I'm a media slut

In the last 48 hours I've spoken to about 10 newspaper journalists and been interviewed for no less than 6 radio programmes (first one: scary; last one: blasé). A piece of my work which a friend described as "the cutest research ever" has been jumped on with a frenzy.

I'm not going to post a link here, but suffice to say if you've hear or read anything about children's language in the British media today, it's almost certainly me. But nothing will stop me going to Brownies tonight. Except maybe John Humphrys.

The women of this nation...

apart from those who like football, or have more than one TV in the house, are currently amusing themselves.

I've been doing a little browsing on the internetty web (as Mr Spouse and I call it), and a little sewing on two baby quilts. One is for my new niece, and one is either a faith quilt, or is for some other lucky child of a friend or relative. Not for my cousin's - I'm sorry, but having your second child due less than 3 years after your first does not count as "it's so difficult and upsetting not being able to have another child". Definitely not as "everyone in the family needs to know even your 97-year-old grandfather". Although the latter may have been her big-mouthed mother. Just because she is 13 months younger than her brother.

At least that may be the last of it for a while, unless my brother decides he can't live without a son. I have one remaining unmarried cousin my age, who is currently messing around with, and I suspect messing around, a very good friend of mine. No wedding bells or pregnancies I don't think - she wants to adopt from China, as a first choice, but he's under pressure to keep the family name going. The other side are all either under 30 and living in a different country to their spouse, or unattached, or both.

Going through my cycles in real time is rather a lot like watchin paint dry, so I'm not subjecting you lot to them. Suffice to say I madly decided to take my temperature this month, but at least it tells me, once again, I'm ovulating fine. In other news, no news from the miscarriage clinic (why does my mother ring to ask if I've heard from them four days after I've gone to the gynae? that's hardly enough time for a letter to get there and back!), and Mr Spouse and I have agreed that if "nothing has happened" six months after my last miscarriage, we will start going for adoption.

Details are yet to be worked out. Will "nothing" include another early miscarriage? Will we go with the agency we visited, or think about concurrency (where you foster a very young child and then if they don't get reunited with their birth parents- which does not happen 90% of the time - you adopt them)? The concurrency agency is quite a long way away - there are only about 4 in the country - and we might have to twist their arm to get them to consider us. We'll see.

A radio programme

This is a BBC Radio 4 programme about miscarriage that I suspect will only be up till Monday 26th June, as usually they keep them up for a week.

I'm putting this post up before an actual text one so if the programme expires, but I don't get round to updating, you won't have to keep looking at it.

Pro-cras-tin-a-shun

I'm a university lecturer, and we've been on "strike" (a boycott of assessment activities - at the busiest time of year for assessment) - no marking. So now that our strike has ended, I have a huge pile of marking to do. You, gentle reader, are very lucky.

I had my next (maybe final) gynae appointment today, and went along with as usual a long list of things to ask. I forgot to put one thing on it, and I didn't sleep well last night, so not surprisingly I forgot to ask about it. But it is not fertility related*, and this is what she said about the fertility things:

My FSH level is 7. Not hopeless, but not as good as it could be (it seems that 2-6 is "excellent" and 6-9 is "good"), and another reminder that I don't have forever to do this pregnancy thing. So I didn't really need the gynae to tell me "it all gets harder after you're 40".

She's redoing the "online" clotting tests (the ones that measure actual levels of substance in your blood, rather than the ones that test for a gene mutation, which is not going to change). She also arranged for a test for the MTHFR mutation- she hadn't heard of it but the fact that it's in a book by the miscarriage guru lady in London, rather than off-a-random-website, made her take it seriously. But given that apparently a third of people have the mutation, there must be a lot of people who get and stay pregnant just fine with it.

She's referring me to the recurrent miscarriage clinic - the local one - the only thing I can find in the London clinic's book that I don't know if they do is the real-time clotting test (how fast does your blood clot in actual fact) and if they don't, I'll try and arrange for it to be done privately. She also said that, if I get pregnant again but have not yet had a diagnosis of a clotting factor, then it would do absolutely no harm to take low-dose aspirin. I am not sure if I'll extend this to "it will do no harm to take it during the second half of the cycle every month". I'm tempted.

And she said when we have some answers from the miscarriage clinic, IUI might make sense, and can be done at a fairly local hospital (1/2 hour away) with good results.

