Pundelina Kafoops lives here

Fresh Horses - handwriting

2012-02-05T01:55:00.000+11:00

Eden has inspired a post, I like her Fresh Horses meme, I like memes altogether really.

Here's my crappy handwriting. Sorry it's SO crappy, it's kind of painful to bare it to the interwebz - everyone else's is (as always) so much prettier than mine.

C'est la vie.

Time keeps on slipping into the future

2012-01-14T12:59:00.005+11:00

Yes it does.

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year Bloggy friends. Every other year I've posted either Christmas or New Years messages in a timely fashion, but not this year. I didn't make pointless wishes at Christmas this year and New Years was quiet.

I know that 2011 has been a crap year for a lot of people, but it was good to me - despite not getting miraculously knocked up. I achieved some intense goals and have been kindly rewarded. It's the first year since 2008 that I haven't experienced the crushing pain of failed assisted reproduction attempts throughout the year. In 2011, I wished and hoped but with no faith in my preferred outcome so when the inevitable blood began each cycle, I wasn't dragged down and out with the flow. Last year I focused on a baby-free future and that cushioned me against its loss. Last year I let go. I'm free falling.

This January we went on summer holiday up north to the sun and the sea and had a lovely time. Feast your eyes my lovelies.

Rainbow Bay beach on a crystal clear day

View across to Coolangatta from our rental house in Bilambil Heights - we all want to live there permanently

Drowned trees outside Forbes

PhD scholar!

2011-12-14T13:36:00.002+11:00

I just got the offer today, a full scholarship to do a PhD!!!

So much hard work, so many hours of slog to get to this point ... and so much more to do before I can be Dr Pundy!

The paths a life can take you are truly amazing - some paths are horrifyingly terrible (IF) others are astoundingly wonderful (PhD).

I've not been in here much, time's at a premium and I've been writing so much that writing for pleasure doesn't often cut it. I am reading all of your blogs though, sending positive thoughts out to the Universe for those who need them and cheering all of you on on your paths.

Be well.

Summer sky and Xmas

2011-12-09T14:44:00.000+11:00

Sci-Fi time

2011-11-18T13:30:00.002+11:00

I love Sci-Fi and I love timelines and here are my two loves all intertwined. Click to embiggen.

Beware of spoilers ... and shenanigans.

Awesome #10 and an update

2011-10-22T22:39:00.003+11:00

I owe you all some awesome ...

Photos that work without trying (the rides were awesome too especially No Limit).

Naughty chickehs that come looking for cat fud.

Impressionism by accident (our Gallery has a water window).

What a busy study year this has been. But much better than the Year of Hell doing my Honours thesis and IVF at the same time. I started the study year very apprehensively because of that bad awfulness but I settled into it ok and my anxiety levels haven't caused collapses or breakdowns (so far). And now, suddenly, I've almost finished the coursework for the Master. I've maintained a straight A average throughout the year and I'll be so fucking glad when I'm done with the last two pieces of assessment and I can forgo straight As forever and just work on the "Ps get degrees" theorem.

I'm finalising my application for the PhD and while I'm a shoe-in to get accepted into the program, a scholarship is not so certain, so I'm nervous about that.

I still wish that I'd get miraculously pregnant and it still hasn't happened and I still get disappointed every single month. Stoopid or what?

Awesome #9

2011-09-24T13:21:00.002+10:00

The view through my umbrella during Spring rain.

And speaking of rain ... Rain's news is also awesome. Congratulations Rain and McRuger and welcome to Cadet!

Awesome #8

2011-09-16T15:07:00.001+10:00

Sunbeams (and spring blossoms)

Weekly Awesome #7

2011-09-07T23:08:00.003+10:00

Completely not weekly at all.

This awesome goes to finishing assignments - the feeling that comes along with handing one in, the joy in being able to cross it off the list.

1 down, 6 to go.

Discarded dreams

2011-08-25T22:08:00.002+10:00

When our last IVF cycle was a bust last year, I had a fridge crisper full of leftover drugs. In fact I had exactly enough drugs to do one more cycle - alone. I planned dosing myself with the same (or less) Gonal-F as my last cycle, getting my GP to organise an ultrasound on about day 9 of my cycle and then depending on the measurement of the follicle/s I saw at that appointment, I'd plan to trigger and then go at it like rabbits with the Big Guy for one last medicated hooray.

But something always stopped me from doing it, certainly not lack of drugs, not lack of courage, not lack of willing GP because my GP is both awesome and malleable. I guess I just figured it was pointless really.

But I didn't throw out the drugs, they stayed in our crisper taking up valuable space. Every time I looked in the fridge I saw both the possibility of another cycle and the hope of a pregnancy, as well as the futility and pain of the same.

I got back from Bali on Sunday. And in the afternoon, in my jet-lagged haze, I opened the crisper and decided to dispose of the drugs. I have known I'd have to do it for a while, but I kept on not being ready. And then, out of nowhere, I was.

I stopped in at the hospital at the end of our street; the hospital where I planned I would deliver that baby we never had, where my mother-in-law's sister is a midwife who would have taken such good care of me, of us. Emergency was quiet last Sunday afternoon, and so I waited while a paramedic found out where to check in the dazed young man on her gurney.

The nurse asked what she could do for me and I confessed that I had a strange request. I had all these drugs and sharps leftover from our final failed IVF cycle last year that I'd been hoarding and I wanted to dispose of them safely. I started crying halfway through my silly explanation and she looked at me so very kindly, such tenderness in her eyes, and said that would be fine and was I alright.

Am I alright? I'm not sure really. I do know I have a lovely family and a wonderful husband. My life is full and busy and everything really should be fine. I should be over it. But my heart got torn wide open by infertility. I never expected it to happen (no one does) and it broke me into pieces. And I'm just slowly stitching myself back together.

The drugs are not in my fridge anymore but the crisper is still empty. And now its emptiness haunts me a little like my empty womb. The crisper, I can fill.

Weekly Awesome #6

2011-08-16T23:46:00.001+10:00

Sunset on Jimbaran Bay :)

Weekly (kinda) Awesome #5

2011-08-10T09:31:00.003+10:00

First up let me apologise because apparently I suck at super-regular weekly postings! Who woulda thunk it?

Anyway, this 'week's' awesome goes to snow and skiing.

We took the kids up the mountain this past weekend and though they'd only learnt to stand and ski a tiny bit last time, this time they were all capably whizzing down the slopes by the end of our weekend. Wrangling all three of them into their gear and then teaching them was not as hard as the Big Guy and I had imagined and we ended up having a fantastic time.

TBG and I both learnt to ski when we were little and we really wanted our kids to get the bug and be able to feel the joy of skiing and love the magic of a snow-covered wonderland. We're so lucky to have the opportunity to teach our kids and the cashola to fund it.

And...

3 sleeps til Bali! How lucky am I? Skiing one weekend, swim-up bar-ing the next. AWESOME.

Weekly Awesome #4

2011-07-27T09:58:00.002+10:00

Getting high distinctions for both subjects in my first semester of the Master (and thus half-guaranteeing entry in to the articulated PhD). Two more high distinctions for the remaining two subjects and then it's all aboard the PhD train.

Also awesome, going to Bali in a fortnight for a week. Completely random and unexpected, gifted to me by a sweet friend (Hi K!). Cocktails ahoy!

The Weekly Awesome #3

2011-07-19T17:42:00.000+10:00

Catholics

Because there's a patron saint for everything, even digestive problems.

And lest any of you think I'm being religist, I am catholic :)

The Weekly Awesome #2

2011-07-09T02:23:00.002+10:00

This weeks awesomeness belongs to Japanese dollar stores and their excellence at stocking incomprehensible items.

What's the deal with that tomato story plate?

Clever chickehs!

2011-07-04T13:47:00.001+10:00

Please excuse the messy balcony complete with washing everywhere - it's testament to my spontaneity.

The Weekly Awesome #1

2011-06-30T20:12:00.001+10:00

Rainbows where I least expect them

... on the hand dryer in the bathroom at work.

Props to 1000 Awesome Things - I'm now inspired to find the awesome in my life. I'm going to make this a weekly thing, feel free to join in!

Pieta

2011-06-25T10:45:00.001+10:00

The Pieta is my favourite sculpture and when I stood before her in January I was rapt. Her beautiful sad face enthralled me, her love, her pain. Did a religion spring from that love lost? It's an interesting thought.

So much tragedy in our bloggy world lately, so much pain, shared by so many. When there are sorrows we are all cut, each sad post breaks so very many hearts. I wish I could change the world with a wave of my hand and the typing of a kiss. Alas.

But, in this world of IF, news is often mixed together. Pain with joy, sadness with light.

And when there are joys we share them and exalt and wish only the best (my lovely numb lucky Lady).

The Universe is confusing

2011-06-21T20:50:00.000+10:00

Because poor darling Misfits lost to the House ... again.

I just can't bear the unfairness of that and can't even imagine how they are coping. Lucky number 7 was supposed to be lucky. And this is just so cruel. Infertility is so very cruel.

:(

IF A-Z

2011-05-29T20:52:00.002+10:00

A. Age when you started TTC: 35

B. Baby Dancing or Se.x: Horizontal Mambo

C. Children wanted: I wanted 4. And when I was 13 I wanted two sets of twins!

D. Dogs/Cats/Fill in Children: 2 cats, 3 chickens, 5 fish.

E. Essential Oils/Vitamins/Snake Oils: prenatal vitamins, false unicorn root, CoQ10, Evening Primrose Oil.

F. Fertility Meds I’ve taken: clomid, Gonal-F, ovidrel, Synarel, Lucrin

G. Gain: 5 kgs

H. HSG (Hystosalpingogram): All clear

I. Infertile Pet Peeves: People assuming that I'm over it now.

J. Job title: Research Fellow

K. Kid’s names you’re afraid will be taken by the time you can use them: Not telling ;p

L. Length of time TTC:

M. Miscarriages: 1 chemical

N. Number of times you’ve switched OB/GYNS, REs, FSs: 0 - but I did get a second opinion

O. Ovarian quality: terrible

P. POAS or wait for AF: For the first couple of years, POAS. Now, mostly wait.

Q. Quote from an obnoxious fertile: After she heard we'd been trying for over 3 years she said (gesturing to her 8 month pregnant belly) "This one was a complete accident - we were done!"

S. Sperm: fine (or maybe ... yes please)

T. Time you tried naturally: 15 months or so

U. Uterus quality: great

V. Vagina: lovely

W. What baby stuff do you already have?: Lots of old stuff from my Little Guy.

X. X-tra X-tra Hear all about it! How many people know the ins and outs of our crazy TTC journey? Everyone I know. Yes, pretty much everyone. Sometimes cause they asked, sometimes cause it was on my mind, sometimes in relation to something else.

Y. Yearly Exam (do you still go in even though someone sees your lady parts most months?): Yearly, just got the all-clear for this year.

Z. Zits: small and infrequent.

So now you’ve read mine. What are your IF A to Zs?

39

2011-05-23T13:42:00.000+10:00

And feeling it.

Thank you for your surprise birthday wishes on my last post - t'was very unexpected.

I'd been doing my best to ignore it. But it happened to me anyway and here I am, living the final year of my thirties and bleeding after nookie on CD12. Hello peri-menopause how I hate thee.

Woe is me. If I wasn't feeling so woeful 'd tell you about the lovely birthday dinner I had with friends (I did, it was) or how sometime yesterday I thought to myself how much worse it could all be (like my entire 20s) or how the song I sang to the Little Guy (my best beloved) at bedtime last night (10:30pm after our dinner out) was "Happy Birthday to me" and at the end he hooray-ed and piped up with his new catchphrase "cha-cha-cha!"

I'd tell you about how gorgeous my husband is, how he tries so hard with all his loving of me and he wins. His whole self is For The Win. He left me notes scattered around the house yesterday, detailing his love and all the reasons why. He loves me so well. And just now as I cried softly on his shoulder, bleeding and definitely not post-org.as.mic, he cradled me and was gentle with my silly old self.

Faaaark

2011-05-19T23:22:00.000+10:00

I really thought I was pregnant last week.

My period was late and I was hopeful and I planned the post I would write here and the people I would tell and I even looked up a due date.

And then I tested. I haven't done that in oh-so-long. So very very long. And it was so awfully devastating to see the shadow of a second line that never turned into a proper second line.

I cried and cried and cried. And then I was madmadmad like nothing else and I screamed at the walls (I was alone at home). And then my period arrived the next day (CD30, I was due on CD27).

I'm just so fucking pissed off. It's GIGANTICALLY unfair. And I'm so dumb for being so hopeful.

How do I get over this? It's 11 months since our last failed IVF cycle now and I'm wishing we could try assisted conception again. I wish it would be of some use to try again. I wish ...

In other news I'm busy like a very busy hive of bees and I'm really glad that I'm not a poor alcohol and drug-addicted lady who's stunted her child's cognitive development (placement anyone?).

Glad you liked the chickens.

Circus chickeh

2011-05-05T21:49:00.001+10:00

I have the beginnings of an excellent circus here :)

I made awesome rainbow cake

2011-05-01T21:22:00.002+10:00

I did it! You may remember that I said I would and this weekend I did! And it was awesome. So awesome I can't hardly believe I managed it.

Don't you just love these batter bowls? I do!

I used a ton of icing in this, so much that the kids were mostly defeated by their slices.

Our gorgeous girl turned 11 - how can that be possible?

The slice emerged to the sounds of excitement and appreciation - and the kids liked it too ;)

Why are there so many songs about rainbows? Because they're AWESOME!

Thank you to Whisk Kid and her inspirational post. The cake was a hit with everyone and I was pronounced an awesome cake-maker and an awesome Step-Mother. Booyah!

Superfetation

2011-04-28T22:48:00.000+10:00

Amazing.

People and animals who are already pregnant can get pregnant again. Yet I can't at all.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=superfetation-pregnant-while-alread-2011-04-27

The Big Guy has two step-sisters - they've both had babies while we've been trying. He has two cousins - one had her second baby just before we started trying (while I was still convincing tBG), the second had her baby this morning.

Why couldn't I have married a man whose female relatives were done babying?

I gave the new baby the socks that were for our baby, the rattle-booties that were for our baby and the organic baby stuff pack that was for our baby.

I'm slowly giving it all away now and that hurts.

Smelling that sweet, sweaty newborn smell (she was only 10 hours old when we visited her tonight) was delicious, holding her was glorious, giving her back to her Mama was wrenching. I want so much (and I use the present tense with ooomph) to have a baby and that desire is not leaving me. Not fading, not diminishing, not abating, not going.

Something that tells me there is no intelligent designer. Today was my first placement. The 12 year old child I am to assess has a drug-addled, brain-damaged, alcoholic mother. That poor lady has a 12 year old, an 8 year old, a 4 year old and last year she had a new baby who was removed from her care immediately.

Yet I can't get pregnant.

Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Hoppy Easter Peeps!

2011-04-24T19:16:00.000+10:00

Because we're in the future it's all drawing to a close for us, we're chocolate-d out and have had a lovely day.

I hope you all have a safe and eggsellent Easter and that the Bunny is kind to you!

Like a ratty old jumper

2011-04-13T21:01:00.001+10:00

I've shrugged studying back over my head again. Assignments, group work, countless readings that I'm not doing enough of. It's all so familiar and well-worn. I know how to do this. I am doing it. Quelle horreur.

I've not much to say this week.

1. My Little Guy is off with his Dad for 9 sleeps having the first half of the Easter hols 2 hours away from me. I miss his squirmy little body and his silly little voice and his little rat-fingers trying to tickle me.

2. The Big Guy's kids are off with their Mum on the normal week-on-week-off schedule. Thus we are kidless and it's sucky. And nice, but only for a little while.

4. The chickehs are doing well. I am trying to train them to leap for food, which works sometimes but only if they can see the food. Then they flutter and leap to get it. Dry cat food = nomnomnom. Perhaps I will open a chicken circus one day. No doubt I will have to teach them other tricks besides chasing me and leaping. I will ponder it further.

