I actually slept last night (7 solid hours), though I'm not betting on that being the last of the jetlag, and my mother is making coffee, so I'm pleased. Although her laptop seems to think I am moving the cursor randomly from line to line and typing in odd places so if you find any incomprehensibility, don't blame me.
Yesterday I escaped the maternal clutches and took my life (and our car) in my exhausted, LH drive, automatic-accustomed hands and gingerly made my way down to the top of the hill where the Hairy Farmer Family live. It's about 10 miles from my mother's house and very beautiful it is too. And of course they are a very lovely family, with a very gorgeous (and yes, he is verbal, just not very good at pronunciation, honest!) child, and it was delightful to meet them, and refreshing to talk to someone who knows exactly where we are coming from in so many senses, even down to the school system and local knowledge and geography and, well, I hope I'll be back. Especially if there is cake.
In a bit of a rush before we left CA, we finally heard back from the Nice Agency in state - who (yay!) think they can deal with us. Now, these may all be prejudiced positions, but I can't help feeling that we will do better with this agency for a number of reasons. One of them being that you can actually look at the website without going blind (in the case of one agency) or feeling someone knocked it up on the back of an envelope (in the case of the other). One of the others being that this agency takes gay couples, unmarried couples, and singles (I think cluttered-website-agency also does but blank-website-agency only takes married couples). Although we do not fall into those categories, I think we are probably more likely to appeal as a family to someone less conservative.
I also had a pleasant chat with the UK agency who were very surprised we hadn't received their information pack (frankly, I wasn't) and promised it would be sent out immediately, and asked nice but not too difficult questions about where we were in the process and what we were thinking of doing, to which I gave the right kind of answers ("yes, we do want to adopt from the US because we're more likely to get an infant but also because we want to try and have some degree of openness which might not be possible elsewhere"). Middle-class, high earning families are the ones that adopt internationally here, but generally there are at least a few who don't want any contact with birth families and that's why they choose international (certainly there were some on the course our friends were on, who chose China over Central America for just that reason). So at least we'll get social worker brownie points for that. I didn't ask if we get let off part of the course for having done the fostering course, but I will at some stage.
- Months spent in Southern California: 7.5
- Miles on our year-old car when we bought it: 6,000
- Miles we've driven on our year-old car: 7000
- US$ amount lost on the sale of our car: not telling
- GBP amount lost on the sale of our car: considerably less owing to more favourable exchange rate at purchase
- Amount made on sale of random goods on Craigslist and at yard sale: approx $700. Guess people are buying second hand goods these days. But not clothes, even some of our stuff that's in really good condition, strangely.
- Trips outside the Californias: 1 (and that last week, to Colorado for a conference. Brr.)
- Trips within the Californias: 6 - 4 in SoCal and 2 in Baja.
- Useless OPK sticks: many, many.
- OPK sticks that actually worked: about 6
- Useless pregnancy tests: about 4
- Progesterone supplement tablets left over: about 30 i.e. a month's supply
- Months spent trying to get pregnant: 6
- Months spent NOT trying to get pregnant: 1
- Days till I leave work: 2
- Papers written since I have been here: approximately 5
- Grant proposals written since I have been here: approximately 3
- Days till we leave SoCal: 3
- Days till we leave NoCal where we are stopping over: 7
- Adoption agencies contacted: approx 20
- Adoption agencies in the US who have replied to us to say they cannot work with us: approx 8
- Adoption agencies in the US who have not replied to us: approx 10
- Adoption agencies in the US who have replied to say they CAN work with us: 2
- Number of these that are in California: 0
- Social workers who have said they can do our US home study in the UK: 1 (and that's the only one I contacted)
- Adoption agencies in the UK who have said that they can work with us: 1 (the non-UK work is parcelled out geographically so it's not too surprising that there is only one)
- High today in SoCal: 18C (low 12C)
- High today in NW England: 13C (low 4C)
- Approximate winter low in SoCal: 4C
- Number of radiators in our house in SoCal: 0
- Number of radiators in our house in NW England: er, 10?
- Approximate thickness of walls in our house in SoCal: 0.02mm
- Approximate thickness of walls in our house in NW England: 1m
I was having coffee (well, chai latte, if you must know) today with the very delightful Sam, and the topic of money came up. I have not spoken at all about our new plans to my mother (regular readers will have an inkling why), but I know she was on the verge of offering to pay for IVF at various points in the past, and I have a feeling she will be more pleased about our new plans. In some ways that is why I am not mentioning them - especially not until they become more concrete. But her mention of David Miliband gives me a clue (and incidentally, at the time he adopted, there was nothing to stop non-US citizens going down the same route), and I think she realises it costs a fair bit and she often says "well, you'll have it anyway some day".
When I left home my parents paid my maintenance until I graduated from my undergraduate degree (there were no fees in those days) and my grandparents gave me a credit card while I was volunteering as a high school teacher in Zambia (I used it to buy dollar-priced sugar, at times the only kind we could get, as well as chocolate, cheese, and biscuits. Oddly I lost about a stone that year). I then fell on the mercies of the Medical Research Council, who funded my PhD, and after that have been gainfully employed, or for a couple of brief periods have had savings to draw on. I have not lived at home since I was 18; Mr. Spouse lived at home till he was, I think, nearly 30, but paid his parents rent and after about 5 years working was earning more than them.
My brother on the other hand seems to have been on a rubber band until about 6 or 7 years ago; he still keeps some books at our mother's house, and alternated between the two parental houses for the first 5 or so years after undergraduate. I don't know about his financial affairs after that and before getting married but I do know he has my mother's credit card (he is 39), has been known to use it without asking (the understanding is that it's for locally bought presents for the nieces, almost exclusively), and she often pays for his flights to see her.
Now, my father has also offered to pay school fees for the nieces to attend a bilingual school in their area. I could not work out why I thought this was a good thing - perhaps just because I approve of the school - but not of the smaller amounts for the credit card in particular, and for the odd other payment he "can't quite make". But a wise friend in the computer has suggested perhaps it is because it is a big, group-type thing - the ultimate education of my nieces being important to the family as a whole, and not something any one section of the family may be able to accomplish. So perhaps if it is offered, help with adoption costs would not be such a bad thing to refuse.
I'm very curious, though, about my readers (hello, I do have some, don't I? Or is Google Reader/Bloglines failing to update my feed? I know Reader takes hours if not a day sometimes). Do you receive financial help from your family, or do you give it? What are your parameters? What do you see yourself doing for your own children?
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we got the news we'd been waiting for - that it is likely to be possible for us, from the UK point of view, to do a non-Hague adoption from the US. The solicitor's advice was pretty clear and indications are she knows what she's talking about but the firm took weeks to acknowledge our question, weeks to acknowledge they'd received our payment, and weeks after they'd said they would give us information to actually provide it.
That was why I was being a bit cryptic in this post. I was not yet sure at that point what this would mean for us - especially as we had already started trying to restart the fostering process.
However, and I see no point in keeping you in suspenders for any longer, it looks like that won't happen. After posting about that last week, we found out that our application had indeed been closed, not due to lack of contact from us but due to reorganisation on their part. They are not now taking applications for respite carers - which was our initial plan. I assumed they wouldn't accept us as short term carers, since we'd both be working full time, but on speaking to them again they back pedalled a bit and I think realised they probably have wasted a course on us, and said that might still be possible. But with this new news we don't feel inclined. Even if it ends up meaning UK adoption from foster care, we just want to get on with it.
As Mr. Spouse said, "it's a sign".
(You know he meant that tongue in cheek, don't you? Like Irish people are allowed to call themselves Micks, and the rest of us aren't, people brought up in a scary evangelical church are allowed to wave their hands and say "it's a sign" in an ironic manner, without offending anyone.)
