The start of a better week - hopefully

My weekend went from bad to worse to pretty good. I cannot believe the state I was in towards the end of last week. For some bizarre reason I had it in my head that D wasn't in love with me anymore. I know, it sounds so silly to actually come out and admit it on a post but it was how I was feeling. The main reasons for this are that we have been having very little intimate time together, you know how it is, trying for a baby just kills your sex life. Sex was a burden and something we just did when we had to. Thankfully this weekend we have sorted that out.

We celebrated my birthday along with D's brother and his partner. The problem with this is that D's brother and his partner (let's call them YIN and YANG) always end up arguing when they go out. They apparently love each other but you wouldn't believe it. Anyway, to cut a VERY long story short. YIN wants to get married and have kids but YANG doesn't. YIN gave birth to a stillborn many years ago and (understandably) has lots of issues and to top it off she lost her mother 4 weeks ago. So, YIN is in a very vulnerable state at the moment and YANG isn't helping when he spends a lot of time refusing to discuss future plans etc. Now I am not saying that YANG should marry YIN just because she is in a vulnerable state and needs the stability at the moment, I am saying that YANG should not be AFRAID to marry her just in case she runs off with his money and he definitely shouldn't let the issues that he has with his own upbringing stop him from doing something that would really and truly be the making of him.

WW last night was interesting, I was so scared about going because I was convinced that I would have put on weight after the weekend that I had and I was amazed to discover that I had lost a pound. I'm very happy with that and next week I am hoping for an even better weight loss as I have decided that this is the week that I will increase my activity levels. My incentive is obviously the baby thing but also D and I are thinking of going abroad in November and I am hoping by then that I'll be at goal.

D is off on a boys holiday on Monday and although I am going to miss him like mad, I am looking forward to the ME time. Everybody seems to think that I am not going to survive for a week without him, seeing as I have a VIVID imagination and will probably spend all night, every night thinking that somebody is trying to break into the house. But, I think it will be good for me, good for us.

So here marks the start of a more positive week and hopefully a more positive me.

Nuff said....

What would I like for my birthday this year?

The same thing as the last two years......

Bad week

This week has just gone from bad to worse. Usually at this point in my cycle I am feeling positive and hopeful however, I am currently depressed, despairing of my situation and life, and a total emotional wreak.

I do wonder if it has something to do with the fact that I will be 33 on Sunday. It is dawning on me that I am a miserable bitch and that I have been for nearly two whole years. I am so sick of being miserable but I really can't seem to lift myself out of this depressing bubble and move forward.

Last night I asked D whether he thought giving acupuncture would be a good idea and I couldn't believe what his response was. He asked me why I was considering acupuncture and when I said to try and help the infertile situation he turned around and said that we weren't infertile, that it would happen if and when it is meant to be. I could have swung for him because I was really starting to think that he understood the situation and was able to be supportive but the truth is that he doesn't and isn't. At least he wasn't last night. I know that he IS feeling this shit and that it does hurt him but he just doesn't know how to deal with it. He is a bloke after all. We really are no good for each other when we are like this because we are just too alike, sometimes I am amazed that our marriage has lasted as long as it has.

There are some things which really get to me about D and one of the biggest is the relationship that he has with GOD. After a childhood of GOD smothering by his mother he has grown into an adult with a LOT of issues. He is convinced that he is being punished for something that he has done in his life (probably from appearing to lose his religion), that this is typical of how he's life is and that I would be better off going and finding somebody else who can give me what I want. Oh and to top it off he doesn't believe in medical intervention which is why I spent a lot of time wondering whether to even bother going to the doctor because if we do discover that we need medical assistance he probably won't go for it.

I am happy to try alternative medicine and if that doesn't work then I would not think twice about medical intervention as what I want is a BABY and it doesn't matter how we get it as long as we do.

I am so tired of this battle with IF, the battle that I have with my husband, and the internal battle that I have with my own guilt. You see, I'm the real reason we are being punished, I was the one who had a termination at 15 and probably destroyed my only chance of carrying a pregnancy to full term. I chose not to be a mother at that time and I'm beginning to think that may have been the worst mistake I have ever made.

Pissed off

I am so fucking pissed off.

A colleague announced that she is 3 months pregnant today. I have been expecting this announcement for a while now but I will be totally honest and tell you that it has knocked me for six. This colleague got married last September and being 37 I thought that if they are planning on having a family they will be starting sooner rather than later, and sooner it is. In fact, I don't know why it has hit me so hard because the last time I saw her I was convinced that she was pregnant, there was just something about her. Thing is, if they only got married last September, and lets say they started trying a month or two before, it means that she was trying for 7 months and voila, there you have it, she is up the duff.

