How The Fuck Did I Get Here, Then?

I know there was a time when I was happy.

Somewhere in between meeting Monkey Boy at the age of 33 and the shit going down with his mother over our wedding plans, I was happy.  Deliriously happy, as one is at the start of every relationship I suppose, but even more so because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was The One.

Unfortunately, I was at the end of a 9-month drug binge at the time we met. A binge that was helping me forget the incredibly abusive relationship with a brilliant and talented man who unfortunately had Bipolar Disorder with psychosis and self-medicated himself with 5 litres of cask wine every night. A relationship that had ended only with a Restraining Order after 4.5 years of trying. A binge that was helping me forget that my youngest brother had committed suicide one month before I ended that relationship, and that he was the second of my brothers to make that choice.  A binge that helped me forget that people I considered my friends sexually assaulted me in a hotel room the week after I ended that relationship and that the police would do nothing about it.

So I think its fair to say that I was well fucked up around that time. *Actually a gross understatement of the matter.

Being at university, drugs were freely available, always on offer and (it seemed to me) the perfect answer. *They are not and never will be the perfect answer to anything.  And they certainly did help me "forget" my troubles. When you are high on speed and ecstasy almost every weekend, and the good old green every day, you are having a damn good time in your own head.  But the bills aren't getting paid, and there is no money for food and everything else is falling to shit around you because all you do is party.

So when you meet someone who is nice, and decent, and the brother of your best "party friend" and he LIKES YOU, and he meets every criteria on the list you wrote down in your diary (while on drugs) re qualities the perfect man must have, well its rather easy to make some decisions that in hindsight might have been better made...well..sober.

Never mind, the decision was made and we were married. And because there was a passive-aggressive showdown about our wedding plans courtesy of Monkey Boy's mother, (who has several posts in her all to herself) his family did not come to the wedding.

Strike One.

Two days later, on our honeymoon I had Prolapsed Disc #1 followed by six months of unbearable pain that my doctor seemed unconcerned with alleviating in any way. Monkey Boy was halfway through his Honours Degree, which he had to give up so he could look after me.

Strike Two.

I had surgery, finally. Hurrah! It fixed the pain, by taking away part of my spine in a procedure called a Hemi-Laminectomy. Ok, whatever, at least it didn't hurt anymore.

So then I thought: lets have a baby! Fabulous idea, especially for someone who never ever wanted to have children (me) with a loudly ticking Biological Clock.  Then comes the miscarriage..

Strike Three.

My brain is OUTTA HERE!  Major Depression comes and overstays its welcome.

Our lives become a hell of TTC and HCG and TWW and OPK and Semen Analysis and timing sex and heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak.

Until, almost two years later, on the day we are at the IVF clinic being told we will be starting our first cycle in a couple of months and we are freaking out about the whole idea, we were completely unaware about this.

Hooray! We have a baby, and he's awfully cute and healthy and we loved him heaps. He was the impetus for a reconciliation with Monkey Boy's family. But we have no idea what we are doing with the strange little creature though, and he doesn't sleep, and he doesn't feed properly and he doesn't put on weight and I cant produce enough milk no matter what I do so now of course I am a failure, and there is more stress and no sleep.

But somehow,  after 18 months, there was enough sleep to produce some rather unexpected changes.

The thing was, we were not planning on another child. At all. Felix was the miracle baby. Another child was statistically impossible. Goes to show what you can take from statistics.  The other thing was that the very first day of the pregnancy I managed to prolapse a disc again. Same disc as before at L4/L5 but on the other side. The surgery that fixed the initial injury in 2004 had created a weak point, and my stupidfuckingspine decided "wheyhey! Lets smoosh out that way".

So imagine, if you can, a ruptured disc that presses on the sciatic nerve and causes indescribable pain happening at the very beginning of a pregnancy. All those long months ahead of you with increasing pressure on the back, on the pelvic joints, the loosening of all the joints thanks to stupid hormones. The doctors saying "well you're pregnant, you cant take anything."  Imagine pain that starts in the lower back, courses through your buttock and down the side of your thigh, hot, burning hot liquid pain, that then heads to your big toe, where it feels like your toe is being pulled so hard your leg is being ripped off.  Imaging this 24 hours a day. Imagine pain that makes you rock back and forth on your knees for hours on end in tears, unable to walk, or sit, or lie down, heavily pregnant and screaming with pain at times and desperate, desperate, desperate for anything. Even for the pregnancy to be ended there and then so they would give you decent pain relief.