So the last few days I've been trying to concentrate on work and wrapping up here, while actually searching for agencies that may take us on (one in Texas has done quite a bit of expat work, but not Hague work, but then we wouldn't be Hague; others have done Hague but not expats; and we are not sure whether we wouldn't prefer a California agency as it's got a big population and our family is here).
We've worked out which UK agency would do that side of the approval and boy, it's another world - they have one preparation course timetabled every month this year, even if they don't all run or aren't suitable for us.
So - I am feeling a bit giddy. I was supposed to have an appointment with the RE and I cancelled (which meant we didn't have to pay our premium for March, so, er, more money towards adoption travel I suppose!). I will be away for about 5 days mid-month this month and I thought "oh well, no need to use the supplements in the 2ww this month". This feels absolutely huge to me - that I can have a break and not feel panicky - even if it is just a temporary break. Huge.
April is a good time to move from the US to the UK if you are infertile. I'm missing the consumer circus of both Mother's Days.
Bizarrely my slacker brother reminded me of the UK one by sending me a link to a Mr T video on how to treat your mother (I am not clever and cannot work out how to embed but it is here), and then didn't call her himself. I, however, am daughter of the year and did call, and Mr. Spouse called his (who wouldn't understand the country differences). So halos all round.
Except for my mother who said right at the end of our phone call "oh, I do hope you get to celebrate Mother's Day yourself one day".
Sniff.
Who am I? Where do I live? Where am I resident? Where am I domiciled??
These and other tricky questions were puzzling us while we tried to work out the answer to our first question, in the previous post. Even if we are physically in the US, Mr. Spouse is not a resident (he goes by the lovely phrase "non-resident alien", and I have to remind him to keep the antennae hidden). I think we are actually domiciled in the US at the moment, but normally in the UK, and these things will be important as you'll see in the moment.
In April 2008 the US ratified the Hague Convention and this means that for non-US persons adoption of a US child (and vice versa) should not take place if there's no available parent in country. However, the US considers some citizens who aren't physically present in the US (e.g. military) to be still domiciled and - crucially for us - if you are intending to come back to the US and establish a domicile before any child is 18, you are also a "non-Hague case". This means you can go through the regular US domestic adoption procedures.
However, because we can't stay here long enough to get by without going through UK procedures, and since the UK is also a Hague signatory (I feel so clever bandying these phrases around!), it also matters what the UK thinks: will they accept a family adopting from a Hague country, but through a non-Hague process. At this point we stalled. We found a referral to a UK adoption lawyer in about November and they just kept being Very Very Slow and not answering our questions and then asking us for a lot of money and then not acknowledging that we'd sent the money and we had no idea what was happening. I think this is probably why I had not owned up to all this complicated legal research and the faint hope we had, because it was taking so long and was so tenuous. In fact, at this point I was really thinking "well, the fostering will work, we'll get our home study done PDQ when we get home, how fabulous". And then we got last week's fostering news...
More to follow...
That's my head, what with not knowing whether we are coming or going.
This is going to be a long story, so forgive me if I start it and leave you hanging.
Question 1, which we asked way back in about September when we first got to the US (and which I'd been musing over since probably last summer). I feel oddly guilty about this and I'm not sure if it's because I haven't shared it with my lovely readers, or if it's because the whole idea seems, in some senses, like a cop-out. Too easy. Think of the children in foster care.
Suppose we decided to stay in the US (after all, we were about to get, and indeed did get, an exciting new government). Suppose I applied for a job here and Mr Spouse got a green card (or even citizenship!). Or suppose we (or at least I) didn't get jobs but we applied for domestic adoption here and had a miraculously quick placement - are we eligible since we haven't been resident here long? could we legally take the baby back to the UK? would we be likely to be picked by a birth mother anyway if we're maybe going to take the baby away?
So, we went to an adoption panel locally and pestered Nice Attorney with questions - the answer to the last one, he feels at least, is Yes because we have Good Accents and people like the UK. So at least that's payback for all the "oh, you're South African" or "Oh, how come you have such a nice accent, you must practice all the time".
And the answer to the first and second suppositions turned out to be the economy, stupid. Mr. Spouse is not going to get a job here, I'm not going to get a job at my level here (or maybe I would, but there's no way it would be as family friendly - 12 months maternity leave) as in the UK, and even if I did, and he decided to study instead of working, we wouldn't be able to afford any of it.
So, we were left with "apply, rush it through, and hope they'll let us take the baby home". Which led us to a lot of legal questions, a lot of internet research from Mr. "Amateur legal expert" Spouse, and a bit of a dead end. UK law only allows a child adopted overseas while you are living overseas to come back to the UK 12 months after the adoption is finalised (which in our state is 6 months after the birth, and I think that's standard).
OK, sorry to leave you hanging there, and there is more to this story, but I have to say that my complicated multi-collaborator application I'm writing is simpler and will make my brain hurt less.
We just got a letter from Contract Social Worker to say "are you still intending to apply to foster, I'm still intending to do your home study"
("I don't get paid till I do...")
So, we rang her and told her when we were coming back, she explained she'd been doing a full weekend and polishing it off with everyone else, we suggested a Thurs night through Sat timetable and said we'd ring her back when we get home.
I then realised that if I wait to do that, work will suck away any Fridays that might be free, so Mr. Spouse rang her today. Apparently we "need to re-apply" (or, she has suggested, we can apply to "private fostering agencies").
Er, no, I don't think so. We passed our course, the county team knew we were going away, and they knew for how long. Other people on the course had done half the course over a year earlier and completed with us.
I interpret this as the county saying "Hello, you say you're Contract Social Worker? Who? What were you doing for us again? (oh, her, we'd forgotten she was still under contract... we have our own social workers free now) erm... don't bother".
I'm not panicking, don't worry. Though I did for a minute think, what if we didn't bother with the fostering and just went ahead to adoption, would the adoption agency even know?
There isn't going to be an update just at the moment on that particular bit of news, possibly in the next month, possibly not till we get home to the UK (in exactly a month's time, in fact).
In other news, I know I am a very sad, obsessed, person because I am very happy when I feel cramping when I use my pessary thingys - not because I particularly think "cramping = implanting", it's much too immediate on a daily basis for it to be anything other than direct drug action - but because I think, gosh, they must be doing something.
I have just had some weird news - which may be good, or may be just frustrating or tantalising. I've been waiting for information on this for a while, but I'm afraid I can't share it with you just yet, nor may I ever be able to. Sorry about that - but I have only just got this, it's the middle of the working day, and I just feel like sitting here and shaking for a bit, definitely not like working.
So I just thought I'd leave you all even more frustrated than me.
One of our favourite Channel 4 programmes, Shameless, is not officially available over here, but there are ways. The episode synopsis for the last episode we watched kind of gave the game away, and the same theme also seems to be coming up in Big Love (if you aren't up to date on either show, please look away now).
Both shows are featuring miscarriage - what's more, of an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy. Now, for a long time, I have noticed that books and movies have been using what I like to call "Pregnancy As Dramatic Device" and possibly more recently (or possibly I have been noticing more) they have started working out that not everyone who gets pregnant actually has a baby, so have been slipping in little miscarriages here and there (in fact, in Shameless, the character hadn't announced a pregnancy on the show yet). Sometimes they warn viewers in the synopsis - but not everyone reads the synopsis.
I think it's time to create a whole new set of advisory/rating labels for films, TV, and books. Perhaps you'd like to borrow them for your blog? I apologise for my lack of artistic ability - if I was any good, I'd have made new labels to fit in with one consistent theme - these are from a variety of countries. But anyway, here's my attempt:
Pregnancy mentioned.
Teenage pregnancy mentioned.
Unwanted pregnancy mentioned.
Unwanted or abused child or children mentioned.
Adoption mentioned, usually with not very much factual background (see: Juno).
After adoption, couple magically become pregnant.
