Xbox4NappyRash

Sacred excrement

2009-07-03T16:56:00.006+01:00

It always kind of bothered me.

No matter how much explaining people did, wherever they pointed to, regardless of what they said to make it clearer, I have never been able to make head nor rump of ultrasound pictures.

I usually end up nodding and agreeing out of politeness, I was certain this would be no different.

ET pattered over to the examination chair, daintily pulling downwards on the hem of her top in an amusing attempt to preserve modesty in front of the male nurse, before spreading her legs in his face for the third or fourth time.

Off up went the dildo-cam into what is familiar TV territory for us.

Wow.

There. See that? Fuck. Right there.

Before he could point out anything, before he had a chance to say a word, there it was.

Like a torch being switched on and off in super fast forward mode. Bright, fast, and very very alive.

He didn't need to tell us it was a heartbeat, but he'd have had a tough job finding mine right there and then.

The shape was clear, to me at least, with head to rump measuring just over a centimetre.

Seriously, a bloody centimetre.

The poor bugger was carrying around a yolk sac as big as itself while still measuring a day ahead of the recalculated 7 weeks and 2 day old pregnancy.

Given the parents the wee fella has, this may well be the first and last time it will ever measure ahead on any size chart in its life.

Having a picture to look at is nothing short of amazing. There he/she is. Really there.

Freaky internet people, say hello.

Give us a wave

2009-06-30T19:27:00.006+01:00

She has a wee belly you know.

Not much, and no one other than us would ever notice. We know that all it really is is a little swelling or bloating, but that doesn't seem to matter. It's so much more than that.

It really is one of the nicest sites you could ever see.

Speaking of which, in a couple of days we hope to see an even better one. On Friday we have our first scan, 7 weeks and 5 days into the pregnancy.

The as of yet unnamed bugger has now turned from an embryo into a foetus, (or a fetus, if you like to spare vowels,) its nervous system is developing rapidly, including its brain, and wee eyes are starting to show under its skin.

Last week's bud-limbs are growing still and looking more like real arms and legs. It might wave.

All this is happening, we are certain of it, ET is tired on and off, she has turned from some foods, and there's breast activity going on that can only be described as a very fitting tribute to the late Farrah Fawcett.

We have nothing but positive signs, no reason to think anything is other than perfectly fine, and we are very content with the idea of the wee thing being tucked up nice and safe in its bedwomb.

Still, in the corner of my mind somewhere there is a pinhole sized fear, so atomic, so magnetic, so concentrated, and potentially full of horrors that I can't bring myself to think of.

I don't know why it's there, there is no reason for it. None whatsoever.

Then why is it there?

Roll on Friday.

Hey, you, whatsit...

2009-06-26T05:25:00.002+01:00

A decision must be made.

We need a name with which we can refer to this mutating being that has my wife growing out of it's arse.

Calling it 'my baby' is only going to cause confusion when that name is already bestowed upon my iPod, PC, photo printer, telly, and Smartphone.

Add the fact that ET and I can't ever agree on anything, to the delightful news that mood altering hormones have started to kick in, and we are having some trouble pinning a 'name' down between us.

You really haven't played a game of chicken until you've allowed a hormonal pregnant woman bring her face to within an inch of yours, all the while clueless as to whether you are about to get a kiss on the forehead, or a head butt to the bridge of your nose.

It does tend to encourage your agreement with her wishes.

On nicknames themselves, ET doesn't want to call the kid 'Bertie'.

I would be more willing to accept this rebuff of my suggestion had she not already scoffed at 'Bono' and dismissed 'Bruno'.

I don't know why they are all male names, she is convinced it's a girl. I also don't know why they all start with B, although I'm tempted to suggest 'Bugger'.

Either way, we have to call it something while it's busy denying me my conjugal rights in there. 'Squirt' is too obvious, even if it is a shamefully accurate description of how it came to exist.

'Spooge' makes me laugh, but I don't know how appropriate it will be to announce to folk that ET has a belly full of Spooge.

We are open to suggestions, but today in the spirit of ethnic harmony and procreation, I'm toying with the idea of calling it 'Miguel'.

Take that, Nixon.

Berries and buds

2009-06-24T05:23:00.000+01:00

The apple seed baby has grown.

Well, I'm assuming it has grown because it's now being compared to a grain of rice, or a blueberry, depending on what you read.

Firstly, I'm not so sure a grain of rice is any bigger than an apple seed, and secondly, telling your average thirty-something year old Irishman that something is similar to a blueberry is about as useful as tits on a bull.