Imagine also that you are dealing with all of this with an 18 month old son, a husband who cannot cope with what is happening, and no support. Imagine your husband grabbing your son, pointing to you while you are in obvious distress and yelling at him: "Look! Look at what you've done to mummy!"

My heart broke right there and then, and I realised that there was a choice to be made and that I would always always make it in favour of my child. Looking back, that was the moment, the very moment that our marriage died.

Nevertheless, I am pregnant and still completely disabled and dependent.  It wasn't until I was 33 weeks pregnant that I was finally given an MRI and some halfway decent pain relief.  To get this I had to scream hysterically at my Obstetrician who wasn't quite understanding that if he didn't prescribe me some decent drugs RIGHTNOWFUCKYOU I would kill myself.  I was given Endone for pain relief, and the MRI showed what I knew it would all along, a disc protrusion on the right at L4/5 impinging on the sciatic nerve root.  Right there that produces a whole new set of complications for the pregnancy and delivery. 

The boffins all said it would be right as rain once I had delivered. That once the pressure of the baby had been relieved then the disc would heal itself. Well we all know that boffins are full of shit, eh?

So delivery, with my back in this state? Horror show. Again, that's a story for another day, if I can bring myself to write it.  Suffice to say at the end, I had more pain in my back from the epidural, pain from the emergency c-section, a baby in ICU being checked for narcotic withdrawal (it turned out she was completely fine) and hospital staff that clearly never bothered to read my file and treated me like a "normal" postnatal woman, when very clearly I was a fucking wreck with very high needs.

I left hospital with severe PTSD from the delivery as well as severe PND which nobody seemed to pick up on even though I knew I had both but was so fucked up I literally couldn't say anything to anyone.  I was completely unable to care for my new daughter and what's more, I didn't want to. This is another story. It was BAD. It was so bad that it let to a complete disassociation from Monkey Boy's family. Again, another story for another day.


I think Ella was at least 12 months old before I got to see a proper Pain Specialist. In the meantime I took a combination of every painkiller on the market, including continuing with the Endone, and I took all of them at doses far greater than was recommended.  It was extremely hard for me to breastfeed because of the pain, and we had been comp feeding since the hospital anyway, so by the time she was 4 months old, she and I preferred to use formula.  I was over my high and mighty stance on breastfeeding. I had to do whatever it took to survive.

And once I was no longer breastfeeding, I decided to try "potentiating" my medications with a glass or two of wine each night. And it worked. It really did. I wasn't drunk, I wasn't even tipsy, I just felt less pain. I had greater ease of movement. I could get some sleep. And so it went on. And on. and on, for almost three years.


I changed medications frequently in an attempt to find the right drug and right dose and right combinations, under the supervision of my Pain Specialist, until we eventually hit on a combination of 4 different medications that, for most of the time, kept the pain at a bearable level. But the alcohol, unbeknown to him, remained part of my secret strategy.

I knew it helped the pain, so I drank from late afternoon (the time of day when I would have used all my energy reserves just coping with being alive and a mother) and I drank until I went to bed.


Three MRI's later and nothing had changed for the better. Quite the opposite, in fact. The L4/5 disc has "dessicated and sequestrated" and there was now also some spinal stenosis and retrolisthesis. There were "white matter lesions" on my brain which still may or may not be MS.  Much talk of Degenerative Disc Disease and permanent and spine is failing and wont operate too risky and I am just tuning out once we get to the word "Permanent".

So my life is a routine of pain medications that would knock most people out, doctors visits, neurologists, pain specialists, psychologists, and social workers whom I BEG for help and yet none is forthcoming beccause I dont fit into any of the right funding pigeonholes. Too young. Wrong type of spinal injury. Not disabled enough. Have someone at home with me therefore no need for extra help.

Except the person who is at home doesnt do all  the things he is needed to do. He takes his stress out on the children and on the person he is supposed to be caring for.  If this were a professional relationship of Carer/Client, he would be fired. Except it isn't, and one cant fire one's husband.  One cant even divorce one's husband when he is your Carer and there is no one else to do the job.

