Miserable Music Monday

Today is Monday, and let's be honest, is there actually anyone out there that looks forward to Monday, is there anyone out there that can put Monday out there as their favourite day? "Oh yes I love Monday's, it's great, it means the dreadful weekend is over and we cant get into a new working week, hooray" yeah right! Well maybe there is one breed of people that look forward to Mondays, its those annoying mothers that love everything, love everyday and are high on the crummy old air they breath because they are with child and are in a permanent state of bliss, these type of mothers are unfortunately what i encountered today and what probably helped to put me in this shitty mood.


This morning for some ridiculous reason I decided to torture myself again by attending the children's music session at the library, now I find all these groups so hard at the moment but I try to make a real effort to go to at least one a week for the boys, and the fact that this is my job and I don't want to come across as some kind of unstable depressed woman (better to keep that under wraps). So in we go and of course I try to avoid eye contact with any of the mothers, in case they strike up a conversation which always leads to me being asked "how old are your boys, twins?", I always reply "no they are not mine and not twins and then try to pretend I have some kind of mental problem so they stop talking to me. Really one day I would love to just say "well actually you know what lady, they aren't mine, but thanks for reminding me that I am without children of my own because I have been battling for the last 2 years and have still got nowhere, now please stop talking to me and take your jolly spirit with you!". Perhaps next week Ill give that one a whirl. So if all the smiling, high as a kite, laughing, over the top mothers weren't enough, there was of course a mum who decided to whip out her boob and feed her 3yr old child! Now I'm no prude, I have no issues with breastfeeding, but I do find it slightly odd to still be breastfeeding a walking, talking child with teeth! I know there are many mothers out there that do this, and you may be reading this and completely disagree with me, which is fine, there is after all nothing wrong with doing it, just in my opinion its a bit weird, if you cant eat a chop you shouldn't be eating a boobie, and this is my blog so my opinion is what you get to hear. So anyhow, out comes the boob, on goes the giant child and away they go, a spot of morning tea, then her friend next to her (obviously following the same philosophy of tit is the best food for any age), whips hers out and chucks her 3yr old on!, just to make matters more weird, instead of the lovely old lady who normally takes the session, we had a giant manly man! bet he didn't realise he was signing up for the 3yr olds tit eating session! I half expected one of the kids to get their little ferocious teeth out and bite the mums over used nipple off, only to go rolling across the carpet and land at the manly man's feet! now that would have been a reason for me to attend next week if ever there was one!

So there you go, this is my life, trying to deal with day to day annoyances. I feel a bit shitty today, this may be because I expect my period soon, so a bit of pre menstrual blues, it may simply be because the weekend is over and I had to drag myself out of bed at 6.25am this morning. Its likely a combination of all of these topped off with the stupid music session I attended.


I guess the worst of Monday is now over and leading me into Tuesday which leads me closer to the end of the week and IVF day 1. Yah for that. Now why cant someone invent a playgroup for infertile people? Hold on, I think I just did. My playgroup would be full of mad, frowning woman instead of happy smiling woman, and instead of getting high off their baby's sweet smell, we would be getting high of weed, which by the way would be supplied. Instead of silly children's rhymes and laughing every time one of the children does something really dumb, and not even funny we would have an amazing DJ every week and we would be laughing at each other because we are actually funny and of course the weed probably helps with that. It would most definitely not be named something ridiculous like mini minstrels, mini musos, bounce and rhyme, giggle and jiggle, bop and hop, or dance and prance.

Wouldn't this make Monday's alot more bearable? Magic instead of misery, sign up now, criteria - must be miserable, barren and have a strong hatred for nursery rhymes, silly songs about speckled frogs sitting on logs, monkeys who fall out of bed, and generally any song involving an animal. Sounds like you? great, see you there next Monday.