I'm not comfortable with all this measuring up against healthy foods and fruit business. I'd much prefer if they compared its size to things I'm familiar with.

'This week your baby is the size of a malteser, or a McNugget, or one of those sugar lumps you carry around in your pocket you disgusting man', would be much more indicative for me.

At its current age of 6 and half weeks old, this leader among embryos is growing a set of kidneys, which should come in handy. It also has buds for arms and legs, and I wonder if it's already trying to shove it's bud-fist into the empty space in its face where its mouth will be.

Where exactly you would fit these four limb buds, set of kidneys, and last week's beating heart on a blueberry, I'm not so sure.

Small as it may be, the bugger is demanding. Mouth or no mouth, it manages to communicate through it's host interpreter who in turn informs me what 'the baby wants'.

The baby wants the lasagne without the spinach so go back and get it, the baby wants the red throw over and not the blue one, and the baby wants to watch another episode of 'Ashes to ashes' and most definitely not that boring '24'.

In 9 days time we get to have a look at this wife squatter, and I'm bringing fruit.

Something in my eye

2009-06-22T05:30:00.001+01:00

Father's day was never something that registered with me, it never really came into my radar.

I woke yesterday morning in a self inflicted haze, to find ET standing over me.

My fear that she was about to beat me about the head and face with a bedside lamp or some such weapon was luckily found to be uncalled for.

She presented me with a gift and card, the card read as follows:

I'm somewhat concerned as to where ET may have developed paper cuts in retrieving the card, but for a six week old embryo with a couple of buds for hands, that is some nifty penmanship.

Another day of moronic grinning followed.

The nuts & seeds of the matter

2009-06-18T09:52:00.005+01:00

My child is the size of an apple seed. One whole seventeenth of an inch long.

Within a couple of weeks it will be up to one third of an inch. At that rate of growth, in two months it will be taller than I was in college.

What is more interesting is that in the last week or so, it's heart started beating. ET would say that the fact it possesses one means it's already more evolved than it's father.

I'm not sure how something the size of an apple seed can even have a beating heart, so either it is something they make up to stop us getting bored of it all, or it's the most fascinating feat in all of biological history.

We are now past the 5 week mark and into the sixth. The predominant symptom is face ache from grinning like an idiot and an inability to focus on anything for more than twenty seconds.

That's me anyway.

ET is exhausted. Utterly. Totally. Her body has decided to take to this pregnancy like a squirrel, and is insisting she hibernates through the entire thing. I have to wait at her bus stop to knock on the window to wake her. Otherwise she'll end up in Paris some evening.

I have also set her alarm for February next year, should the contractions not wake her.

Unfortunately, unlike squirrels who hibernate in the wild, my nuts may not last the Winter.

Rear view mirrors

2009-06-16T05:30:00.004+01:00

On Sunday afternoon we took a long walk through Amsterdam.

This is something I've hated and avoided doing for a year or more. Everywhere we looked we were always face to face with another family out for the afternoon.

Another mother, another father, another bump, another child, another reminder.

That meant pretending we didn't see them just to get through it, and eventually, I stopped going there at those times completely.

For over a year I have skirted past the pregnancy section in bookshops, making sure to look anywhere but at the books, for fear anyone would notice me and instantly recognise I was a little broken. Like being labelled a deviant if you were caught anywhere near the porn section in a video shop.

Those things are embarrassing, and not entirely healthy.

Sunday, for the first time in so long, we were able to watch those families pass by, and talk about them. The size of the bumps, the ugly strollers, the cute kids, and how we certainly wouldn't dress them in those rags. It was like being released from prison.

Sunday, we stood at that section, thumbing through book after book, passing them back and forth between ourselves, comparing their merits, choosing what we wanted to take home.

Handing those two pregnancy books to the assistant to pay for and bag, was as liberating a moment as I've ever had.

'Yes, I'm perverted and here's my porn'.

I know that some people read this stuff here purely because they identified with it. What we were facing was what they were facing. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.

Now, it must seem like we have become an enemy of sorts. I described it myself once as finding out that someone else had discovered the secret, but wouldn't share it.

There's no secret. There's just persistence and luck.

I find it hard to articulate why I feel an amount of guilt about having that luck. No dictionary holds words strong enough that could explain how grateful I am that we have had it, nor how much the misery of the last couple of years has shaped how we are now, and how we'll go forward.

I know people will stop reading here now, I know it's too hard for some. I understand.

I hope they will see whatever gets written here not as gloating, but as an example of what really can be if you stay persistent and get that little bit of luck.