5. I signed my fellowship contract today and I feel like a fraud because I'm nowhere near as Fellow-y as the other Fellows, but c'est la vie. I am still deciding whether to change my position title on our website (I'm the webmaster) because of my fraud-y-feeling.

6. I got a Very Good Mark for my first assignment but I'm pissed off because the marks came from the peer ratings and our lecturer had told us that those ratings didn't count for anything and as it turned out they counted completely and I'd been soooooooo (SO) kind to the other students while they killed me with Death-By-Powerpoint. Now my choices in this matter are thus:
   a) keep marking everyone stupidly high (47 out of 50),
   b) mark everyone else a average grade only (30 out of 50) unless they blow my mind,
   d) write "I refuse to participate because it's so patently invalid to have me marking my peers".
What would you do?

And here's a picture for your eyes.

The traditional Venice shot. Ahhhh, holidays, they go so fast.

For your viewing pleasure

2011-04-08T18:21:00.001+10:00

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

I'm particularly fond of these six.

#2 - who did they kill and why are they all so happy?
#8 - the best kind of stalkers
#10 - no words for this
#22 - why?why?why?
#28 - she's so adoring
#46 - olde-time-math-nerds

Tell me which are your faves and why :)

The running of the chickehs

2011-03-21T22:04:00.000+11:00

As promised.

Thanks for the love.

Slow carbs and dead chickehs

2011-03-17T23:57:00.002+11:00

What is this space for?

I'm not here very much, I read all your blogs and I comment here there and everywhere but I'm not sure what I'm doing here. Anyway...

Updates:
1. Our chickehs were all eaten by foxes while we were in Italy. It was awful for our housesitter and awful for us when we got home because I did not see the letter she'd written us so I went searching for the chickens in the dark with a torch through our large backyard :(

The coop wasn't strong enough. Foxy Loxy got in and killed my chickeh-darlings. So sad.

We have new chickehs, they lay an egg a day each and I love them. Which sounds weird after just telling you all about our poor first set of chickens. But we waited a while, and we got these from someone who didn't want them anymore and I really do love chickens. These 3 are very funny, in that they chase me around the backyard for treats. They also climb the back stairs and cluck around on our patio in hope of finding/getting dry cat food (their favourite treat). I will endeavour to record them one day soon and post the vid of them here.

2. The Big Guy and I have been on the 4 hour body diet and we've both lost tummy fat and are finding the diet relatively easy. (Kinda.)

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates. Don’t eat bread, pasta, rice (brown or white), any grains (including corn), potatoes, breaded fried food or dairy (except some lactose-free cheeses) on your slow-carb days (except cauliflower).

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again. Meals should include protein, legumes, and non-starchy vegetables; eat as much as you like, 3-4x/day.

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Avoid milk (including soy), sweetened soda (no more than 16oz of diet), and fruit juice. One or two glasses of red wine are permitted.

Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. Tomatoes and avocados are okay (the latter in moderation).

Rule #5: Take one day off per week. Go nuts and eat lots of calories to keep your metabolic rate (thyroid function, conversion of T4 to T3, leptin) up. Do at least five days of rules 1-4 before following rule 5.

Saturday is Crazy Day for us and we're both finding it hard to eat all the stuff we can't eat all week; not because there's not enough time, but because we just don't feel like it that much and it's hard to schedule eating crap into the day. I had pancakes with syrup and fruit last Saturday and was ill for a few hours after. I think my body likes the veges/legumes/protein diet.

3. I've been going to counselling class which has (so far) taught me that I'm probably not meant to be in drama school because I fucking hate role plays. I've also been attending cognitive/personality assessment classes which have taught me that IQ is a crock and that the courts love the shitty old MMPI. But I knew that dudes, teach me something new already.

4. I like making friends in my course and my Openness domain NEO-PI score puts me square in the psychopathology section.

5. My light period and my menopause fears have combined to make me overly hopeful that I'll skip a period for the next however many months and pop a baby out because I'll have been pregnant and that was why my period was so light and I got O pains so early. Ha! I'll show you psychopathology.

Once a scholar ...

2011-03-09T13:08:00.001+11:00

Always a scholar?

I've started the Master. Oh Emm Gee. So far it's interesting and I'm finding my balance between work, study and family. Ha! I'm like a somersaulting acrobat juggling three balls on a tightrope and it's only just begun.

I also had a 1.5 day period, with a sum total of about 20 ml of blood (I know this TMI because of my Lunette cup which has convenient measurements). And then yesterday afternoon/evening I had what felt like ovulation cramps - on CD6. WHAT THE FUCK? Is this the beginning of the end? Potentially you lovely ladies will get to travel down menopause road with me and hear all about the highs and lows to scare the bejeezus outta you all (there probably won't be any highs except the high temperature at night when I make the bed all manky with my night sweats).

It's scaring me.

Bones WAS my favourite show

2011-02-21T22:16:00.003+11:00

But not anymore.

I still have a metaphorical hard-on for David Boreanaz, I still enjoy the quips and the plots, I still like beating them to the cause of death and the murderer but my love for the show has, on the whole, been tainted, destroyed even, by two things.

1. Seely Booth is in a relationship with a blondie. That just kills me. I used to spend a good proportion of any episode waiting for him to take off his shirt and do Bones, in a dream, a coma, a fantasy, whatever. I waited and sometimes he did. Sometimes he even got nekkid with casual s.ex partners and that was cool by me. But now the writers have ruined the UST (unresolved sexual tension) between Booth and Bones and to top it off they gave him a p.orn-worthy, intelligent, Bones-liking girlfriend. She's the antichrist peeps and I hates her. He's MY precious.

MY precious!

2. Then, not only did they screw with my fantasies, they screwed with my safe haven. Were there ever any babies or pregnant people in Bones? Noooooo, just rotting corpses and lots of s.exy thoughts. Now, NOW they have ruined that too. Ruined it so much that even tBG sighs loudly every time they mention their babyjoy.

Stoopid Hodgkins and Angela made a baby - accidentally no less. And every fucking episode has mention, no, dedicated screen time to the pregnancy. So I want to shoot the TV. And the writers. How dare they fuck up my favourite show so badly.

Damn.

(Not sure if these pics are NSFW - male chests shown. Are they NSFW?)

And now I'm thinking about vampire hotties, is it just me or does everyone lerv Eric Northman.

And who would you prefer - David Boreanaz or Alexander Skarsgård?

Oh My God!

2011-02-10T21:05:00.001+11:00

Mournful-Maura ... I'm still plodding along completely unpregnantly with frequent well-timed non-contracepted s.ex to keep my hopeyheart alive. Maybe that ought to read dopeyheart. Whatever.

The other night as the Big Guy and I watched an ad that featured cute toddler twins in boy/girl nappies, tBG turned to me and sighed. He told me how sad he was that we weren't having a baby. How much he had hoped to meet our child. All in the past tense, a done deal so to speak. Blerk.

We're not having a baby peeps. I don't like that reality. Not one bit. When will I stop giving pregnant women dagger eyes and muttering 'you're so lucky' under my breath when we pass each other? When will I look at/hold a baby and be happy for baby love without feeling like crying simultaneously? When will it stop?

Being on holidays was awesomely distracting - and I can't remember seeing ANY pregnant Italian women. Can't I stay away on holidays?

Giggling-Gertie ... yesterday the Little Guy ran out on our back verandah to take some of his laundry inside. He ran so fast and as he passed the back door handle he snagged the arm of his white dress-up shirt and practically pulled himself off his feet. He scraped his arm and was in tears, very very sad when he suddenly looked at his shirt. In a tone that ought to be reserved for noticing that your arm is hanging out of the socket and there's blood gushing everywhere, he cried, "OH MY GOD! MY SHIRT!!!!" It was hilarious and I found it incredibly difficult to remain consolatory whilst wanting to roll on the ground laughing. When talking about it with tBG later, I cried laughing, it was that funny. I wish I could have taped him saying it so you could hear the horror in his voice.

Looky-Lucy

My kraken sleepeth

2011-01-31T02:09:00.000+11:00

Heeeellllloooooooo bloggie-friends!

First - I am devastated and blown away and completely thrown by poor Wiseguy's awful turn of events.

Fly free little Lola you are so very loved and missed by so many people.

I am return-ned from holidays more myself than I have been for the past god-knows-how-long and ready to rumble, OK, not rumble, but I'm feeling so very good at the moment. I guess that's what 5 weeks of holidays, lots of beautiful sight-seeing, then surfing, sun and relaxing will do for a girl.

About this time 3 years ago I threw out the birth control pills and we started TTCing. Can I just say (as you all know) that this has been one of the most awful trying painful things I have ever voluntarily done to myself. 3 years of grief, failure and pain.

Now, as I start 2011 (and soon a Masters degree - eeeeeeek!), I have almost completely given up hope. A tiny, itty, witty, incy bit still remains, but I am starting to sort through all the things I've held onto (for when we had the bay-bee) and maybe, just maybe, to move on with life. I don't cry when I get my period anymore and I don't feel quite so hateful towards random pregnant women as I used to. I do still feel incredibly jealous and I wish they would all take their great big pregnant bellies and their tiny newborns off to pregnant-newborn person land and not come back til said tiny babies are annoying 4 year olds and all evidence of happy pregnancy is gone (but not any of you guys, you've shared this horrid journey with me and I'm delighted for each and every one of your planned or surprise conceptions). Hmmm, I do still feel pretty hateful apparently.

Anyways, I'm back from away and being away from normal life has been excellent. Bring on the rest of the year!

Can't blog, too busy summering

2011-01-21T11:12:00.002+11:00

I know I promised more Italy pics but then we got the kids back and went summer holidaying. I hope all your January's are fun.

P.S. Congratulations Eggs Out of Time!

3 years later

2011-01-13T00:00:00.000+11:00

And I love him dearly.

Thank you Big Guy for being the bestest husband evah.

I'm still wading through the Italy pictures, finding it hard to find the time to sort through them. I swear that camera was glued to my face the whole time we were there. And I'm so glad it was because there was so much to take in my brain couldn't possibly hold all the wonders I saw.

I've decided to pick some pictures from each day to show you. And tell you about.

Day 1

After a 23 hour journey we arrived in Rome around 7am on Christmas Eve. This was in the first batch of pictures I took as I rounded street corners and gasped every time I turned my head. Rome blew me away; living in Australia we don't have any buildings older than a couple of hundred years, no architectural styles before Georgian. Rome is a pastiche, a blend of the ancient and the relatively new (relative in a millenial sense). Astounding and intensely beautiful.

The Pantheon. Just getting there was a trip and a half due to all the things we saw on the way (including a tiny little church - Santa Maria Maddalena - whose beautiful interior had us enthralled for ages). The Pantheon is enormous. So VERY big. How those ancient people managed it is beyond me. It's been rebuilt over time, redecorated and renewed as it was repurposed.

Everywhere one turns in the Pantheon, the view is spectacular. And because it's being used as a church today there's a mix of the ancient and the not-so-ancient. It's like mini-Rome. This apse holds the Chapel of the Crucifixion and the wall surrounding the cross is the original Roman wall. From 126AD. The cross is 1400's. Those old walls. I desperately wanted to feel them.

And then I did. Do you think that nail is old? I did.

I'm in love with old. And with Rome.

A friend of mine who had recently returned from Italy said that she disliked Rome - too dirty and busy. But for me it's perfect. Possibly winter visiting is better than summer visiting, it wasn't too busy and it wasn't dirty.

Mi amore Roma.

Watch this space peeps

2011-01-09T21:25:00.001+11:00

Because I'm (*sob*) coming home.

Italy is absolutely phenomenal, if you haven't been then I totally recommend that you to go book your holiday NOW. Srsly.

Home in 36 hrs, much photo-i-ness to follow.

I'll leave you with this excellently silly/sexy Italian men's undies box, he has his O face on 'cause it's O time baby!

so much to say so little time

2010-12-22T00:27:00.000+11:00

There's so much I want to tell you all. But all I can say is this...

I dreamed up these little angels for our Christmas party table toppers. Then I made 6 of them and I adore them.

We hosted a Christmas party for 34 family members for our Great Big Family Christmas. We have an enormous backyard but every time we hold a backyard function it rains. This time, thunderstorms were predicted. So on Saturday when tBG and I were erecting the first of three wall-less marquees I convinced him that we would be wise to play table tetris indoors and see if we could have the party inside. We moved the furniture into our bedroom and had seating for 36 people in our dining room and lounge room.

I went overboard on the Christmassyness of the decorating and I loved it.

That's my desk over on the right, when I'm blogging, that's where I sit :)

Everyone had a lovely time at the party, it's so nice that we all get along so beautifully - such a blessing. And it rained cats and dogs - so praise be that we managed to fit everyone and everything inside.

We're off to Italy in 2 sleeps. Backpacks packed, waterproof hiking boots purchased and broken in, 16 kg spare luggage allowance to buy lots of pressies and bring them home. Praying that Fiumicino airport doesn't get closed and that no more of Pompeii collapses.

For the next little while I'll be off enjoying our we-didn't-manage-to-have-a-baby-so-we'll-have-a-fucking-great-holiday-instead jaunt. I hope you all have good Christmases and that 2011 fulfils all your deepest desires.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

Her birthday

2010-12-01T13:48:00.000+11:00

Today was one of my mother-in-laws' birthday. I have had the pleasure of three mother-in-laws, all of whom I love. My ex has a lovely mother with whom we happily lived for a while. Then there's the Big Guy's mothers. His Mum, who is a kind mother-in-law and his second mother (step-mama), a most excellent mother-in-law.

Today should have been her birthday, she should have turned 64. Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm 64. Instead we've spent the last three days planning her funeral.

On Sunday morning we got the phone-call. As everyone knows, calls at 7:30am on Sundays are always bad news. And it was. We got to the hospital by 8:30am and then we waited. And waited. And prayed. And soothed. And loved. And finally at 5pm, I kissed her warm forehead and asked her not to be dead.

:(

I don't talk much about our step-families. That's plural because tBG's parents divorced when he was a teen and they both remarried. Each of tBG's step-parents had teen children of their own and both tBG's Mum and Dad managed to extend their families and open their hearts to their step-children and blend quite beautifully. So when tBG and I got together, there was no question of us not blending happily and well, of course we would and so we have. All family occasions are big blended affairs and everyone gets along so well - even the Xs (mostly).

My MIL was an open-hearted woman, a wise and kind woman, a generous and practical woman. She was down-to-earth and funny and always up for a drink or a laugh. She cared adoringly for tBGs father when he died slowly of motor neurone disease in 2007 and she'd not healed from that loss yet (none of us have). There were 16 people in the hospital loving her when she died, all of us torn and devastated and disbelieving. How can she be dead? Why does death come unexpectedly? Why the fuck does it have to happen at all? Funeral is on Friday. The Great Big Extended Family Christmas is happening at our house in 3 weeks and there will be a huge hole where she should be.

Books and places

2010-11-18T21:28:00.003+11:00

Jenn's post today was a simple one about her day reading. But reading it brought up so many memories for me. Jenn's been reading LM Montgomery's Emily of New Moon and I remembered my childhood desire to visit Prince Edward Island and see where Anne (and Emily and Rilla and all the rest) lived. To tread the ground my fictional friends trod on, see their sights, feel a snatch of their lives. I had a list as a kid, of character's places I wanted to go to.
- Prince Edward Island (because of Anne)
- the Hudson Valley and the Catskills (because of Trixie Belden)
- the Lake District (because of Swallows and Amazons)
- Berlin (because of Emil and the Detectives)
- Sweden (because of Emil and the Soup Tureen)
- the Norwegian countryside (because of Mrs Pepperpot)
- the forests of Finland (because of Finn Family Moomintroll)

When I got older, I expanded my character's-places list to include TV and film friends.