Stuck, with pain, with permanent pain, with a life on narcotics, with a life of dependance and limitations, and with the inability to care properly for my own children, with the inability to work. Stuck in a marriage I desperately want out of and with no clear way out.

How the fuck did I get here? Even looking at all that history, I can see how I end up in a situation where I become an alcoholic, but I cant see how WE - Monkey Boy and I - end up in the position of contempt for each other, and he behaving in damaging ways towards our children, when we started from a position of such love and respect for each other.  I have changed, of course I have, but I don't take my grief and anger and loss of hope out on my kids. 

Or did I miss the signs that were there the beginning that, had I not been drug-fucked, I would had realised meant trouble down the road?

Is this a hell partially of my own making?

Can I Just Say...?

That possibly the dumbest question you could ask someone who has dealt with infertility is "So, when are you having another one?"

Apart from that whole miscarriage-endo-pco-ugly-sperm-miracle-natural-conception-thing, which YOU may have forgotten but I havent, why do we need another? We havent even broken this one yet.

The Bitch Is Back

Seems to me that it pretty much sucks to be a girl.

Not only do I have to endure 3 days of labour to have a 9 pound person pulled out of my clacker, but the promised "cure" that having said experience was supposed to provide for my menstrual disorders does indeed seem to have been a load of baloney.

And as we all know, the only reason I had the Spud was to control my endometriosis.

And now... now, despite still breastfeeding (oh, another myth exposed!) my girlie troubles, my monthy friend, my Aunt Flo, the Crimson Bitch (yes, thats the one) has made a torrential return, announcing its arrival with explodey ovary sensations and leading one to consider (after 36 hours) that perhaps things arent going as well as they should. The good people at Tampax love me, I'm sure, since I have had cause to use every single one of their products in existence in the last two days.

Things were going SO not as well as they should that a brief chat with some weirdo Canadadian stalker yelled at me that convinced me I should perhaps be having a chat to the kind folks at my nearest ER.

Yesterday all three of us spent our morning in the ER while I was jabbed, poked, prodded, drugged and bleeding. The outcome? Unpregnant, unanaemic. Most likely a fibroid, see your doctor for an ultrasound. Go home, you're not dying.

So I went home and discovered three messages on my phone from aforementioned stalker and her sidekick and now the kind folks at the hospital think I have a sister in Canada and I'm kinda worried that I'm gonna end up with a horses head in my bed.

But you know, yay, because I've so missed regular wandings.

Quickie

Just to bring things back to topic for a moment, it's the end of CD31, I'm about 17 days past ovulation. Big, sore boobs. No period.

I also have a bulk pack of Tampax AND a Fertility Cooter in the house.

I'm just sayin', is all...

My desire to Pee On A Stick has re-appeared. First thing. I will report, of course, either way.

Yeh, right.

AS.IF.

My Cooter

Desperate Googlers are about to be sadly disappointed!

The lovely K-K recently came home from a jaunt across the globe. I asked her to find a fertility doll for me in South America. This is what she brought back...



Yes, people, I have a Fertility Cooter.

The one about my crazed hormones, or Why I Like Prozac

A few people know this. Most dont. I dont think anyone apart from Adam and my wonderful GP understand it.

I'm going to write about hormones. Specifically, my hormones, why they dont like me and I dont like them.

I went on the Pill when I was a tender young spud of 19. I tied a few different types out, and after being unbearable bitchy on the biphasic and triphasic ones, I found a monophasic pill with a high dose of progesterone that suited me just right. I stayed on this for about ten years, I guess. I stopped bleeding as the progesterone dose was so high, but big deal, right? So I just kept taking the active pills constantly.

Then we decided to have a bash at this babymaking caper. I came off the Pill. I figured it would take ages before the Crimson Bitch would return but it only took 5 weeks. Groovy. Yeh, until the first proper cycle got underway. I'm a bit thick really. It took me 6 months to figure out what the hell was going on. But here it is.