We are going to enjoy what lies ahead of us now, we are not going to dwell on what's gone before and let it spoil this for the three of us, but keep it as a reminder of how lucky we are.

I hope it's catching, and long lasting.

Zwanger

2009-06-12T17:18:00.001+01:00

By Saturday it had become just too much to handle.

Sitting, standing, scratching, pacing, waiting for Monday.

The red menace hadn't sailed into port, and the temperatures were still high. By the end of the afternoon, we finally caved in and picked up what I can only call an extortionately priced pack of pregnancy tests.

Clearblue are a shower of opportunist bastards.

Maybe the act of buying the tests served to sooth the anxiety a little, and they were put away, unused.

Come Sunday morning, my wake-her-up-so-she-can-take-her-temperature alarm woke me up at 7am. Following a gentle and loving poke to the temple, she reached over, grabbed the thermometer, and shoved it in her gob.

I'm sure she was still asleep when it beeped to indicate it was ready.
High. Still high on day 28 had never happened before.

Butterflies.

She trotted out of the room and up the stairs to the bathroom. Still lying where I woke, I listened to the familiar house sounds. Floorboards, door handles, a flush, silence.

Butterflies.

It could have been 5 seconds, it could have been a day and a half, I don't know, but at some point the familiar sounds changed to the unfamiliar sound of her thundering down the stairs. How she didn't fall and break her face is beyond me.

I don't know what was said, but the test was shoved in my face. Being blind as a bat and not long awake, there was no way I could read the tiny word in the test window. You would think these people know that the tests are most likely to be peered at with sleep filled eyeballs.

Clearblue are a shower of cruel bastards.

A dozen blinks later, there I was, flat on my back, which I must admit is not the optimal position for reacting to life-altering news, staring at the word 'zwanger'.

Pregnant.

Another test later that evening said the same.

Clearblue are the best company on the planet.

We floated into Monday, floated over the tiny matter of a heart stopping negative test result using a cheap internet bought stick, and went into orbit once the hospital rang with the results of the blood test.

A very healthy 13dpo hCG score of 129.

Today they tested again and it came back at 400. Perfect. This is really going to happen.

It's been almost 6 days of grinning like a demented loon, being caught smiling to myself, and generally living in a Disney-like fuzziness where all the light bulbs have a higher wattage and nothing is unfixable.

What a difference a week can make.

Saving you from tales of fireflies

2009-06-09T05:01:00.003+01:00

Well, yikes.

I’ve written an awful lot of rubbish here.

Don’t get me wrong, it has its merits, it tells the story, keeps my brain ticking over, and is often fun to craft, and full of release, but essentially it’s the same handful of entries repeated.

Twenty eight times I’ve told the same thing over and over, with a few self-abuse tales or outings to the clinic thrown in for some variation.

The same thing happens every month, and I write the same thing every month.

With every cycle that passed, I wrote another kind of entry. Entries that never made it on-line, most of which never made to black and white at all. These were my imagined posts describing how that cycle would be a success, how we’d finally done it.

There were good ones among them too, some funny, some poignant. Some that rushed one way before suddenly hurtling back in the opposite direction, a roller coaster of reveal, breathtaking and stomach dropping, and leaving us all panting and drenched in the eventual wonderful news.

Some borrowed great words from others, bloggers, musicians, poets. Quotations that took sledge hammers to the glass cases housing the emotions I could only imagine I would feel but couldn’t come within a country mile of expressing accurately.

Each time I came up with one, it seemed perfect. Each time it was irrelevant.

My last one was my favourite, pretentious and failingly poetic, filled with daydream imagery and mention of fireflies and lots of other things I really should stay clear of, but it genuinely felt right and I was convinced I would use it.

Until now.

Now it doesn’t seem right. None of the twenty odd variations do. None of them come even close to pushing my stomach up into my chest, stealing half breaths from me, and making me stand taller, but shake just a little in disbelief and excitement like the following half dozen words do.

I’m going to be a dad.

Tread softly

2009-06-08T05:32:00.000+01:00

I have more than a couple of pet peeves about this whole infertility circus.

If I started writing about them all, I'd be here so long I'd lose the energy to make a fist. So I won't.

Two of them, however, won't be escaping so lightly.

One can't be helped, it's unavoidable. I hate not being able to be there for every appointment. I've managed so far for every scan and talk with the doctors, but there are other things that I can't be at.

There's often no reason for me to be there, when ET takes a blood test for example, it just irks me. Often, appointments with the specialist are carried out over the phone directly with ET, which I'm also not there for.