- Crabapple Cove in Maine (because of Hawkeye Pierce)
- Monte Carlo (because of Herbie goes to Monte Carlo)
- Rome (because of La Dolce Vita)

One of those dreams is coming true in 5 weeks. Italia, sto arrivando!

Editing to add: if you don't already read Allie at Hyperbole and a Half, today is a perfect day to start - I LOLed so hard I cried while reading her latest post :D

Bugbears about grief

2010-11-15T23:24:00.000+11:00

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was wrong.

That's it, that's my bugbear and I'm so incredibly sick of reading/hearing/talking to people who truly believe that there are predictable patterned stages to grief and that acceptance is the final stage.

Shut the fuck up people.

But sorry if I've just been rude to you, I don't mean to be rude per se.

The final stage to my grief is just plain coping. Resilience sure, but never acceptance. Why the freaking hell did secondary infertility happen to me and why the freaking hell haven't I gotten pregnant yet. There is NO acceptance in my heart or body. I want a baby with my husband, I can't have a baby with my husband and I will never, as long as I live, accept that. I will, however, cope.

I will also attempt to trick the universe.

See Universe, see! I have "gotten on with my life" ... I have "given up" ... I am "relaxed" and I am even drinking beer I'm so relaxed, which is helping me to relax EVEN more! So what do you think of that eh? How's about you come along now and foil my careful coping plans with a surprise miracle pregnancy.

Anyhoo, Mind Hacks agrees with me and so does the research.

"Evidence-based Findings

Not all people experience grief in the same way
Some grieving people do not report feeling distressed or depressed
Some people experience high levels of distress for the rest of their lives without pathology
Repressive coping may promote resilience in some people
Resilience, growth, and/or positive emotions may be associated with loss"

10%

2010-11-10T23:06:00.003+11:00

200 applicants for the Masters.

50 interviews for 20 positions.

I got one.

Yay!

And...

Eeeeeek. It's going to be a lot of work.

In other good news at my house, work wants to make me a research fellow, which means more money for less work. And paid leave.

Most awesome. In fact it's beyond awesome, it's beyawsome.

It's beer o'clock at our house

2010-11-04T21:13:00.002+11:00

I have developed a fondness for beer! Who would have thought it? Not me, because vino has been my drink of choice for about 10 years now, but I've started getting ill from it - I think it's the acidity, but whatevs, I'm lovin' the beer. Especially this beer, it's soooo yummy.

OK. Update time for teh crazy shemozzle of teh Ph.D in crazy.

So, you'll all be pleased to know that the admissions officer for the Mas.ters and the post-grad research admissions officer have been communicating. Because of moi!!! You see, the website that bosses potential students around and corrals them into the appropriate online/hardcopy applications wuz WRONG. And no one knew this 'til poor ol' me applied for the WRONG thing in the WRONG form because the CAPTAIN-WRONGY-PANTS webpage told me too. (Possibly that's enough virtual shouting.)

I submitted my spiffy application for the Ph.D/Mas.ters combo just like the page told me too, with exactly the right eligibility requirements it told me I needed. But the day after the applications had closed (for every post-grad course across my state!) the AO emailed me to tell me that I wasn't able to apply for it, I needed to apply for a standard Mas.ters first, get straight As and then apply for PhD candidature at the end of first year. Oh, and no scholarship for the Mas.ters because it's coursework, not research. I couldn't understand how I had missed the vital eligibility requirement stating that I had to start a Masters first until I went to the webpage to check and found that I'd read it right the first time - according to it I just needed first-class honours to apply. Which I had, so howdy doody to that. I got back in touch with the AO and explained my findings and he said "Ooooh, it's a new course, I'll have to check that out!" Which he did, but his reply was still the same. Masters first, webpage WRONGO.

I could keep relating the back-and-forth exchanges, which involve a couple of prissy women with too much power and cats-bum mouths, but I'll stop there because of the boring awfulness of those exchanges and the result is what matters.

I have applied for the Masters course (late, but that's ok, they're letting me do that because of their wrongnosity). My potential Ph.D supervisor said he'll just pay me the cash he would have used as a top-up scholarship so at least I'll get $20,000 for first year. After which if I excel (eeeeek, I'm sick of excelling, the pressure is unbearable and a B is not a bad mark in the real world) I can apply to change over to the Ph.D, get the proper moola and sally forth. He also said that he's the one who decides whether the topic is suitable because he's the supervisor and he says it is, so there. He also said he'll get the Dean of the Faculty onside so it'll probably be fine.

So it's turned out to not be all terrible awfulness. Just kinda messy and shemozzley, but finalised for now.

And as for my Mama, her appointment with the GYN specialist is on the 1st December and she'll get a plan of action there. Her abdominal/low back pains are possibly colon-related (colitis or diverticulitis maybe) so she's off for a colonoscopy Friday week. I hope they figure it out because she's sick of the pain and sick of feeling crap. Thanks for the kind thoughts.

In other news we have a chickeh who lays soft-shelled eggs (Sparkles we think). They're usually broken when I go to check the egg box, but today there was an intact one. They're very weird to look at, they feel so very strange and we can't figure out how the chickeh manages to squeeze them out with breaking them on the way down the vent.

Good egg- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bad egg

no bloody PhD for me

2010-11-03T09:35:00.000+11:00

Stupid university website with its misleading course information.

Stupid Psych Association with their stringent and dumb requirements for exact PhD topics that have to fit right in with Masters' groups.

Stupid no scholarship for first Masters year.

Stupid everything.

Siete tutti così gentili

2010-10-25T22:13:00.001+11:00

Yes you are.

I've been needing inspiration and confidence and support with this crazy Ph.D idea. And I got some from you guys - thanks so much.

So, yes, I'm applying. The app has to be in by the end of the week and I'm almost finished writing it. I've been reading articles and talking to peeps and getting excellent references done for me. I'll get accepted for the Ph.D program no problems, but what I need to be able to do it is the scholarship. Which is not a big amount in itself ... but ... the reason I'm even applying is because this guy came to work the other day and asked us (me) to run a big online survey for him. The he mentioned that he was thinking of supplementing a Ph.D scholarship to make it more attractive to a Ph.D student - his top-up would make the Ph.D worth $40,000 a year to do. He offered it to me and I scoffed and refused it immediately.

However, I went home and realised that maybe I can do a Masters/PhD combo for $160,000 over 4 years. That actually sounds like a pretty good deal! I have to do another two years study minimum (Masters) to get registered and practice as a psych. And all I was going to do was wait til I'd recovered from the horrors of the honours thesis I just handed in in March. But would I ever really be ready? Nope. I don't think so. Who the hell wants to write a fucking thesis anyway. Be it 16,000 words (Mas.ters) or 80,000 (Mas.ters/Ph.D combo) (that's $2/word!).

So. I never managed to have a baby but I'm going to see if I can be a sooper-dooper academic and birth a book instead.

On the craptacular side of life, my Mum has just been diagnosed with a CIN III cervical dysplasia. The awfullest kind to find on your annual pap smear. She didn't even go for an annual smear though. She's been spotting and having discharge and pain in her uterus and lower back for a couple of months and that's what prompted her to go get checked out. As you might recall, faithful readers, my Mum was done and dusted with periods when she was 41 - which was 18 years ago. So bleeding and period pains are terribly fucking weird things for her to be getting.

Even worse for her, she was raped about 30 years ago and she has serious issues with pap smears and pretty much any and all vaginal exams. So of all the places in her body to have a problem that requires invasive treatment, this is the worst. She'd prefer brain cancer to this.

As far as I'm concerned, prayers are just kind thoughts, so go on and think kind thoughts for my Mama. I love her and I don't want her to have cancer or for me to be an orphan. She's my only family. ~~Here's a quicky-piccie of her so you can concentrate on it and~~ send healing-hippy-vibes her way please.

PhD of crazy

2010-10-15T21:43:00.002+11:00

Calling all academics - tell me I can manage a PhD. M'kay? I'm applying and I'm freakin' out.

RIP Lou - fly free

2010-10-09T23:24:00.000+11:00

Sad news in the bloggy IF world, Louise (evil stepmonster) died in August of the cancer that took her by surprise early this year.

Her lovely husband came in to tell us long-time stalkers and cheerers-on-ers, which was a kind and thoughtful thing to do. What a dreadful awful terrible time for him and them all.

If you can, go send the family some love.

YayBoo for me too

2010-10-01T00:32:00.000+10:00

Maddy did it and so am I.

*~Yay~* We went to the Royal Show.
I love the Show and I have great memories of the Shows of my youth. Like the time my Mum and I went to the Royal Easter Show when I was very small. At the end of the day it was raining and awful and so Mum left me with a policeman at the Police Portable Van while she went to get the car. I have an abiding memory of sitting on a bench in front of a big policeman while eating a drippy chocolate paddlepop and seeing dark grey stormy skies out the van window.

More memories, riding the Hurricane with my Mum and us both laughing hysterically as we were whirled and thrown up and down with our tummies flying. Going on the Loop de Loop which flipped us up upside down. At the peak of the ride all the stuff in Mum's pockets emptied out and fell to the ground below while we giggled together. (She got her stuff back once we were on the ground.) Mum is great fun to ride with.

The year I got a stack of Showbags with lollies and chocolates and our dog ate them all, I was devastated. The following year, I got Showbags again and we locked my Bags in the Ping-Pong room, on the ping-pong table with my cousin's Bags. That bloody dog leaped onto the wall outside the room and squeezed himself through the very narrow opening in the awning window and ate all MY bags but left my cousin's alone. Even more tears that year.

This year we had a ball at the Show, my Mum accompanied us and we spent some happy times laughing on rides together. She can't go on any high rides any more because she's developed old-person-vertigo (she's not that old, 59). Now she feels sick if rides go up and down, but if they go round and round she's fine. So we rode the crazy spinning rides together and took turns taking the kids on rides and tBG and I went on the extreme rides. Like this one.

That's us under the empty orange chairs at the top right

We saw prize-wining bulls and prize-winning roosters and prize-winning scones, muffins, quilts and shoes. We ate hot dogs, lollies, chocolate and fairy floss balls bigger than our heads.


L-R (back) tMG, my Marmie, tPP, (at front) tLG

All in all a great day out.

*Boo* R.I.P Ivy
She was fine at 11am, dead on her side by 1pm. Poor Ivy, the Unknown Chickeh. I never really got much of a sense of her personality, except I did think she was a quiet chickeh. She would stretch her head up high and make a quiet, breathy attempt at a cackle. But her poos were fine (blerk, it's amazing how much a poo can tell you about henhealth look at your own risk) and she was eating, drinking and getting along well.

Bizarrely, we found her after I'd invited our Crazy Neighbour over to view the birds. I was all "Oh they're doing great" and "we love the hens" and "they're in such good shape" and then ... there's Ivy lying down with her eyes shut. I thought maybe she was just lying down like she was having a dust bath. So I walked over saying "Maybe she's having a dirt-bath, hahaha, they look so dead when they're doing that, I'm sure she'll jump up and run away" but she didn't. She was dead and Crazy Neighbour must have thought I was the delusional crazy one, because she kept saying "Oh, she's dead. She's definitely dead."

So passeth the first bird. And when informed, the children were saddened but immediately asked when we would get another, because they are resilient little persons.

Dirt bathing

2010-09-19T21:34:00.001+10:00

No webcam available chickeh-stalkers, but will pictures do? I have pictures aplenty.

Chickehs in the dirt

Now you can see why I thought Sparkles was in trouble in the dirt - she and Ivy look DEAD

You can see poor Sparkles' plucked/pecked neck in this shot and Ivy's beautiful multicoloured plumage on the back of her head.

Chickehs on the run.

:)
I has chickeh love.

Art imitates Life

2010-09-16T23:58:00.000+10:00

Or is it Life imitates Art??

Either way I have Chickens imitating IF.

4 chickens, 13 days, 8 eggs.

If we gave my chickens AMH tests they'd fail as badly as I did.

Why oh why did I get chickens who are peri-menopausal? I have traded desperately wishing for eggs from me for desperately wishing for eggs from chickens.

Do you think if I gave them wheatgrass shots or Royal Jelly then they'd do better? What about CoQ10 or yoga?

Maybe they just need to relax. Maybe I do.

Getting-the-Chickehs ...
I saw a animals alert thing on Faceblerk that led me to a page when some ladies were organising a chicken rescue from a big battery farm. When battery chickens reach 78 weeks old (past peak lay) the farmers kill them. This particular farmer was killing 52,000 hens and offered the chicken-rescue ladies as many chooks as they could find homes for. They thought they'd rehome a couple of hundred but they ended up with orders from fellow chicken-lover-animal-rescue-types for over 16,000 chickens. They whole rescue went belly-up after the battery farmer was reported to the DPI (Department of Primary Industries). The DPI wanted to investigate the rescue, which meant they needed to shut down the battery and the farmer did not want to shut down (loss of livelihood) so he withdrew his offer.

The whole thing fell apart the day we were supposed to go collect our chickens. Lots of people were very disappointed. Lots of people had built coops and gotten organised to house poor old sad badly-treated battery chooks ... us included. But what I learnt was that most battery farms sell their old chickens - they put them on the sale shelf at a crazy-low price and give them a chance to live. So we went to Wagner's Poultry in Coldstream and bought ourselves some old $3 chickehs. Past peak lay but still laying ... apparently.

So there's one question answered - fellow chook lovers, you too can rescue old chickehs.

Maddy, the chickens will not have chicks because we can't have a rooster. We live in the city and though the council is hen-friendly, they've banned roosters due to the evil-early-morning-noise they make. So no bebe-chickehs for us. Even though I would love a little Peeper following me around.

Andie, Maddy and Jenn - the gumboots are from Bunnings. Imagine that - hardware wonderland sells rockin' gumboots. Not online though. I does love me a trip to Bunnings.

The chickens are definitely great entertainment. I pop my boots on morning and night to go tend to my ladies and sometimes just to watch them at their chicken-business. They have distinct personalities and I am doing my best to train them to come when they are called and to be hand-happy.

Henrietta is the tamest - I call "Henny-Henny-Henny" and she'll come and peck at whatever tidbit I have in my hand, though sometimes she does like to try to eat my fingertips instead of the treats.
Sparkles is pecked on by the others, she's the scrappiest of the four, but also seems to be the cleverest. She discovered dust-baths on day 5 much to my horror. I went down to visit them and found her lying on her side in the dirt, ruffling up her feathers and totally covered in dirt. The other chickens were standing around sort of watching her. I though she was having a fit or something and went to pick her up whereupon she growled at me (yes, growled!!! it was very LOL-worthy) and pecked my hand. Anyway I quickly ran inside and Dr-Googled "chicken rolling in dirt" and found that dirt is how chickens clean themselves! They get completely covered in it and shake shake shake and get clean. Somehow.
Ivy is a scaredy-cat, she gets very flustered when I come near her and freaks out completely if she's in the coop and I stick my arm in to top up the feed or something. She just can't cope with humanity.
Kakashi is funny, she clucks around following Henrietta and basically copycats everything Henny does. She is interested in me, but tends to keep a safe distance. She does come running if there's scratch grain in the offing though.

I am an animal rescuer from way back. When I was 13 I (with the help of a friend) liberated the mice in our science experiment when we found out they were going to be gassed the following day. We had mice as a Mendelian inheritance experiment, breeding them to see what coloured furs we would get and I loved my mice. So I was horrified to discover that death was their reward. K and I snuck into the science teacher's office and stole the lab key late one afternoon and liberated our mice. We weren't terribly organised about it so she ended up with 3 or 4 and I took 2. We got in so much trouble at school. There were meetings with parents and demands for mice returns but although K caved and gave her mice back I refused and kept them. They lived for 18 months in a cage in my bedroom and my step-father named them Dim and Sim. Which was really a terrible set of names. Mum and my SF stood behind me and backed up my right to save the mice which was totally cool of them. I got a series of afternoons detentions and a series of Saturday detentions as a punishment and it was worth it 'cause my mice were awesome and fun and worth saving. All life is worth saving.