Sleep ovaries sleep

In approximately one week my ovaries will be put to sleep, now as far as I'm concerned they haven't exactly been alive and kicking this far, a few measly eggs here and there doesn't exactly equal wide awake. Anyhow they will be put to sleep, as my doctor puts it. I will be starting the pill when my period arrives in about 1 week and then the ovaries go to sleep. Tuck them in and let them rest for a few weeks in hope that when they wake up to a shot of drugs that they perform better. If I had been sleeping for a couple of weeks then all of a sudden had hard core drugs coursing through me I would damn well wake up and pay attention.


So one week till IVF number 2 begins, I feel excited. Some people get excited about going out for a fun night, starting a new project, buying a new coat, Me, having my husband stick needles in my stomach twice a day, well I'm sure you get my drift, it's not the actual needles that get me all excited, I'm not a weirdo after all, I'm not about to continue the needles just for shits and giggles after I'm pregnant, but you know its the possible outcome that gets me all giddy with excitement.


I really cant wait till egg retrieval to find out how many precious eggs we get to fertilize. More than last time hopefully. Thinking back to my last egg retrieval, you often wonder why there wasn't as much as we wanted, was it because our doctor came swanning in wearing jeans and a ralph lauren polo all casual like, everyone else was all in the surgical garb, except the actual surgeon. I mean it was a Sunday after all, so he was only coming in to the surgery for me, but come on, he may as well have brought in his Sunday brunch with him! minus the eggs though, I have enough rubbish one's he can have for brunch! grose......Only kidding, he is a very professional, trusted surgeon and the head director of the clinic. But hey lets just blame that, the doctor was in the Sunday brunch zone while I was in the Saturday night party all night drug zone, just a shame those drugs didn't last longer, as in all week, they are damn good, if nothing good comes out of this, at least I get a nice shot of those lovely drugs again.


Today when I was out I saw the most gorgeous little African baby, in this cute little outfit, she was just perfect. This got me thinking back to adoption again. We could adopt a baby from a less fortunate country, there certainly are many little treasures that need some love. Although realistically if we did adopt it would be a child from our own country, I just think an overseas adoption is too tricky and even more pricey. On the issue of adoption, I can say we are very very far off this, I would never rush into this, I would have to had exhausted every option of having our own biological child before I went into adoption, I just think it's not fair on the new baby to take it on board if your heart is still in trying for your own child, I think you have to be fully committed to the adoption idea and have you head sorted and clear and not still be all over the place and upset about not conceiving, we would need to have had accepted that we are not going to conceive and be ok with that and be ready to adopt whole heartily . But I would always be open to this option, I don't think we will need to do this to achieve a family, but then again I didn't think we would ever need to do IVF, so you just never know.


That's all from me for now, thank you again for all your continued comments, I know these are all going to really help me when this all gets up and running, especially when all the drugs kick in and I start to fell horrible and crazy and want to start throwing things at one particular gardening man. He also reads the comments and I know they help him too when he's feeling a bit down and out so any kind comments and advice are always appreciated. So a big thank you.

How to cope with failure

I don't really know how I am to cope with more failure. This worries me alot. I try to push it to the back of my mind but it sneaks back out of the archive file and into the new releases file in my brain. There will need to be something drastic done if it all goes pear shaped, perhaps I need to be like Julia Roberts and go all Eat,Pray,Love. Eat my way through my whole pantry, pray at my bedside nightly for a baby to drop out of the sky and love my gardener guy till he can take no more, that's probably it for me, no taking up residency in an ashram or gobbling up fettuccine in Italy.

As I have said if this cycle fails and we are left with no frozens we are pretty much done, well until funding kicks in but that will be about 2yrs in total till we got the funding to start again. So tell me what shall we do? Throw a big party? well what the heck are we celebrating? the fact that we are still living in our own home and haven't been thrown into a mental facility. good reason?. Take a holiday?, this would be great, but I'm guessing airlines don't accept left over IVF drugs as payment do they, because money we just wont have, if we had money to take a trip we would be doing another damn cycle. Wallow?, this is my least favourite idea but funnily enough probably the easiest idea, It's rather easy to stay in bed and crawl further and further under the covers till you fall out the end of the bed and cant be bothered gathering yourself back up so you end up sleeping at the foot of the bed for days on end. 