The other, is very much avoidable. Why can't these doctors or nurses just be nice? We have had some friendly ones, but more often than not, they don't crack a smile.

They are surely clever enough to equate working in a fertility clinic with having patients who could do with seeing the occasional friendly face. We don't go to make their day worse or just to irritate them.

People who need to be there, need help and reassurance, yet too many of those providing the help seem to do so almost grudgingly.

I wonder do they need reminding of what it is they do, changing the lives of people every single day.

These two pet peeve cross paths this morning, ET is going to the clinic by herself for a blood test.

A pregnancy test.

I'll be at work, hoping that whoever she deals with today will just give her a smile.

She deserves it.

Pop

2009-06-04T11:10:00.001+01:00

Take a balloon.

Blow it up to almost full, leave it just a little soft.

Hold it as close as you possibly can to your face.

Using just the fleshy part of your fingers, squeeze it.

Always increasing the pressure.

It's fun in the beginning. Squeezing it is exciting, the anticipation making you almost giddy, but each push of your fingers makes you flinch a little more.

You must increase the pressure, firmer and harder with the balloon directly before your face.

You are not allowed to relax and start again. No easing up, no stopping.

It starts to make those stretching noises, you know it's about to burst. You clench your teeth and flinch faster. It's not fun anymore, the bad part is coming.

Regardless of how much you are expecting it, when it does explode, you know it will be loud and startling. Just for a second or two, leaving you gasping for a breath.

That's what waiting for this feels like.

Feline literature from Guantanamo

2009-06-02T09:33:00.004+01:00

It's been roughly eleven years and four months since the IUI.

My calendar says it's been a week, but it's defective, it must be.

My brain has seized up, and ground to a halt. The neighbour's cat is capable of more productive output than I am at the moment. In fact, the cat is writing this on my behalf.

Under optimistically normal circumstances, which let's face it -if I'm imagining a cat using a spellchecker, these are not, right now somewhere deep inside a short woman in an office building in South Holland there's a whole lot of implanting going on.

As she is sitting there, pretending to work while reading about Susan Boyle's breakdown, there could be a fertilised egg burrowing it's way into some cosy looking corner of a uterine wall. Like those kittens you find in the cupboard under the stairs, rats under the kitchen sink, or asylum seekers in the attic.

The quandary is, who's to tell? how do we know? without waiting for another thirteen years before we get to actually find out. Do early stage pregnant women act as a beacon for small woodland creatures? Does an implanted egg make a noise if you poke it from the outside? What does hCG smell like?

What our neighbour's talented cat is nervous about typing is that today we have had a significant dip in temperature. From steady rises up into the 36.80s, right down to 36.23 C.

Exactly a week after the IUI.

Go on, say it. I dare you.

We'll be over here, in the two week wait cell, that part of Guantanamo bay they were afraid to tell you about.

Simmer, then bring to the boil

2009-05-29T09:42:00.002+01:00

We've done this before. Many, many times.

We have waited.

Two years ago we waited with innocence, excitement. I do miss that.

A year ago we waited sometimes with naive enthusiasm, sometimes a knowing dread.

The last 6 or 8 months have been peaks and troughs in the extreme. The laparoscopy and the supposed increased chances it brings, being teased with the promise of an IUI, having it eventually cancelled, a cycle on a very effective dose of Clomid. Always ending up with waiting, a couple of weeks every time, wondering if this is the time we could cross that fine line, but with the weight of all the previous months holding us back.

I don't know how people do this long term. The treatments, the trying, the extending yourselves, the offering up of slices of your energy reserves and sanity.

The waiting.

We have some daylight now behind us in this two week wait and I can feel it starting. Half conversations that haven't been touched on in nearly 2 years, counting months ahead on our fingers, the daydreaming allowed to linger that little bit longer than it has been for what seems such a long time.

It's simmering. The nervousness, hope, positivity, a little worry.

And damn it, excitement.

The Sperm Runner III: Was it good for you?

2009-05-26T15:06:00.004+01:00

So how did you start your day?

With a tasty low fat yoghurt? Went for a jog perhaps? Or maybe leisurely skimmed through the morning papers?

Me? I milked myself in the name of procreation. Again.

You know you are getting to the sharp end of this process when you are excommunicating yourself into luxuriously wide rimmed, heavy duty, tinted glass pots, and not the measly plastic pill bottles the GP hands out.

Wide rimmed or not, I still had to despair at the volume I produced. Again, I mean quantity, and not decibel level. I’m no good with judging millilitres, so let’s just say the amount would probably stop a wasp in its tracks, but not be enough to drown a small bat.

