and rounded off with a Chinese takeaway on the way home to end up, collapsed in front of an episode of the TV series of Planet of the Apes. (Part of Mr P and I's romantic courtship involved a marathon viewing of all the Planet of the Apes films, consecutively. Dweebs, nous???)

Perfect day and just the antidote for the weeblies about this cycle and tomorrow.

Oh My Giddy Aunt!

I received an e-mail saying "Congratulations!!! Our editors have selected your newsfeed to be featured in one of our Top 10 Sources sites. You can view the site that features your feeds by clicking here.

Have I been spammed or what? Can any one of my 20 avid readers throw any light on this?

I do not know what to make of it. Amazingly, for once, I am speechless.

No Chocolate Eggs For Me* (Updated)

As I sit here and and a hot flash roils over my body, I sigh and think of how much I would love some chocolate. I seem to have traded the headaches for the hot flashes this weekend. I am not sure which is worse.

Actually, what is worse is knowing that my sweet donor is suffering much, much worse than I. At least, with an anonymous egg donor, you do not know what is happening with them and can only remotely worry. I can worry firsthand on the phone as she relates her constant hot flashes, nausea, dizziness and fatigue. I feel bad. So bad.

She is dealing with it like a trooper whilst I can only cry. I keep telling her that she has had 2 children so she can survive anything.

Me? I am an old crone and have been proven to survive everything since the dawn of time, as long as I can cry at the same time too.

* I am a Type 2 diabetic and therefore no chocolate eggs = stable blood sugar.

Lots of variables in this cycle are outwith my control but this is the one thing that is my complete responsibility. But I would love to be cramming my face with Cadbury's Creme Eggs right this minute. Instead, my Easter pudding was custard (made with skim milk and a little Splenda) and prunes. Deep joy.

No Infertile Left Behind

I don't know if it is the effect of the longest suppression known to woman but I am feeling very down. Down, down, way down.

The vice-like headaches are not letting up and actually I am finding it very debilitating. I had a great time on Saturday but then most of Sunday I felt so wan that I just wanted to lie down and weep.

I must check back to last year's blog entries to see how I felt. I did have headaches the last 2 times but I cannot remember them being so bad. Maybe it is because this time I am doubting the reason why I am even putting myself through this.

The spotting and watery mucus are also bizarre. I definitely did not have them before in previous cycles. I hope I do not have a cyst. Anyone have some insight into why I would be spotting as I am not supposed to have any lining yet?

Again it sucks big time that I am having to suppress for 3 weeks. Our baseline U/S is on the 24th which is as far away as the moon from me, at the moment. My clinic does not care that they always do this to me as it is all about the schedule, not people. We are just names on a schedule not real live crying women.

I am convinced that I am wasting my time and nothing is going to work. This is the darkest scraping from the floor of my birdcage mind.

I would never admit it out loud to Mr P or my donor but I am convinced that my uterus is a no-go area. I try to talk it up by telling myself that I have never had an embryo transferred before so how I would I know what is going to happen. Maybe if there had been implantation failure before, I could think this but otherwise what have I got to lose?

Maybe just the last shred of my sanity.

If My Vagina Could Talk or How to Spend a Saturday Afternoon

If mine could talk, it would say "Not tonight, Josephine".

I had a lovely Saturday with my good friend Peg and of course, you can tell from the blog title what we were doing. Yes, it was The Vagina Monologues.

It has been on all week and the theatre it was performed at has a fab restaurant downstairs. I know the manager and he was saying he could not believe how many women there had been in all week. Demanding starters and sweets and fancy coffees and shrieking, oh the shrieking! He was about deafened by all the oestrogen.

Well, I was one of those shrieking women and it was a hoot. I had read enough about the show to know what it was all about but the tears and laughter and female empathy did this poor woman's tired and empty heart good. I was worried that I would lose the plot due to the hormones (and 2 gin and tonics ha!). The poem about the Bosnian women and the rapes led me to shed quite a few tears and I battled with no handkerchief handy. However, I always have a sleeve.

My mood was restored during the audience participation where we had to shout out the pejorative C word very loudly and with gusto. I think the blue rinse brigade were having some trouble with that one but us rambunctious 40 year olds were having none of that nicety business. I roared, with all my heart and soul, for all the women who could not roar.

Could You Misanthropes Keep That Noise Down to a Dull Roar!

I have just re-read posts from my first IVF last year and my first encounter with the satanic drug of Synarel. I was pretty perky then until it all went to shit with no embryois to transfer.

However, my complaints about the Synarel were the same then as they are this year. Tastes like shit, makes me sneeze and gives me headaches. Oh, and I see dead people. Well, they will be dead if I get my hands on them.

The people who will be dead are the fifty-somethings who sat through The Proposition at my local arthouse cinema and gave a running commentary all the way though the film. Mr P had to give them a menacing glare and ask them to shut up. He is a pussycat but he has a shaved head so he can look mean if he tries. I was ready to just reach round and tie their tongues together but Mr P's restraining hand on my arm held me back. I just resorted to a hard Paddington stare as we left the cinema.

By the way, the film itself was amazingly violent but if you could ignore that, the cinematography was out of this world. Lots of shots of sunset in the Outback and lingering views of the desolation. All set to music co-written by Nick Cave and he also wrote the screenplay. Emily Watson and Ray Winstone outdid themselves.

We also had our weekend away to Loch Lomond. The hotel was shit and Mr P got food poisoning in their restaurant on the first night so that sort of put a damper on the weekend. We did have a glorious view of the loch from the bed but that was not enough to make up for the rest. Bah.

The only thing that helped ease my pain was that I finally got my mitts on the new Morrissey album and it is only 4 weeks until I worship at his feet, in person!!! I am already stressing about which black outfit to wear.