*smiles*

Chick-chick-chickeee

2010-09-05T21:46:00.001+10:00

We can has chickens. Rescue chickens too! I've always wanted chooks and when I heard you could buy ex-battery chickens and save them from slaughter I decided to bite the bullet and chicken us up. In 24 hrs we've already gathered 3 eggs. Hooray for rescuing poor battery chickens and hooray for having enough room in our yard for a coop and hooray for our landlord saying we could do it and hooray for our girls.

Henrietta - she's boss chickeh

Ivy - ?


Kakashi - apparently she's a manga-chickeh

Sparkles - she laid an egg in the car on the way home!

Smudge is very interested in the chicken coop

Happy chickehs

A girl has to have red gumboots to tend to her chickehs

Living here

2010-08-16T11:19:00.000+10:00

I've been doing my best not to think about infertility or babies or assisted conception. For too long I swallowed myself up in all the things this world had to offer and now that I've been spat out the wrong end of the IVF-machine I've taken some time to process everything solo.

3 things that have been helping me process

Copious amounts of wine. Lovely, delicious, soul-numbing wine. I'm pretty sure I'm not an alcoholic but I'm sure as hell using wine as a crutch.
I bought my Mum a puppy. Best baby I ever spent money obtaining. The day we got money back from the last failed cycle, I went shopping with her. She'd been depressed, suicidal, feeling alone and terribly affected by the Cham.pix she took to help her give up smoking. So while she was taking to steps to ensure she would have less chance of dying from a smoking-related illness she jumped into psychotic death risk with the Cham.pix. She lives alone and since my Grandfather died she'd been travelling up to Sydney every weekend or so, and spending all the holidays there, with her mother. (Who is a cold, crotchety, emotion-sucking grump. Kind of. Mostly she's that way to my Mum and I. Old history. Anyway, is this the longest telling of "why we got a dog" you've ever read or what?) Shortly before my Grandfather died her dog died too. So, no dog at home, no loving father to love and be loved by, spending far too much time away from us and her friends to look after Granny + Cham.pix = head in the gas oven feelings. And she didn't want a new dog. She said she couldn't bear it. But this one night, this one night we went to the store where she bought her last dog (I hate pet-stores and would never purchase an animal myself from one, but this was her thing and we were only looking anyway) and there was this scruffy little puppy leading her brothers around their big cage in a merry dance. She had a long strip of paper in her mouth and she was running around madly with 3 or 4 brothers chasing her. Every once in a while she'd look over her shoulder to ensure her pursuers were still on track and then she tossed her tiny head and sped forward. Clever. And so for the next hour I worked at my Mum and convinced her that the dog was perfect and that I would pay and that the dog would make all the difference. And she has. For both of us. Who knew I needed puppy-love too?
Super Mario Galaxy 2. I love this game. I've never really gotten into computer gaming. In fact after the highs of Pac-Man, Elite star force and some text-based game I used to play back in 1985 I steered clear. But 3 years ago we got Super Mario Galaxy 1 for Christmas and I was hooked. I played it nightly with my darling - swapping turns star-catching for each other until we'd defeated the evil Bowser and rescued Princess Peach. And last month I bought number 2 and we're getting to do it all over again. I love the Mario fantasy worlds, I love the escapism and I love the feeling of reward I get after I get a star. I love the sparkly twinkles everywhere you look, I love the innocuous non-evilness of the bad guys, I love the little twists and turns and changes in direction and perspective. The game is controllable, achievable and distracting. Perfect.

Cheers!

Crazy lady

2010-07-25T22:23:00.003+10:00

I'm having a moment. I don't think I have any stories, tryings, hopings or wishings except akshully I do have all of the above and I wish I didn't. Crazy-lady is crazy.

How can I turn off my brain?? I just don't know. What I do know is that if you google "sore breasts, nausea and burping" then the interwebs thinks you are baking a bun. Except I know that most likely I am not, but my heart hopes I am wrong and so I have been having an endless, unsatisfying argument with myself that goes a little something like this.

"Maybe I could get pregnant."

"Just stop it."

"You never know, stranger things have happened - like that girl with no external genitalia who gave her boyfriend head and then got stabbed and then had a c-section to deliver a healthy baby boy."

"Shut-up."

"But my boobs are sore and today I'm nauseous."

"Yes and your period is due tomorrow or the next day so your progesterone levels are high and you know that both Mum and the Perfect Princess were queasy yesterday - it's a bug".

"But, maybe..."

"But nothing. Just shut the fuck up already!"

I'm a crazy woman, honest-to-god, some of these conversations have occurred aloud because somehow I muct figure I can get through to myself better if I talk aloud.

In other crazy-lady news I'm thinking of starting my Masters next year. I've had all my plans smashed into tiny pieces and I've been feeling a bit lost without plans for the future. I'm worried that if I don't get a move-on and finish doing something with this psych major then I'll never have a proper career. And if I can't have a baby then I better have a fucking good career instead. Problem being that I am scarred from this last year of writing and IVFing and grieving and so I'm quite put off writing. In my investigations I've discovered that possibly the easiest way for me to get certified (short of more talk-aloud conversations in public accompanied by nudity and knives) is to do a Masters of Psychology (Developmental and Educational). It's still a shitload of writing all up but the thesis is only 9000-16000 words instead of 60,000. Which sounds vaguely doable.

I shall continue pondering and talking to myself.

By the way - I caved and gazed at a negative pee-stick just now (late at night on CD13) for the first time in 7 months - I'd broken that darn habit. Fucking stupid sore boobs and sicky-tummy.

?

2010-07-08T00:15:00.000+10:00

I have to re-frame my focus and I'm not sure how.

FCFU

2010-06-25T00:47:00.005+10:00

Yes siree.

I am indeed.

Goodbye assisted conception - you drained our savings for NOTHING.

When I did my 'current status' sidebar tally, I thought to myself "what the fuck were you thinking Pundy? You are a super-freak and a moron all at the same time." In all my time in the blogosphere and trawling through Dr Google I have never come across anyone as poor at egg-making yet try-try-trying as me. Super-dooper-freak.

So Sunday was pretty fucking awful as you can imagine. All that sunshine, lollipops, rainbows and blah blah blah turned dark in an instant. In the time it took to hear my phone ring once and see a number I didn't recognise which meant it was a doctor calling right before we were about to leave the house (literally right before) to tell us not to bother. Luckily I'd just taken two val.ium and a pana.diene forte (my back had seized, fibromyalgia sucks balls).

So I listened.

"Oh No."

"No, that's it's for us, I don't want to make another appointment, Dr McB told us not to bother this time anyway."

"No , I don't want an appointment with the counsellor."

"Thanks. Bye."

And I trotted back to bed, downcast and numbnumbnumb and lay in bed and sniffed my Special Blanket (yes I have a blankie, I don't care how lame that is, I had a pretty fucking traumatic childhood, adolescence and early twenties, the blankie helps me feel safe. If you're lucky sometime I'll take a picture and show you the awesomeness of Special Blankie.)

The Big Guy, my darling, my sweet, my everlastingly wonderful and gorgeous husband, followed me back to bed, curled up behind me and stroked my back quietly 'til I fell back to sleep. Four hours later I woke up crying and then I went and collected my 7 year old son from his fuckwit of a father.

THINGS THAT DON'T SUCK

The Little Guy. He rocks. I got to experience being pregnant and it was wonderful. I hope all of you out there that have never had this, do get it. It's amazing to grow a person. If I didn't have him I would honestly be suicidal. All my life I was afraid of infertility and desperate to be pregnant. Thank God he happened.
My husband - he is amazing. I really do not have the words to express his spectacular awesomeness. And if I had to choose between having a baby and having that man, I would choose him every time. Every single time. Even if I didn't have the Little Guy. He is my match, my yang, my fit, my best, my love. Without him, I would founder. And to endure 5 incredibly fucked up IVF cycles with him beside me has been astounding. He has never let me down. Ever.
On Monday, I found out that I now have a Bachelor of Behavioural Neuroscience with first-class Psychology Honours. I grieved for my beautiful Gramps and did IVF all through that fucking research project year and I still excelled. Yay me.
Wine, Val.ium, Cod.eine and Fen.tanyl. And chocolate and Osso Bucco and Three Cheese Risotto.

THINGS THAT SUCK

I did not get pregnant. No baby for me.
We wasted a lot of money.
I took a drug that made my already thin hair fall out in clumps and gave me neck-ne and back-ne, thanks for nothing DHEA.
I proved my desperation to a heap of random medical professionals.
I cried buckets and made my eyes sore and my eyelashes thin out.
I'm still in faint-chance-limbo. I still ovulate, tBG has sperm, until I stop having periods there will always be a tiny hope that we could achieve pregnancy. So I get to spend the rest of peri-menopause ever-so-slightly-stupidly-hopeful. That's surely a level of hell.
I will never get to have a family that has a Mum and a Dad and a Child and they all stay together. I didn't have that as a child, my child does not have that and now, I will never ever have that. The Big Guy was my chance. I will be by his side as I die ('cause I better fucking die first, I couldn't bear it the other way round) and so if we had had a child together, a child of our own, I would have gotten to experience that togetherness, that FAMILY. And maybe healed some of my own screwed-up-child-self-who-lives-inside-and-cries-for-her-Daddy.
I don't get to see what wonderful person tBG and I would have made. Where is that dark-haired, clever little baby?

* Editing to add (FCFU = First Class Fucked Up) and I don't usually swear quite so much.

no PUPO pour moi

2010-06-20T10:30:00.001+10:00

18 June - one egg retrieved -sadness
19 June - one embryo created - hope
20 June - transfer cancelled, abnormal fertilisation - despair.

One

2010-06-18T12:08:00.000+10:00

Egg retrieval a few hours ago.

Two follicles but Just One Egg.

Beside me as I sat waiting to get taken into theatre:

Lady A, in for a pick-up with 20 follicles
Lady B, in for a termination

Life isn't fair.

I woke up from the anaesthetic, looked at the circled 1 written on my hand and burst into tears. Then I cried for the next hour and a half. The nurses were very kind and let the Big Guy, my rock, come in after a while when it was obvious that I wasn't going to stop crying any time soon.

Someone will call me tomorrow between 1-3pm to let me know whether we're going for a transfer on Sunday. I hope, with all my sad little heart, that they say we have an embryo to transfer and then that I don't get a call on Sunday morning cancelling it.

Low expectations = no tears

2010-06-14T11:51:00.000+10:00

I went with a churning gut and sat for far too long waiting for the scan. It's a public holiday here and they had a problem with the doctors so I waited for over an hour - which did great things for my controlled-anxiety!

Mad Hatter's Energy Man told her to be in the present so I have been doing my best to be here too. My head provided me with the perfect (repeating) soundtrack, so for the past few days I've been listening to this

and this

My freefall scan resulted in two follicles - both on the left. (Nighty-nighty little righty. I think it's gone to sleep for good now.) I am the proud owner of a 15mm and a 12mm and have been asked to return on Wednesday to check on their progress, with a view to triggering on Wednesday for a Friday pickup. And no tears leaving this scan which is a pleasant eventuality!

Please, Universe, let one of these eggs be the magic egg.

Cupcakes and scan

2010-06-13T22:05:00.000+10:00

Oh cupcakes how I love thee. And so does modernhaus who recently thrilled me with a link to Ming's delicious cupcakes and cookies. Get a load of that foodporn gals. If that doesn't get your salivary glands going then pshaw, what on earth would?

Soooo...guess what I've been doing lately (besides shooting up loads of expensive and unfun drugs)?? Yup - baking cupcakes, though not Ming's 'cause I only saw hers today.

I baked these Blueberry and Lemon Coconut cupcakes ...

and then I iced them with lemon icing ...

... and soon I'm going to have a cup of decaffeinated tea and eat some!

Blueberry and Lemon Coconut cupcakes (for substitutions and americano understandingses go search at OChef)

125g butter, soft
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 tsp finel grated lemon rind
2 extra large eggses
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 desiccated coconut
1/2 cup sour cream
a couple of handfuls of frozen or fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 180C (350F) or a bit lower if fan-forced.
Beat butter and sugar 'til light and fluffy.
Beat in lemon rind and eggs, one at a time, beating between additions.
Fold in flour and coconut alternately with the sour cream.
Spoon mix into paper-lined 12 cup regular muffin tray.
Poke about 4 blueberries into each cupcake. (You can put half the mix in, then poke a couple of berries in, then put the other half of the mix over the top and poke more berries in if you feel like it.)
Bake for 20 mins, then remove to a rack and cool.

Ice with Lemon Icing - which has to be the easiest icing ever.

Sift a cup of icing sugar into a bowl and drizzle enough lemon juice over to make a sticky icing, not too stiff and not too runny. Then spread it over the cooled cupcakes. Drool.

Thank you back of the frozen blueberry packet, I thought that recipe looked delicious and I was right!

Tomorrow is CD8 and I go for a scan in the morning to see if my ovaries have woken up after 5 days of stimming. I'd like a couple of good follicles and a couple of good eggs (followed by good embryo/s, a healthy pregnancy and a live lovely birth) please Universe.

Four important walls

2010-06-10T22:28:00.001+10:00

This post is inspired by, and dedicated to Eden and her Gimme Shelter post and linky-business. Go head over there and join the sharing circle.

I was born in Sydney and after my Mum and Dad split up when I was 1.5 my grandparents used to take me for weekends at a time so Mum could study. So every weekend of my young childhood and then every school holidays after that until I was 17 was spent at this house in W.hale B.each.

I loved this place, every nook and cranny of it. I loved the smell of the walls and the feel of the sandstone pillars. I loved the sound of the surf down the road, the salty tang to the air and the magnificent gardens my grandfather built so lovingly.

I walked up and down those stairs for years. Finding eggs the Bunny had left for me. Playing with my Little People and my new red patent leather shoes with the little bow on the front. Skipping up with a towel over my shoulder ready to trek down the street to the beach. Imagining I was a princess in my secret garden, waiting for the prince to find me. Being chased by monsters all over and around.

I sat out on that balcony more times than I can remember. Eating prawns and chips with salty, lemony fingers and listening to my Gramps tell me how delicious the heads were (yuk!). Late at night watching the lightning roll in across the sea, flashing pink and white through the big dark sky. Dandling my various cousins on my knee playing This Little Piggie on countless little toes. Posing for smiling happy family photos in groups and pairs and just by myself.

This beach is as much a part of that house as the gardens and the balcony. I learnt to jump over waves and read the surf. My Gramps tossed me over waves I couldn't jump while my mother and aunts and Granny sunbathed on the sand. He taught me to watch for rips and smell the rain coming on that beach and I left my footprints there forever. Forever doesn't last long on a beach. I wish, so bad, that I could go back and visit those days. Stay in that house again with my extended family, eat Gramps' spaghetti and play bridge and listen to the grown-ups talking politics and religion and gossip.

Ahimè!

2010-06-06T13:09:00.000+10:00

Ma no, io non sono una leggenda metropolitana!

Addio sette mila, quattrocento, ottantacinque dollari ... numero IVF cinque, qui veniamo!

Help

CD27 and other news

2010-06-04T17:26:00.002+10:00

This month I have felt lots of cramping down low in my sweet chariot. And so naturally I've wondered whether I could be so lucky as to be magically, wonderfully, urban-legend-ly knocked up in this cycle before the final IVF. Who knows, I gave up on my PingOAS obsession months ago when I finally realised that it was doing me no good to see the screamingly white space where my lines SHOULD have been every month. So no pee-sticks for me. I'm due by Sunday, in which case I'll be starting the last round of jabs on Monday-ish.