I’d have wrung my own neck if my hands weren’t busy wringing out my own head.

The race was on. As sensible as putting the pot between my legs seemed to be at the time, when I saw the state of the roads from last night’s storms I had a rethink. One slam on the breaks could mean explaining to police exactly why my windscreen was covered in semen, awkward, even in Holland.

Instead, the fruit of my loins was popped into my jacket pocket and delivered incident free. Unless you count the scornful look I received from the receptionist as I used both hands to hoist the pot onto the counter to emphasise its tremendous weight.

Once I’d assured the nurse, who I’m certain also works as a baggage check-in person at the airport, that I had filled the pot myself, that no-one could have interfered with it since I had interfered with myself, and that the potent potted produce she was pawing, was in fact, mine, I was out of there.

*** *** ***

Four and a half hours later, ET and I were sitting in the small waiting room behind the heavy white door, alone. Footsteps came and went, and the puddle of water from her closed umbrella spread on the floor between us.

An unsurprisingly blonde, incredibly tall, and reassuringly friendly IVF doctor came and took us down to a treatment room.

There, she explained what was about to happen, absolutely none of which registered with me as I was too busy grinning from ear to ear with the news that the sample, after washing, had 21 million Spencers ready and waiting. The usual target after washing is 5 million.

When I returned from cloud 9, ET was again semi-naked in the chair, refusing to wave hello to Spencer like I asked, with stranger number 7 chalking up carnal knowledge.

Out came the catheter and the syringe filled with my self abuse, and in it went.

Or not.

Seemingly ET’s uterine cavity didn’t take too kindly to this jizz filled stranger popping it’s head around her door, so the good doctor called an assistant to bring a different catheter.

In a world of ever decreasing stereotypes, the assistant was a 50 plus year old bald man, with a bandage on his head the size of a post-it note. Despite becoming the 8th stranger to gaze into my wife’s nether regions, he brought with him the new improved catheter.

A moment later it was in, and so were 21 million of my finest. After a 5 minute rest (and I think ET had one too) it was done and dusted.

On reflection it’s a simple procedure, painless and quick, but that doesn’t deter from how proud I am of that midget wife of mine. Five times in stirrups in one week is at best a real pain in the arse, or that approximate area anyway, and I know how nervous she was in the moments just before the IUI. I hope she knows it’s those same moments that make me most glad that it’s her and me.

Now, we just wait. I’m half afraid of what for.

Eeny, meeny, miny moe

2009-05-25T14:41:00.000+01:00

That's just how these few days have gone, pure chance and guesswork.

In this morning's game of reproductive cluedo, the culprit once again was humourless Janneke in the big brother room, with the withered face and the dildo-cam.

They really need a curtain in there. Seriously.

We'd met a few times before, so there was no small talk to make while ET was doing her graceful semi-naked hop dance. Clothes neatly arranged in a heap on the floor, she climbed up into the stirrups.

For the fourth time in a week.

Janneke guided her probe towards ground zero, and even from my vantage point I could tell that we had a big 'un. 18mm plus, sitting cosily alongside another of 15mm plus.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but again we had two, where there had been three.

Off she went to the other side. Exactly how she knew where to look when it's supposedly in the wrong place is beyond me, but find it she did. Where there was one 14mm follicle last Friday, sat a shrunken old mass. Barely 10mm and out of the game.

Janneke, perhaps feeling she needed to compete with the tabloid headlines of 'your-ovary-is-in-the-wrong-place' nurse, declared that she thinks we have been seeing a few cysts left over from the over stimulated cycle.

Regardless, we are left with two follicles of good size and growing on one side. Bingo.

That's half the battle. The decision rested on the results of the bloods taken, which have since all come back good.

We go ahead with the insemination tomorrow, without the need for the trigger shot.

After all the hiccups of the last week, I'll believe this is actually going to happen when I see it.

Which will most probably be through white knuckled fingers.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to tell my customer I'm going to the hospital once again, for the fifth time in 8 days.

I'm sure they already think I'm dying.

As I present a sweaty pot filled with the juice of self-abuse to Janneke & Co tomorrow morning, I'll probably wish I was.

Of course, what else?

2009-05-22T11:09:00.005+01:00

Sometimes, you have to laugh at it all.

We were given a semen sample pot and detail form when we arrived at reception this morning. That was surely a good sign, things were about to happen.

For good measure it was an unfamiliar face that called us into the big brother room. Making her the sixth stranger make a human lollipop out of ET in the last year or so.