Couple relax, stop trying to get pregnant, and magically become parents.
Couple have been trying to get pregnant for 12 years and magically become pregnant.
Miscarriage, stillbirth or infant loss mentioned.
Couple or (more usually) individual with no children is bequeathed children by a friend in their will or becomes responsible for a neighbour's children. Despite having no experience with children and said children having been violently bereaved or neglected the children bond to their new parent immediately and are charming and lovely.Any more you'd like to add? Do chip in - I have mainly stopped here because I have run out of ideas for the letters I have, but there are several more out there (I can't think what to do with G, for example). You can make up new letters, too, if you like (there is no M in the current UK or US classification, that one is from Australia, and the A and AA are old UK letters).
Slightly old news, but I've been mulling over this, and something that the very wise Thanksgiving Mom said clicked for me, so thought I'd blog about aspects of this case. It's been rather overshadowed in the blogosphere by the octuplets - I can only find a couple of ranty journalists and some legal types who've blogged about it.
Anyway, briefly in my understanding, the couple had their three children removed at the ages of approximately 1, 3, and 5 (all under 6 at least, and the youngest was 1). There was suspicion of non-accidental injury and no other good reason for the injuries seen, at least at the time. Normally if there is no reason to think that the birth family have changed then a permanency plan should be made within about 6 months (social worker drag notwithstanding) and finding a family and placement within about a year. Commentators have said "that's so quick if nothing could be proven". No, it's not quick - it's actually SLOW for a one-year-old. That's another whole half of their entire life during which they have uncertainty and are living with a temporary family and have no clue what is happening to them.
Ideally all three children would have been placed together, and I don't know if efforts were made to do this, but groups of three children are hard to find places for, healthy under-twos are easy to do so, but some families are happy to take 2 preschool siblings, which the older two were probably just about at this stage. They were found 2 adopted homes and formally adopted. They are now legally the children of their adoptive parents - they now have different legal parents.
Now all the debate has been about how wrong this is, with the majority of opinion coming down on the side of "it was a miscarriage of justice for the parents so it should be overturned" with added "only their birth parents can possibly love them" remix.
Thanksgiving Mom's post speaks to this. She says that she cannot imagine anyone else loving her Cupcake more than she does - but she knows that Cupcake's adoptive mother will feel exactly the same.
So, legally, and I feel in the best interests of the children, the adoption orders will not be overturned. I know I have a lot of readers who will agree with this next point:
It does not matter at all what the best interests or the legal position is of either birth or adoptive parents - it is what is best for the children that matters.
My understanding is that adoption orders would only be overturned in the same sorts of circumstances as those in which a birth child would be removed from their birth parents.
In this case, the children have all been away from their birth parents for more than half their lives (if I've done my calculations correctly), and the younger two have been with their adoptive parents for more than half their lives. Moving to a different home at a young age is disruptive enough - moving back would be worse. Children do not understand the reasons behind being moved against their will (and being moved from the only parents they remember will be against their will), and however loving their "next" set of parents would be, they would still think they could be moved again, they would still feel the situation was not permanent, and they would still worry that if they were naughty they could be "sent away" again.
In an ideal world (and some enlightened commentators on some of the broadsheet versions of the story have said this, in slightly different words), the children would have face-to-face contact with the birth family. For many families where the birth parents are even somewhat more dangerous than these birth parents (at least, if the latest evidence is true - I have no reason to believe it isn't), this happens. When I say dangerous, I don't mean they are likely to physically abuse the children in the presence of a facilitating social worker or adoptive parent, I have more in mind the possibility that the birth parent will behave in a rather immature manner with inappropriate conversations, or simply failing to turn up.
It seems as if these birth parents could potentially have mature face-to-face contact, but all sides would need to be clear that the children are not going back to the birth parents, at least not until they are 18. In an ideal (given the horrible background) world it might be possible to have something approaching US-style open adoption - but this would probably only work if the birth parents could accept that this was the best (from their point of view) they were going to get. On another recent case, a researcher has commented that perhaps grandparents (and other kin who cannot have custody) need not necessarily be willing to state up front that "yes, this is the best placement for the children". But I'm not completely sure. Is it good for a child to have contact with someone who repeatedly says "you'd be better off with me, I'm your real family", when professionals have decided that is not happening?
I'll remain agnostic on that point, but perhaps my commenters won't.
After my bout of heartburn over the weekend, I've decided to give up caffeinated coffee for Lent. OK, this is a little contradictory, as I know that decaf is also supposed to cause problems due to the coffee oil, and my interim measure was to drink it milky, and I also know that milk (despite the received wisdom) is not great for heartburn either.
I'm also not in any way convinced it would make any difference to our current inability to get pregnant - as Shaz says, better to take up drinking and recreational drugs.
However, I want to make a small change, but am very sleepy today - so, hello, chai latte.
And if anyone calls it a "chai tea", I'll whack them on the head with a dictionary from basically any Asian language or one of a selection of African ones. Why not have a "caffe coffee" instead?
We have another 2 months here in the US but our health insurance is SO expensive and we have emergency cover from the UK, so Mr Spouse asked me whether I had any more upcoming appointments in March or whether it was going to be possible to cancel it.
I had the brilliant idea of calling them to ask (!) what would happen if we failed to renew, as we know that my short appointments are not that expensive out-of-pocket, but I wouldn't want to be taken off as a patient. In fact, if we wait till the end of March before paying March's bill and then call to cancel, they will actually charge us the lesser of a month's bill or the actual cost of services. Can you believe it? I was amazed.
In other news, a word to my body. This is how you are supposed to do a period:
Day 0/28: Spotting, if you absolutely have to.
Day 1: Heavy bleeding, require new tampon every 2-3 hours, large pad at night, fully able to go out of the house and stuff like that. Perhaps some Advil.
Day 2: Repeat, smaller pad at night.
Day 3: Smaller tampons, no pad at night.
Day 4-5: Spotting - liners possibly required.
This is NOT how you do it:
Days 22-24: Spotting, getting heavier.
Day 25/1: Dark blood but tampon definitely required. Also my birthday. Did I mention that? Now counting this as day 1.
Day 2: Heavier, as normal day 1.
Day 3: Sit down to breakfast out of hotel room, finish eating, feel awful, go back to hotel room, have soaked through tampon and stained jeans. Make it to convenience store for additional supplies but then lie down for rest of morning. Now afraid to stray more than 5 minutes from a loo for rest of day. Strangely almost nothing at night.
Day 4: Flow almost finished and just need liner.
Day 5: Don't even need liner.
I'm not quite sure what my body is on, but it also seems to involve heartburn, though that could be the many drinks I had to drown my sorrows at being Awfully Old, or (more worryingly) the baby aspirin.
OK that isn't too relevant to the post but it's been running round my head and so I thought I'd give you lovely people the chance to have an earworm too.
Well, anyway, I did survive - my first ever baby shower. We go to a wine tasting group once a month and one couple are expecting their first baby and the organiser suggested we combine the events. Not exactly something to look forward to, though I do enjoy the wine tastings, and it was pointed out to me by Mr. Spouse and others that the large number of men there meant there would be less cooing and oohing and ahing than there might have been. We knew there would be no silly games; the setup was that anyone wanting to give a gift would place it in a basket near the door and they would be opened late in the evening, probably after all the wines had been tasted and discussed. I planned to remember an urgent appointment with my pillow at that point.
Unfortunately there were a lot of wines and the gift opening ended up being about halfway through the evening - but happily the living area of the house we were in is split and I took myself away to the other area. I was at that point handed a baby (not your usual wine tasting guest, I know). This is the 8 week old baby of the friend who had several miscarriages and a very difficult pregnancy - this baby was only in the NICU for 3 days, his older brother having been in for about 10 I think. My friend is very matter of fact, just glad to have him home and happy for others to gush or not as they wish. I handed him quickly to Mr Spouse (only one person said, ooh, look, he's being a daddy) and got another glass of wine.