Around 5-7 days after ovulation, I went absolutely psycho. I screamed, I threw things, I threw things AT THE MONKEY. I wanted a divorce. I said terrible things. Unforgivable, horrid, vile things. I would start an all-out-war over there not being any cordial in the house, one that would last for 3 days. Cordial, people! I cried like I had never cried before: those gut-wrenching cries that make you feel like you're going to cry out your internal organs. I screamed like I had never screamed before, imagining that causing myself physical pain would be preferable to the emotional pain that I was feeling. Then, about 5 days later, calm would descend again on the Panda, and everything would be okay.

Except, of course, everything wasnt okay. Monkey Boy was distraught at the things I had said and done, and was scared to do anything that might set me off again. I know he still carries the scars. I know he's scared of it happening again.

Things came to a head after the miscarriage. With both of us suffering depression, our ability to cope with my psychotic moments was ZERO. Thank jeebus, I had found a leaflet at our local doctor's office about Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. I read it, and saw myself described on the page. I showed Monkey. He agreed. Time to talk to the doctor.

So we had a diagnosis. It turned out that I'm not a horrible heartless evil wretch. My hormones are fucked. My brain chemistry is fucked. Oestrogen drops, Panda becomes a Psycho Bitch-From-Hell with an out if she's ever charged with murder! It wasnt until I had this diagnosis and an understanding of what my body was actually doing that I realised I have had this since I hit puberty. It was poorly controlled with some of the varieties of the Pill that I tried, and completely controlled with the one I finally settled on. So all of a sudden I had an explanation for what I had always thought of as a nervous breakdown. I wasn't nuts, as my father would have me believe. I wasnt possessed by the devil, as my mother would have me believe (I kid you not), and I wasnt a useless failure as my brother would have me believe. I was just a kid, with bad brain chemistry and really fucked hormones.

Interesting aside: this was how I knew I was pregnant - the weeks after ovulation I didnt go psycho.

Despite the fact that we were trying to get knocked-up, I went on Prozac, which is NOT, as most people think, an anti-depressant. Its an anti-anxiety drug. In low doses it is extremely effective in controlling PMDD. I didnt want to be on drugs, but nor did I want to feel like killing myself every 28 days, nor ruin my marriage. So I took the Prozac.

Best thing I ever did. Within two weeks I felt like I was functioning as a normal person. Not once have those psychotic episodes returned. Sure, I've got grumpy, sometimes I've even over-reacted to minor stuff. But I havent screamed, I havent threatened divorce, and I havent wanted to die. Unlike anti-depressants, I can still feel the highs and the lows of life, though there aren't so many highs around as I'd like, but ya get that with this whole "cant seem to get knocked-up thing".

Prozac: this girl's best friend.

I Am Pathetic

No, really, I am.

87% abnormal morphology, rejected for IUI, told IVF is the only way...and yet I still poke my boobs and ask Monkey Boy if they're bigger, get a little excited about the fact that they are, and are sore too, and get a little antsy about the fact that the Crimson Bitch is now late. Why? Why do I do this to myself????

I am not pregnant. I am not going to be pregnant without a serious amount of help. Why am I still analysing every.single.twinge????

Why am I disappointed the second it feels like the cramping is starting, then have hope creep back in when it stops?

I need new parameters within which to function, and I dont have them. I dont know what they are or how to find them. Alls I know is that if I keep functioning in the old TTC paradigm I will go insane. We're not TTC. We're waiting for the technology train to leave the station.

We are not trying to conceive. We are not trying to conceive.

Sing it with me kids.

Infertility is the new black*

Its not just me, I know its not. The world really has gone infertility mad.

Every time I turn the teevee on there's either a plot line about an infertile couple who now "have to" adopt or about miscarriage or neonatal death. There are stories on the news about how infertile couples are being ripped off by the IVF clinics charging too much (they highlighted our clinic, btw), or about how much harder it is for mere mortals to adopt from overseas, unlike for Angelina (who obviously just turned up one day and said "I'll have THAT one. Put it on my Visa." (joke!)

Then there's the latest offering from NBC (those doyens of sensitivity and taste). Be careful with this - you may burst a pfuffer valve.

Now, I'm sure I do not have to waste wordage in telling you that every.single.one of these entertainment-worthy items was factually wrong.

Without even realising it, we've just become the Next Big Topic. Well, good. If they want to make entertainment out of the heartache and pain that we suffer, then I'll give them something to talk about.

When I get mad, I get really really mad, (though less so now, thanks to our NBF, Prozac). Then I start writing letters. Really good letters.