OhMyGod!!! I'll be injecting again within days. I'm battling hopelessness at present. I have to keep reminding myself that it is possible, I haven't stopped ovulating yet. However, if my odds were those of a horse in a race, there's no way I'd back it unless it was running in the Melbourne Cup. And then I'd cheer a lot and yell encouraging words at the horse while I watched it race on TV at the pub. 'Cause that's what you do on Melbourne Cup Day if you're not at Flemington.

I'm liking the metaphor here...let's see if there's more metaphorical fuel* to be drawn from this

It is a race built on dreams, on hard luck and triumph. It is a race which is also survived by tragedy.

That's the race I'm in. Mine's a race against time and I really want to be a winner.

In other news, I've never really given two hoots about Schapelle Corby or her punishment for what I consider to be an incredibly stupid crime. She was convicted of smuggling 4.2kg of dope into, INTO, Bali in 2004. Again, I say ... INTO Bali! She maintained she was innocent, and there are multiple explanations that were raised regarding crooked baggage handlers and drug-smuggling syndicates. Suffice it to say, I haven't cared too much about it. As far as I was concerned, she got the same sort of trial as she would have had here and she'd have been convicted here too. But for less time, because in Indonesia she got a 20 year sentence. Locked up at 26, she'll be released somewhere round 47. The other day I was in the supermarket and I saw this headline

And while I stood in line I read the article, which is of course complete fluff and elaboration. But it hit me then. Not only is Schapelle denied her liberty for 20 years, she's denied her fertility too. Her chance to have babies and thus to have grandchildren.

I don't think that's fair. That 20 year sentence is a substantially different punishment for man than for a woman. Now, years after her incarceration began, I feel terribly, terribly sorry for Schapelle and, for that matter, any woman who is incarcerated for a long prison term. A man at 47 can go on to have a family, a woman generally can't. Isn't it bad enough to be locked up, isn't that punitive enough? And why isn't this an issue? I know that here in Australia, you have to do something fairly heinous (homicide, sexual assault, injurious acts) to get put away from such a long time - all your fertile years. Poor woman - I'd be fighting that sentence too. And I'd get knocked up in prison if it were possible. Which it apparently is, according to the stories about Hotel K as the jail is known.

And then there's this - Bolivia woman 'sold new-born baby for $140'. I'm torn over this one. I know the moral ground ... no baby-selling, it leads to bad bad things. But in this case? She couldn't afford to keep the baby and had sold it to an infertile lady. God knows what will happen to that little one, I actually hope that the lady who bought the baby gets to keep it. There's gotta be some breaks for infertiles, surely.

*Can you even have metaphorical fuel?

Rainbow cake

2010-05-30T00:21:00.000+10:00

I have to make this cake. I don't know if I can manage it, but I'll have to try sometime because I love the look of it.

Hostore

2010-05-26T14:36:00.004+10:00

Greetings ladies.

You may be wondering about the title of this post.

Is it an Italian dialect greeting?
Is it a strange new food?
Is it the store you go to buy hos from?

Surely C's the right answer, right??

It's none of the above - it was my google verification word when I left a birthday message on Keiko's blog. And it tugged at me, like those darned not-words do.

Often I get a fantasmagorical verification word and I want to sign off my comment with it. But then I stop myself and think, "but they'll think I'm weird if I sign off a comment with hostore, even if I do find it terribly funny". Why do I care whether you guys think I'm weird?

Misfits wrote about friendships recently and so did Bunny and they got me thinking about what these IF friendships mean to me and how much I appreciate belonging to a Glum Club (with moments of Glee when one of us gets to escape).

I do, I do, I do. I appreciate the you-ness of you all so very very much. So maybe I will start signing off my comments with my verification words - just because of the me-ness of me. Or maybe just the excellent ones. We'll see.

About this club though. Maddy wrote recently that 25 of her blog sisters had gotten pregnant since she started blogging in June 09. I started blogging 8 months earlier and have through all my IFtime belonged to a forum of TTCers. At last count 39 women I started trying with are pregnant or have had their babies in the forum alone. In bloggy-IF-land out here there's at least the 25 Maddy counted plus a few more from the 8 months prior to her count. That's a shitload of escapees. 64 at minimum. Maddy takes it as a sign of hope - it can happen she says and she's totally correct.

But I'm torn at present.

I greet the pregnancy announcements with such joy - true joy, especially when they've struggled hard. And I congratulate and compliment along with everyone else when babies are birthed safely and displayed proudly. Both in the outerworld and in cyberspace. I'm so appreciative of all the new little persons being created and born. I want each and every one of you to get pregnant and produce your squalling, kicking, cooing bundles. I want to snuggle and cuddle your bundles of love and occasionally I'm lucky enough to do so when someone close to me has a baby (like SIL#1 and SIL#2 and Friend#1 and Friend#2).

It's just that I wonder if I'm picking a scab. Maybe I'd feel better about my failure if I wasn't confronted with so much success it at every turn. I just don't know. I'm pondering.

It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to

2010-05-22T16:06:00.000+10:00

So there.

The Big Guy was very kind to me this morning. I turned 38 and woke up cross and cranky and weepy. Chronologically my body is 38, mentally I'm about 28 and my reproductive system is about 48. Aarrgghh. This is the third birthday I've spent TTC and it's going to be the last one. I'm over it. I'm over beating my head against the brick wall of my prematurely aging ovaries.

The clinic has agreed to do a cycle for us irrespective of my FSH level - so when my period arrives I'll get busy jabbing. We'll do a flare cycle and hope to God it works.

Da da daaaaaa

2010-05-14T23:23:00.000+10:00

Just because I love it.

Fuck you FSH

2010-05-11T21:38:00.000+10:00

My period arrived on Mothers Day.

Day 2 FSH = 14.1

Clinic will only let me do IVF if my CD2 FSH level is below 12. We weren't aiming for a cycle this month anyway, just tracking it to see the fluctuation-that-wasn't.

FuckFuckFuckFuckFUCK.

I am now the unhappy owner of sore eyes (crying), old ovaries (genetics) and a request for a bone density test marked 'indicator - premature menopause'.

And I have realised that I am jealous of other infertile couples. A green hierarchy of jealousy which I shall now expose because it's festering inside me and this is what my blog is for after all ... de-fester-ifying my head.

First place goes to those women under 30 who are experiencing ovulation problems (anovulation, PCOS whatever) - seemingly easily fixed by clomid or, if need be, a quickie trip through IUI or IVF. At least there's young healthy eggs in there somewhere.

Couples with male infertility place in the middle, even those who have almost totally crapped out sperm, because it only takes one and 1% of 10,000 is still an awful fucking lot when the embryologist is looking for one to ICSIfy.

And bringing up the rear are those women who have tubal problems but fine ovaries. IVF is a must, but if there's eggs there then you're in business.

*Sigh* How fucking sad am I.

Back to the fun-park

2010-05-01T12:25:00.001+10:00

Well, well, well. Wednesday's doctor's appointment resulted in a non-teary departure from his office, a situation which surprised me no end.

He says that reproductive hormones fluctuate and he recommends trying again! As long as my day 2 FSH is below 12...of course. We looked at going with his clinic but in the end he said he would only do the same type of cycle as our old clinic anyway, neither of them believe in oestrogen priming cycles due to the lack of rigorous scientific evidence, so it's to be another flare. He did say that this time next year would be no good with the downhill path I'm on. We compared costs and we're going back through the original clinic and we'll have another go on the IVF roller-coaster.

Because I do so love roller-coasters, the faster and bigger the ups and downs the better. At least the IVF roller-coaster has some ups - unlike my body's natural roller-coaster which is now permanently set on steeply-down.

We in Australia need Child Protection Order checks and Police Record checks to proceed with IVF as of the new legislation introduced this year. Last year we got the police checks done, so we just had to post off the child protection checks and wait for processing. Potentially, I'll be jabbing myself by the end of May -0 as long as that FSH level is under 12. I'll check it when my period comes in early may just to see what's happening.

Anyhoo, in other good news the Big Guy's sperm appears to be in the normal range now, so he said to keep trying naturally too - maybe there's one good egg left in me to naturally snag one of the millions of normally shaped sperm TBG produces. TBG stopped riding his bike after the SA that showed 92% abnormal forms, and he started taking Menevit and slow-release vitamin C. Maybe those things helped, maybe it was random, whatever, his junk is normal junk now and I am pleased about that. So is he - he kinda puffed out a bit when the doc told us and later said (only half-jokingly) that he feels more manly. I, of course, feel less womanly because it's so darn obvious that we're not pregnant because of me. All me. And I know it's not a blame game - from him or anyone else outside my head. But inside my head - I'm playing the blame-game and I'm the loser.

As for the new legislation, there's been a lot of furore over here. Lots of "it's not fair"s and "fertile couples don't have to get checks before they leave the hospital with their baby". Personally, I don't care and I think that it's the least of the "it's not fairs". I understand the purpose - I believe it's to avoid litigation sometime in the future when a child conceived through ART grows up and reveals that they were abused by a parent and seeks to sue the clinic that facilitated their conception. If the clinic hadn't jumped through some hoops to suggest that they vetted out the paedophiles and child-beaters, then they'd be liable. It cost us about $64 to get the checks and really, anyone with a clean record ought not be disturbed. It's just not that big of a deal - they are the sort of checks one has to get done for all sorts of employment/volunteer work anyway. Rant over and sorry if I offended anyone who's offended by the checks.

And wait - there's more good news!!!

We're going to Italy from 23 Dec to 8 Jan to start 2011 fresh and exciting :) I'm thrilled to be going and TBG is such a sweetheart for suggesting it, I was feeling awfully plan-less, direction-less and miserable - this really helps! Christmas in Rome, New Years in ...? Visit some family, see where my grandfather came from, walk the stones that ancient people walked. I can't wait to get lost in all the history. And if I'm 7 months pregnant then all the better!

insert hysterical laughter here

2010-04-22T14:39:00.000+10:00

Well the last of the test are back and I'm completely weirded out.

Inhibin B: normal reference range = 100-250 ng/L; <10 = post-menopausal

Guess who has an Inhibin B level less than 10?? Me! Amazing, I am still having perfectly regular periods, and ovulating, but my result on this test suggests that I am done and dusted with periods and fertility.

What The Fuck is going on in there????

Doctor's appointment next Wednesday. I wonder what his take will be.

Here is a virtual bunch of flowers for all you lovely, lovely ladies who have shared my incredulity, horror and disbelief with me. You have showered me with love and kindness and for that I am eternally grateful.

DHEA - for the FAIL.

2010-04-19T17:56:00.000+10:00

Oh ladies I'm so sad

Latest FSH results - 14.3 (menopausal)
latest AMH results - 1.9 (menopausal)

I don't want to believe those results ... I want them to be someone else's, some 50 year old lady's - not mine

I'm not sure what we will do now - not sure if it's worth going forward, with a CD3 FSH of 14.3 I'm not even sure that the doc will even do a cycle with me I have to make another appointment but from the looks of it, I'm a DHEA failure.

Thank you so much for all your supportive, horrified comments. I am drowning here and it's a comfort to know that you're out there thinking kindly of me.

A couple of friends who have struggled with infertility have both told me to ignore the blood test results and to keep trying and trying, not to give up. But oh I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do, it's so much money to try and try again! I'm not even 38 yet and this is all so incredibly unfair. What would you do? What will I do? What will the doctor say now?

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

2010-04-16T15:38:00.000+10:00

First set of blood tests reveal that my FSH level is now 14 point something.

Aaarrrggggghhhh!!!!

Doc said that the only thing the DHEA would do for sure was lower my FSH (which was actually fine at 7.4). Instead it's doubled. This is not at all good and naturally the doctor's office is closed and so I can't see/speak to anyone. I've been in tears since I opened the mail and saw those shocking results (I get copies sent to me). My free testosterone and DHEA-S levels are also stupidly elevated and I'm thinking I should stop taking the DHEA. ButvI'll wait and see how disastrous my AMH and Inhibin-b levels are, talk to the doc and then decide.

Taking DHEA was NOT supposed to make my situation worse, but so far that seems to be exactly what it has done.

Disbelief

2010-04-15T00:28:00.003+10:00

Are any of you still incredulous? I know that after 26 months of TTC, lots of crappy blood tests, 28 BFNs and 4 IVF stim cycles I should be over the incredulity of it all, but I'm not.

I find myself thinking "surely we're not infertile" and "how on earth is it possible that we haven't had a baby" and "wtf?" and "I just can't believe it". 'Cause I can't. I wonder when I will believe it.

It's sort of funny, kind of like a murderer has snuck into my bedroom and is strangling me and yet I'm still wondering, "What? How can he have gotten in, surely it's not possible!" Or like I'm hypothermic in the icy cold ocean watching the Titanic be swallowed by the sea and I'm thinking "Hang on, I'm supposed to be in my berth, surely the ship can't be sinking!" Or like I'm crunching a sweet apple thinking "I'm supposed to be eating a banana - why doesn't this taste like a banana?" Ha! Stoopid disbelieving brain.

I'm downing my DHEA like a good girl and am waiting patiently for the blood tests now, because today is CD3 and I went and got jabbed. I will be interested to see if the DHEA has done anything to my hormone levels. Also, and confoundingly, I'm interested to see whether getting the tests done at the pathology lab will make a difference, given that both inhibin-B and AMH are supposed to be spun immediately and then put on ice (neither of which have happened at my GPs).

And in the end, the results of these blood tests don't actually change anything anyway. If I can get my act into gear then we'll probably start the new cycle soon. That is, if I can get in to see the mandatory counsellor before my luteal phase starts. Which, when I type it and look at the dates, seems unlikely. So, then, I think we'll be cycling in June.

What...ever.

P.S. Still not finished with the damned illness either. I officially hate coughing.

Sickie-bear

2010-04-07T00:08:00.000+10:00

I got ill on March 23rd. But my deadline wasn't til the 31st and I still had work to do, so I didn't stop and rest like I should have.

I got bronchitis on March 27th. But still with the needing to work...not enough rest. Then on about the 2nd it seemed like the bronchitis was clearing up, but I started getting sinus-y and last night I awoke at 4am with a throat like razor blades and a hot hot body. Not good hot. Bad hot.

So today, I'm completely brochitis-y again, every muscle and joint in my body is killing me and I'm coughing up phlegm like a 90 year old smoker. I swear a truck hit me.

And so we went to two doctors today. One gave me steroids for the wheeze and antibiotics for the lungs and the other gave me hope.

He said a few things and, as is my wont, here's the list.

1) DHEA is of no proven benefit but it can't hurt.

2) Growth Hormone is promising, but only one clinic in Adelaide is doing the clinical trial and we're both not there and not in it.

3) My egg numbers suck and he would never expect to get even 5 or 6 out of me, but the ones I have make embryos so all is not lost.

4) He didn't recommend quitting, said he'd be happy to go ahead with us.

He's so great, I have waaaaaay more confidence in him than in the docs at our last clinic, even though he says they're just as good. So we'll give IVF another chance to fuck with us and maybe delight us. Probably mid-May, the way my cycles are going.

He wrote me a path request for hormone checks at day 2/3 of my next cycle (which should be Thursday week) and he wrote a request for TBG to have another SA done. I want that done so I can let go of the hope, every damn month, that maybe we've hit the jackpot naturally.

I'm so scared heading towards this new cycle now. I half-thought that he would just say give up, but my age is apparently in my favour even if my AMH & Inhibin-B aren't.

But so scared. Early January, after the Christmas Fiasco BFN, I was severely depressed and hurting so badly after my six months of IVF Horror. I had to put that away and finish that stupid Honours project. Now that's done and I'm terrified to be letting myself in for that world of pain again.

Please Universe, please let it work this time.

Hoppy Easter!

2010-04-04T01:02:00.001+11:00

I hope everyone has a very Happy Easter!

I am having a weird Easter this year. No Little Guy (he's with his Dad 200 kms away) and no Mama (she's with her Mum and the rest of her family 2000kms away). So it's the Big Guy, his two kids and all the rest of TBG's family for Easter for me. And that feels wrong and weird and completely un-Easter-ish. We're going for a picnic in the park - all the family TBG's Mum could muster including one of the SILs and her new baby. I love the SIL and I love the new boy and I will endeavour to steal as much baby love as I can.

