Disconnected

Feeling a bit disconnected from the whole ttc / IF thing at the moment. It's difficult to explain but I just don't feel anything. I don't feel sad, depressed or frustrated, I just feel disconnected.

I know that we are moving forward with this. I know that there is no guarantee that we will have a baby at the end of it. I know that we are in for a long wait.

And, knowing all of the above has left me a bit numb. I'm sure this mood will change but for now it leaves me with very little to blog about.

Low pain threshold?

Before I attempt to recall the HSG appointment I would like to thank WFI and Ms H for the good luck comments attached to my last post.

As it happens I needed all the luck I could get.

I'm not really a hospital person. I have managed to get to 33 without having to go into hospital for anything other than to visit people. So, yesterday was definitely an experience for me. I sat in the waiting room for just over half an hour before I was called into a changing area. I was told to strip from the waist down, put one gown on with the tie ups at the back and then one with the tie ups at the front.

At this point I was beyond nervous.

When I entered the room I was greeted by a female doctor and two nurses. They were all very nice and tried to put me at ease. I was asked some questions and then had to sign a piece of paper to say that I wasn't pregnant. Finally I was instructed to lay on my back with my knees open.

So far so good.

I can do that.

I can lay on my back and open my legs.

I'm even OK with the cleaning of the cha cha both inside and out.

The bit that I am not OK with is when the doctor inserts the catheter.

OMG!

The pain was so intense. It was just so uncomfortable and painful.

I'm laying there, in pain, pain that I have never experienced before in my life and I am feeling like a complete idiot. I'm laying there thinking that I obviously have a low pain threshold. This isn't meant to hurt like this. The doctor even says that she is surprised that it is hurting me so much, that it doesn't usually hurt until the dye is inserted.

I ask her when she is going to insert the dye and she tells me that they are waiting for the doctor to come in to take the xrays.

She tries to readjust the position of the catheter, they place the xray machine over my stomach and I am told to squeeze the nurses hand. All the time I am struggling with the pain, which is constant, and the thought that I am a complete wimp. I'm also thinking that this is going to take a good 20 minutes and how am I going to cope with this pain for 20 minutes.

A male doctor comes in, says something to me which I can't for the life of me recall. I hear the female doctor say something about how she now understands why I am in so much pain, that she had trouble seeing when she inserted the cathetar and, as a result, had inserted it too far.

Within two minutes the male doctor was gone and the female doctor removed everything and stuck a pad between my legs saying that I would definitely get some bleeding. I hopped off the bed with my knees together (trying to hold the pad in place), picked up my bag of belongings and hobbled out to a room to get dressed.

So, all in all, not very pleasant. But at least it is over with now. I didn't get the results, I have to wait to get an appointment through. I was also disappointed that I didn't get to see the screen with my bits on display and the dye working its way through my tubes, that was the only bit that I was looking forward to.

Hooray for short cycles!

For once my cycle has done something that I wanted it to do.

It started early.

So, at the moment, it is looking like I will be going to my HSG appointment on Thursday. I can't believe it. My period is usually quite regular, the shortest cycle I have had is 25 days, so a 23 day cycle on the month that I need a 23 day cycle is almost unbelievable. It feels good to have something work out for once. Having the HSG on Thursday means that I will not have to reschedule the appointment at the infertility clinic on 11 November.

I hope everything looks alright at the HSG appointment because if it does we will hopefully just be referred on to assisted conception (and the long NHS waiting list but, at least we will be one step closer).

Me and my In-laws (part deux)

When I look back at the person I was when I got married, I am amazed at how much I have changed. I married at the age of 25. At 25 I still had a lot of issues that had developed whilst I was growing up. I was incredibly shy, in fact I spent a lot of my wedding day cringing from embarrassment and worrying about what people were thinking. If we were to get married today, we would have a completely different day and I would enjoy every second of it.

My shyness stems from my mum. Even at the age of 57 she struggles with change and new environments. I am very close to both my mum and dad now but I did most of my growing up on my own. My sisters are quite a few years older and my parents were living a youth which was interrupted by the arrival of my sisters. I don’t blame my mum and dad for having a good time rather than being a parent.

I am definitely a stronger person now and I know that I am not perceived as shy. I can stand in front of an audience of 130 people and give a lecture, I can speak my view in a meeting and I can look after myself in a variety of situations however, there are occasions when I revert back to feeling like the person I was when I married.

One of those occasions is happening today. On my suggestion we are having the in-laws round for dinner. I have spoken about my ILs before here and I have been trying to keep away from talking about them again but I just can’t. You see, the problems is that my ILs make me feel like a child. In the past I have held a lot of resentment towards them for making me feel this way, but now I am beginning to wonder whether it is actually me that is making me feel like a child.

When I was growing up my dad was always strict on the whole politeness thing. Please and thank-yous were uttered when they weren’t even required through fear that my dad would pick up on any impoliteness. I was to be nothing but polite to everybody whether I agreed with them or not. This proved kind of difficult in my career and it has taken me a number of years to conquer. Now I have opinions in abundance and more often than not I will voice them but, not where the ILs are concerned. They are very much of the opinion that their opinion is the only opinion and if you choose to voice an opinion which is different to theirs then they just ignore you. I’m not kidding, they just move on to something else and make no comment on what you have just said.

My MIL has an image of the kind of daughter-in-law that she would like. That image is the one she knows. She doesn’t know me at all. I wish she did. I will spend an evening of pretending that I am this person (because it is easier) and only when I start to get tired and drunk will I start to rebel. What can I do to stop myself reverting back to a child whenever I see my in-laws? I thought having my own child would help but obviously that isn’t going to happen. How can I politely make her see that I am a 33 year old woman who is not like her but is still OK (even if I do watch such disgraceful TV programmes like East.enders)? I have been trying for 8 years to improve the situation with my ILs but sometimes I just feel like it is getting worse.

We hardly see them. We argue about them (although not so much now). I don’t want to stop my husband from seeing his parents; I don’t want to argue with him about them. I want to invite them round and enjoy their company instead of spending the entire week building up to the visit and conjuring up all sorts of scenarios of things that they will say that will piss me off. Does anybody else have a difficult relationship with their in-laws? Because at the moment I feel like the only one.

Why is it so easy for some?

I have just received a text message from a friend (one of the friends that I saw the other week). She can now officially announce that she is pregnant with her second child. I'm pissed off by this news. Yes, I admit that I am not only pissed off but I am jealous. You see, this is a repeat of when they were expecting their first child. Although at that time I had all three of them pregnant at the same time, now it is just the two of them and the third is beyond jealous because she has been trying for a few months for her second.

I hate that this is so easy for some people. I hate that everyone else seems to be moving on with their lives whilst we are stuck in a rut. I hate that a pregnancy announcement still has this affect on me. I hate that this is something that we may never experience.

Waiting

Still no word from the hospital about a possible appointment for a HSG before 11 November. It looks like it could be another month of waiting. I will try and call the hospital later today.