I'm starting to get mad, people....



* Monkey Boy, personal communication, July 14 2005

Where are they now?

These thoughts have been going around in my head for a long time. They sear through my body and make every cell scream. I cant articulate them verbally. I feel physically ill when I think about it. There is no way that I can make these words come out of my mouth.

Only now, almost twelve months after I conceived, can I write them.

I wrote the following as a comment on Thin Pink Line after reading Manuela's emotional story of her miscarriage. With her permission, I publish them here.

*******

When a woman has a stillbirth or a late term miscarriage, or a neonatal
death, there is a body. A physical presence, a person that they can hold, and
love, and grieve over and have a funeral/memorial service for, and bury. They
know where their child is.

Where are our children? I cant bear to think about it. I hate to think
that to others they're merely "products of conception". Goddamn it, no they
aren't. I cant bear to think about you having to place your child in the
waste bin. I cant bear to think of mine being placed down the toilet
like a goldfish.

I wish that there were some ritual that we could perform after a miscarriage,
that acknowledges the grief, the love, the importance of that child in
our lives.

I wish we knew where our babies are.

************

Oh for crying out loud

My ovaries hurt. Like, they REALLY hurt. I reckon I've ovulated twice, considering the appearance of the EWCM on not one but two distinct occasions. Now I'm getting mid-pelvic cramping pain starting CD19 which is just like it was when the last Clomid cycle went a bit wobbly.

So of course, just when I'm trying to get my head around the concept of not being able to get up the duff without technology, my brain calculates that this crampy thing is happening about implantation time.

Somebody please stop me!

Okay, now a question:

Should I cancel the hysteroscopy I'm on the waiting list for? Is there any point in doing it? I was wondering about the endometrial biopsy and whether that would shed (ha!) any light on anything minorly important like the miscarriage. Barren Bitches Clinic says no point in doing it as it wont change our treatment, but I dont know....

The drugs dont work

Remember when you were a youngun, and you'd wake up one morning with an overwhelming desire to fake a stomach ache/fever/broken limb/anything to get out of going to school.

That's how I felt this morning. It was Dirt School day. Now, normally this would not be a problem. I like Dirt School. I get to dig. In dirt. Since this is what I like doing, this is a Good Thing. I quit Law School because this is what I really wanted to do. But this morning, I would have stuck the thermometer on the light bulb and put talc on my face just like the old days if I'd thought it would've helped me stay home.

In the end all I had to do was say to the Monkey "I cant face going today". Why wasnt it that easy at school?

And its not because its horrible or the big kids dont like me or...anything, really. Its just that the thought of having to go and act like a normal person, of having to put on a resonably happy face and not act like my world has taken a rather large tumble in the last 3 weeks, well it fills me with dread. I just cant do it.

I feel stupid and weak and like I'm letting myself and Monkey Boy down. I should be strong enough to go play in the goddamn dirt for 6 hours. Other women manage to deal with shit worse than i'm going through, and still go to work. Whats wrong with me that I cant make it out of bed and into the real world?

I dont think the Prozac is enough anymore.

All out of ideas

I feel like I should have something profound to say today for some reason. But I dont.

(OOOH Monkey Boy will hate me for starting a sentence with "but")

We watched The Clinic's informative DVD on IVF. I knew it all anyway. I also know that they lie when they say it wont hurt. Monkey Boy got all freaked out and quiet. I just think that if that's what we have to do, then lets get on with it.

In lieu of anything else to say, something perdy to look at....





And then I thought you might like this one better...





After all the no-sex-please-we're-over-it comments I read at Ms Prufrock yesterday, I figured there was a need for something to get the blood pumping again.

The one in which I rise through the ranks

Its late. I should be in bed, beside my glorious Monkey Boy. But there is no way this little Panda is going to sleep tonight.

Upshot of the Repromed visit:

1. Day 5 blood tests all came back fine. Normal. First time for everything. Day 5 scan - fine.
2. Monkey Boy's semen analysis - lots of swimmers, good technique, ugly as hell. Only 13% normal morphology.

With those rates, they wont even consider us for IUI.

So now, I join the ranks of the Cool Kids at the Back of the School Bus. Next stop, IVF.