But oh!

They started TTCing just after us, had a miscarriage and finally got pregnant. So I don't feel anything but love towards this new boy and his parents. But for myself, there's jealousy and sadness and wistful longings.

Dr's appointment for us on Tuesday the 6th. I wonder what his recommendations will be...

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher

Thanks to Coco's boss's daily inspirational and to Coco for passing this along ... I really like it.

The Eagle has Landed

2010-04-01T01:00:00.000+11:00

Hi there bloggedy-friends!

How nice to see you again, whatcho bin doin'?

...

Great! That's just great.

Me?

Oh, you know ... HANDING IN MY THESIS!!!! That kind of thing.

Yes, I has handed the fat fooker in and I say fat in the truest sense of the wordy word. 161 pages of written evidence that I thought too hard about EEGs and depression. Whilst depressed. How's that for a mindfuck.

The Big Guy bought my some pretty roses and took me out for delicious dinner and now here I am ... all free and stuff.

So now I say to the Universe - now I am done with the thesis shite can I puh-leeze get pregnant. I shall be far far more relaxed now. Surely that will help. And, Universe, if you were trying to keep me on the path to psychology by not letting me have a baby and stop doing Honours, then you've done a sterling job. Really, a cracker of a job stopping pregnancy and keeping me finishing my studies.

But it's ok now, Universe, I can have a baby now, it won't be interrupting anything.

'K?

Rawhide!

2010-03-15T01:44:00.001+11:00

Writin' writin' writin'
Writin' writin' writin'
Writin' writin' writin'
Hon-ours!

Keep those words a'rollin'
Though the fingers' swollen
Keep those hands a'typin'
Hon-ours!

Through sun and shade and weather
hell bent for leather
Wishin' it was all over now
All the things I'm missin',
Good vittles, love, and kissin',
Are waiting for me to finish writin'

Write 'em on, fix 'em up
Write 'em up, fix 'em on
Move along, do 'em up
Hon-ours!

Count 'em out, write 'em in,
Write 'em in, count 'em out,
Count 'em out, write 'em in
Honours!

Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though there's nothin' provin'
Keep them fingers movin'
Hon-ours!

Don't try to understand 'em
Just write, count and stand 'em
Soon we'll be living high and wide.
My hearts calculatin'
My true love will be waitin',
Be waitin' at the end of my write.

Write 'em on, fix 'em up
Write 'em up, fix 'em on
Move along, do 'em up
Hon-ours!

Count 'em out, write 'em in,
Write 'em in, cut 'em out,
Count 'em out, write 'em in
Honours!

You get the picture?

Thanks for the feedback and the tips peeps...

Mon, I've tried the grog, just gave me a hangover and a sore back. Double-awful. And a baby with JS's face - ewww. Please God that baby MurLem is as gorgeous as you!

Allie - the toilet dream! I have that one too!!! And sometimes I've gone into a loo and thought the walls were solid only to look up and realise they're gone! And I'm on the toilet with people all around!!!! There aren't enough exclamation marks in the world for that feeling. Unfortunately a doona's not enough padding for Princess-and-the-Pea-me - BTDT.

WiseGuy - we do take our own bedding, but can't fit a whole mattress in the car/roof-pod. I wish we could!

lovecomesfirst and JB - I googled the cost of a high density foam single underlay - wowzers! Even on ebay I'm looking at at least more than one hundred bucks.

babysmiling - Will investigate the eggshell stuff further, though I'd love a latex topper I can't justify spending the moola on one for a week a year (we stay there when skiing too), so maybe the eggcrate foam is cheaper.

SIF - that is a crazy awful dream! Hope you don't have that one again.

Eden - I love your Ms Dream Analyser self and your positive thoughts. Strangely, I dreamed he died again last night. The ALP were trying to kill him and I woke up crying in bed beside him. I think I'm very afraid of losing him. (And yes, ALP = Australian Labor Party, WTF is going on in my head???)

Dreams, Doozers and Beds

2010-03-08T03:57:00.001+11:00

Every year the Big Guy's Mum organises all the family, close and extended to go up to their ski lodge and have a long weekend away. This year the family pickings were slim, what with SIL #2 having just delivered their baby, the reliable cousin busy organising her wedding, SIL #1 moving house and BIL off surfing. So the long weekend this year was just us five, MIL, FIL, SIL #3 and her two kids, FIL's brother and his daughter and grand-daughter. (What an acronym-rich post).

Last time we all went up it went like this. I must have wiped out the mattresses from my memory because OH MY GOD those things are rocks!!!!

So this time, we go up there and TBG promises me that they will all leave the lodge for activities during the daytime and I will be able to work - because, as you know, I have this looming deadline and I'm scrambling around trying to meet it.

Day 1 - fine-ish ... I'd slept like crap the night before and was sore and a bit hung-over, but they all left for about 4 hours during the day and I got quite a lot of work done. Yay. Then we grown-ups sat around playing games 'til the wee hours and went to bed. Where I proceeded to have the weirdest and most devastating dream.

TBG and I had decided to kill ourselves by drinking raspberry-cordial-flavoured-unknown-poison we bought from some guy on the street. We were laying in a bed together having drunk the poison, waiting to slip into unconsciousness and die when I realised I could feel the baby girl I was 18 weeks pregnant with kicking me. (WTF?) And then I panicked. (Naturally). I started having second thoughts about our suicide pact and I wondered if I called an ambulance if they could identify the poison and fix us in time. TBG was unconscious beside me and so I shook him and shook him to rouse him and when he sleepily opened his eyes I told him about my second thoughts and asked him what he wanted me to do. He mumbled that he just wanted to be left alone to die.

And then I woke up. I was emotionally crushed for a second and very very sad and then I realised it had been a dream and I rolled over to find my beloved, sleeping, alive husband to wake him up and get cuddled. I didn't sleep much more that night. Got up grumpy, still affected by the dream and then it rained and all the outdoor activities were cancelled.

Arrrggghhhh.

FIL's brother's daughter offered to drop me home as she was leaving that day and so after lunch we drove the 3.5 hours home. We spoke of my conception dramas and she felt the need to tell me that "some things are just not meant to be". Well, that sent me right off. I politely but firmly told her that the "meant to be" line was crap and surely she didn't think that toddler Gurshan Singh was "meant to die" and so if not, then what was happening to me was not "meant to be" but just really bad luck. She agreed. Possibly, now I recount that, I wasn't so polite. But whatever.

When I got home I spoke lovingly to my own darling gentle bed, finished off writing up the results
section of my report, emailed it to my supervisor (who will be surprised to get mail from me at 2:30am) and now here I am.

Randomly rambling.

Why on earth was pregnant-me wanting to commit suicide. I wasn't aware of the pregnancy until I drank the poison and laid down, what a freaky thing to dream.

But not as freaky as the time I dreamed I was all dressed in white in a pseudo-churchy place in amongst an audience of similarly-white-clothed young women. Then this handsome, goateed man up front pointed at me and said, "Her."
And right then I knew that the devil had just chosen me to be his bride.

I really dream some doozies.

Speaking of doozies, did any of you ever watch Fraggle Rock - I completely loved the Doozers. They were so totally cute!

So questions for the peanut gallery ... I'd really love some answers!

What's the weirdest dream you can remember?
Did you like the Fraggles?
What are your recommendations for making hard horrid beds comfortable (because, come next March I'll be going up that mountain again to sleep on that cruddy mattress)?

Outliers

2010-03-04T00:03:00.000+11:00

I'm struggling through the data analysis for my project at present. It's due in on March 31st, I'm yet to successfully run the stats and you can blame the outliers and the lack of 'normality' for that.

And that got me thinking. I'm an outlier, I'm the not-normal in the dataset of women.

"An outlier is an observation that lies an abnormal distance from other values

in a random sample from a population".

I'm 37 and I don't make many eggs when stimulated. Outlier.
I've done 4 IVF stim cycles without a pregnancy. Outlier.
I have a very low AMH level and a very low inhibin-B level ... for 37. Outlier.

If I was in my dataset, I'd want to transform me or delete me. I'd ruin the analysis if I left me in.

I wish I could transform myself. I'd turn myself into Super-Egg-Making-Lady and square-root my weirdo hormone levels right into the normal range. Just like that!

But no. It only works in statistical packages, where my lovely depressed/not-depressed old people are now just represented by the numbers I've made of them.

I'm more than those numbers.

Pundelin-ology

2010-03-01T01:04:00.000+11:00

Rules: YOU! Yes, you, reading this. You're tagged. Now that you know more about me than you ever wanted to know, play the game, it's fun! Let others know a little more about yourself, repost this as your name followed by "ology."

FOODOLOGY:
What is your salad dressing of choice?
The amazing splendiferous dressing I posted about a while back.

What is your favourite sit-down restaurant?
The European - such yummy food and I know one of the waiters and he gives us great tips.

What is your favourite fast food restaurant?
Ali Baba Kebabs. I lerv falafel.

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
Thai food.

What are your pizza toppings of choice?
Cheese, capsicum, pineapple, salami, ham, mushroom and olives.

How many televisions are in your house?
1

What color cell phone do you have?
Black

BIOLOGY:

Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right.

Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A baby - does that count?

What is the last heavy item you lifted?
I rarely lift terribly heavy items due to my back, but I helped lift our new barbeque a couple of weeks ago - boy was it weighty.

Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
Nope.

Have you ever fainted?
Nope.

BULLCRAPOLOGY:

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
That's hard, I think I would, just so I could make sure to do some special things before the Day.

If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
Celeste.I like the starry connotations.

How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
None, I hate wearing shoes that poke between my toes.

Last person you talked to?
The Big (now 40 year old) Guy.

FAVOURITOLOGY:

Season?
Summer if I'm near a beach. Winter if I can get to the snow.

Holiday?
Christmas.

Day of the week?
Friday.

Month?
January.

Color?
Red

Drink?
Ginger beer.

Alcoholic?
Kahlua and Coke.

CURRENTOLOGY:

Missing someone?
Yes, my Gramps.

What are you listening to?
Nothing right now, I like silence. But recently I've been listening to Lisa Mitchell and to Josh Rouse.

What are you watching?
Watched Bones and Castle tonight. I love me a good crime show.

Worrying about?
Finishing my lit review. (Oopsie, not doing it right now!)

What's the last movie you saw?
Up in the Air. Oh George *swoon*

Do you smile often?
Not enough.

If you could change your eye color what would it be?
I'd like blue eyes. The kind of blue that's really pale with dark rims.

What's on your wish list for your birthday?
I find it hard to come up with present ideas. I'm middle-class and relatively well-off so I have no burning desires. Not like when I was 20 and poor. There was a ton of stuff I wanted then.

Can you do a chin-up?
Hahaha, I love gag questions!

Does the future make you more nervous or excited?
Excited. I only really get nervous about things when I know what they are and they're impending.

Have you been in a car wreck?
Yep. Ouch.

Have you caused a car wreck?
No.

Do you have an accent?
I'm Australian and I sincerely hope I don't sound it.

Last time you cried?
A couple of weeks ago. That I can't bear it post was preceded and followed by tears.

Plans tonight?
No more writing, going to bed.

Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom?
Oh yeah. Apparently I like the bottom cause I've been there a few times.

Name three things you bought yesterday?
45 bread rolls. 3 kg of potato salad and a cheesecake to feed 20 people. It was the Big Guy's 40th birthday party and it went great.

Have you met someone who changed your life?
Yes, my ex-husband, my current husband, my darling friends Beezus and Big A.

For the better or worse?
Mostly better. Alright, better completely, even the ex, he made me grow up so much.

How did you bring in the New Year?
Soggily in the city under a meagre bit of shelter watching the early fireworks.

Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?
I would but I wonder how far the question means? Back way way far - I'd go and see medieval France, back in my lifetime - I'd go back and tell my Dad not to hang himself. That really fucked me up and I don't think he thought it would.

What songs do you sing in the shower?
I don't usually, but if I do it's whatever has gotten stuck in my head recently.

Have you held hands with someone today?
Yep!

Who was the last person you took a picture of?
I think it was of R when he was being loving to the cat at the party last night - evidence!

Are most of the friends in your life new or old?
Both. But I don't have a wide circle of friends.

Do you like pulpy orange juice?
Yes.

Last time you ate peanut butter and jelly?
Never, I live in Australia, what is 'jelly' anyway, I'm pretty sure it's not the same as our jelly (which I think Americans call Jello).

What were you doing at 12 a.m. last night?
Sleeping off the spins.

What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
OMG did I leave the camera outside overnight! (No I didn't thankfully.)

This lovely little meme brought to you via Rain & lowfatlady & Mrs Gamgee!

Where I've been

2010-02-21T23:59:00.005+11:00

Adele over at Delinquent Eggs graced me with this Beautiful Blogger award, which was oh-so-kind of her. The rules are the standard Thank, Copy, Link, Tell 7 things, Nominate 7 people. And so I will.

WiseGuy asked me "What's up?" and I'm going to use my first couple for that.

1. I have been writing and data analysing frantically. My dataset is finally finalised and the stats have been run and now comes the process of discussing what I did not find anything significant. That's a bitch with psych reports, one has to discuss both findings and non-findings. I have to come up with a rationale for my non-findings without completely dissing the methodology of my project, despite the fact that it's most likely the fault of the methodology that it went pear-shaped. I am also writing the second draft of the literature review and to date I have 203 references for this 5000 word paper. That seems a little overboard to me and I am swimming in all the information (oh I wish I had a watery metaphor that made actual sense).

2. I have been planning the Big Guy's 40th birthday. He deliberated for a while as to what kind of occasion he would like and he settled on a BBQ with all his friends and family. That sounded easy enough, but now I am wading through the details of feeding and entertaining the 30+ people who have said they are able to come. Somehow, by next Saturday I have to have amassed a large quantity of food and beverages and have it all ready to roll by 1pm. Salads, marinades, cheesecakes ... here I come.

3. I have been eating and trying not to. In the middle of 2007 I found my wedding dress, it was off the rack, gorgeous and alterable. Which was great because I was a scrawny, bony thing back then. The dressmaker assured me that she would be able to take the dress in, but my mother screeched "arrgghhh, the bones, the bones, you can't get married with a chest like that" and I proceeded to put on weight. Not very healthily. Instead of buffing up and eating protein and getting some meat on me like that, I ate full-fat butter, and cheese and bread and pasta and all the things I did not naturally like to eat. I made my serving sizes larger and larger and made myself eat three times a day and I snacked ... a lot. And by the time it came to my wedding 7 months later, I had gained 5kg (11lbs) and the chesty ribby hippy bones were gone. But alas, did I stop gaining weight? No. Did I return to my sensible eating habits? No. I just kept packing it on. Over the course of the past two and a half years I have gained a total of 25% of my own 2007 body-weight. Horrific. I have love handles and I have a roll of belly fat. Did the IVF help - not one bit! So anyway, I have been eating and trying not to.

4. I have a penchant for crafting, cooking, sewing and baking and all good housewifely activities (except cleaning). I indulge these desires when I can and for the past 8 years I have felt guilty whenever I have been doing something other than studying (with the exception of mid-term holiday guilt-free times). I started this Honours project a year ago and I have had no breaks from it longer than a week (Fiji, how I remember you with love). As such all my indulgent creativity (except cooking which I have to do) has been either stifled or fulfilled with a large dose of guilt. I am really, really looking forward to finishing studying. I shall have my evenings to myself and I shall do whatever I like!!!

5. My husband is the absolute best. I'm not quite sure why he loves me so or why he is so wonderful to me. Suffice it to say that he does and I find myself quite overwhelmed by gratefulness for his affection and kindness. I dated a lot of losers, I even married one of them, and to find this man is a blessing beyond my hopes. That he loved me back enough to risk marrying me is truly amazing.