I think we'll bring a special prize for the 10th, a framed picture or something.

Cutting to the chase, we have 4 follicles again. With the 3 from two days ago showing little or no growth. All four are between 12mm and 14mm.

Not big enough to trigger, and too many.

Meaning, we await confirmation that we have to go back again over the weekend.

I haven't a bloody clue what's going on in there. There's no pattern, no consistency, and to add a little spice, our dildo-cammer for today announced that one of ETs ovaries is in the wrong place.

The wrong bloody place. Not in her jacket pocket or on the mantelpiece or anything, but it's above the uterus as opposed to the side of it. She assures us that makes no difference whatsoever.

I like to think that it just fancied a stiff word with it's partner on the other side, hopefully telling it to get it's arse in gear.

Well shout louder, bitch.

So, we wait, again. For a call back for a scan, again. To see if we can go ahead or be cancelled, again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to throw my head back and laugh dementedly.

[EDIT - We go back on Monday, they need to see growth, they want some 18mm follicles. We are a way off that at the moment]

[DOUBLE EDIT - Mammydairies found the idea of one ovary trying to get at the other so amusing, she turned her hand to animation. Quite the achievement considering she is quite literally about to blow any second. We are in talks with the ovaries over a stage musical about their lives, set to the back catalogue of Duran Duran.]

Now for my next trick

2009-05-20T11:37:00.004+01:00

My heart sank when I saw it was Janneke, and not our preferred vag-visage, calling us.

'Laugh-a-minute Janneke' as I've Christened her.

Unfortunately that minute seems to have taken place somewhere in October 1986, so we just have to make do with humourless Janneke.

We had been asked to come back for another scan today. They wanted to check the growth of the 4 follicles, in the hope one would stop growing and the other three would push on. Based on the growth the follicles showed in the last Clomid cycle we were not expecting anything good to come of it.

We were ushered to the 'big brother' ultrasound room, so called as it doesn't have any curtained area for ET to get her kit off.

There I sat, Janneke to my left, interrogating me on the standard of my Dutch conversational skills, while to my right ET ever so gracefully hopped on one semi-naked leg in an attempt to get her jeans off.

After a couple of moments wishing I was temporarily deaf and blind, ET was in situe, her bare feet framing Janneke's stern face.

"I'm going to put the probe in now" she delightfully announced.

Er, Probe?

In it burrowed around the grainy black and whiteness of my nearest and dearest's reproductive organs, it was all I could do to stop myself announcing 'One small step for man...'

Probe indeed.

Straight to the right hand side she went this time, yesterday's ground zero, the cause of our distress. One, 13mm. Two, also 13mm.

No number three. Vanished. Gone. Vamoosed. Janneke claimed it wasn't uncommon, giving us some sober tale of larger follicles using all the hormones and leaving the smaller ones to wither away.

Over on the left hand side, the solitary follicle remained, having grown another 1mm. This leaves us with 3 in total, a 14mm and two at 13mm.

Almost unbelievably, exactly what we needed, but didn't for a second expect we would see.

The 3 need some growth, so most likely we will go back for another scan on Friday morning, when we should know more definitely if, or when, insemination will happen.

You don't get many days when you get good news in this game, and indeed, your perception of what constitutes good news changes dramatically over time.

But today, is one of those days.

Uno, dos, tres...

2009-05-19T11:28:00.002+01:00

I felt it was a good sign when the male nurse, who still looks eerily like the husband of a friend of ours, opened the ultrasound room door and called us in.

A familiar face at least, keeping the number of strangers who have peered up my wife at five since this debacle began.

Pale, bald headed, big lipped, with a neatly trimmed wiry beard, I wondered if he ever felt like he was looking in a mirror when he was down there sometimes.

As he got to work with the dildo-cam, I cracked open a fanta and offered around my peanut MMs.

First to the right hand side. One. Lovely stuff. Perfect.

The dildo-cam burrowed and snuffled it's way to the left.

One, two, and fuckyoudruggobblingsonofabitchfollicle, three.

In total, 4. Cuatro.

One 13mm on the left, and three at 12mm on the right.

The 13 is too small to induce ovulation now, which means giving them some growth time which would probably bring them all into the 'big enough' category.

If that happens, 4 is too many and it all gets cancelled.

Again.

ET is upset, tired, frustrated and stressed. I don't know what the fuck I am.

We await a phone call this afternoon to give us our next step. Maybe we go back to scan again tomorrow in the hope one has miraculously stopped growing like I did when I was 8, or vanished into the night like some South American resistance activist.