So reproductively I feel as if I've had a few answers. But parenting-wise, I'm not sure. If I knew we could not get (or stay) pregnant, I would want to go for adoption as soon as possible. But will I ever know that?

*it is a Barthelin cyst, and no, you don't want to know what it is.

Not a good day

It is a bank holiday, but we don't get the May bank holidays. Mr Spouse does, so he is at home, not working, while I am at home working. And I have got my period. I am not going to be a mother before I am 40; this was my last chance.

Torn...

For once I'm not entirely sure I would be happy if I was pregnant this month. It is possible, and my good friend A got pregnant with her daughter without skipping a cycle after a much later miscarriage; and another friend in pre-pregnancy-test-in-everyone's-drawer days "thinks" she had a miscarriage at 5 weeks the month before her daughter was born. But I am wondering if I need a rest. This did not stop us from trying, however.

And of course I'm not sure I'll be happy if I'm not, because I will worry I'm broken again, that was a fluke, we are not going to get pregnant. But I imagine I'll know by tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. An ovulation stick (actually my cheat's version, the sticks from the mega expensive Clearblue monitor, which are themselves cheaper than normal ovulation thingys) suggested my period will be due tomorrow; and a (proper, pricey, non-cheapo internet job) test was negative yesterday (I couldn't resist, OK? I'm addicted to peeing on sticks. If I had waited perhaps I would have been too late to do it...). I have no real clue symptoms-wise as, unlike DoctorMama even my 10-week pregnancy seems to have made my uterus cramp before every period.

Next steps are the gynae appointment in 2 weeks' time at which I think we will ask for referral to the nearer, less snazzy clinic, and I think they will see us in about a month, before which time we may well have some of the tests either repeated or done for the first time through the local hospital. I think there will be more clotting tests than have been done, and I'm going to ask that the ones that were done before could be repeated (apart from the genetic ones, which aren't going to vary). There will also be chromosomal tests for both of us, and I imagine a proper ultrasound of my uterus. If we find there is anything they can't or won't do, but that is done at the further, more snazzy clinic, we'll get it done privately.

Incidentally, does anyone have a recommendation for a free invisible counter? goodcouter.com was doing me very well but seems to have been broken for the last week or more.

Yes, I do really want to have children, really, I do

I was away with Brownies last night, the only leader for our group - and one girl with a chest infection and asthma kept me awake coughing (I was awake longer than she was!) for almost the whole night. While sitting on her bed at 3am surfing on my PDA I was desperately longing for someone else to take a shift...

Other news from the Spousehold (and I promise not to use that again): we went to the open evening from the private (charity) adoption agency and both of us came away feeling more positive: they did not, like the local authority, seem to totally rule us out because of Mr. Spouse’s age - both of our ages would be taken into account, I am plenty young to be approved for under-5s, and although we might lose out in a “competition” for a child or children because of our age, we could also have something to give that others could not – I suspect my experience would help, but if we were willing to take a sibling group, that would also help a lot.

Under 5s are definitely around, and if you take two siblings at once, it has the advantage that a) they will have each other (with my family’s emphasis on biological kinship, this would be a positive thing, too) and b) the younger one will definitely be quite young, and the older one could be fairly young too as not everyone will take siblings. And Mr. Spouse, after hearing about the adoption process (which sounds a lot like our very intensive marriage preparation weekend, but more drawn out) and that one would have to go through some of it again for a second adoption, seemed to also become more positive about the idea of going for siblings. He is the one feeling the clock ticking on adoption, and doesn’t want to do the whole process once aged Old and then again aged Old Plus 3; he is an only child, sees no problem with having just the one, but is open to the idea of more than one.

I was predictably moist-eyed over Children Who Wait and Be My Parent; these were old issues, but one not so old that I can’t help wondering if one pair would still be in there if we started the process later this year, and also one set was very appealing in a car-crash kind of way, to be honest; six lovely sisters, from the same town where my mother used to do home tuition for children who had been excluded from school, and who my mother no doubt would be able to identify at least by reputation, as it’s one of those kinds of towns.

Mr. Spouse is very keen for me to cancel the IVF open evening. I haven’t yet, unfortunately the one we have booked is the day before my next gynae appointment or I would wait for that to make a decision. The next one we are away, I have cancelled one already, but I guess if we decided to go for it we could just book a (moderately expensive) initial appointment rather than go to the (free) open day, but not have to wait. He is more convinced it would be pointless, I wonder about balanced translocations and PGS. But the former is very rare and the latter doesn’t seem to lower the miscarriage rate to a major degree.