My mother, O she of the ridiculous platitudes and "let nature take its course" doctrine agreed in an instant to float us the money to pay for it. As I said to M, complain all you like about how fucked up they are, but my parents are going to buy us a child. Well, in theory, anyways.

So, how do I feel? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Numb. Absolutely numb. Except for that feeling in the pit of my stomach, which I kinda recognise. I think its dread.

No, wait, I'm going to throw up.

I certainly did not expect to be told today that we had very little chance of achieving a pregnancy on our own. I dont know what I did expect to be told, but it wasnt that. I also didnt expect to be told that it wasnt all my fault. I think I expected something to show up on my test results and be given some more medication and blammo! Yes, blammo! Baby! Or at least to be told we need more tests.

So here we are. The beginning of the end of the road. The stats: in the 36-39 age group, which I join in 29 days, 37% pregnancy rate, 16% ongoing pregnancy rate. With a thawed embryo, 27% and 19% respectively.

So AT BEST, we have a 19% chance of getting a baby out of this.

Thats an 81% failure rate.

And as my brain is wont to do, I've automatically started thinking about adoption.

And I keep thinking, what about the pregnancy last year. How did we manage that? Was it a fluke? Was it an ugly sperm that fertilised an egg and then it went wrong, or was it a beautiful sperm that made it through somehow and I wasnt able to carry the pregnancy? Is it a combination of both of us, and even with IVF I'm still going to lose our babies?

It also crosses my mind that we will:

1. not be present when our children are conceived.
2. have many children held "on ice" and have to decide what to do with the extras
3. get to see our embryos before they are transferred.

Now, I get attached to day old ducklings, for chrissake. How the hell am I going to cope with seeing our babies and then losing them? Its too horrible to contemplate, but contemplate it I must.

I dont want to do this.

I want to be told - as I have expected to be all along - that I'm overreacting and making a big deal out of nothing and there's nothing wrong with either of us.

Could someone please wake me up from this and say those words.

I dont want to do this and lose our babies. Its one thing to keep trying and not achieve conception. Its another entirely to know that you have conceived (even if it was in a lab dish), that you are carrying a child, and then lose it.

I dont want to do this, but I want a child. I want a child that looks like Monkey Boy. I want to see his eyelashes and ridiculous curly hair on a baby that has my green eyes. I want to see if it will be as hyperactive as Monkey or as quiet as me (I hear the gasps - yes, I'm quiet!). Will it love the water or the soil?

Because this desire is so strong, so overwhelming, I will do this. I will do whatever it takes.

But I'm scared.

Diversionary tactics

For everyone who is waiting to ovulate, waiting to test, waiting for appointments, just to take your mind off things.

Its a community service.

(Honest, o darling husband of mine.)

A quick update

And just to bring things back on topic for a moment...

Despite my claims yesterday about not wanting any, I still got some. Damn that Monkey for being so spunky.

And I'm ovulating today. Not that this has meant anything in the past, but, well, gotta be in it to win it I guess.

Why I blog

I've been keeping a journal on and off since I hit puberty. I still have every journal I've ever kept. Those early teenage angst-filled volumes are safely squirelled away in my time capsule box, I'm sure for someone to have a right old laugh over when I'm dead and gone.

I made the mistake once of writing stuff that I didnt want ANYONE to read. My mother being the person that she is (and, at the time, the menopausal witch that she was) took it upon herself to read said journal entries. Learnt my lesson the hard way. Do not write stuff down that you do not want anyone to read. Ever. Even if you think that no-one will ever find it, or your partner would never read your journal, eventually they will.

That is what makes this blogging thing really weird. After the miscarraige I started keeping a regular journal. Still am. But the stuff that I was writing in that now gets published for anyone to read. And this leads me to a new dilemma. How much do I share with the world, and how much do I keep hidden? Do I censor myself in order to maintain a level of privacy, or to protect the guilty? Should I worry whether my friends will be offended by things I write? Should I worry that my doctor and my therapist know I have a blog? (Hi girls!)

The point of publishing my experience, thoughts, fears and fundamental failings as a human being is done both as personal therapy and as some sort of help to others. Not that I think that I am some shining light and that I above all others will be able to help anyone who is also going through this, but I think that it is the intimate personal stories that are the most interesting, and the most deserving of being told.