I don't really have the answer just yet on how to cope with another failure and this one will be the biggest to date, this one is really going to hurt, not only will it hurt, but the sting will hang around alot longer too. I am still confident that we are going to succeed with this cycle, so for now I will try to push failure back out of my mind.


Failure in life is inevitable unfortunately. In some way or another most of us are likely to fail at something, which I think is fine, it makes us work harder to get the success. As the doctor keeps saying to us, at the moment it is like we are rolling the dice and we keep getting the wrong side, but eventually we are bound to strike the right side,(what the hell, we have some kind of dud dice I tell ya).


If we fail, there is always our good friends Jack (as in Daniels) and Bombay (as in gin), ok so who the hell has a name like Bombay, but I like gin, and gardener guy likes the lethal JD. We can sit down pour a brew and while I hurl abuse at him and anyone within a 10km radius, gardener guy can throw things and get into a fight with a youth who tells us he has a kids. Good idea? no not really, I'll settle for nice civilized 30yr old cup of tea (dash of gin), some biscuits (dash of hash) and some nice fluffy slippers and pjamas.

Causes for Infertility, who knows?

The safest place for a man trying to conceive is in his bubble

I have no idea what cause infertility, but apparently many people on the internet do. And what causes infertility, well in a nutshell, everything!

So tonight gardener guy got to thinking about his sperm. As we always are looking for reasons for infertility he started getting concerned that maybe it was his fault, which it isn't, his sperm are fine, they have been through all the tests. He was worried that he wasn't doing all he could do to help so he got on the internet, big mistake!


He came across a very funny website, where a doctor claimed that many things can be the cause of infertility, this gave us a damn good laugh and that was about it. A few of the things that can be a cause of infertility are as follows - using anti perspirant deodorant, of course why didn't we think of this! it's bad enough that people probably turn the other way when they see me coming for fear of more infertility talk but now I've got to add b o to my list of put offs. Now I cant even have a nice hot shower or bath to wash off all that b o, because this is not allowed either, especially gardener guy, we don't want his balls to explode with all that heat, so on the heat issue, that cuts out electric blankets, a big no no, and no standing in front of the fire on a cold night because that will heat up your balls and then you are fucked, looks like it will be a cold winter at our house this year. It's ok to drink a beer or two and smoking is probably not too bad as long as you are not riding a bike! yes you heard right, those balls of gardener guys are allowed no where near a bike seat....why? who the hell knows. Obviously don't eat any meat because you never really know where it has come from, so vegetarian all the way, and unless you are growing vegetables yourself, don't eat them as you don't know what has been sprayed on these so you better not eat them either, best not to eat at all really, just to be safe. Avoid contact with cat feces was another one, so don't go rubbing your cat's shit all over your hands, or your man's balls. Because so many people do that! 

For goodness sake the world is a lethal place, everything is a potential hazard. Gardener guy just better avoid farting in case it releases some kind of toxic fumes that he may inhale that then may increase his body temperature and make his balls explode! I think we just need to wrap the whole house in glad wrap and hop into our bubble where we are safe.


So many strange things are to be read on the Internet, what you take on board is up too you. But personally I don't fancy being a smelly starving woman living in a freezing cold house with a equally stinky bubble boy husband. Go on live a little, break out of your bubble, spray yourself from head to toe in deodorant, go out for a long bike ride while eating a pork chop, then come home, light the fire, rub cat poo all over yourself and have a long soak in a hot bath.