The most annoying person was a loud woman who was holding the baby after this and going on and on about how lovely he was and wouldn't we all like to take him home?
So thankfully I think that will also be my last baby shower, at least for the foreseeable future. As Thalia says, these are rare in the UK. The pattern in my office is for contributions to a single - solicited - gift to be sought, but no pressure (and I'm not sure we got one for the adoptive parents, which is a huge oversight), basically drop in to the office and give money if you want - the gift is usually given before the birth (though all our recent office births have been late!) in the office, in a simple five minute chat session. I think I've given money once and avoided all presentations, and no-one has complained. I've never heard of anyone having any kind of pre-baby party, though the lack of gift registers does mean new parents end up with a lot of, er, gorgeous and immensely, er, practical white lace handknit acrylic cardigans, and not many sterilisers.
In other news - hello progesterone supplements - I thought you were supposed to PREVENT spotting. Last month I had some about day 26 which a) does occasionally happen anyway (only about 1 month in 6 though) and b) I strongly suspect was related to the dye and messing around in my insides. However today is only day 24 and it's my 3rd day of spotting. I am slightly afraid that I did ovulate very very early this month (as per only hint of LH on monitor sticks) and said insides think it's time to get on with bleeding, but are being prevented. I've never ovulated that early before, but of course I am now getting Offically Very Old.
On that note, I'm going to Disneyland tomorrow.
It wasn't me.
It fell off in my hand.
A big boy did it and ran away.
They say a bad workman blames his tools but I have concluded that my Persona meter is, indeed, not working, or at least, not working for me and not working at the moment. Ye olde trusty boobometer indicated yesterday that I have definitely, positively, ovulated this month, when I cannot say, but some time before yesterday. So forge ahead with the Prometrium.
I have discovered a very helpful truth:
Bloggers are the best, and sometimes, the only, source of accurate medical information.
Before using my new tablets, I recalled the doctor's instruction to "pierce them with a needle". A quick Google for name of medication, pessary, and needle brought up:
Barren Mare
A Little Pregnant
and, well, me - in the first 10 results. Barren Mare is first.
Am currently on CD 16. Normally I get at least a readable OPK or Persona stick on CD 15 or 16, with usually a line of maybe 3/4 the darkness of the control line on the previous day.
I had some of that nice gooey stuff from about CD9-13 (but I usually get it ridiculously early, and then in patches) and a line of maybe 1/2 control darkness on about CD12? 13? Then nothing. White as white. CM back to something not very stringy. Boobage slightly sore but no screams of agony as I take off the bra.
It's possible that my innards have gone on strike after being messed with last month but now I don't know when or whether to start the pessaries.
Quick recap of the last doctor's appointment:
- we (I say we, obviously it's me, but it affects Mr. Spouse too) can switch to Prometrium from the generic progesterone - it comes in capsules which the doctor, but not the pharmacist, said to pierce with a needle. I have about another week to work out if I need to do this. It is actually not much more expensive for us than the generic.
- Suppositories of the blue triangular anti-ED medicine - she's not confident about trying them. This is mainly, and I appreciate this, on safety grounds. The only research with recurrent miscarriers is of a very high dose, and in conjunction with pregnancy, it is very untested and I'm happy with that decision.
- Hysteroscopy - she doesn't think it would add anything. The most comprehensive paper I've read suggests that HSG combined with laparoscopy and US is pretty OK. You can see an anomaly with HSG but you can't tell what it is, but you need laparoscopy to tell what it is. I'm going to keep thinking about this and perhaps do something when we are back in the UK.
As I say, this leaves us with the "go away and try" instruction.
I don't know how much longer I can go on doing that. But I am also in a somewhat different position to a lot of people - I'm not sure I know of anyone (and if you are in that position please let me know how you overcame this) who has the same issues, even in a general sense.
If we want to adopt (and even adoption preparation is up to a year away), because of what happened last time we started the process, we do not want to risk another pregnancy and another miscarriage during that time. However, we are not people who definitely need treatment in order to be able to conceive, or at least people who "as far as they know" are in that position. I think this means that to avoid risk we'd have to use contraception.
Unless we are very unlucky with our adoption social worker, we aren't going to be asked to use contraception while we go through the adoption preparation process. I have heard of people in this position, but it is mainly once they have a match with a child, and for many of them they just nod and go "yes, yes" while knowing they have blocked tubes or endo or have been trying to get pregnant for 10 years without a sniff of a positive. What's mainly frowned upon is actually doing treatment while doing the preparation process.
I think they'd be a bit cross if you were subfertile and started the prep process after 2 years of trying on your own, and then had a successful pregnancy, but no child has been told they have new parents, oh no they don't, so no harm done really.
But in another sense we are slightly nearer to "needing treatment" than we were. I am no longer confident that just taking my vitamins is all the pre-pregnancy preparation I need. I would not be too happy if we were actively "trying" but I wasn't checking at least the day of my cycle and making sure I started the progesterone at some point. So we have an even sharper divide between "trying" and "not trying".
I don't know if I can switch it off - that's my problem. Last time we decided "right, go for adoption" we just thought "well, we aren't getting pregnant, so to not get pregnant we just keep doing what we're doing". Now I'm not so sure. "Trying" and "not trying" are now so different that I don't really know when, or how, to take the leap. And I'm also concerned my nerve will fail if it takes months or a year or more and I'll wheedle Mr. Spouse into "trying" again.
This was the phrase that sprang to mind while watching a couple of the singers in the first gospel group singing at a very small festival my choir took part in this afternoon. I suspect they had been told "hey, we're on first, we'll run off quickly and get to watch most of the game". The other choirs looked enthusiastic as well as sounding it, and I think we did well too (despite having almost no basses, who'd have thought it??!)
It also fairly well describes my state of mind in the last couple of weeks. We aren't due to fly home till mid-April but I keep catching myself thinking it's imminent - and therefore it's not worth doing X, Y or Z.
After my last doctor's appointment, I had a nice post planned about causality, but have found myself in a CBA-ness state. So I haven't.
Over the last year, I've approached CD1 mainly with a sense of resignation, but most doctor's appointments with something like enthusiasm. However, this month for some reason I was feeling the opposite - our timing had been good, I was using the progesterone, and if anything had been blocking my tubes it isn't now. Of course I was disappointed. And my appointment wasn't much better either.
I've had I think two, maybe three, other "well, just go away and try again" appointments. Two of them were within a month or two of a pregnancy - when although "at least you can get pregnant" sounds very hollow, it doesn't sound impossible that it will happen again. Now all the RE could say was "are you sure you don't want to do IVF?"
There was a tiny bit more, but as I say, I'm phoning it in.
Apologies for the silence, I'll just leave you with this: one of my favourite columnists addressing a topic of great interest to me.
I wish to complain about your product.
How can a girl be expected to pee in a "cup" (which cup? the one I haven't got from the doctor for the urine test they gave me a cup at the lab for? one of our landlady's Vegas mugs? a spare glass jar? an empty Starbucks vanilla roibos chai latte cup?), dip the stick for 10 seconds, leave it for five minutes ("or possibly 10 to confirm a negative result") and meanwhile run back to the bedroom where her husband is rapidly going off the boil? And if I leave the stick in a handy bathroom drawer, and minister to Mr Spouse's needs, you're going to have to be awfully quick to get back before you are no longer allowed to read the test.
Although I was wondering whether having my insides poked about would make the little girls be a bit reluctant to come out and play, I wasn't prepared for 3 straight days of negative - including the latest day I normally get a positive OPK/fertility meter reading - and not just "well, maybe, let's think about it tomorrow" negative - pretty much blank white negative. Especially since all the other OPK type things I've used before (Persona, an early version of the Clearblue meter, and some digital Clearblue sticks also once I think) have had at least some form of second line from day 13 at the latest.