A bit of a long post, but we are going to see the gynae in a couple of weeks’ time, before she’ll refer me to the recurrent miscarriage clinic. I probably have the choice of clinics, one of which seems to have more of an emphasis on clotting problems, as they do more tests, and which is further away, but which does not believe in NK cells, and one of which is closer and is doing a clinical trial on NK cells, but I might not be eligible for the trial anyway being a little overweight and it involving steroids. So that’s a dilemma… the first one has a very good reputation, but the word on the street (or rather, on the babydust-infested but UK-system-oriented message boards) is that the second is pretty friendly and welcoming, too.

It's four a.m...

and I can't sleep...

I started helping with Brownies in January, it's on a Friday night, and it's fun. But I'm not sure I can carry on, not with that group. There are a number of issues, some convenience (the Friday thing, which is starting to irritate Mr Spouse), some personal (not relevant here), but one crucially relevant: the baby.

I am pretty certain it's this miscarriage which has brought back feelings of the previous one, and feelings of NigelandDelia. I know it has for Mr Spouse too. This was the first week I saw little S, one of the leader's babies, after this miscarriage, and the first time I really clicked that she is very close in age to what they should have been. Perhaps because there is a month or two difference, but as she gets older this will be less and less significant. I know this is going to continue. If it wasn't for this, I think I would have asked to change groups anyway, but I'm just happy I managed to hold it together in the meeting, and that Mr Spouse found me a quiet bench on our way out to dinner for my meltdown.

Where we are at...

Not sure, really...

My theoretical return to work (in fact, return to my desk in my study at home, looking at work files rather than blogs) coincided with a major rush and panic on a grant application, fraught with inter-country politics, and due yesterday. We got it in, but not without a long-suffering research administrator working long hours and an international collaborator taking his ball home.
I did actually go into the office yesterday but reserved the right to come over all feeble and work at home today. Which I am doing.

Colleagues that I have told have been sympathetic - I felt like a bit of a wimp when I had to tell one very nice man that my miscarriage was at just over 5 weeks - his partner had two, one at 12 and one at 16, I think between their two children (she was told to lie in bed for a month with the next pregnancy, but this was 20 years ago!). But he said this was the worst time they'd been through, even including the death of two elderly parents in the last couple of years. I also told another colleague, who I didn't know at the time of the first miscarriage, about both of them. I think this may change the dynamic between us a bit - she comes across as someone who really doesn't want kids, and almost resents talk of them, although she is generally a lovely person.

New feelings have been raised, oddly by the pregnancy as well as by the miscarriage. When I found out I was pregnant, we had these two upcoming information evenings booked; I actually felt sad that I might not now need to adopt, but we had decided to go to both anyway "just in case". At my lowest point, when I knew I was miscarrying, I sobbed to Mr Spouse that I would never have a baby and he said "yes you will, it just might not come from your tummy". And that made me feel sad too - so I'm not sure what I want.

I guess I might want one or more children that are lovely little clones of me and Mr Spouse and who are gloriously bright and musical and calm and well-adjusted (all the good parts of both of us and none of our faults, of course, and guaranteed no developmental issues), as well as one or more children who are slightly more problematic, but who were "chosen" for us, or vice versa, in a very human sense.

I had an email from a friend in the US who had been told "well, you know, if you adopt you are guaranteed to get a baby" (by an adoption counsellor, so although the counsellor may be stretching the truth a little, she is probably not completely making it up). Perhaps this is true in the USA, if you wait long enough. Here, it is not, although most people give up rather than being given up on; and it is not very likely that one would get a newborn, although that is not too crucial for us, personally I'd like to go for an older baby or toddler and Mr Spouse is starting to come round to that idea, too, I think.

I have also been reading other US blogs where people seem to be going for IVF and adoption at the same time; another thing that wouldn't happen here. IVF seems a bit pointless at this stage, unless it turns out we have a balanced translocation or something like that, but I don't want to give up on pregnancy without knowing if there is something treatable we can find that might be causing the miscarriages. And I don't think we could have those investigations, and pursue adoption, either.

Anyway, I'm going to go and have some lunch, and go into town and do a little shopping. I am aware that I am at risk of getting depressed, especially when I catch myself afraid of going into town, partly because of the people, and partly because I think someone will spot me and say "you aren't sick". And that means I really, really need to get out of the house and get a little exercise.