As I am forever yelling at the teevee, the personal is the political. The personal heartaches of thousands of couples going through infertility is an extremely important topic to shine the spotlight on. I want to draw attention not to me (although, you know, its nice to have some attention) but to the issue of infertility. I thought that there werent really any taboos left in our society anymore. Even paedophilia gets a nightly mention on the news. In the last 12 months, though, I have discovered how wrong I was. I've discovered that infertility is possibly the last taboo.

No-one wants to talk about it, no-one wants to acknowledge the pain that it causes, no-one wants to acknowledge that perhaps the feminist movement of the 1970's has been partially responsible for the heartache of the thousands of women now discovering that they cant have it all. Society wants to blame us and hold our infertility up as our own fault for selfishly choosing a career over children. No-one wants to accept that this is not a problem arising from selfishness anymore than cancer is a problem arising from selfishness.

I did not choose my infertility. I did not choose a career over children. I did not choose my endometriosis. I did not choose polycystic ovaries. I did not choose to have a miscarriage. I never wanted children until I met the man I instantly knew I was going to marry. It was my bad luck that I was already in my mid-thirties when he came along. None of us going through this choose the various medical problems we have.

Yet time and time again we are made to feel as though we are selfish, impatient, asking too much, and have brought this on ourselves. We were selfish for not having kids as soon as we left school and we are selfish now because we want them.

This is why I blog. I refuse to be silent. I refuse to let other people feel comfortable about infertility. I refuse to be labeled a selfish career woman (I never had a career and couldnt care less about having one). I refuse to have this intensely powerful desire to have a child be minimised. I refuse to have my grief at being unable to have said child trivialised.

This is my story. I will not censor it to make others comfortable. I will tell it like it is. I hope those of you who have not experienced infertility directly are uncomfortable.

I hope you are so uncomfortable that you change your position.

The one that contains a lot of swearing

What is it about infertility that makes people think they have the right or that it's acceptable to say the things they do?

Scenario: On the phone to my mother, talking about how much doctors and specialists cost. Mention how much we pay each time I get to have the thrill of a whatsit up my whatsit, and how much IVF costs.

Her comment: Why dont you just let nature take its course? Just because you're 36 doesnt mean you cant get pregnant. Betty had her child at 40. If its meant to happen it will happen.

Hmmm lets see. I would have thought it was pretty fucking obvious by now that nature's course was not going to get and keep me pregnant. I would also have thought it was pretty fucking obvious that the less time we have to go through this hell the better. But no, I should just keep on going through this and hoping and grieving every single month until...when? Menopause?

Lets not treat a recognised medical problem. Lets just ignore it and hope that it will go away because for about 0.000001% of people it does. Lets not recognise the innate biological drive to have a child and the power that this has over people. Lets just say its up to God as to whether we're meant to have kids or not.

Jesusfuckingchrist. Why doesnt SHE stop taking her blood pressure medication and let nature take its course???????????

You wouldnt say to someone with cancer "If its meant to happen it will happen." Oooh, sorry you're dying of Leukemia. Just let nature take its course. If you're meant to live, you'll live.

Fuck off you fucking fuck.

Life support

The journey I'm on now (if "journey" is an appropriate thing to call it - "large steaming pile of poo" seems more appropriate) has changed so much as to be completely unrecognisable from that which I started. Not surprisingly, the support that I need to get through this has changed along with it.

At first, I was just excited about trying for our first child. We even announced it to some of our friends (I'm sure they appreciated knowing we were now having unprotected sex). We were so excited to have conceived after 5months we told practically everyone, only to be devastated a few weeks later when we lost the pregnancy. No-one knew what to say to us, or indeed IF to say anything to us. When I realised that I was actually infertile, I went looking for like-minded souls who could help me understand what the hell was going on and put some things into perspective.

I turned to the infertility forums. Here were women who got it. Who I didn't have to explain WHY I was going insane or why I felt a particular way. They'd been there and knew. I had found my people. I introduced myself as ttc 14mo, 1pg m/c 6wks, pco, endo, CD5. and they all knew what it meant. None of my "real" friends would have a clue. Hell, alot of doctors wouldnt have a clue.

I found a huge amount of support, large sprinkles of babydust (yes, I know, I've been guilty myself), advice and positive energy. But as time goes on, I find that I resent that level of positivity.

