How the other half lives

I think this is probably my first foray into private medicine, at least in the UK – in the US I had the sort of insurance that didn’t guarantee you a waiting room full of well-dressed City types, and on the NHS, especially where the RPL clinic is, you get a high proportion of scallies, and a low teeth-to-tattoo ratio. Think people who shouldn’t be wearing leggings, wearing them, and sitting outside the hospital smoking next to a) their baby and b) the No Smoking notice. Yes, I’m a snob.

The Small But Perfectly Formed Clinic is in the bowels of a London teaching hospital, in a mainly 19th century building, so there’s a limit to how posh it can be. But the open evening attendees were, as I say, not your usual gynae clientele.

Most of the talk was about IVF, with little acknowledgement that people might be there for other things, even though a couple of bright-eyed young things at the front asked about IUI during the questions section. The doctor giving the talk did acknowledge to us, though, that she should have talked about people with other needs, as they mentioned, though glossed over, what I think we might be most interested in – an ovarian reserve assessment. She also mentioned, as if it was the answer to ageing eggs, PGS, but she was honest enough to admit that our consultant was probably right, and it probably wouldn’t help us much.

Mr. Spouse says he doesn’t feel nearly as enthusiastic about adoption as he did before the last pregnancy, and I suspect his enthusiasm level isn’t high enough to start the process again at the moment – mine isn’t really, either, though I think it’s a little higher than his. It has also occurred to me that the next preparation course for our agency is probably in the summer, and they wouldn’t want us to do too many home study sessions before it, nor to leave too long a gap before starting again. So we will ring them when we get home and enquire, but not make definite moves to starting again. And I think we might book in for the ovarian reserve test.

I think I might need to compare how I’m feeling now to how I was feeling a year ago – because I suspect it’s the same. Feeling that I have no time, that the next month/six months are THE crucial months for both adoption and pregnancy, that if I put either one off even a little bit I will have missed the window, the perfect cycle, the perfect waiting child. I’m glad the consultant said what he said about my next year – I think I might need to learn to wait a bit more patiently, and to trust that a small amount of time is not going to make that much difference.

Today in the church year is Maundy Thursday – Jesus is all alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, and is very much about suffering, but I think also about trust – that not everything can happen immediately, or the way I want it to.