6. I like to talk to strangers. Mostly old ladies. They're happy to chat and I always imagine myself, old and alone with few people to talk to having a conversation with someone at the grocery store, finding a wee bit of sympatico in a passing stranger. And so I take those opportunities to gab a bit. Whether it be about the beauty of those kittens we're ogling in the pet store window (which leads to a conversation about her cats and how gorgeous the big Tom was) or about the indecisiveness of the Little Guy as he deliberates on which Treaty Tuesday lolly he will have (which leads to a conversation about how few and far between treats were in the old days and what a good idea it is to limit them).

7. My New Years resolution was to seek out social occasions and attend them. To catch up with friends and to be sociable. As part of this I found an old friend on facebook the other day and after she friended me I stalked through her photos. Surprise, she had twins 4 months ago.
In a flurry, a dreadful, terrible flurry I thought a few things.
1 - she probably had PCOS, she was always a big girl.
2 - she undoubtedly had some kind of assisted conception.
3 - it probably worked first time.
4 - she has tiny babies now and I don't.
That left me feeling bereft and jealous and sad and hurting. All those suppositions.
However - - - I went to visit my lovely old friend and her cute Little Boo and Big Boo and found out I was wrong. So wrong. In fact, those babies were an accident. She wasn't ready for kids, wasn't trying and didn't do anything at all to get them. She and her husband bought a house, and two nights later those babies were conceived. At 8 weeks she said she'd felt she was popping out a bit and thought maybe she had her LMP date wrong and so they went for a scan to see when the baby would be due. She said they both nearly died when the sonographer asked whose family twins ran in. I was so wrong. And somehow, strangely, I felt better. I definitely don't begrudge her her accidental twins, but the other way - my imagined way - I did. How fucked up is that. I did have a nice day talking to my friend who has not changed, and cuddling and feeding her babies and I will return soon to do it again.

So there you are.

I hereby nominate these 7 people for the Beautiful Blogger award: I love their writing, their honesty, their inspiration, their humour.
Marianne at Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping
Jen at Of Cabbages and Kings
Kelle at Enjoying the Small Things
S at Woman Anyone?
Mad Hatter at Late for a Very Important Pregnancy
Frank at Memorie Di Angelina
Eden at Edenland

Oh and Adele, you are so right. I got asked about the predictive value of AMH level for pregnancy and the research I found suggests that while the AMH test is great at telling you how low your ovarian reserve is, it's not so great at specifying which people will become pregnant and which will not (especially if AMH is over 7.8)

A number of authors have tried to identify cut-off levels for AMH that are able to distinguish between pregnancy and non-pregnancy (Hazout et al., 2004; Eldar-Geva et al., 2005a; Kwee et al., 2007; Elgindy et al., 2008). However, the majority of them indicated that AMH measurement is not useful for predicting this end-point (Van Rooij et al., 2002; Fanchin et al., 2003b; Penarrubia et al., 2005; Ebner et al., 2006; Ficicioglu et al., 2006; Kwee et al., 2007; Smeenk et al., 2007). Up to the present, only one study has been published relating serum AMH levels to the live birth rate following IVF (Nelson et al., 2009). In this prospective study of 340 patients it was demonstrated that the live birth rate dramatically increases with increasing basal AMH value. However, as concluded by the same author, this finding may at least in part be explained by the very good correlation existing between basal AMH and the number of retrieved oocytes (Nelson et al., 2009), indicating that circulating AMH may definitely be considered a better marker for quantitative than for qualitative aspects of ART.

Anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH): what do we still need to know?
A. La Marca, F.J. Broekmans, A. Volpe, B.C. Fauser, N.S. Macklon, on behalf of the ESHRE Special Interest Group for Reproductive Endocrinology – AMH Round Table Human Reproduction 2009 24(9):2264-2275; doi:10.1093/humrep/dep210

Analysis of live birth rate relative to AMH and FSH quintiles (Fig. 1) demonstrated that although there was a significant relationship between increasing AMH and escalating live birth rate, above an AMH concentration of 7.8 pmol/l there was no discrimination in live birth rates.

If AMH was less than 4.9 then the live birth rate was 15%.
AMH of 4.9 to 7.8 then the LBR was 22%.
AMH of 7.8 then the LBR was 35%+ (normal live birth rate for >35yr old IVFers)

Serum anti-Mullerian hormone and FSH: prediction of live birth and extremes of response in stimulated cycles—implications for individualization of therapy. Scott M. Nelson, Robin W. Yates and Richard Fleming, Human Reproduction, doi:10.1093/humrep/dem204

Maybe there's hope for me yet. Maybe.

I saw that Mel had put me into the Lost and Found for my last sad post, hundreds of people read it, and yet I feel like it's a lie. Not the sad post but the words "is heartbroken over test results which are putting an end to her dreams of having another baby". I got those test results, I am heartbroken about them but my dreams aren't ending. Maybe I'm delusional.

I can't bear it

2010-02-12T17:39:00.000+11:00

It's too much for me.

I'm sad and I don't know how to stop wanting a baby.

Before those test results I thought that maybe my last effort plan would work and now, now that I see my inhibin level is close to post-menopausal, now that my AMH level is practically negligible (it's 0.39 on the other scale), now I'm adrift and I want to know how to stop wanting this.

I'm truly happy for all the people I know who are pregnant here in blogland, or in forums or in real life, but I'm so so sad for me.

Now it hurts to read about betas and scans and dates and nurseries and measurements and plans and pains and joys. Before, I thought I really had a chance to be part of that club.

Now I'm just envious and heartbroken.

For interested parties AMH looks to be the most reliable marker of ovarian function (FSH the least reliable as it is affected by estradiol).

"The FSH, estradiol and inhibin secretion are mutually connected by negative feedback. Therefore, their circulating levels are only an indirect reflection of the number of antral follicles. The E2 levels are less a reflection of the number of antral follicles, but rather of their growth activity during the follicular phase. On this basis, the highest biological plausibility as marker of ovarian reserve is to be attributed to AMH, followed by inhibin B, FSH and E2."

from La Marca, A., Broekmans, F.J., Volpe, A., Fauser, B.C. & Macklon, N.S. (2009). Anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH): what do we still need to know? Human Reproduction, 24(9), 2264–2275. doi:10.1093/humrep/dep210

Meeces have all the luck

2010-02-12T12:37:00.000+11:00

Stem cells help grow new eggs in mice?

OMG I want this technology and I want it now.

A friend in this same IF boat said to me yesterday that she thinks we're 10 years too early. She thinks that in 10 years, they'll have us old ladies sorted out and they'll have figured out implantation and poor response ... and now I think we'll be growing new eggs!

Good vibrations and crap results

2010-02-08T11:18:00.001+11:00

I'm waiting for the doctor to call me back and I thought I would dish out some bloggedy goodness. I has bin a bad blogger lately, but a free and relatively happy person. It's interesting to me that when I'm under pressure, or in pain, or terribly miserable I begin to see those states as normal, as the status quo. And then when the stress has lifted, or the pain relieved or the depression alleviated I realise exactly how much I was affected and exactly how not-normal it was.

Last year I was not my normal, usual, centred self, interwebz. I have been stressed, in pain and thoroughly, thoroughly miserable and this break in the clouds, this sunshine streaming on down, it is so welcome, so warm so ... needed.

The DHEA experiment is proving an interesting. I'm not sure how much of my well-being is DHEAs doing and how much is the relief of IVF stress. Either way I have had an improved libido, some insomnia and general feelings of good.

Last week I finished one section of my research project a 2771 word Method. 2771 words is more than I had to write for the whole of my undergrad projects! Now there's another 3 sections and 4229 words to go. On track.

Yesterday I made an orange cake and made great headway into re-covering an old lampshade. The original 90 year old shade was (as you can imagine) stained and worn and I have had a new one in mind for a while. Then yesterday, I did a bit of research and began work.

The old shade.

Stage 1 - carefully peeling the old, rotting silk shade off the frame. Ninety year old dust exploded at me in little puffs as I popped the threads and smelt bad. A musty old lady smell ...

I wonder if that's how my ovaries smell?

The frame revealed

Stage 2. I carefully cut the old shade in half along it's seam lines, spread it out on the new material, pinned and then freaking-out-ed-ly cut the new cloth with a one inch seam allowance. Cutting material completely freaks me out. Up until this point I was oohing and ahhing contentedly as I completed tasks. Anyway, despite my cutting-panic, it worked out fine.

Stage 3 - I stretched the new cloth over the frame, pinned it tightly and left it to settle.

Then I made some trim, an orange cake and arranged them so artistically for this photo! Ha!

Next post, I will provide the yummy recipe and a picture of the finished lampshade. I'm on hold with the doctor's office now waiting for those test results.

Off hold. Crap. Craptastic results people. Completely shitehouse.

FSH - 7.4 (still under 10 so it looks fine)
AMH - 2.8. (It was 6 eighteen months ago. Normal fertile AMH is between 10-20ish. Fuck.)
Inhibin-B - 23. (More shit. Normal range is 100-250. Post-menopausal is <10. I'm in the menopausal range.)
DHEA-S - 5.8mMol/L. (Have to suss out the normal range for that.)

Fuckdamn. That's completely fucked up and all of sudden I really don't feel so great.

The Scale of the Universe

2010-02-01T22:55:00.000+11:00

I just love this. I am a science nerd at heart, but don't let that put you off looking at this beautiful presentation.

The size difference between us and the outer reaches of the universe is smaller than the distance between us and quantum string (the tiniest parts of matter). Amazing. Do go look at it. Do. Just use the slider bar at the bottom of the animation to go in in in or out out out.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

I am so small.

I got drained for DHEA

2010-01-23T15:52:00.001+11:00

I got my period on Thursday and today is Day 3. The magic day 3 whence all shall be known and understood about fertility and one's hormone levels. I have been contemplating a 3 month course of DHEA and today I went to my GP and asked him to prescribe me 75mg of DHEA per day and to do some blood tests on me. Because he knows me and my all-too-medical-head very well, he merely nodded and did my bidding. So I am now waiting on results for all these ...

DHEA
DHEA-S
DHEA-T
testosterone - free
FSH
LH
oestrogen
progesterone
Vit D, 25-Hydroxy
Thyroid Peroxidase (TPO) Ab
Antithyroglobulin Ab
inhibin B
AMH
thyroid function
liver function
iron studies

I will go back once a month and get most of them re-tested so as to monitor everything properly. it shall be interesting and I shall treat it like a science experiment.

Today my step-daughter asked, for the kazillionth time, if her father and I were going to have a baby. Usually when she asks I say "Maybe ... we're trying", but today I said that I thought that we probably wouldn't. That we'd been trying for two years now and it was very unlikely that it would happen. I felt all glum and pessimistic and realistic and sad while saying this.

The Little Guy piped up from the back-seat "Can't you just take a pill?" and we all laughed.

I wish it was so easy.

For now I shall brave the testosterone storm that may swamp me and take my 75mg of DHEA in the hope that an IVF cycle in May results in more/better eggs and a pregnancy. Otherwise it's the end of the road for us. If anyone out there has anything good to tell me about DHEA, please do so. I'd love a story about a late-thirties poor responder who took DHEA for 12 weeks and got pregnant.

Show-and-tell - Can a Loony?

2010-01-14T19:22:00.002+11:00

Here I am for the 87th Show and Tell at Mel's. Telling but not showing this time.

Yesterday I collected my Marmee from the airport in the afternoon and brought her back to our house for a welcome home dinner. She'd been up north at the beach with the rest of my maternal family, sunning and surfing and relaxing. So I cooked some foods I've never cooked before. Last night's menu included spinach and ricotta cannelloni followed by meringue. T'was yummy.

After I'd dished out and started eating the cannelloni I thought to myself that I wished that I'd taken photos because it was so colourful and gorgeous. But I didn't. And the leftovers don't look quite so wonderful as the piping hot dish all tomato-ey and cheesy did. Here's the recipe.

Napoli sauce

2 tbsps good olive oil
800g canned diced tomatoes
1.5 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tbsp sugar
pinch salt
1 onion chopped

1 heaped tsp crushed garlic

Heat up the oil, saute the onion and garlic 'til translucent, add the tomatoes and the seasonings and cook with the lid on, stirring every once in a while, for a half an hour while you make the cannelloni.

Spinach and Ricotta filling

375g spinach (if you use frozen, then defrost it and squeeze all the water out)
350g ricotta
3 egg yolks
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 cup grated cheese (tasty, parmesan, mozzarella, use whatever you like or a mixture)
a sprinkle of nutmeg
1 tsp salt (and some pepper if you like it)
cannelloni tubes - 20 small tubes, or 10 fat ones (enough to fill the bottom of a lasagne dish)

Combine the spinach, ricotta, yolks, garlic, 1/3 of the cup of grated cheese and the seasonings in a big bowl. Mix well with your hands. Then poke the mix into the cannelloni tubes 'til they're full.

Puree the sauce with a whizzy stick and pour half into the bottom of the dish (I used a 18x29cm (7x11.5") rectangle lasagne dish). Lay the cannelloni over the sauce then pour the rest of the sauce over the top. Sprinkle with the other 2/3 cup of grated cheese and bake at 200C (392F) for 30-35 minutes. Poke with a skewer to see if cooked.

Eat!

Then I made meringue to top a lemon curd tart I'd bought. I've not made meringue before which kind of startled me. Here in the land of the Pav I had escaped meringue making??? Astounding.

I had 3 egg whites (because of the 3 egg yolks I'd used in the cannelloni filling, apparently meringue and cannelloni are companion foods) so I beat them within an inch of their lives with the beaters I got for Christmas (me to me). Oh how I love those beaters - they even have dough hooks. Who knew I could appreciate whitegoods so much. 10 year old me would be so impressed! Anyway, after beating them 'til peaky with a pinch of Cream of Tartar (what on earth is that stuff anyway, must investigate) I added about 3/4 cup of caster sugar really really slowly and beat it all together until beautiful fluffy meringue mountains formed easily. The I walloped heaps onto the tart, whacked it into a very hot oven for a few minutes and we all ate delicious curd cake with sweet meringue topping. And again I wished I'd taken pics of it all, but no. Apparently I was too busy living my life to document it.

I had some left in the bowl and decided to bake some meringue blobs. Oven down to 90C, in went the meringues for me to remember to turn the oven off after 1.5 hours and then leave them to cool for 3 or 4 hours in the cooling oven. But ... oh dear ... I forgot about them almost as soon as I had put them into the oven and this morning my step-daughter, the Perfect Child, said "what happened to those meringues you cooked last night?"

Yes, dear reader, the oven was still on and the meringues were still warm. TBG thought they'd be little meringue-y rocks but akshully they were perfect! And yummy. Ta-daaa.

P.S. I copied Mel and made myself a formspring page too - http://www.formspring.me/pundelina - go on ask me anything!

You know you wanna

2010-01-09T00:17:00.000+11:00

And I sure want you to - so go on, delurkify and leave me a comment letting me know that you're out there (google analytics says there are plenty of you but you're mostly so very quiet).

As for me, I'm holding in there. Only just though. And only with copious quantities (read, 1 or 2 glasses of wine) of alcomahol. I'm sad and dispirited and not sure what to do next. I think I'll try taking DHEA for 3 months and then get Dr Mac to do an oestrogen priming cycle in April/May. Even though he doesn't believe in either of those options, I just can't give up.

In the meantime, the Big Guy and I will make whoopee, pray for miracles (or peace) and I will (must) finish my research project.

Honest and scrap and Happy New Year

2010-01-01T02:27:00.005+11:00

My blog is honest - that's one of my failings actually. Unflinching honesty. Only popular if you are really sure that your arse doesn't look big in those jeans or if you don't care too much if I tell you the truth. (Apparently very few of you wanted to know about bad 70s movies. But hey, I is what I is. Oh, also, I'm worried that I offended people with that last post so I'm very sorry if that happened, it wasn't my intention.)