When a friend has a miscarriage

I just found this and thought it was quite good - I've seen other similar things in the past, although they are good to find, I'm not sure how one would give these to ones friends and family. Hello, people, you know I've had a miscarriage but really, you aren't being that sensitive, here's something to teach you how.

Did you know...

it is possible to have your bladder too full for an ultrasound? I was sent away to pee before my scan this afternoon. And I was very mean and didn't tell the Scan Man that there was no more loo roll after me.

Saw the GP this morning (declining the receptionist's suggestion of a telephone consultation yesterday, when I would have been on the train. No, I don't feel like discussing my miscarriage in a crowded train carriage. Funny, that) and he said that, although it was up to me, he would really recommend having an ultrasound. I guess part of me still had a tiny bit of hope, but I knew it was pointless thinking like that and that knowing I was going to have the scan would just get my hopes up. But fortunately I got an appointment for this afternoon and managed to take my mind off it by doing some gardening (at least my tomato plants are growing). The GP also seemed surprised that the pregnancy test I did yesterday would have been negative already, but it didn't surprise me, as I stopped feeling pregnant at the weekend.

So having drunk loads, and walked to the hospital, and waited half an hour (I was early, they were late), I found out there was nothing in there - which is better than the worst that could have happened i.e. that I would need to have an EPRC.

I'm still feeling pretty exhausted, sleeping a lot, and the GP says if I need to be signed off next week just to call; I have a grant application a nervous student needs to submit by Wednesday but I have sorted it out so I can do it from home if necessary, I think. I would dearly love to reduce my workload long-term but don't really see how - the parts of my job that are flexible are those that I like, and those that get me long-term promotion prospects. We have a moderately generous holiday allowance but it's not huge, and I already take it all as it's almost exactly the same as Mr Spouse's, and he always tries to take as much as he can.

Last time I came home from the hospital after my miscarriage to find a book on pregnancy had arrived from Amazon. This time I have had several items of nicely snug clothing arrive, due to some rather delayed mail-order and Ebay purchases which came while we were away. For our anniversary on Monday Mr Spouse and I chose a selection of possible cotton items for ourselves from the Boden catalogue and ordered them for each other without looking at the checkout page, if you have any idea what I mean. So I now have a nice new blue dress to wear to a wedding in a week's time.

I don't feel good. But I don't feel dead, either. I'll ring the gynae tomorrow to arrange a referral to the recurrent miscarriage people. I don't know where they do their standard referral to, but there are two clinics within a couple of hours of here, and if it's the same place they send IVF people to, I'm going to ask for it to be somewhere else, as it's a 2 hour drive.

That seems to be that...

I bled much worse yesterday, and in fact my breasts were much less sore and swollen even when I woke up yesterday. A load of clots last night, and that seems to be it, it has eased off now. I am very tired and pretty numb, but not in floods of tears or anything. I've been taking my mind off it by knitting a little dress for my new niece who, ironically, arrived on Monday. I had already been making something for her older sister, and while I was making that, I had the audacity to think perhaps they could pass it back to our children when they are done.

My new niece has been given my mother's middle name as her first name. I like the name (although my mother normally doesn't own up to it, and is cross that she will have to now), as well as my mother's first name, and the combination was her maternal grandmother's name too. I had always thought I'd give my daughter the pair of names. I am grateful to my brother - though I doubt it was conscious - that he has not taken her first name for his own daughter. There may be a gap but there won't be another cousin with her name.

I dithered on Friday afternoon about ringing the consultant's secretary, for too long, so they were closed. The options on Saturday were then A&E, the GP out of hours service, or the ward where I had the other miscarriage. I rang the ward in the end, and I was glad I had - they told me I could come in if the bleeding or the pain were too bad to cope with, but need not do so if I didn't want to, and should make an appointment with my GP next week, and he would organise a scan. I don't think I want a scan unless they deem it medically necessary as I am sure it's all over, and the lack of a sac just means it was too early for one, not that I haven't got rid of all the material that was there.

What now? Well, it's our anniversary tomorrow, ironically. We have a hotel booked, so I may as well feel tired and miserable there, then Mr Spouse is off for a couple of days for work, and both the hotel and his work are near my mother's (they are also near Big Scary Department where I was supposed to be giving a talk on Tuesday), so I'll go there for a bit of TLC. Then I guess, working out who to tell about this (and who to tell there may have been a third, also), getting a referral to an official miscarriage clinic, and working out if there is much point in trying to get pregnant again.