But as the big girls have done their "ooh, we're sore now" post-ovulation, presumably progesterone-induced end-of-day sigh, I'm assuming the cheap OPKs are a pile of, as my nieces would say, caca.
So I think I'm going to start with the suppositories on day 18 not day 17, just to be on the safe side, but I'm not sure if I'm going to call the doctor about using them in, er, a different area, given just how sore we both were last month.
And then I'm going to ignore the OPKs and use either my Persona, or nothing.
I said recently that I thought Mr Spouse wanted me to be done with trying to get pregnant but I realised I hadn't discussed it with him.
This came out partly from him being a bit bewildered about what exactly I am aiming for or intending: we do still have a firm commitment to completing the foster care process, and I originally suggested that we give it a maximum of five years from when we started trying (which will be up this September) before definitely pursuing adoption alone, on the one hand, but on the other hand I am pretty sure I want to fully investigate this possible uterine factor/endometrium/septum.
But it also came out from a comment by the lovely Sam, who very kindly came round to tell me how horrible my HSG could have been and take me out for gentle coffee and fun watching her daughter play, fortunately after I'd had the HSG already! We got to telling our long and boring stories (as you do, I'm glad the woman at the next table had her earphones in, I'm guessing she would have moved if she'd been bothered!). Sam said "well, it sounds like you aren't really ready to give upon the idea of having a birth child".
I guess not.
Anyway, I asked Mr Spouse whether he just wanted me to give up on the idea. Actually, he doesn't. He does want me to give up on all these investigations - I think in a way they must be hard on him too, for the same reason they are hard on me. I in particular want, but he wants too, for there to be something easily fixable wrong with us. But I don't think he believes there is. I'm not sure if I do but I'm not sure I don't, either, if you see what I mean.
I wish I was done. I wish we'd been done a couple of years ago, to be honest. I have a little girl in my head from one of the "waiting children" magazines which I saw immediately before miscarriage no 3.
So: about 18 months ago, I think, I realised that although I was trying pretty hard to "stick to" my calorie plan on WLR, it wasn't working. I could stick to it for a couple of weeks, and sometimes lose, sometimes not, but not really for much longer than that.
Then, one day while lazily reading the Sunday papers with a friend outside a pub, I read an article about Paul McKenna. If you don't know about him, I'm not going to repeat it here, just Google him. He has a book called "I can make you thin" (known to Mr. Spouse as "I can make myself rich") and as it is a very slim volume, the article gave pretty much all the text plus commentary. It is an idea that I had come across before, in various guises, including "Fat is a Feminist Issue" (Susie Orbach), "When you eat at the refrigerator, pull up a chair" (Geneen Roth) and "Beyond Chocolate" (Sophie & Audrey Boss). I had to some extent tried and not really understood the whole concept - which is generally known as "intuitive eating" - but somehow I knew I needed to try it again.
The main things that make me feel this approach is worth trying are that
1) Diets don't work in the long run. This is partly for physiological reasons - eating too little can make your body go "hey, starvation alert, quick, don't burn any fuel" but properly managed, this shouldn't happen - eating a reasonable amount to offset any exercise should help.
But it is also, probably mainly, for psychological reasons. Denying yourself - being a "restricted eater" - has been shown to make people eat more in the long run, more when they are no longer "denying themselves", and is probably a major cause of yoyo dieting. For the 90%* of women who have dieted and failed, it is not that YOU are a failure. It is not that you don't have the will power. You cannot possibly have that much will power. You are not designed to have that much will power.
2) This approach seems much more sustainable in the long run and also much more amenable to working with kids - especially kids who haven't had a very reliable food supply at points in the past. It's also much more home-life friendly, or at least in some respects it is - I was getting a bit fed up of telling Mr. Spouse I didn't want to eat his favourite dinner because it was too calorific.
However I have kind of half-heartedly tried this approach before and it didn't really work. And you know, I think it may be that I needed to try "proper" dieting first. First of all to appreciate the process:
- no more "I've got to eat this, it's what I planned, I've got to eat all of it too"
- no more "I'm starving but I've got no calories left for today"
- no more "ooh, how many calories in that, ooh I really really want it but I can't have it, oh I'll eat it anyway, I feel so guilty, I'm a real weak-willed ninny"
But also because I learned a lot and also I think because my physiology needed a bit of sorting out:
- I actually have a clue what portion sizes will fill me up, I have tried more recently to eat slowly, and with the WLR emphasis on eating enough fat, I know that reasonable levels of fat are also quite filling
- Losing the first chunk** of weight seems to have sorted out my blood sugar so that I actually feel hungry a lot more often
- I am much more able to exercise now - although I was quite active before, I can do much more now.
- The confidence that Mr Spouse gave me to lose the weight has also helped me think of my body more positively
So, long story a tiny bit shorter, I have lost another stone by dint of:
- Eating when I'm hungry
- Eating what I'm hungry for
- Eating slowly and mindfully
- Stopping when I'm full
- Exercising Moving my body
- Paying some lip service to meditating on body image and listening to relaxation tracks (actually, the former has been of more help - although I thought it wouldn't - I think the confidence being with Mr. Spouse has given me has helped me see something more positive in my body).
All this type of thing is pretty much proven to work - "tapping", hypnosis etc. hasn't. So, on the Beyond Chocolate principle of "be your own guru", I'm taking what works from each of the approaches.
I'm not very good at all of this and I have to remind myself to remember to focus on the positive. I'm getting better at noticing whether I'm really hungry, or thirsty or sometimes just bored. I was never a huge emotional eater - things have to be really really bad for me to need food and it's almost always chocolate on CD1.
Slowly and mindfully is generally OK, and I have a much better place to eat lunch here than back in the UK. My crunch points are 10 minutes before I leave the office for a gym visit/long route home via lots of places, and I realise I'm starving plus I have to do an emergency email; and the more prosaic sitting-on-the-sofa-can't-be-bothered-to-turn-off-the TV. That of course combines with eating only when hungry as it's usually after a meal (though sometimes early evening before we've cooked dinner/if Mr Spouse is still out).
Stopping when I'm full is better at home than when out, but my portion sizes are decreasing, definitely, and I don't always feel the need to eat all of what I bought. This does mean several days a week I really really want dessert but have no room. I should probably persuade Mr. Spouse we need to have a dessert-for-dinner day, but I do have a smoothie-plus-pastry lunch day most weeks, and unless it's a very small pastry again I don't feel the need to finish it if I'm full. So this one kind of combines with "eating what I'm hungry for".
I think, just to go on a bit, that the real confidence booster has been realising that I - and everyone else, yes really, you are NOT a fat pig who will eat chocolate till the world ends - do naturally gravitate towards a somewhat balanced diet.
Generally I want to eat more breakfast than I used to but less lunch and dinner - in particular, I don't feel I have to have sandwich plus fruit plus crisps or biscuits for lunch, I feel satisfied after most of a sandwich plus a drink some days, sandwich plus some fruit others, very much depending. I don't have to eat loads after exercising - I notice I eat a little more but not necessarily proportionately. I also notice that although some "healthy" type foods fill me up quickly (fruit in particular) I get hungry again quickly, but other things that are sometimes termed a bit less "healthy" keep me going a lot longer. I had a chunk of cheese as part of my lunch at about 2pm and it's now 6.30, I've only had a skim-milk*** latte in between and I'm not really ready to think about dinner yet.
I'm not fully there in what I do nor in what I want to look like/weigh. I'm not sure I ever will be - but I'm at a holding level and a much more healthy weight (BMI about 27-28 at the moment - I think I've gained about 3lb in 5 months in a pretty overweight culture).