And my blog is scrap. Just like all those bits of material I will do something with one day, just like that half-broken chest-of-drawers that still kind of works that I haven't thrown out yet. It's here, it's bitty, it's pieces of my life and my feelings. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Always a patchwork of the overflow.

Thus (who gets to use that word in real life, I love thus, it's a most excellent word), thus Allie thought that I deserved this award. Thanks Allie, if there'd been an awards night I would have been sloppily dressed with my hair all over the place, stumbling drunkenly up to the stage to blushingly accept it. I has completely embraced the "drunk Christmas" part of failed IVF cycle #4.

The rules are that I should share 10 honest facts with you and pass on the award to 7 of my bloggy peeps.

But I don't have it in me tonight to write more right now so I shall nominate my gals in my New Years wishes below and when I am less ruled by awfulness and crapola I will write 10 speshul things. Here's a cartoon from the talented Lawrence Yang at http://blowatlife.blogspot.com/

Here's hoping 2010 brings several of us our babies or healthy pregnancies, and brings joy and peace to us all!

2009 can just fuck off

2009-12-29T01:00:00.005+11:00

So there.

The Big Guy says that title is a bit naughty.

I say, who the fuck cares ... I'm not pregnant, my thesis isn't finished and my doctor told me to give up trying to conceive. And my grandfather died. 2009 can go and jump in a lake.

I've been blog-surfing tonight, as you do, when you've managed to follow yet another person who's knocked up the moment you sign up for their blog (congratulations Veronica) and you're looking for new reading material. Preferably non-fertility related reading material thankyouverymuch. So I jumped around through blog lists 'til I landed here and I liked her stuff.

I made TBG find De66ieD0esD@ll@s for me the other day. I wanted to finally see what had made the boys of my youth talk so furtively and what Debbie had actually done. All these years, I'd thought Debbie did an entire football team - the Cowboys - but it turns out that Debbie barely did anyone. Eventually, at the very end, she did her boss ("I eat my Weeties!" says he). What I discovered whilst fast-forwarding through most of the movie was that 70's women had boobs in all shapes and sizes, everyone had pubic hair and in that movie lies one of the funniest lines in movie history.

One of Debbie's friends works in a library and her boyfriend has not had any action from her for a while so he convinces her to perform an act on him in the stacks at the library. Shortly after beginning, she gags a little and ever-so-smoothly the boyfriend says "Don't choke baby... stay alive." I laughed and laughed and laughed. It is completely worth watching the movie just to see bad-70's-p.orn-guy being so caring.

Now TBG just has to say "...don't choke baby" and I'm in fits of giggles all over again.

BFN

2009-12-23T10:39:00.001+11:00

As if it could be anything else.

Go see Avatar in 3D

2009-12-20T13:14:00.000+11:00

If people only read my title then I will have written enough.

Oh my god. Avatar was phantasmagorical. A feast for my eyes and a journey for my soul. A glimpse of a future and of another world like nothing I've ever seen before. I've only ever seen worlds like this inside my own imagination whilst reading fabulous books (Grass, Ender's Game, The Dragonriders of Pern). By the way, do go and read those books if you haven't already.

The story was relatively simplistic, but the telling - oh the telling was wonderful. The story, in the end is just a vehicle and it does a great job of carrying the imagery forward for us. What the movie should be seen for is it's extraordinarily complex three-dimensional effects. We left the theatre, the Big Guy and I, wishing we could be Na'vi - bounding through the trees, flying on Ikran, listening to the Tree of Souls. We wanted to go back in to the theatre and see it again immediately just to examine the rest of the screen instead of always being focussed on the main thread in any scene.

Awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

Christmas Hope

2009-12-16T00:27:00.001+11:00

We has it.

The other day I went shopping for an ornament to give as a gift to a sweet friend of mine and I found three Christmas words - Peace, Joy and Hope. I bought Joy for my friend and, even though we have way too many ornaments already, I bought Hope for us. Which was surprisingly similar to what happened when Eileen and her DH went shopping. I hung Hope on our tree and I've spent far too long gazing at it wondering if I will show it to our baby next Christmas and say "that's your first Christmas ornament - just especially for you" ... or if I will be unpacking it next Christmas wistfully and sadly instead.

I wonder if all of us in the IF community have Hope strung up on our trees. If not the word itself, then the feeling - wrapped around the Christmas tree and all muddled up with Christmas Spirit. The hope that this will be the last Christmas without that family member we're trying for.

This time I have told everyone, and I mean everyone, about our embryo transfer and our testing date. I want all the positive thoughts, prayers, sticky vibes and good wishes we can get. I hope it helps.

Today I am 4dp2dt and I have been a bit crampy since Sunday. I think it's because of the Pregnyl-induced progesterone rise I must be having. If all is going well then Twinkle and Blobby (or at least one of them) have/has successfully hatched and are/is preparing to implant into my uterine lining.

Show and Tell - T & B

2009-12-11T12:54:00.000+11:00

My Show and Tell for this week is these two little miracles. Twinkle and the oh-so-aptly-named Blobby. My transfer went ahead at 10:30am this morning after two days of agonising anxiety.

Twinkle is a lovely looking 4-cell. Blobby, a 'grotty looking' 3-cell. But Dr Mac did say that he knows of lots of grotty embryos that turned into healthy babies.

The Big Guy and I are amazed that we made it this far and we are praying with all we've got that the blood test on Christmas Eve reveals a healthy looking beta.

More weird numbers from me ... This was my 4th stim cycle, my 3rd pickup, 2nd transfer and ... I want 1 baby who would be tBG's and my 1st biological child, but my 2nd, his 3rd and our 4th altogether. 4-3-2-1-2-3-4.

Go check out what the rest of the gang are showing over at Mel's.

3

2009-12-09T11:28:00.001+11:00

Dr Mac found 3 eggs!!!!! He kindly wrote it on my hand so when I woke up in recovery I knew immediately and I didn't spend all my recovery time crying.

3.

Amazing.

Today is 09-12-09 - all numbers are divisible by three.
The pick-up was done on the third floor.
The Big Guy bought me 3 different lovely chocolates.

This is my 3rd pick-up.

Maybe 3 will be lucky for me. Dare I hope so?

Tomorrow the nurse will call me and tell me if we have a transfer time for Friday. More waiting, more good thoughts and prayers needed please.

Thank you all so much for your love and support.

PS. this is post number one hundred and ... three.

Prayers, good vibes - send them to me please

2009-12-08T23:11:00.000+11:00

I went for a repeat scan on Monday.

Right ovary had a 22mm follicle - nice growth over the four days.
Left ovary had a 22mm follicle - where the hell did that come from? - and two <10mm follies. Dr Mac thinks the big one might be a cyst because it's exhibited unusual follicle dynamics. He says that's what happens with menopause. But I'm only 37 for Christ's sake.

Anyway, I triggered on Monday, pickup in is 9 hours (8am Wednesday morning) and I really need your prayers and good thoughts.

Dr Mac continues to suggest ceasing IVF after this cycle. He's diagnosed premature menopause, said I'd have poor outcomes from continued assisted conception and it would be very expensive.

I am scared and I don't want to move on. I don't want to give up on this dream. I don't know how.

For now, I am praying like crazy that there is ONE healthy egg inside me that makes ONE healthy embryo that grows into ONE healthy baby that I birth next September.

Please.

Dead horses

2009-12-04T15:46:00.000+11:00

3 follicles today. 1x14mm (that's the good one), 1x10mm and 1x<10mm.

He wants to do the pick up mid next week and he says to only expect 1 egg. I am completely devastated at this news and I don't understand why my body is letting me down so badly - things have just gotten worse and worse each time I cycle.

After this cycle I think we will be giving up - there's no point flogging a dead horse.

Dr Mac also said that DHEA was useless, L-arginine disproven, growth hormone too dangerous and that all the alternative therapies are flapping around the edges trying to influence that which cannot really be influenced - the antral follicle count. He did say that he'd do an oestrogen priming protocol if I wished it, but that he doesn't think that it's going to do much good. That the clinics in the US using this protocol are relying on case studies and small patient numbers and that only a large scale study would really demonstrate efficacy.

Blah. I feel like shit. And I think I'm supposed to be trying to be hopeful still. But like I said the the Big Guy, I don't know how to be hopeful any more.

Cheating on Louis Theroux

2009-12-02T17:11:00.000+11:00

That's what I did last night. I cheated on Louis Theroux on our 6th anniversary. I had phantasmagorically wonderful s.e.x. with some devilish guy, not caring one whit that I was married to poor Louis. Poor, poor Louis. He was listening at the window the whole time and when I emerged from the den of iniquity he was there to greet me and tell me he'd heard everything and that we should break up.

WTF. A naughty dream (oh yes, it was naughty) and a guilt dream all mixed together with a fantasy dream. My sleeping brain sure is busy. And there's a secret in there that I wasn't fully aware of myself - I think Louis Theroux is cute and I would do him. Apparently dream-me doesn't particularly respect him though.

And so the dreams have begun, hopefully they'll stay tame like that one and not send me into the depths of zombies-eating-your-face horror. My first scan is on Friday after 5 days of stimming and I'm feeling nervous.

On Saturday, before we went to collect the script and the drugs, I had a complete OTT meltdown at my dear Big Guy. He did something I ought to have taken in my stride but instead I erupted into a raging lunatic. Literally. And I realised, after I was done screaming and was merely sobbing on his shoulder, that I'm terrified. Completely terrified. Not of the needles, not of the procedures, I'm scared of the downs. Those downs are so so low and it's taking me longer each time to recombobulate.

This is my 4th stimulated cycle in the last 6 months. That's a lot of hormone adjustment and dealing with failure and disappointment. I hope, with the teeny tiny bit of hope I have left, that this cycle is the one that gets me pregnant.

Urban legend FAIL

2009-11-26T22:19:00.001+11:00

Bien sûr!

Brownish CM this morning, blood this evening. I called the clinic and was told that tomorrow will be classed as Day 1. So I shall call again tomorrow and find out what Dr Mac has in store for me.

The nurse tried to tell me that lots of people were trying to fit in a cycle before the end of the year and they all get put on a list and looked at to see who can and cannot do a cycle so that they don't overload with numbers of patients. I say 'tried to tell me' because as soon as she said it I replied that I WOULD be doing a cycle because it was offered specially by Dr Mac. Then I thought I should probably take a deep breath and shut up. There were no orders in the system for me so they have to talk to him tomorrow and find out what he wants me to do.

I shall try not to google anything this time and to stay a bit detached. Ha!

In other news, my honours supervisor is happy with me at the moment and so am I. I handed in the first draft of the literature review and then floored her by showing her my 3/4 complete data file (almost ready for analysis). I have made some progress and have met my milestones so far which delights both of us.

TBG's ex-wife dislikes me and tries to ignore me and today she sent an email to tBG asking that I not have contact with the Middle Guy's school (he is starting secondary school close to us in 2010). I have run 2 errands for tBG to go to school during school hours when asked and apparently she does not like this. My errands so far have involved collecting a folder of information and buying some second-hand clothing. Life-shattering.

I don't understand why she is so threatened by me and she can go and get fucked with her request that I not have contact with the school - she "would prefer that any day-to-day contact with the school was with tMG's parents". I am his parent too and her request is absurd.

Thank you for your lovely comments regarding the drawers, we love them and every night when tBG goes to bed he says "I love our bedroom". So sweet! (He thinks I've made him sound ghey, but really he just sounds happy with the new furniture.)

We did this

2009-11-24T00:35:00.006+11:00

TBG took me shopping yesterday - to Ikea. I have a not-so-secret Ikea fetish (it goes along nicely with my stationery and hardware fetishes) and I like to wander around the store playing with all their stuff and briefly living in their weird little apartments. I particularly like this blue and white one they've got going on at the moment. It has a lovely, though incredibly uncomfortable, navy blue couch with pale blue and white furnishings. But I digress.

We have lived in this house for 2 years and for 2 years we have dithered around not getting a new chest of drawers. We got an enormous, fantabulous bed with a splendiferous mattress that makes all other beds feel like rocks, lovely bed covers and blankies. But the rest of the room was a mish-mash. I had a raw pine chest of drawers that I'd rescued from a neighbours' hard rubbish pile six years ago. They'd thrown it out because it was wobbly, falling apart and poorly made in the first place. But I gave it a home and made do. When we bought the new bed I decided that the old chest of drawers looked yukky (it did) and we attempted to paint it. But we don't have a good painting space and instead of a pristine white piece of furniture we got a tallboy complete with paint-embedded dust, hair and teeny tiny bugs. So then I squashed all my stuff in other places and we talked about getting a new chest one day.

Apparently Sunday was the day. We hit Ikea on a whim, bought the second cheapest bits of Swedish crapola we could find and I had the brilliant idea of inserting fabric behind the tacky plastic panels and ... ta-daaaa ...

We now have a new chest of drawers and two new bedside tables too. And I am so pleased with the results! The fabric I chose matches the bedspread perfectly and it's all luver-lelly.

The old bedside tables we had were hard rubbish too. In case you haven't guessed, I have a not-so-secret hard rubbish fetish as well. I am indeed a Rat. What do they say - reduce, reuse, recycle. I happily do all that.

As for the other stuff (you know, the hideous horrid stuff) my period is due sometime after Tuesday. I'm not sure when exactly because of the double ovulation and the uncertain timing of the second egg's release. No one can tell me if my luteal phase will be ruled by the first egg's eruption (in which case my period is due Tues/Wed) or by the second egg (in which case my period is due anywhere from Thurs to Sat).

Mostly I'm not hopeful but there's this dumb little part of me that says "oooh maybe you could be pregnant, you had two eggs, you had s.ex, maybe maybe maybe..." The rest of me wants to beat that silly-me over the head with a rock and make her shut-up cause she's always wrong and listening to her hurts.

I sound like a complete crazy woman and I am. I've spent the last week miserable and sad and having nightmares every night and I don't think that the broken awful sleep helps my mood at all.

But anyhoo ... Retail therapy worked some - aren't the drawers gorgeous???

Show and Tell - The best salad dressing E-V-A-H

2009-11-18T21:02:00.005+11:00

I have lost myself lately. The stress of these repeated failures, these 3 ICSI cycles of doom have taken their toll on me and I realised the other day that my poor blog has turned into a repository of sadness. Almost completely. The odd post here or there reflects more than the infertility issues, but they are few and far between.

So. I have resolved to try to write a non-infertility-related post every time I write an infertility-related post and I'm starting with something delicious. And I'm tagging into Show and Tell (go see what everyone else is showing too).

This salad dressing is seriously the absolute, most fantastic dressing in the universe. If awesome had dressing on it, it would be this dressing. Oh, and it's crazy simple too. Without further ado I present ...

Punde's Perfect P'salad P'dressing

Equal parts

lemon juice
balsamic vinegar
soy sauce
sesame oil
Half again as much honey than the other ingredients

So if you made a little serving, just for two, you'd use 1 tsp of the first four and 1.5 tsp of the honey. The dressing is sweet, salty, tangy and smooth all at once and you must must must only use the queen of oils in it.
Mix it all together and serve with salad. Any salad.

We particularly like this salad ...

A big bowl full of baby spinach leaves
15 bite-sized chunks of roast pumpkin (no skin)
Red capsicum slices
Cucumber slices
Sugar-snap peas
A handful of cashews

Layer, toss, whatever. Then dress it right before eating and you will think you have gone to salad heaven. The Big Guy used to dislike salad, but now he eats it 3 or times a week very happily as long as it has a dash of the fantabulous dressing on it.

As an aside, I am amazed. Astounded even.

Apparently the universe is on my side - I am not even allowed to accidentally stumble into infertility. I went to find an alliterative synonym for dressing that started with 'P' 'cause I like that kind of thing and I landed at synonym.net. This is what they had to offer ... who knew fecundation or fertilisation were synonyms for dressing! Ha. I won't be going there again - FAIL synonym.net!