Why is this happening to me? Why can't we be expecting a baby, I wouldn't mind having to wait for a year or even two but it isn't even happening now. I am getting so sick of waiting. I'm WAITING for the good old NHS to send me an appointment for the consultant and when I receive that I will have to WAIT for THAT appointment. And then after the appointment with the consultant I will have to WAIT for the appointments for the tests. And then after the tests I will have to WAIT for an appointment with the consultant again and then when I have had a second appointment with the consultant I may be on a WAITING list for IVF and so there begins the longest fucking WAIT of it all. I think by the time all the above happens it is pretty guaranteed that I will be at my goal weight and just about at the end of my tether!

No control

I hate having no control over things. I'm not saying that I am a control freak but I don't like having events in my life that are completely and utterly out of my control. The house situation and the ttc situation are both out of my control and I think that is why they are bothering me so much. I NEED to feel in control of my life again. The big question is HOW? I cannot control the selling of my house. The only way I can take control of that situation is either by taking it off the market or by placing it in the hands of another estate agent. If I take the house off the market I will be admitting defeat and both me and D will have to accept that we are going to have to continue to live in a street that we are not happy in for the rest of this year, at least. If we change estate agents we will have to pay for a HIP and I have the feeling that the value of our house will have dropped.

I am not in control of the ttc thing now that we have been referred to the hospital. Every day I go home and hope that I will have a letter waiting for me, telling me that the next step on this crap journey is about to take place. BUT every day I am disappointed as this letter is nowhere to be seen. I hate the fact that I am having to wait for the doctors to refer me, that I have to wait for an appointment and then the fact that I am going to have to talk to a consultant who will decide what is best for me.

To top off the feeling of having no control, after a week of sticking to WW I only lost 0.5lb last night, HALF A BLOODY POUND! Is it really worth it? SO, let's recap, I am not in control of the house sale, ttc or my weight, so what is there that I AM in control of? I'm in control of this blog (which I am hiding from the outside world), I'm in control of.....no, this is too difficult. I can't think of anything to list. This blog is the only thing that I feel really in control of.

I'm starting to think that I need help.

So tired....

.......of waiting for something exciting to happen. It really would seem that we are not destined to have any of our wishes come true.

For just over a year now we have been wanting to move house, we don't want to move on to anything grand, we just want to get out of the area that we are in. The area that winds us both up beyond belief. We are sick of hearing cars racing up and down the road (worrying about whether the cat will get run over), people running over ducks, dogs barking (we had to endure it for 2 hours last night as next door had gone out and left the bloody things locked in their utility which is right next to our living room), litter everywhere, anti social behaviour, cars parked so that getting out of your drive is difficult and loud neighbours. Yes, I know we are miserable and that a lot of this is just daily life but it is NOT the daily life that we want to be living in.

For just over two years we have been wanting to become a family. We have got absolutely nowhere on this. Yes, we have been to the doctors and had some tests. Yes, we seem to be OK and there is no obvious reason why we are not conceiving. But, it is still very much just the two of us. I am so tired of waiting for this to happen, it will bring us so much joy if it were to happen. I don't want to go for further tests, I don't want to have to do IUI or IVF, I want to conceive naturally.

NOW, we are not greedy people, I don't mind having one or the other at the moment. I don't want BOTH to happen to us at the same time. I can live with either a house move OR a baby but AT LEAST ONE OF THEM WOULD BE GOOD BEFORE THE END OF THIS DECADE!!!

Does IF only apply if you have had IVF?!

Went out for a meal on Saturday with an IF group that my friend knows (when she did her IVF cycle). It was a little frustrating. We went for a Mexican, there were only four of us so I will introduce them to you, naming them after the dish they ate in the restaurant.

Chicken Burritos is my friend with an 8 year old boy and now twin girls from her first cycle of IVF. Nachos is a woman who has a 4.5 year old son and is 11 weeks pregnant with her second child following her first cycle of IVF. Chimichanga is a 39 year old woman who looked about 29! She has a 7 month old child which she conceived naturally on her first cycle after her second IVF attempt. She had been trying to conceive for 4.5 years and had one miscarriage shortly after starting ttc.