Diets beckon - they are very well marketed - lose some weight quickly and go back on a healthy eating plan - but I get a reality check pretty often from some of the ladies on my favourite message boards - how many times have they yo-yoed, there are some much more long term dieters than I am, and so many women who are much thinner and have horrendous body image issues.
This has got SO long but I just wanted to get it all off my chest. If you want some real inspiration, check out everdecreasinggirdle.
*figure plucked out of hat
**term used advisedly
***I have noticed I go for skim milk when I don't want to be filled up for long or am not at all hungry, and sometimes I deliberately go for full fat when I know it's a long time till dinner.
Or, So Far, So Diet.
In the autumn of 2003 I was pretty sure Mr Spouse and I were getting married (we hadn't yet set a date) and I had just been offered a new job. I was getting my winter clothes out of storage and bemoaning that, as usual, the moths had got into them. However, I found that I couldn't. I remember a long and tearful phone call with me lying on my bed and him calming me down (we were in a LDR at this point). I had also recently been to the doctor who told me the cysts I kept getting were a sign of high blood sugar (which I turned out to have - only marginally - it was 7 fasting and 7 after a GTT and the normal UK range is 4-7 - the cysts were as we now know Bartholin cysts and/or abscesses).
Mr Spouse has, as you may recall, insulin-dependent diabetes. He knows all about sugar metabolism. He'd already noticed how much sugar I put on my cereal and how many sweet things I ate (probably more than him, and he needs the occasional blood-sugar rectifier). I despaired of doing anything about my weight and despaired of changing my eating. But I finally knew it was time to do something. I had never really dieted before apart from a few grapefruit efforts when at school - my mother is a chronic dieter, all food is "bad", and I had resisted getting into this when I left home.
I'd actually tried an online food diary system which I'm not afraid to publicise, Weight Loss Resources. The system emphasises calorie counting, but does all the calculating for you, including saving recipes, and calculating in meticulous detail calories expended during exercise; it encourages you to eat all your exercise calories, which for a bouncy and hungry girl like me seemed good. Plus there is pretty good evidence that just keeping a food diary makes you eat less - I like evidence.
I had done a trial for a few days at a 2lb/week rate of loss and immediately panicked as there was no way I could adjust my eating to that level. However, I decided to give it a go at a much lower rate of loss - 1/2lb per week. Between Oct 2003 and May 2004 I lost 1 1/2 stone (21lb) and my blood sugar was back to normal. Over the following 9 months or so I lost another stone and I was running, cycling, swimming and doing yoga; I cut down on sugary things, mainly through substituting fruit. I didn't feel deprived, though after I'd been using the system for about a year I started yo-yoing a bit.
My weight remained stable, or rather up and down within the same one-stone range, for about the next 2 years, 2 pregnancies. I was very unsure about keeping my eating at a reasonable level "on my own", and I even used the same system but at a no-weight-loss level, during my first pregnancy. I also begain increasingly to stick at a plateau, to yo-yo somewhat (though mainly within the same 10-15lb) and to feel a little deprived when strictly sticking to my calorie limits.
I think it was after my 2nd pregnancy that I decided to try out WW, and I'm sorry if you are a fan, but can you say "patronising"? It may seem niggly, but they have a "system" and if you appear to be ignoring the system, bad luck - not just bad luck, time to get told off. I assume it's the same at meetings, but I was doing this online. Basically they give you "points" to eat (which add up to way fewer calories than WLR suggest, but no matter, I was seduced by the "free" vegetables - and I did also try "Core", where you eat as much as you want of a limited set of foods), and you can "earn" points through exercise. Again, you don't "earn" as much to eat as you would if you calculated them using actual calories, although of course you can lie about how much exercise you do.
You are supposed to eat up to, I think, 12 points per week of your exercise calories, and then you can do 12 more and you aren't supposed to eat those (or at least, you aren't supposed to do more than 12 that you don't eat). At the time I was training for a 40 mile bike ride and regularly racking up 30+ exercise points per week.
As the online system won't "let" you eat more points, I didn't see why I should keep paying for something I wasn't using. The point of this is not that I am petty, but that evidence shows that you lose weight faster if you exercise and eat to balance it, than if you cut down on your intake severely and either don't exercise or exercise a lot. Plus I was hungry!
Anyway, sorry for the moan and I'm sure WW suits some people but really not me.
So after that exercise I was a bit despondent and then got pregnant again and then tried WLR again (not sure in what order) but eventually had to accept that I wasn't going anywhere, though I was still a lot lighter than when I started the whole thing.
No news, that is.
So my HSG was not too painful, and I am lounging around doing a little light reading and feeling relatively cramp-free (no worse than a normal period, anyway). Apparently they were looking for adenomyosis, too, which I wasn't really aware of. This may be my unrelieved optimism but I had thought that the doctor had decided this was rather unlikely.
Fortunately the HSG showed no evidence of adenomyosis and, not surprisingly, nice clear tubes, but disappointingly no nice explanatory septum either. Annoyingly I wasn't shown the x-ray and I was too keen to get dressed and leave to think of asking to see it.
So I have a feeling that where we go from here is I ask the doctor about a hysteroscopy. I'm not overly keen on having anything involving lengthy recovery time while I am over here, even if having it done in the UK would also mean going private, as we only have a couple of months left, but we should be able to squeeze this in.
I wasn't quite sure I got my point over to her about the possibility of additional suppositories (the blue triangular pills associated with male problems) so will try and remember to print off the article I found, as well maybe as what I've found on hysteroscopy versus HSG. I tend to come over all pathetic when speaking to doctors and forget everything I meant to say, or not explain myself properly, so must remember to take aide memoires with me.
What is slightly depressing about this is that I feel that Mr Spouse has more or less given up hope and is really just humouring me, and I'm not far off that myself.
Mr Spouse was, as some of you may know, made redundant just over a year ago. This was a cause of much rejoicing as it was the third round of redundancies with the company, and he'd been there umpty-ump years so was in for a very large Go Away Now Please payment. We spent some of it on making our windows wind-proof (a good thing in windows) and some more on getting him teeth that you can chew on (he was previously a product of 1960s school whip-it-out dentistry). People would ask us how we were doing and I would tell them we were fine, both financially and emotionally, and would elaborate on what some of the money was going on. But he asked me not to tell people, saying it was his personal business, though myself I didn't think teeth were that personal, he thought so and I felt a bit mean.
He would never tell other people about our fertility bits unless I gave him the nod, but there are a lot of nosy people in the world, in particular, well, My Mother. She's staying at the moment but is off to see her old high school friends in Washington State on Monday (it's very sweet, they have their 50th reunion later in the year but she and her pals are having a maverick get-together now instead for those who couldn't care less what the prom queen is doing - assuming they had them in the Dark Ages). I have to have a quick pointless pregnancy test on Monday and although I will be able to conceal the HSG as it's on Tuesday I need to think up a reason to stop at the doctor's on Monday.
I can't decide whether to say "I need to run an errand" or "I need to get a test at the doctor's" (what test? what for? a blood test? ooh, do they think your blood sugar is high again? ooh, you shouldn't have made all those cookies*" or "I need to pick up a prescription" (in fact, I need the preventitive antibiotics but am picking them up elsewhere) (ooh, what for, ooh, are you sick, ooh, you'll still be on them when I come back won't you?).
Am I weird that, unless I'm actually going for an operation I will not be sharing any of what's going on with my mother?
The problem is if I do share, she expects things to happen Right Now, both treatment/investigation and, of course, pregnancy; and if I don't share, she seems to assume we've given up. I particularly don't want to share adoption/fostering-related things partly because of her negative reaction to the whole issue, to anything hinting at non-genetically-related (i.e. not "real") grandchildren, and in particular to anything relating to disability, which of course is a risk with birth children as well (though she wouldn't see it - termination can solve anything I think would be her stance) - witness two references to "half-wits" in the last three days alone. Although she did mention David Miliband** to me recently, so perhaps she is softening, but I doubt a previously-fostered four-year-old would meet her criteria.