Or, it gets cancelled.

Again.

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow

2009-05-18T09:05:00.003+01:00

It's one of life's puzzlers. When you can't decide if time is going fast or dog slow.

It hurts my wee head to figure it out these days, so I won't even bother .

The five day drug binge has come and gone, with no casualties. Yet.

Hopefully the reduced dosage will give us just enough growth to have more than the usual quota to play with. Two or three juicy eggs would be perfect.

Tomorrow morning we have the first scan to see the progress of the follicles.

Again, more than three and they will cancel the whole thing, so we really could do without it being a repeat of 'man-milky white and the seven Chernobyl dwarves' from last time.

If all goes well, we may or may not need another scan the following day, and we should know when we can trigger shoot, and when the insemination would take place.

My guess would be Friday or Saturday.

I'm oddly curious to know if we will be entertained by humourless Janneke again, or the bearded male nurse (who looked remarkably and unnervingly like the husband of a friend of ours), or will ET be showing her pearly, er...pinks to yet another complete stranger.

Either way, we'd show them off in time square if it would guarantee no more than three follicles and the IUI could go ahead.

I'm off to assume a zen pose and repeatedly hum 'one-two-three' for the day.

Achtung no baby

2009-05-13T08:44:00.002+01:00

Today, a woman will attempt to cross international borders with mood altering drugs in her possession.

While German customs guards will be on the look out for tips of heroin filled balloons peeking from the bottoms of elderly ladies, and sniffer dogs will have their noses in the cocaine caked crotches of teenagers, this lady will pass unnoticed.

ET has to travel to Berlin for a day or two, a trip joyfully coinciding with starting her second round of Clomid.

The first time around, we naively thought we had escaped with little or no side effects when she had finished her 5 day course relatively unscathed. Little did we know that the fireworks really start post ovulation.

Let's just say those Berliners are lucky that this is the first day and a lower dose, otherwise if they still had that wall of theirs, she'd be climbing it.

It may have been expedition point for some of the most overwhelming military movements of the 20th century, but Western society knows of no destructive potential greater than a wee woman full of Clomid.

To be on the safe side, those Germans better not start any shit, for the next 36 hours anyway.

Concurring with the Boomtown Rats

2009-05-11T08:56:00.001+01:00

Due to normally being in a daze until they are almost over, I've never really had an issue with Mondays.

Today, I don't like Mondays. Today is cycle day 1, again.

Yep, again. For the 28th time.

There is something ridiculous about having used up all your fingers and toes for counting failed cycles on. When you've exhausted your testicles, penis, and useless manly nipples, and are patting yourself down in the search for sticky-out bits to count on, you should probably just stop altogether.

At the bus stop at least.

Exhausted is apt actually. Along with weary, weak, tired, spent, and any other of the many pitiful adjectives you can muster.

On the other hand, we'll get through this one - just, thanks to knowing we now have a shot at IUI again.

ET will start sucking on the Satan sweets from Wednesday to Sunday, a quarter of the previous dose. Hopefully her innards won't end up looking like something from Chernobyl again, and we can go ahead with the IUI this time.

In the delusional state of staying positive, all that would happen before the end of next week.

A fortnight from now, we could be pregnant.

Did you laugh manically at that line? No?

I did.

Naive miles

2009-05-08T12:53:00.003+01:00

We are walking the final steps once again, and as usual, they will be the slowest of them all.

It's a course we know well, we've seen all the landmarks, looked in all the shop windows, and recognise all the faces along the way.

We've had people pass us by, and fade out of view in front of us. Some, more than once.

We've walked it in all seasons, all weather.

It's our 27th circuit, and now on day 24, there are 3 or 4 more days left.

If we had any common sense we wouldn't even think about it, and set our minds on the next one, another attempt at IUI.

That's where the real possibilities lie.

Face it, if you can't get knocked up in 26 attempts, including one with half a dozen eggs lying spread-eagled, your chances on attempt 27 are on the unhealthy side of almost non-existent.

Evidently, common sense isn't something we possess in abundance, and so here we sit, counting down the days to the 'maybes' and the 'what ifs', still thinking about how this could bring it all to an end. And a beginning.

Like every other month that passes, we have something we can say could make the difference. Not drugs, timing, gimp masks, vitamins, nor freshly flushed tubes, but this month we were back home - 'just relaxing'.

Writing that line out makes me feel more than a bit silly, but that's nothing new.

The wry ability to allow my better judgement to be quietened during these days by lottery-odds sized possibilities is both amusing, and comforting.