Guide to bad parenting

Well folks, even though I have no children of my own, I could quite easily write a guide to bad parenting, after having been in childcare for almost 10 years I have seen it all. I have heard every hair brain, pathetic excuse as to why their child doesn't sleep much, eat much and generally is just a little shit. I have heard it all. There is always an excuse from the parents, when really ill let you in on a little secret, its not bloody rocket science, It's just the parents fault!!! start good habits when the child is young and your away laughing.

I am going to let you in on a few things that I see over and over again, and quite frankly its just starting to piss me off. Really the majority of parents out there need to just get some damn ball! your child shouldn't rule your life, you shouldn't be afraid of upsetting your child. You are the adult so get a grip!

Two of the biggest complaints from parents are sleeping and eating. My child wont go to sleep, my child wont stay in their own bed, my child wont sleep for very long during the day, my child wakes so early in the morning, and my child wont eat much, my child is so fussy. Well its very simple really, and sometimes I just want to shake the shit out of parents, because honestly I feel like all their head must be filled with is shit, no brains. Start good habits early, for starters you need to get your child in their own room early on, weather you like it or not I believe this is very important, If your child keeps getting up to come to your bed, its not hard, you keep taking them back, they will eventually get it, don't give in. It will work. SIMPLE!, your child knows they can try it on with you, If they cry, you get them up, cuddle them, fluff around like an old lady. NO!, don't let them have the control, when they get to a certain age they need to learn to stay in there bed/cot without screaming, till you are ready to get them up, don't be dictated by their time schedule. This will eventually work, they will realise you are not going to get them up when they wake at 5.30am screaming, rather you are going to leave them there till an acceptable time. They will understand and stop screaming and just quietly chat away to themselves till YOU are ready.


Eating is much the same concept, you as a parent need to be in control. Again when your child gets to a certain age they will not die if they don't eat a full meal, they will not starve, if they are hungry they will eat. When you present your child with a meal, that is it. They take it or leave it. If they carry on and have a meltdown you don't give in and ask them what they want, god no, that is the meal you have made for them and that is what they will eat. Its always a good idea to reward good eating with a treat after, perhaps a biscuit, but if the meal is not eaten then no treat. Not hard is it? So many parents I come across are just too weak, they give in to quickly, they don't even give their child a chance to show them how clever and well behaved they can be, they create monsters.Your child will eat their dinner when they realise they are not going to get away with it. 

Use that simple rule, " children will do as they are told when they know they have no other option" don't give them an option to be able to play up. Be in control!

Ok well that's enough of me on my high and mighty horse, I'm not sure where this came from, I just get so mad with my job sometimes. Just because I don't have my own child doesn't mean I cant give my advice, after all a builder who doesn't own his own home would still give advice on what to use to build a house, a doctor that doesn't have cancer can still give advice on the best treatment, so I'm no different. 


After the weekend gardener guy seems to have got back to positive thinking, I even told him last night that this IVF was going to work and he replied "I know that, it will work", so that's really good, he is much more useful and happier when he gets himself in a postive  frame of mind, even though we have done this before and we are yet to see it pay off.  I have also been thinking a bit lately about the future and what it hold for us if this fails and how to move forward and deal with that, but Ill save that for another blog. For now we know where to keep our focus on and keep our eye on the prize.


I know everyone has a different approach to parenting and I would never try to force my opinions upon a parent as they are the best parent for their own child no matter how they go about it. I just think alot of parents make things harder for themselves which is a shame. Like everything in life, you put a bit of effort in at the beginning and you get more out of it in the end. That's what I'm trying to think with our quest to make a baby, we have put alot of effort into it and in the end we will get more out of it then we could ever imagine.

Eggs with a side order of sperm, oops I mean bacon

Can I order eggs please, with sperm thanks.I fear one day when I order bacon and eggs that eggs and sperm will actually come out of my mouth. These days when I am referring to eggs, bacon is not what I am pairing it up with. Whenever I hear someone in a cafe order eggs, my little ears will prick up and scan the room for an infertile woman, only to be brought back to reality when in fact it is just an overweight truck driver ordering 10 fried eggs and a plate of bacon, no womanly eggs or sperm insight.