*Sam, you don't escape so easily - I'll be packing some up for you for later in the week.
**There are many misinformed articles going around about the Miliband family adoption, incidentally, so perhaps I will try and correct them at some point.
If it wasn't enough that my mother is staying (and demanding to be taken to the mall every day, after having said she "didn't really want to do much while she was here". When I said "it is cold here, you will need warm clothes" you'd think she was 10 and decided a short nightdress and one sweater and cotton socks were enough), I was told on Monday three times that I was not allowed to have any sex before having my HSG next Tuesday, which will be day 11. One of the nurses said "even with a condom" though the others said condoms were OK. And I have to go in and have one of their pregnancy tests on Monday, although I was sorely tempted to ask them why mine weren't good enough.
What do they think, that I'm going to magically ovulate on day 9 and Mr Spouse's swimmers are going to magically burst through protection?
To be fair, I know some people think they have had their period and in fact they are pregnant; and I also know some people have shorter cycles than me with much earlier ovulation. But are they thinking that the dye or X-rays would make the swimmers all funky and cause a miscarriage?? Bizarre.
In other news, this will be the first year during which I didn't know I was pregnant at some point, since 2003; as that was the last year in which (barring accidents) I couldn't really have been pregnant, this is a bit depressing. It is still possible (unless of course the clinic lock me in a chastity belt for the rest of the month, too) that I'll be technically pregnant for a few days of 2008.
A bizarre, but very good, Christmas. Highlights:
gorgeous weather, just hot enough to be lovely but not so hot we were uncomfortable. The locals were of course wearing winter coats and the children wooly hats to the:
Noche Buena mass, which was a great experience - the church in the little town we were staying in was rustic and whitewashed, rather than ornate and dark as some Catholic churches are. The music was actually pleasant and well-sung, at least by the 10% of the congregation who were singing (a slightly more typical Catholic feature in my experience), apart from the Spanish version of The Little Drummer Boy, which we could have done without.
Christmas dinner on a boat after a couple of cocktails watching the sunset.
My shiny new (red) iPod nano, fully loaded by the lovely Mr Spouse.
Riding a large and friendly horse along a beach by the Pacific.
Seeing two humpback whales
Lots and lots of Mexican food, including weird goat-flavoured caramels.
Lowlights of course also intervened including:
Being tossed off a different horse (fortunately onto some very soft sand and not into a cactus).
Eating far too much Mexican food (though we reckon probably less than a normal Christmas as there were not the usual piles of leftovers at home, but we still have loads of cookies etc.).
Unsurprising negative test on the 25th which actually did not upset me and neither did
My period starting only 2 days after stopping the progesterone suppositories instead of three like last time - why do I expect consistency? - so not having enough supplies with me. Not quite sure why Mexican sanitary products are made "with camomile", but they are.
A couple of somewhat painful, er, intimate experiences while I was still using said suppositories. Now I'm hoping this is something I can get some advice on from my lovely readers. What can I do about this? I have read it is better in the evening (so 12-14 hours after putting one in rather than just 8) but both for personal timetabling reasons (I go to bed earlier) and physiological reasons (well, you can work it out) evenings are not our best time. We get a couple of days, it seems, before my period starts, but perhaps this is nature's way of making us both desperate starting from around CD5.
CD1 of this cycle was Thanksgiving (i.e. a Thursday). I'm under instructions to use my progesterone from day 17 for 12 days i.e. till day 12 and then do a test on day 29. Which is... yes, you've guessed it.
Just as well I am fairly sanguine about negative tests.
In other news, although my blood sugar was high when it was tested, as my insulin and thingy-1c (long term blood sugar wotsit) were slap bang in the middle of Fine, the doctor thought it was a blip. Mr Spouse's observation that it was awfully late to be eating cake, the night before, leads me to believe she was right.
The HSG is not too pricey so I'll be ringing them up when we get back from our hols (nice warm part of Mexico, thankyouverymuch, we are pretty cold here and actually beginning to feel like Christmas, so we are looking forward to a bit of warmth). They sound like they book it pretty precisely early enough in the cycle to mean we may not miss a cycle too. We'll see what they say but I doubt I'll be having surgery while I'm here as I have a nasty feeling that is very much not covered.
The tough get cooking.
I had a followup appointment with the RE on Thursday. I'm still slightly puzzled as to why no-one has looked at my lining before - is it not standard in the UK, is it just good fortune that both my previous appointment and this one were about day 21, did my clinic in the UK see my pre-period but also post-miscarriage (and therefore post-pregnancy, albeit only a 5 week pregnancy) uterus and think "ah, juicy", or was it actually OK when I had my uterine biopsy/doppler study when I was being potentially entered for the NK cell trial?
It actually occurs to me that I can email and ask whether a thickness was noted at that time, since the nice specialist's nice secretary said I could ask any further questions...
Anyway, it improved a little this month but not enough (5.7 - I think it was 4.9 last month). Apparently estrogen is used with women doing IVF who have this problem but as it may prevent ovulation, we don't want that. I hadn't found anything on the little blue pills in suppository form to show the RE but now I have so will perhaps take that along to my next appointment. As well as seeming quite thin, there appears to be a gap in the lining. She described is as "a dimple" which sounds so cute. But apparently it could be a septum - though she didn't think it would be too big.
So I'm supposed to have an HSG early next cycle. Thing is, this isn't covered on our plan (or at least, not unless we stick to the expensive plan we're on now, which is going up $300, so we were going to switch to the next one down, which is $200 less than we are paying now). I keep telling myself I only have to do this ridiculous coverage dance for another 4 months, but if this is not too pricey, I'd rather get the HSG done now and then if I need surgery I can set the wheels in motion when I get home. So I'm calling tomorrow to find out the price.
I felt OK about this on Thursday but with a combination of things I felt very weepy today - recurrent miscarrier friend delivered her second baby (anti-coagulation having enabled her to stay pregnant, which makes me feel even worse if they can't make my problem better, why can't I have a fixable problem?); two other people at the party we were at last night were pregnant; so is a lady in knitting group who insisted on discussing C-sections with one of the other ladies (I got back at them made everyone depressed by telling them about my friend who died last year - she was a twin but this was pre-scans but her mother was fully aware "unless it's one baby with two heads"**); and we had the Annunciation as the Gospel today.
Anyway, I have just made pomegranate pie and roasted pumpkin for pumpkin risotto - and Mr Spouse took me on a walk along the beach and we discussed our fostering plans.
I have been thinking about it and I actually think that even if one of my previous pregnancies had worked, it seems so unlikely that we'd have managed a second (or that we would do so now) that I think I'd have been talking about this when our child reached the age of 5 or so, anyway. I have been feeling a bit stuck over adoption - why wait and do fostering when we could forge ahead with adoption - but as he has pointed out, we'll be approved as foster carers pretty quickly but adoption could take ages, and it will be good experience, and even if we just have a couple of placements and only do it for 6 months, it will look less like we can't make our minds up.
**This is one of the funnier pregnancy stories I know, or at least it was until last year. So I tend to reel it out when the conversation turns to labour. In this case, it was particularly appropriate since one of the other girls there was also a pre-scan-era twin and her mother didn't know she was having twins. My friend's mother's midwife thought it would be a nasty shock to find out there were two in there but my friend's mother was well aware of the two heads and told the midwife so.
However, I can't say "I have a friend who..." any more because this is the friend who died 18 months ago and as I still think of her as my friend, I keep forgetting this and launching into the story.
Bernardeena just posted about being annoyed with her brother for choosing a name as an option for his baby, that she and her husband had named the baby they lost. I was reminded the other day that Mr. Spouse and I had discussed names for our first baby - we have not dared to do it since - but he says he has no recollection of the conversation.