They spent a lot of the night talking about people I didn't know (from the IVF messaging board) or their children. I didn't feel totally out of it though as I enjoy hearing about other people's attempts at conceiving, pregnancy, birth and baby stories.

The only thing that really pissed me off was the way they were about my situation. I felt like they were being a bit snotty towards me. I don't know, perhaps I am being unfair as they were also very helpful and were sharing things with me that I hadn't considered but there was just something about them, Nachos in particular. Chimichanga made me feel really small when she asked how long I had been trying. When I said just over two years she said that that wasn't long at all and I went on to say that it is difficult though because you tend to put your life on hold and she replied with how I shouldn't do that! Now, the thing that really got to me was that this woman, a woman who had spent a lot of time trying to conceive and who had been through 2 lots of failed IVFs thought that it would be OK to say what she said. Does she not remember how she felt after two years of ttc? Did she really not put her life on hold when she was ttc? (She went part time to try and reduce the stress) Did she really not think that she would ever have a child until AFTER her two failed IVFs?

Now, I'm not asking for sympathy from ANYBODY but a bit of understanding wouldn't have gone amiss. I vowed on the way home that if I EVER speak to anybody who has got past a year of trying for a baby I will make it VERY clear that I can fully understand what they are going through and that it is HARD and hopefully the outcome for them will be a positive one. I don't want to measure my failure to conceive against anyone else's and I certainly will not feel at all smug if we do eventually manage to conceive a child of our own. I almost felt like I should apologise for not knowing the procedure of being referred to hospital for further tests.

I have noticed over the past two years that IF brings with it a lot of people and that these people all have their own time frame/story/heartbreak/despair but I do not, for one minute, want to compare myself to these people or make these people feel like they do not have the right to call themselves IF because they haven't been trying "that long" or they haven't been through IVF. We, my husband and I, may decide never to go through IVF and if that is the case does that mean that I am not worthy enough to call myself IF.

Don't give up on me

After 6 months of using the C.learblue F.ertility M.onitor and discovering that I am, on average, a pretty consistent ovulator I get a great big slap in the face.

The blood tests at the doctor are done and NOW my body decides not to ovulate. I am on CD21 and there is no sign of that egg - what is going on?

I know that others have to face irregular ovulation but this is something that has not happened to me before, or rather I should say that I have not been aware of it happening and I have been monitoring it for 7 months now.

Still waiting for a letter from the hospital, I know that I am going to be waiting a couple of months at least but I am getting impatient for signs of movement and no O this month has just added to that impatience.

On the weight loss front I am really pleased this week. I lost 2.5lbs which is now a total of 4lbs, only another 31lbs to go! I thought this was really good considering we had been away for the weekend so I had a few drinks and a curry (although I stuck to Chicken Tikka rather than the really fatty dishes).

House front - no news.

HATE

I lost a disappointing 1.5lbs at WW this week. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting huge weight losses each week but I really did think that I would lose a bit more than that - seeing as it was my first week. Anyway, 1.5lbs off is better than putting on.

I am feeling really weird at the mo. I just can't seem to concentrate on anything, I am totally knackered the whole time and I frequently feel like I am losing my grip on everything. In fact, I often feel like I am on the verge of having a panic attack. I have never had a panic attack so I am not entirely sure whether this is what I am feeling but I get to the stage where I just can't concentrate on anything, I feel trapped and all I want to do is run away. I think that I am feeling like this because it has really started to dawn on me that we may never have a child. I really don't think that this is going to happen for us because if it was going to happen it would have by now.

I was reading a post on another IF blog yesterday and she was talking about how the ttc period is spent with fear, despair and depression when it should be a time to enjoy as when the baby does come life becomes incredibly hard. In principle I agree with her and I went home feeling that I should stop being so damn miserable, and hey, I managed it for a couple of hours but then I started to feel the usual crap. You see, we could all enjoy this time if we had some guarantee that we would have a baby one day. It is not knowing whether it is going to happen at all that puts you into the state of despair.

I am currently in the pathetic state of staring at every single pregnant woman I see, muttering "why the fuck can it happen to her and not me" under my breath and secretly wanting to go and grab the woman by the throat. I have become the maniac that I didn't want to become and I don't see a way out (other than the obvious).

Taking control of my eating habits is not helping me this time, I think I have sunk too low. That's what happens when you HATE your job, HATE your house, HATE not being a family, HATE not having a baby and HATE being fat.

I'm done with begging, this shit can just keep coming, I no longer care if I drown in the process.....