Since the doctors appointment I think we hit a bit of a bump, but we got over it. We are now back on track. I think it is very normal to be rolling along ok one minute then next thing you know you are crying over a plate of bacon and eggs. (see story below). 

This morning gardener guy suggested we go out for breakfast, which was nice as we needed to sort a few things and get both of us feeling a bit better in the head basically. So off we went. I knew gardener guy wasn't himself and was still full of anger and bitterness and just not feeling good, and i do get that he is allowed to feel these things and I cant expect too much from him all the time, but I didn't want him to be feeling like this, for himself and me. He discussed with me that he is finding it so hard that I'm unhappy and he cant do anything about it, he doesn't know how he can deal with this if this IVF  fails, and how to help me. This is when the crying over the bacon and eggs started, the tears started in the cafe in front of everyone, but who cares, this just happened to be where we were discussing it and trying to work out all this shit. My gardener guy took my hand and told me he is sorry about all this negativity and anger and he isn't mad at me just mad in general, and that he finds it hard being helpless for me. I told him he is in no way helpless and being who he is, is what gets me through, if he was to continue this mad, angry, negative, I hate the world behaviour, that is what will tip me over the edge. That is not who he is. Anyhow we managed to come out of there feeling better and back to normal. God I tell you the nurse wasn't wrong when she said how much of a strain it can be on your relationship, can it what. Looking back now I think when I started the IVF, I remember the nurse saying to me " you do realise this is all alot tougher that the IUI's you have done" and I can now see exactly what she means. I think people tend to think that oh yes it must be hard being on all those drugs and doing all those injections and having those surgical procedures but really all that isn't even scratching the surface of how tough it is, if only it was just that and the emotional stress wasn't there. I'm not looking for sympathy here (although a little bit is always nice isn't it) and I know people are probably thinking "oh here she goes again, yes we hear how hard it is for you and you do like to go on about it", and I hate that people are probably thinking that but if I don't air it on here and don't get it out of my system I might explode. Not literally of course (well you just don't know do you, I may just burst from stress), as I have said this blog helps me and that is that. For anyone out there who is on the brink of explosion just remember 'when you feel a little depressed and useless, just remember that you were once the fastest, strongest and best little sperm out of millions' you must have been strong as an ox then and you probably still are now.

So where too from here, nowhere to put it bluntly. if this fails that's it, If there are frozen embryos, then great we go ahead and use those but if not this is it. We still don't qualify for funding till Aug 2012, then the wait list is approximately a year. So I am now going to try to accept that if this fails we are stopping. There will be no more. I wont be trying anymore hair brain crazy alternatives, it will just stop, I will stop treatments, stop the baby obsession, stop looking for ways to fix it and just start life again. Trying naturally will then be our only alternative till the funded cycles which seem like a million years away, I wont count down the months/years till the funded cycles, I wont count down the days to my next period. I will just stop. I will just stop it all. I am no where near at that point yet, as we have this IVF to do and that's my focus. I will need to accept that there is no more help for a very long time. But......... I am putting that out of my mind at the moment somewhat as I believe this will work, and I know I say this quite a bit, but this is it. 

Sometimes when you order bacon and eggs, Its just that, bacon and eggs. Sometimes you just need to let go, give each other a smile and breath and settle the fuck down. I'm not quite there yet, for me eggs still match sperm, not bacon, I am still frowning, holding my breath and unsettled. As the saying goes, Its not over till the fat lady sings, well I'm not ready to be the fat lady singing quite yet, and really you should be thankful for that considering the voice I have!

Doctors Appointment - IVF number 2

Today was our doctors appointment, and I tell you this was a roller coaster in itself.

