Holy Innocents

Today is the day the Church remembers the children massacred by Herod: Rachel weeping for her children.

It is also my due date. It has been an OK day, or even a good day. We're in a posh hotel for a few nights before going away to see the family hordes, and had my mother and mother-in-law for Christmas, so need a break. Today was a museum, shopping, and church. Tomorrow a massage, returning some Christmas presents, and a meal out in the evening; for once I seem to have a more interesting new year planned than most of my friends.

Should I call? Or will it make it worse?

1) Very close friend S (was my best woman) and her husband J - I blogged about this - had a recently failed ICSI cycle. Just got a Christmas card from her best woman R. She has a son about the age our first would have been, and confided she had to have some kind of op (to remove polyps? is that even likely?) and then got pregnant. She is expecting twins. I imagine S knew about R's pregnancy before we did, but she hasn't mentioned it, though this may be because R didn't want her to. Not sure if I should call and see how she's doing in light of this.

2) Friend S at work - adopting from central America - I saw a few days ago that adoptions have been closed from her country - now, I am assuming she knows as the news is a little old, but after she got her referral, no idea how these things work, whether they would just slam the door on everyone, or process people who had got beyond a certain stage, or if the cutoff is in the future. They had originally planned to adopt from China but her husband M is too old, and I told her as soon as I saw the news, they contacted their agency who asked if they'd like to be rushed through, and they said no, they'd switch countries. So I feel like the bearer of bad news/as if I am poking them with a stick reminding them if they already know.

Dilemmas. I would maybe email the second couple before going back to work in January, as I don't know them that well, but a friendly Christmas call to my friends S & J would be appropriate anyway.

(Edited: I just looked up more about the overseas adoption news and it looks like they may have gotten far enough along in the process that they will be OK. But I'm still not sure whether to ask or not)

Just relax(in)

I was intrigued to find, at a small internal conference, a poster by a student in another department at my university, on this link - the possibility that relaxin may be crucial for embryo implantation. I think this is well-known in animal research but it seems they are only just transferring it to humans. Not that relevant to me, but I'm not sure the article would have meant much to me at all if I hadn't had a few pregnancies and/or read up about reproductive physiology a bit.

Anyway I am pretty exhausted after a long haul up to Christmas, and am in theory supposed to be doing some work today, but so far have only answered a few emails and developed period pain and a headache. I'm not sure if I really wanted to be stressed and pregnant again on the anniversary of my first positive pregnancy test and Sproutetta's due date (both the 30th) but I'm not.

It's been 6 cycles since my last pregnancy ended and this is the point at which I started making appointments to see the GP the first time around - and started the blog. I am not sure seeing anyone about fertility is what I want to do at this stage - all the fixable and permanent/structural things, as well as MF, have been ruled out, both medically and by our approximately 6-9 month latency of pregnancy on average. I know I'm ovulating every month as I get very clear progesterone symptoms (actually feeling hot, sore boobs, some cramps). If I didn't have a calendar I would still know when day 21 was. I suppose I could ask for an FSH test but although if it was massively elevated it might make us decide to give up on even trying to get pregnant, we aren't in a position to do anything else in the next year, so we might as well just carry on. I guess I feel OK about this.

I was very weepy yesterday watching Cranford (it's a period drama, based very loosely on some novels by Mrs Gaskell) for some bizarre reason (a small boy with a thirst for literacy but whose father doesn't see the point of books is taken in by a kindly clerk, who dies and leaves him money to go to school and indeed to build a school). Mr Spouse gave me a hug and suggested we steal a small Central American baby when we go to the US. "No-one will notice", he said kindly.

Miscommunication

The other day:
Me: Mmm, hellooooo, are you awake?
Him: What does your meter* say?
Me: Red, why?
Him: Well, that's more complicated, not sure I feel like...
Me: Well, you're a bit late to think about that, we've been ignoring it so far!
Him: Oh, I thought we were paying attention to it...

I apologised the next day for not discussing it with him.
Him: Oh, I just do what you tell me. I don't mind.

You can see why I love him.