Not good

I've started bleeding - not enough yet that I'm sure everything's gone, but it certainly isn't getting better, and it seems to be getting worse. I came home from work a couple of hours ago, and had to stop and get some pads on the way home. I also have dull, general aches rather than the twinges that I've had up till now.

I think I am going to go and lie down and feel sad now. We are supposed to be going away for the weekend, as it's our anniversary, so I don't know if that will happen either.

Hurrah for the busy woman!

When I was in hospital having my lap and dye, the nurses were commenting on the gynae, and I think someone made the classic comment "if you want something done, ask a busy woman". So, rather than going to my fairly-sympathetic-but-hardly-any-clinics-and-doesn't-see-the-point-of- early-scans-you-could-lose-it-after-the-scan-anyway male GP, I decided to entrust my anxiety to the gynae's secretary, who rang me back (on my mobile, while I was having lunch with a friend who only knows there have been "hospital appointments" and "an operation", so I'm glad she didn't want any more details over the phone). And I'm going to have a scan in 2 weeks' time. 7 weeks is probably good as I know you can sometimes see a heartbeat at 6, but not seeing one then is not bad. I may have to go on my own, I have just realised - Mr Spouse will be away a couple of days that week. Hmm. Perhaps his boss can be persuaded he doesn't need him on that trip. What if I went and there was no heartbeat and I was on my own? What if I went and saw a heartbeat on my own and then next time there wasn't one and he never got to see it? But I don't think he'll want to go to bi-weekly scans, if I have them, to be honest... Dilemma.

Limboville

I have stopped feeling very scared every moment of the day, although knicker-watch continues, I have not had to run out in the middle of anything in the last couple of days, and I actually slept well the last two nights. But I still feel low-level scared with bursts of petrified.

I can see that I've had a fair few visitors in the last couple of days but I think people may be holding off on commenting - partly because one person always seems to have good news as another has bad news. But I also know that, if someone else in my situation found themselves unexpectedly pregnant, I would feel jealous of their happiness. But I don't feel happy at the moment - just scared.

The acupuncturist did treat me, and explained what she wasn't doing because I was pregnant. She also told me to eat a better breakfast (yes, mum - although kedgeree was mentioned- bleugh) and not to drink coffee at all. A quick Google actually scared me into going to half caf this morning, as the strength I normally drink it, even one cup could be too much.

Now we have to decide what to do about the IVF and adoption open evenings we have booked for next month - the adoption one is a bit easier as they don't book up so we can just go to the next one, and they will see you for a chat at other times. But the IVF one is booked months in advance normally so it's harder to know what to do about that one. Of course, I could have miscarried before it, but it's unlikely I'll have had a scan.

Nothing really...

Another very faint positive. I would have thought it would be stronger today, and it was supposed to be a more sensitive test, but then it was a cheapo one I got off the internet for £1. Someone else I know on the web bought these and got about 10 negatives and then a positive with a digital test, if you can believe anything so ridiculous. If there are no further developments I might buy a better one at the end of the week...

But living in a small town leads to dilemmas here (hence buying them from the internet, or from Waterloo). I can't buy them from the chemist where I've promised to pick up Mr Spouse's prescription some day this week, it being right by my bus stop, as someone from choir works there. And obviously I can't buy them from the student shop at work as ANYONE might see me. Plus I think they have them behind the counter and you have to ask for them. Bet they don't sell many, what do you think?

I am a statistic

Apparently, according to that very reliable source The Internet, 30% of couples with unexplained infertility become pregnant within three months of a lap and dye. I think I’ve just landed in the 30%.

I’m really scared as I type these words that it will turn out to be a false alarm, chemical pregnancy, or whatever you want to call it. I thought my period was due on Thursday or Friday but last month’s bleed was weird and took ages to start, and I may have ovulated two weeks ago today (except I didn’t use the ovulation thingy according to the instructions, so who knows?) which would make it due today. But on Friday I got a “maybe evaporation line, maybe positive” and on Sunday a “faint but it’s really there and it appeared quickly, even if the outline isn’t that clear”, with some not very sensitive cheapo tests picked up at Boots at Waterloo when Mr. Spouse wasn’t looking (naughty Dr. Spouse). We've jut been to various far places on the train, which is why Waterloo.