Thanks to that selectively unassertive logical part of our brains, we can walk the last yards once again, not with dread, but with a little excitement.

One of these days it won't be misguided.

(Incidentally, for anyone who tried and failed to listen to the radio interview thanks to the arse-ache that is realplayer, you can now hear it here instead)

Fertility Foe

2009-05-06T12:11:00.003+01:00

We use the 'Fertility Friend' website.

That's all well and good, we can record the daily temperatures and keep track of all the other relevant details of a cycle. Every month we end up with a wonderfully colourful and complicated graph with dots and lines and trends and numbers and letters and bells and whistles.

All of which combine to tell us how tremendously normal, yet overwhelmingly unpregnant, we are. It really makes you feel extra special to see a sarcastically graphic representation of your own uselessness.

One of the details you can record on there are the days you have sex. (With each other.)

That, right there, may well be the first time I've ever used that term here, and for a good reason. It's one of the many, many terms you can use to describe the act itself.

You could call it shagging, or humping, or riding, or screwing, or copulating, or making love, or horizontal jogging, or indeed any one of a hundred terms ranging from the graphic and crude, to the suggestive and cute.

With all these marvellous phrases at their disposal, what do our Fertility Friend buddies choose to use to denote the act?

BD, or 'Baby Dance'.

I'm aware that not everyone wants to use the cruder terms for the squelchy sessions, but what sort of a demented walking talking head injury victim came up with that particular vomit inducing beauty?

It's not a dance. There are no tuxedos or ball gowns, there is no grand entrance, and there are no marks out of ten. Thankfully.

It's rarely graceful or stylish, you don't normally cover all four corners of the room, and frankly, you'll be lucky if it lasts as long as the average waltz.

You can forget about having two consecutive attempts, or swapping partners, and I'm yet to see anyone on 'Dancing with the stars' shuffle naked across the bed on their knees to reach for a cushion to shove under their partner's backside.

Adding 'baby' to the name doesn't help, it's not like you are going to forget what you're doing. I get the vision of the words 'baby dance' in my head in shades of pink or powder blue and I hear twinkle twinkle little star on repeat in my brain.

Talcum powder, knitted blankets, and nappies all spring to mind. Edible underwear, does not.

Get a grip Fertility Friend people, or I may be tempted to send your offices a baby explosive device in the post, or baby beat your CEO around the face and throat with a golf club.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch

2009-05-04T20:45:00.003+01:00

Done and dusted, another trek home. An enjoyable one even.

As a special threefold tribute to you ‘just relaxers’ out there, we paid no attention to what cycle day it was and just had ‘at it’, we tested the resolve of a childhood bed, not to mention the paper thin walls, and we even gloriously revelled in a fine hotel.

Curiously enough, and some of you may be shocked to read this, but doing it while not knowing what cycle day it is, is exactly the same as doing it while knowing.

Everything still goes in the same places, the same noises get made, the same squelching occurs, and the few minutes of wondering if that was 'the one' still takes place.

Shocking, I know.

This evening for the first time, I listened to the interview that I had last Friday, and I’m seriously regretting not having used a voice box.

I sound like I was wearing wellingtons, I stuttered for about 11 of the 14 or so minutes it lasted, I said ‘Umm’ 4,617 times, and I compared my poor wife to a cow.

A roaring success.

If that hasn’t turned you off the idea of listening, go here, and under 'shows from the past week' click on Friday’s show to hear it. You need RealPlayer to play it; I’m on from about 1:14 onwards.

Now that we’re back, a quick consultation on Fertility Friend tells me it’s CD20, so we are already floating down the two week wait river on a raft of just relaxedness with just a week or so to go.

It’s all fun and games, but we really would like this to stop now. Really. Can we do that please?

All we hear is...

2009-04-29T00:04:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to free the Irish airwaves of the doom and gloom of the recession, some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to bring up the topic of misery, shame, frustration, anger, and self loathing that is infertility to cheer everyone up.

To that end, in a bizarre turn of events, on Friday next, the 1st May, I will be on 'Today with Pat Kenny' on RTÉ Radio One, chatting with well, Pat Kenny, obviously.

The show runs from 10am-1pm Irish time, and the station can be listened to live online via the above link. (Realplayer needed I think)

I believe the show is also available to listen to for up to a week after they have run so I will post a link to it afterwards if I can.

Radio ga-ga indeed.

10am Irish time, is 11am Dutch time, 7pm later that evening in Sydney, and 5am that same morning in New York, if that's any help.