So it played out like this, there was no real reason as to why the last one failed, I responded fine to the drugs etc, but the doc wasn't so impressed with the number of eggs that were mature, so this brought him to the conclusion that things will be done a wee bit differently this cycle. Basically If I though I had everything thrown at me before, well I was wrong, this time he will throw everything he possibly can at me and more to get this to work. 

We are going for a much longer cycle this time, when my period arrives (appx 17th April) I am to ring the clinic as normal and that is my day 1, I am then to start birth control pills, you may be thinking "huh" aren't you trying to get pregnant, not make it harder, but in fact being on the pill for about 2-3 weeks will basically put my ovaries to sleep and then when I start the first drug it wakes them up with a hard jolt, in a nutshell that's why. Jesus, I haven't been on the pill for like a million years, I'll feel like a born again teenager. So I stay on the pill till I'm told otherwise then I start a new drug, one I didn't have with my previous IVF, its called Bruseline. I will be on this for a few weeks every morning, then I introduce Puregon at night, which I did have last cycle. I continue to take both drugs every day till the trigger injection to release my eggs, now this time i am getting a double dose of the Ovidrel trigger injection, so that's quite full on! apparently giving me a double dose will mature the eggs even more, which is what I seem to need.Then away we go with egg collection, then Embryo transfer as per last cycle.

It all sounds quite a bit more complicated and full on than last cycle (if that's humanly possible), but I am pleased that the doc is recognising that it failed and something new needs to be done. So that's the physical side of it, now the emotional, well oh dear!

My gardener guy has unfortunately lost all hope in the whole procedure, in anything really. He is quite negative at the moment, and I know he wont be like this when we start, but that's where he is at the moment. He aired this to the doctor, saying he has no faith in this working and that he was struggling to feel like any of it is even going to ever work. All these emotions and feeling's are very normal and the doctor tried to explain to us that men and woman are wired very differently and when it comes to something so hard, it does become hard to understand how each other is feeling. I think the doctor does all he can to help and he is very good and makes me feel better. There was even a wee pat on the back from the doctor to my husband and a 'hang in there', I think he appreciates how much of a struggle this is becoming, It's harder for us than alot of couples that go straight to IVF and have a success after maybe 2 or 3 goes, and as the doctor said, we have already had 3 IUI fails and 1 IVF fail, so it's bound to take it's toll on us, this is why he strongly recommended some counselling for us, as a way to understand each other and get through this in one piece. We also discussed the acupuncture and that's good to carry on with, he advised me to quit the Chinese herbs, he wasn't really a fan and I cant continue these during IVF anyhow so ill stop those. He also told us not to worry about eating organic chicken and that mostly it probably didn't matter, this left me feeling, "well now what am I too believe, we keep getting told different things", but the doctor brought up a very good point, ' you will get told and given advice from lots of different sources, and I understand you are trying anything, as you will give anything a go, If I told you to stand on your head every day for 10minutes you would if it helped' which is so true, we just keep doing whatever anyone tells us, and we need to just stop torturing ourselves and just do what feels right for us and makes us feel better.

We then went to see our nurse and signed our consent forms again (once again I do not consent to gardener guy using our embryo's if I die and he meets gardener lady, no thanks!), again we had another chat to her about how we are feeling and all the emotional stress, and she is just great, we both really like her alot, she understands where we are both coming from, she also made a very valid point that we were to try hard not to forget about each other and the relationship we have, as she has seen many couples come through the clinic and not end up coming out together, it takes its toll on even the strongest relationships and we don't want to lose sight of each other.


I know I can be a pain to him and to my friends who try so hard to help me and cheer me up, and I apologise for behaving mad, mean, aggressive, down and just shit. But for anyone out there, don't turn your back on me. I need you for this next round. And most of all, out of everyone, I need my husband, so to him, chin up we can get there, when you are feeling weak I will make you strong, when I am feeling weak you can make me strong, when we are both feeling weak we can lean on one another, don't give up, I think this one is it for us, this will work, be positive, be strong and know I love you.