So I suspect that it was actually due Friday or Saturday as I don’t think I’d get a positive with that test before it was due. I am, of course, on constant knicker-watch and will probably continue to be so for the next week or two. Who am I kidding? The next month or, hopefully, eight and a half. I have cramps (had them last time, but of course also just before periods) and weird pains in my groin (very like ones I get just before a period, but they’ve been going on for about five days, so I can only assume it’s stretching or something).

As I say, I’m really scared it will be a “chem”, but I think that even if I bled tonight I would push it to be recognised as my third miscarriage, even though this hasn’t made 5 weeks yet, and neither did the second. But if I don’t, I’ll try again with a more sensitive test in the morning, to see if I can get a stronger line.

I am currently trying really hard not to hope for the best, but definitely fearing the worst. I think the worst would probably be finding out the pregnancy was not viable after weeks and weeks. No, actually, the worst would probably be an ectopic, but never having had one before I am at least realistic in working out my chances of that are very low (about 1% I believe). Losing a pregnancy, and being worse off reproductively than before it, would be awful. I think losing the pregnancy late would then be a greater fear than losing it early; but not too early, as otherwise it won’t get taken seriously in treatment. I can’t possibly think ahead to anything else, except maybe seeing my GP maybe next week if maybe possibly just maybe I get that far. OK, I’m lying. I have thought about wangling, or paying for, an early ultrasound in a couple of weeks’ time. How can I be so confident it will even last beyond tomorrow??! How can I get some sleep??

Ironically, I had just booked an acupuncture appointment which is supposed to be tomorrow. I’m not sure whether to cancel, in which case I’d probably have to pay anyway, or go along and have a chat and pay, booking one for a couple of weeks’ time when apparently it’s safe (or we will be trying again, anyway).

Although I hardly ever do this, I am also doing a lot of very, very focussed praying…

Men and miscarriage

I was reminded by yesterday's post to put up a link to a very helpful page written by the Miscarriage Association:

Men and Miscarriage

Deja vu, part 2

I got an email from a friend yesterday:

I have just been told that the pregnancy we had is going to end (at around 11 weeks).

We went for an ultrasound, but though the sac was clearly visible, there was no sign of a baby. So I guess in a way, the pregnancy has already ended. I haven't had any bleeding or any pain, yet. The obstetrician was jolly nice and said we could choose whether to have expectant management - just waiting - medical management - medicine to make you have a miscarriage - or a D and C under anaesthetic.

More or less exactly what happened with us. But I actually felt OK about it - I forwarded it to Mr Spouse and he said he was having flashbacks and remembering how sad he was. I think I just felt happy to be able to help, and also I suppose happy that it wasn't happening to me just now.

He reminded me also to ask about my friend's husband and how he was doing; so many people rang him after our miscarriage and asked "How is she?", forgetting it was his baby too.

The Family Man

Last night we watched the second episode of this new drama. I actually think it's quite good, in some ways - it seems thoroughly researched, and some of the scenarios are realistic. For example, of the four couples presented, one has secondary infertility, which is not the classic infertility situation presented in the media, two are using donor eggs, and the procedures are gone through in a fair amount of detail, as well as discussion of egg sharing, PGS, IUI, and other things that don't make it into the media so much.

But being a drama, we've got to have something dramatic. This week's episode closed with the clinic, and the home of a couple trying to get approval for sex selection to replace their son that died, being bombed. And of course every couple who finds a private egg donor a) does so illegally and b) the father of the ensuing child proceeds to have an affair with the egg donor and c) the egg donor has a dodgy relationship with her mother because d) the mother is not telling her that she has always regretted giving up a baby at 16 for adoption and e) the child she gave up is now going for IVF at the same clinic (she's the one with secondary infertility).

Confused? Well, Mr Spouse was! In fact, since the third couple in the series just had triplets using eggs from the adopted daughter, the only people who don't seem to be related to each other in the series are 1) the IVF specialist (who also has marital problems, did I mention that? and whose daughter confessed to taking the morning after pill. Perhaps she slept with the partner of the adopted daughter?) and 2) the family who want another boy, and since they are black, it is fairly obvious they aren't going to be doing any egg sharing with the other couples, who are all white (mind you, one of them could still sleep with one of the other characters).

It's Pregnancy As Dramatic Device writ extremely large. About 60 point, I'd say.