I don't feel strongly enough that the names we discussed (and yes, we DID) belong to that child to not use them for another child (if, of course, we have a child that we can name - though I think we'll be giving middle names to any child not too old to object). My brother's first name is an unusual, and I think, nice name and he is the 13th in line* and has two daughters. Our uncle has two young sons but neither of them have that name, and there are no other boys with our surname; one of the cousins has Cystic Fibrosis and so there is a faint possibility the other boy will have a son and use the family name, or a slightly more imminent possibility that I will have a son and use that name plus the family name as a middle name. I can't see Mr. Spouse having any say on that, frankly.
The other boy's name (probably the one we would have used day to day) is a nice, old-fashioned name that happens to be a common name for kings of England and we have a friend who is obsessed with one of those kings. Mr Spouse says I've been listening to her too much. But it also happens to be a family name for both our families.
I was relieved that my brother did not decide to name his second girl entirely after our mother - she has our mother's middle name as her first name - I wanted our mother's first name for a girl.
I can't believe I have this all planned out, but honestly, I was not the child who planned her wedding down to the shoes - I have always known roughly what I wanted to call my children.
I know some of you have later pregnancy losses but I'm just wondering if I am the only person who is willing to recycle names? I'm assuming I'm not alone in resisting discussing names following a previous loss, though.
*Yes, you read that right.
Your Persona is not a fertility meter.
Some months my Persona gives me a nice cutesy egg symbol, and then about 3 more days of "if you want to be really careful, avoid sex today". I check the sticks as they are straightforward LH (and comparison with oestrogen I think) sticks and they show a darker LH line. Other months, I get two lines of equal darkitude but it doesn't give me the dinky symbol, and usually has days and days of "get off him, you slag".
When I was told by the RE last month to use my progesterone suppositories from day 17 I asked whether I should use OPKs and she said it wasn't really worth it - if I get the peak on day 15 almost every month in living history, I should be fine, and they work out pricey (she's obviously not looked on Ebay). And I got a pretty-dark line on day 15 and a lighter one on day 16.
But now I am panicking that either I wasn't about to ovulate this month (which would be the first time EVER) or that it was set to be a bit late and the progesterone is stopping it. Also, I got loads of cramps when I started them last month on day 23, I think, but nothing so far this month, and my F-cups aren't sore either. I know I never get pre-menstrual cramps before at least day 21, and some months the soreness is later too, but I am overthinking it as usual. And after I pounced on Mr Spouse all those times, too.
Please talk me down.
If I suggest a Christmas present for Mr. Spouse to my mother and she says "oh, can't you just get it and I'll pay you back?", does that constitute her giving him a present?
Somehow, I don't think so. Since I probably have more money than her, but less time, if I'm going to think of it, and organise ordering it I may as well just pay. I already have several things for him, and we are trying not to go all out this year (one big present each plus a few little things).
Incidentally we went to a craft fair on Saturday and I was buying something for a friend when I turned round and spotted him putting a bag in his pocket surreptitiously. It was very sweet. He was a bit annoyed, though, as I know which stall it was from so have an idea of what it was. But I don't mind. I didn't see it, and I get to be reminded of how sweet he is twice.
We have your regularly scheduled Christmas meltdown.
I suspect it was a combination of a slightly, er, frustrating and, er, incomplete "session" that morning, which is extremely unusual for Mr. Spouse - we suspect the blood pressure tablets the doctor thinks he needs despite having never measured even mildly hypertensive before - a very ambiguous email exchange and some ill-advised forum reading re. adoption, and the prospect of singing round the Christmas holiday* tree at our local festival, swarming with kids.
One hopes we have that out of the way for the year, but chances are slim, especially as there is a Christmas pageant scheduled for church next weekend. That would be the church that is doing full on Advent at the moment, not Christmas. Oh well.
Interestingly one of the ill-advised adoption message boards has a lot of parents with children who, either because of prior awful Christmases (presents taken away as punishment, or sold) or hopes dashed recently (birth parents whose lives are not together enough to contact them or buy presents, or who buy unsuitable ones), or because of special needs (too much unpredictability, too many bright lights, too many people), really don't do well in the "run-up to Christmas". Melt-downs, tantrums, and occasional tactical withdrawals from school, events, and parties seem common.
Although I love Christmas, I really appreciate the space that Advent gives me to prepare not just presents and cards, but myself. We don't put up decorations (we have an Advent wreath, and we put out any cards we get) and I tend not to listen to carols (at least not voluntarily). If I'm in a carol concert I try to be in one that is very close to Christmas, and then decorate after that, or bring in the tree and have it bare till Christmas Eve. Mr. Spouse also doesn't particularly go overboard at Christmas, though he is from a working-class and non-conformist background and apparently this means he can put up his tacky Christmas tree on the 1st of December.
I guess we'll be reasonably well-placed to handle children who also don't do well around Christmas, and fuss; we would love to have children around at Christmas but that doesn't mean we have to do loads of extra stuff "for the children".
*I have no objection to wishing people happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, happy New Year instead, or as well, as happy Christmas (note - Merry is what you get after a few glasses, not what Christmas is necessarily. Though it can be) - but it really isn't a tree of another kind. It really is a Christmas tree. And it shouldn't be decorated until Christmas Eve. Bah humbug.
It was my older niece's birthday on Thursday. She is 5. She is finally going to school most of the time (they start obscenely young where she lives - the younger one, 2.5, is also going several days a week to a large classroom style place. I think it is like in Belgium where belgianwaffle reported she was told off for not sending hers full time at an equivalent age).
We chatted on line (and my determination not to use web-chat was fully justified - appalling sound AND video - couldn't even tell which niece I was talking to half the time). But my mum then sent some really cute pictures, in little kilts, and the big one is SO BIG and the little one is also growing madly. I miss them - I hardly ever see them, and my brother is so dogmatic about everything too, so it's hard to have a conversation with any of the family when he is there.
This is a cheat as I was obviously blogged-out yesterday and forgot my final post of the month. Let me off, will you? Anyway this is where we spent our post-wedding honeymoon (we had another holiday later that year, too, because we are a dual income infertile couple and can take lots of holidays) and yes, it is not that sunny, why do you ask? Do you think perhaps I should have known to take a suitcase full of warm sweaters and boots, in May?
I think it will be better perhaps if I get back to my regular intermittent posting as I definitely have fewer comments per post this month, and possibly even fewer comments overall. More posting does not mean more comments, clearly.
The progesterone suppositories definitely caused a few crampings/stretchings while I was using them, and as instructed I did a pregnancy test on day 28 and then stopped taking them. Following which my period was three, count them, three days late. Or possibly 2 if I ovulated late. Completely unheard of. And now, slightly less crampy but oddly heavier than normal. Heavier I don't mind if it's less crampy.
Just went for a blood glucose test this morning, really just as an "in case" which I thought would be fine, but the OB/GYN was humouring me since I was wondering if Metformin might be helpful even though I don't have PCOS, I have had mildly raised blood sugar in the past.
Although it's not in the "definitely elevated" range it's higher than it should be for fasting (117, which is 6.5 in UK units I think).
No pie for me, then.
I stayed in the Marais on my first romantic trip to Paris, with an ex who seemed nice at the time but turned out to be obsessive and a bit of a druggie (in my defense, I had dumped him long before the latter came to light). But it was very much a penniless, walk around Paris because we can't afford to take the Metro or go in any museums, trip.
Mr. Spouse and I went back for New Year a couple of years ago, and it was nice to reclaim the concept of the Marais. I have to say, I didn't really recognise much of it, either because we didn't do as much walking, or because it's changed, or more probably because we went to a completely different part. I just hope I've actually chosen a Marais image!
"Puppy" at the Guggenheim Museum. I have been promising for some time to make my brother a soft sculpture of Puppy.