I dont want babydust sprinkles anymore (its kinda gross if you think about it - where are they getting the babies from?), I dont want wishes for a BFP for this month. As previously mentioned, I dont want to hear about anyone else's BFP. That kinda leaves me out of the babydust gang.

So what do I want? Not to be left alone exactly. If I wanted that I wouldnt be posting these thoughts for the entire world to read (who am I kidding - for all three of you to read). And I wouldn't still be posting to those forums. (Forums? I think its actually fora.)

I dont know. Positivity is pissing me off. How fucked is that?

Randomly generated randomness

Firstly, thanks to those of you for pinning yourself on my GUESTMAP. Now I know where Wisconsin is (even if I can't spell it). Whitby, I dont mind that you aren't a complete stranger, which you may have been able to gather from the fact that I SENT YOU AN INVITATION to come visit my blog. Thanks for the props, and feel free to use anything that may be show-worthy. If it gets laughs, you owe me a Cosmopolitain. (the drink, not the crap mag.)

Secondly, I am the spawn of the devil. After my early morning hormone-induced diatribe against the Graduates yesterday, I surfed over to Bugsy today to discover that she is losing her baby. Not that I think I control the universe or anything, but boy do I feel like the biggest pile of poopy poo in the world for what I said. As Tim Costello said at a public lecture I went to recently, "cynical people suck all the compassion out of the world."

I will be less cynical, I will be less cynical, calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean....

Thirdly, all booked up with Barren Women R Us Clinic (BWRU) for a semen analysis (that one is for Monkey Boy), day 3-5 blood tests which, lo and behold, will be done on the CORRECT DAY and another fanny* probe. I sweet-talked the booking guy into an appointment time for an immunobead test for the Monkey, even though we dont yet have the referral letter for one. I guess it must have been all the noises I was making about wanting to save him having to go through the "depositing" process again. hehehe. You want me on your side, trust me!

Mmmm...still sick. More concerned about mucus that doesn't come from my cervix at the moment. Nice change.

* for our American friends, a fanny is not your butt. Its your cooter.

Yes, that's right. I'm a bitch.

It's 5.13am. I have Bronchitis. It's allegedly going to snow today. And I cant sleep.

Stupid dreams. Clearly, I watch Big Brother too much.

So, I'm lying there, right, and naturally I think about blogging. I mean, what else do I have in my sad life? (please hear the sarcasm)

I thought about women on other blogs I have read, or women I know from various infertility forums who thought themselves too cool for this infertility game and got themselves up the duff. The nerve! Now, this kinda goes back to my previous whinge but I'm gonna repeat myself anyway.

I find myself reading these blogs of graduates of the Miss Mouldy School for the Reproductively Challenged and, while not hating them as such and PLEASE believe me when I say not wishing them any sadness or pain or anything at all to go wrong, I sit there thinking "Yeh, you're pregnant - for now!"

What a cow. What a horrible heartless bitch.

I wish I could go back to the me that existed before the miscarriage. The me that was completely naiive about infertility and loss and chemical pregnancies and non-doubling HCG numbers and...all the rest. The me that thought 5 months was a long time to be trying. The me that actually believed that once you were pregnant you stayed pregnant, and miscarriages were things that happened to those other poor unfortunate women who weren't meant to have babies.

The thing is, I cant go back. The 'veil of ignorance' has been lifted and I know damn well how nervous those new graduates are about their buns in their respective ovens, and how easily it can all turn pear-shaped. How it can turn pear-shaped just when you think you're about to cross the finish line too.

The chicks on the infertility boards (god love 'em all) - and I guess I have included myself in this - focus on getting that elusive Big Fat Positive. Nobody much mentions the trauma that comes along with that second pink line. Its the elephant in the corner.

So in a round about way I guess I'm saying that I dont want to read the Graduate's blogs, not because I'm an insanely jealous cow who would steal their baby at the first opportunity*, but because I dont want to read about it when it goes pear-shaped. I dont want to be confronted with that. Not by it happening to me or anyone else.

I am just as selfish as those awful Fertile people who dont know what to say to me, and dont want to know about a miscarriage thankyou very much. Only most of them still have the blinkers on. Mine were surgically removed.



*Though this might be true...