baybeasts

this has been the week of the faint line. this email that bean sent me last thursday pretty much sums up every single day since then, with minor variations (including work and vast amounts of time spent with very lovely bean relations - grandparents and an uncle):

“um

i’ll wash up
look at faint line 1,560,326 more times
check to see if sprinkler is working
admire new deck setting and feel impatient about delay in bbq construction
poke breasts
sigh
do a load of washing
stare at finished load of washing
growl at miaowy cat
check mailbox
look at line at least once more
think about lunch
look at finished pile of washing again
eat some food
check email
look at faint line
grizzle and maybe hang out washing
boot cat outside
admire new pathway through the straw
wait for 530pm”

there was definitely a line. it was very very faint, and we had to break the little absorbent bit of paper out of the plastic casing to get a really good look at it, and it disappeared on friday but came back stronger on saturday and sunday, whereupon we stuck them all to a piece of paper that we pored over every time the grandparents were looking in the opposite direction. on the packet of the wee sticks it said you are pregnant ‘even if the line is very faint’, and we repeated it like a mantra.

we dared to hope.

today, at about 9am, i got a very sad phone call from bean. you know what’s coming: blood. harbinger of doom and depression. we had dreamed of a celebratory dinner this week, but instead we will be drinking sacrificial wine, blood red and thick. hopefully it will dull the pain. and soon we will get back up and try all over again…

it’s hard to post during the two week wait. there’s too much everything - words to describe it all that aren’t the same as all the other words are too hard to find.

i can talk about home though. a few months ago, i would step outside our back door and feel miserable at the expanse of hot, glary concrete that lay between me and the vegetables. i thought a lot about when we would sell the house, move somewhere greener, quieter, better.

now, i step outside, and there is green, and deck, and somehow the rest of the garden seems closer - like it is all part of the same back yard now. somehow it seems quieter, less smelly - suddenly the factory and the main road that i have hated so much are so much less important now that i can sit with a cup of tea on the deck and just rest my eyes on the garden. i can imagine being here with small children. i am in love with my home.

we bought a table and chairs for the deck over easter, and i worried that we were becoming very bourgeois - we have spent a lot of money on this back yard renovation. but bean said, well, we don’t spent much money on other things (except ivf) - home is the most important thing to us, so we would rather spend money on making it a beautiful place that we love to be than on anything else. she’s right. and maybe that is the definition of bourgeois - and if it is, i don’t think i care. that little leap of joy every time i walk out the back door is worth much more to me than a few thousand dollars.

bean is worried that yesterday’s post was a little too negative, so we thought we would make a list of all the good and bad omens (if only we were superstitious):

bad

good

so we’re feeling optimistic, but of course we must insert standard disclaimer about frozen embryo transfers only working about 20 per cent of the time…

Another quick and painless transfer. Dr David was very happy with this pip as it had thawed well and gone on to divide to eight cells. I managed to get a blurry photo of it on the tv screen, before the scientist said they had to hurry up. Now I feel like I’ve doomed pip because I selfishly wanted to get a photo.
sigh…

gotta love the two week wait…

wow. time flies in blog land. i am feeling pressure to write, because i haven’t written anything for about two weeks, but i can’t think of anything interesting to write about. life is just happening around me, without much time for reflection or insight or wittiness.

the last few days have mostly comprised of bean weeing on sticks, and the two of us peering at them in all possible lights, searching for a line to indicate that she is about to ovulate. lines have now appeared and been confirmed, and our first frozen embryo transfer will be this saturday (yay for dr david and his superior knowledge of bean’s retroverted uterus!).

i wish i was more hopeful. or at least a bit superstitious about easter weekend and fertility festivals and rabbits and stuff, but mostly i am just dreading another two week wait.

there also maybe some exciting job-related news, but it is too soon to go public…just keep your fingers crossed for me, because if it works out it could be a Very Good Thing.

Work has been exhausting but at least I’ve been too weary to fret (much). We’ve had two wang-cam scans with the delightful David and it seems that things are slowly getting back on track. There is an 18mm follicle on the left ovary which means I’ll probably be good to go around Easter Sunday. Hmmm… festive day of egg enjoyment. Could this be a good sign?

Sorenson - I think this embryo will need some Chocolatier chocolate to help ease its transition from the deep freezer to the womb oven.

It’s a little too slow for us to be able to go camping at Easter, sadly, and possibly too slow to have the delightful David do the embryo transfer. I hope A Different Doctor can find their way around my retroverted uterus as gently as David did.

I have found a rather excellent infertility fact sheet for friends and family. It’s from the Australian National Infertility Network (ACCESS).

I love youse all…
I am drinking red wine, but it’s after midday so that’s ok, yeah? S’not like there’s any bloody baby in there anyway…

Sorenson and I are both exactly 56% evil.

“You are evil, but you haven’t yet mastered the dark side.
Fear not though - you are on your way to world domination”.

We have a beautiful new deck to sit on, and S has built some awesome paths through the garden so we are feeling very impressed with our back yard.

We don’t know when my first frozen embryo transfer(FET) will be. More waiting!!! It all depends how cranky my body is and how soon it stops sulking and starts ovulating again. We are hoping it’ll be by Easter so we can go camping for a few days.

I had an annoying scare when a dim-witted nurse couldn’t find record of our frozen embryos on her computer and suggested to me that maybe they’d all ‘arrested’ (kicked the bucket). This was also the day I got my period. I told her to keep looking and somehow didn’t yell at her. She rang back an hour later when she found them.

Thank-you to all our wonderful friends who have given us so much love and support during our hormonally challenged weeks… We’ve been the recipients of warm text messages, blog comments and emails, bolstering phonecalls and hugs and pats on the back, forgiveness for functions we’ve been unable to attend, yellow roses, home baked bread(with special fertility eggs on top), cards, heartfelt mutual sighing and so on. You guys rock.

Family. Well… Unfortunately, some of our family are still under the evil influence of the all pervasive urban myth that one must ‘relax’ in order to conceive. That we are still ‘trying too hard’. Please visit afore-mentioned infertility ’study’ for amusement and correction. What can I say… I’m pretty sure that anyone who has arrived at IVF is not going to waltz in with a cavalier attitude to getting pregnant. I’m pretty damn sure that the doctors, nurses, counsellors and scientists are going to be trying their hardest to make your thousands of dollars and months of invasive treatment pay off as quickly as possible.

I’m not sure how you can do IVF and ‘relax’ and ‘not try too hard’.
Anyone with a better understanding of this conundrum can feel free to email us!

So… I’ll have one or two more tries before taking a break for a few months to let Sorenson have a now long-awaited go at getting pregnant.